×

History

Last county soldier dies in Vietnam in 1969

Troop levels in Vietnam started to fall in 1969. And that’s when the loss of Warren County natives would stop. No more servicemen from the county would die after Sept. 1969. But there was no way for people here to know that. And as 1969 rolled along, the news of soldier after soldier ...

Gertsch received nation’s highest honor

The Congressional Medal of Honor aims to honor only the bravest and most selfless acts in combat. Just 268 were awarded to the 2.7 million who served in the Armed Forces in Vietnam. John Gary Gertsch is one of them. Gertsch was born in September 1944. A Times Mirror and Observer article ...

Fighter-bomber pilot from Warren died on takeoff in Thailand

When one hears the phrase “combat mission,” it’s reasonable to assume that the most dangerous element of such a sortie is the combat piece, the actual time over enemy airspace. For Maj. Fred W. “Ted” Shattuck, Jr., that turned out to be anything but the case. A comment from a ...

Three county natives killed in Vietnam about two weeks apart

Three young men from Warren County were killed in Vietnam within three weeks of each other in January and early February 1969. Each was 20 or 21 years old. “Sgt. Bill Olson, 21, United States Army... has been reported killed in action, according to word the family has received from the ...

Three Eisenhower graduates killed in Vietnam within a year

If you were one of the 2.7 million men who served in Vietnam, there was a just over two percent chance you would be one of the 58,220 that died over there. There were about 120 students in the Eisenhower Class of 1965. If we assume that the gender mix was roughly 50/50, then your odds of ...

Editors detail impact of Vietnam early in conflict

The first American soldiers arrived in 1965, supplementing American advisors that had been in the country for years. It would be eight years before the last American soldier would leave. By early 1967, editors with the Warren Times Mirror and Observer realized in some small way what the ...