Dog Tag Returned to mother of KIA Jackie Dale Walker
Dog Tag returned to family of Vietnam KIA Jackie Dale Walker, 44 years after his death
Between April 20th – 24th, 1968, men from the 1st Battalion, 327th were involved in a firefight to secure two peaks located about 27 kilometers southwest of Hue in Vietnam. Seventeen Americans were killed.
One of those men, Jackie Dale Walker, had just recently celebrated his birthday – on April 7th, 1968, he turned 19. He spent his birthday in Vietnam with his brothers of Bravo Company – 1/327th.
Jackie and his family should have been spending a joyous time celebrating his 63rd birthday a few weeks ago. Instead, his family was left with only memories and thoughts of what could have been.
Jackie Dale Walker, son of Harold and Christine Walker, was born in Okemah, OK, where he shared a humble live with two sisters and three brothers. He loved to fish, hunt, ride horses and had a great fondness for animals. After attending Bearden and Okemah schools, he was a member of the National Guard before he joined the Army in 1967.
On Saturday, April 21st, 2012 – 2 days before the 44th anniversary of Jackie’s death, his mother Christine and family were presented with a possession Jackie left behind in Vietnam – his dog tag.
Jackie’s dog tag was found in 1998 by Wall Street trader Manny Santayana, who was touring the Ho Chi Minh trail and stumbled onto a Vietnamese man who made a living out of extracting bombs from the ground, grinding up the metal and selling it for profit. Sometimes he would stumble upon dog tags from U.S. soldiers, which he would collect and store in an ammo bag under his bed.
“He had 105 of them, and he just harbored them away, thinking perhaps that they were worth something.,” Santayana recalled. “Well, that day they were worth 100 bucks.”
Over the next several years, Santayana was able to make some returns to dog tag owners, but he eventually became too busy to continue with the research. He then enlisted the help of NJ Senator James Beach and the NJ Dog Tag Committee was formed.
"With the help of many organizations, we continue to research, locate and reunite the dog tags with the veterans’,” Sue Quinn-Morris, a researcher for the Dog Tag Committee stated,” and in the unfortunate cases that we have a dog tag of a KIA, we arrange to have the dog tag reunited with their families. Our hope is to return each and every dog tag.”
The Patriot Guard Riders and friends escorted the Walker family from Sand Creek Cemetery, where Jackie is buried, to the VFW Post 1317 in Shawnee, OK, where Oklahoma Speaker of the House, Kris Steele, VFW Officers and the Patriot Guard presented the Walker family with Jackie’s dog tag, Senator Beach’s Resolution, and the Patriot Guard Riders Plaque.The organizations involved in Jackie’s dog tag return include the Patriot Guard Riders and the VFW in Shawnee, among others.