![]() ![]() ![]() “Well, it was a long time ago but I am very happy to hear from you. You posted a note on my brother's memorial page.” He added: "I am his brother. Please contact me if you have any questions.” Even though Brian had perused the website before, he didn't remember seeing the message. On the “Wall of Faces” website, Brian noticed Urbs’ message from 2014. “I had been thinking of him,” Brian said in an interview. Late on Sunday, April 3, 2022, at his home near Spokane, Washington, Brian sat down at his computer. “Donny was like a father figure to me,” Brian said.ĭonald was born April 25, 1945. As he looks back on the moment now, Brian says the news of Donald’s death was devastating. 'Like a father figure'īrian Drake, 66, a retired sergeant with the Port of Seattle Police, was only 10 - and the youngest of five brothers and three sisters - when his brother was killed. He merely listed his email address and signed off as “Rodolphe.” On Dec, 29, 2014, Urbs typed: “Hello, I am looking for members of Donal (sic) William Drake’s family.” One site, titled “The Wall of Faces,” included a “remembrance” page where visitors could leave messages. Urbs searched for Donald Drake on several websites that listed U.S. Whether it was real or fake, wouldn’t Donald Drake’s family want the dog tag returned to them? It’s fake. In Vietnam they make fake stuff for tourists,' ” Urbs recalled when reached in Bordeaux by. “My friend told me at the time, ‘Don’t bother. Urbs wondered whether the metallic tag was authentic. D.W.” and “USMC,” along with “A” for blood type, “M” for male, and the religious designation of “Presbyterian.” Weeks later, in Bordeaux, the friend, Rodolphe Urbs, a cartoonist whose work has appeared in such publications as Le Monde, Le Canard Enchaine, and Sud Ouest, studied the silver-colored piece of metal, imprinted with “Drake. The tourists happened to notice a vendor selling dog tags that appeared to be from American soldiers and Marines. They purchased one as a gift for a friend back in Bordeaux, France. It was 2014, nearly four decades after the last of 58,220 American, 1.1 million North Vietnamese and 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers had died in Vietnam. It begins with several French tourists strolling through the stalls of street vendors in Danang. The mystery stretches across the globe - and back again - from Vietnam to France and finally to Washington State. ![]() So why was Donald Drake’s dog tag missing? And why was it still in Vietnam? The other remains with the dead soldier’s body to help with identification by burial units. ![]() If the solider is killed, one of the tags is removed for official records. Each metallic piece carries the soldier’s name, branch of service, blood type, religion and service number. soldiers head to the combat zone, they are given two small identical pieces of metal on a single neck chain that look like something the family pet might wear. The sliver of stainless steel - about the size of a potato chip - holds a near-legendary place in American military history and folklore. After a funeral at a church in Newton, a procession of cars escorted Drake’s coffin to its final resting place in a Presbyterian church cemetery in Sparta where his relatives were first buried in the early 1800s.ĭrake's family - especially his kid brother Brian, who saw Donald as the father he never had - then tried to pick up their lives and move on. But this month, a reminder of Donald Drake turned up: his dog tag. The Marines brought Drake’s remains back to the hills of northwest New Jersey. A now-declassified battalion report offers only two sentences about the firefight, noting only that a Marine was "KIA" - killed in action - and adding that Marines "searched the area with inconclusive results." He was 21 years old and had arrived in Vietnam only a few months before with the 1st Marine Division. Marine private, was shot to death in a brief firefight with five Viet Cong soldiers near the swollen rice paddies and low hills surrounding the rapidly expanding American military base in Danang, Vietnam. But sometimes, something gets left behind, almost forgotten. Casualties are tallied, battle reports filed. Watch Video: Details of ship sunk during World War II were classified for many yearsĪ battle erupts. ![]()
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