Soldier coming home from Vietnam

By Kim Kimzey
kim.kimzey@shj.com

The last time Martha Mathis saw her brother, Thomas Rice Jr., they took a photo together.
Rice told Mathis to always keep the picture and remember him. He said he loved her. They embraced.

“He said, ‘I’ll be back some day,’ ” Mathis said.

She told him she would be waiting. She has waited almost 44 years.

Mathis and the rest of Rice’s family never lost hope the beloved young man, devoted to them and to his country, would return from Vietnam after the Huey helicopter he was aboard went missing on Dec. 28, 1965.

Rice, then 23 and a specialist in the U.S. Army, and three other servicemen were conducting a mission over South Vietnam. Rice was the door gunner. Also aboard were Donald Grella, Kenneth Stancil and Jesse Phelps. Their chopper never returned from the mission.

The military unsuccessfully searched for the crash site in the South Vietnamese jungle.

Thomas Rice Sr. and his wife, Jessie, were first notified by telegram that their oldest son was missing in action. He was declared killed in action on Dec. 29, 1966. A memorial service was held for him on May 28, 1967, even though his body had not been recovered.

Mathis prayed her brother would someday come walking through the door. The Rice family waited and wondered.

Had he perished in that crash? Been captured? Was he tortured and starved in a prison camp? If he were imprisoned, might he be released and return home alive?

Rice’s brother, James, also was in the Army. He asked to be sent to South Vietnam. Once stationed there, he spent months searching for his big brother.

The youngest Rice son, John Thomas, was drafted for the service just out of high school.

Jessie Rice went to the recruiting office and told the recruiter she already had one son that could not be found, another already serving in the military, and “she’d be doggone if they gone to get her last one,” John Thomas said.

“My mother told them they were not getting her last boy,” said Faye Smith, Rice’s sister.

Their late mother, Jessie, told the Herald-Journal in 1985, “They told me to write him letters. If they returned my letters, it was a bad sign; if they kept them, that meant they had captured him … every letter I wrote came back. Every day I’d come home looking for a letter from him.”
Rice loved his mother. His dream was to buy her a house.

“We didn’t have that much, but we had plenty of love,” said Queenie Floyd, Rice’s sister.

Rice would wake up early in the morning to chop wood and build a fire so the house was warm when other family members awoke.

The Christmas before he went missing in action, Rice sent home money orders as gifts to family members.

He saw to it that his little sister, Faye, received a present — be it a bicycle, doll or pair of skates.
Smith was only 10 years old when her brother went missing.

For years, she searched for his likeness in the faces of homeless men. What if torture had left him mentally challenged or impaired his memory?

Rice was the only serviceman from Spartanburg unaccounted for in the Vietnam War. He was among 29 soldiers from South Carolina missing in action.

The search for Rice’s crash site was renewed in 1993, said Larry Greer, a spokesman for the Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO).

In April 2006, two Vietnamese villagers claimed that in 1966 they shot down the helicopter believed to be the one Rice was aboard, Greer said in a phone interview. The villagers were interviewed again and later stated the chopper was shot down in 1965.

Greer said several factors made the crash site difficult to find.

It’s tough to see through the jungle canopy from above. At the time the men went missing, soldiers had to search for their comrades during combat.

The technology then available only allowed for visual searches, Greer explained. Men with binoculars stared out of helicopters along the route they thought the helicopter would have taken, he said.

A villager led a team with the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) to the crash site in 2006. The site, near the edge of the highlands of Vietnam, was uncovered and excavated from March 4 to March 22.

Some factors that led officials to believe it was Rice’s crash site: the helicopter was the exact type as the one the men were aboard; the dog tag of one of the servicemen was found; and unspecified items worn by aviation Army crew members circa 1965 were recovered, along with dental remains, Greer said.

Dental remains recovered at the site were sent to JPAC’s Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii.

The mystery is now laid to rest. Rice will be, too.

Remains from the crash site were positively identified June 1, Greer said, and they will stay in Hawaii until a burial date is set.

The soldiers’ remains — fragments too small to individually identify but that clearly belong to the servicemen — will be buried in a single casket at Arlington National Cemetery on a date agreeable to their respective families, Greer said. Individual remains will be buried at the location of the family’s choosing.

Thomas Rice’s daughter, who lives in Washington state, wants her father to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Greer said the servicemen will receive full honors and all funeral expenses will be covered by the Army.

A military memorial tribute for Rice will be held at noon Sept. 19 in John Stinson Woodward Memorial Chapel, beside The J.W. Woodward Funeral Home at 594 Howard St.

Rice joined the Army soon after he graduated from Carver High School. His mother did not want him to enlist.

“It just broke her heart when he come back and told her he had really enlisted. She didn’t think he was going to do it,” Floyd said.

Their mother wept.

Rice later re-enlisted.

Mathis said Rice told her he wanted to make a career of the military. He served six years in the Army.

His re-enlistment, the family says, showed his dedication.

At the time he went missing, Rice was in the 1st Calvary Division.

Floyd was by her late mother’s side “up until the end.” Jessie had her daughter promise they would always remember Thomas.

Floyd said she hasn’t missed a Veteran’s Day or Memorial parade. She’s there with an American flag and a photo of Thomas.

“I asked God, just let me live to see the day that I would know for sure,” Floyd said. She’s now 65 years old and says she can kind of accept it.

“I’m just relieved now to know that he’s not in the prison camp — not going through the torture, not being starved,” Smith said.

Rice’s family recalls his kind heart, giving spirit and friendliness. But they want him to be remembered for so much more — for the way he lived, and for the way he died.
As a hero.