The Department of Defense POW/Missing
Personnel Office (DPMO) in Honolulu announced Friday that the
remains of a U.S. serviceman, missing in action from the Vietnam
War, have been identified and will be returned to his family for
burial with full military honors.
He is Gunnery Sgt. Richard W. Fischer, U.S. Marine Corps,
of Madison, Wis. He will be buried on Monday in Madison.
On Jan. 8, 1968, Fischer was assigned to M Company, 3rd
Battalion, 5th Marines, 1st Marine Division, on an ambush patrol
south of Da Nang in Quang Nam Province, Vietnam. Fischer became
separated from his unit and subsequent attempts by his team
members to locate him were met with enemy fire.
In 1992 and 1993, joint U.S./Socialist Republic of Vietnam
(S.R.V.) teams, led by the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command
(JPAC), conducted three investigations and interviewed several
Vietnamese citizens. The citizens said that Fischer was killed
by Viet Cong and his remains were buried in a nearby cultivated
field.
In 1994, a joint team excavated the burial site and
recovered human remains and other material evidence including
uniform buttons.
Among other forensic identification tools and
circumstantial evidence, scientists from JPAC and the Armed
Forces DNA Identification Laboratory also used mitochondrial DNA
in the identification of Fischer's remains.