The U.S. military has identified the remains of a New Jersey airman listed as missing in action since his plane went down in Laos during the Vietnam War, the Defense Department said today.
Air Force Capt. Stephen A. Rusch, of West Amwell in Hunterdon County, was 28 when his F-4E Phantom II fighter-bomber crashed after taking enemy fire in March 1972. Immediate efforts to find the crash site, in Salavan Province, were unsuccessful.
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Another MIA can rest in peace.
For all those who say the Defense Department's Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command is a waste of money, tell that to Capt. Rusch's family.
I have three family members who died in foreign lands (two in Russia, one in Africa, we think) during WW2, and the only information they got back home (years after the war ended) was that they probably died in the fighting, their bodies remaining where they fell. My Ur-Tante (my mother's great aunt) who I had the opportunity to know, held out hope until the day she died (at 106) in the early 70s that her husband might be alive somewhere.
As regulars around here know, I don't care much for the belief in souls or an afterlife, but it's the living families who spend years in confusion and denial wondering about their loved one's status who deserve to know.
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