It took more than 37 years, but Barry Lee Hempel has finally found a resting place.
With family members looking on, the former Garden Grove resident and U.S. Marine and 11 comrades were buried Friday at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.
“It was a beautiful ceremony,” said Esther Myers, Hempel’s cousin, who attended the burial with his mother and other relatives.
“Unfortunately – and somewhat fittingly – it rained all day.”
The remains of Hempel, a 20-year-old Garden Grove High School graduate, 10 fellow Marines and an Army soldier listed as missing in action after a fierce battle near the Laos-Vietnam border, were identified and returned to the United States in August.
It was the largest group of MIAs identified after being reported missing in the Vietnam War, Pentagon officials said.
“For some families, this gives them some closure,” Myers said in a telephone interview. “It’s been 37 years, but I don’t believe in closure because the loss will always be there.”
Villagers, former Vietnamese soldiers and American survivors helped investigators narrow their search to three excavations in 1998 and 1999, where they recovered the remains and other personal materials.
Families can finish the healing process when the remains of their loved ones are back where they belong, said Jim Kaylor, a former Marine and Vietnam veteran.
“I’m glad he’s back home and the more they can do, the better,” said Kaylor, 56, of Newport Beach. “It’s good they are still looking.”
Hempel was one of 200 men killed during a battle in South Vietnam in the summer of 1968. The tall and muscular 20-year-old joined Delta Battery, 2nd Battalion, 13th Marines in the winter of 1967 from the Fire Direction School in Camp Pendleton.
Within a month the battalion was wading through the thick jungles of Southeast Asia, but Hempel never complained, always volunteering for missions and to dig foxholes, recalled Dell Scott, a St. Cloud, Minn., resident, in an August interview with the Register.
Hempel did get scared, telling Scott in quiet moments that he didn’t believe he would make it back home. But, Scott added, “He felt it was his job and his duty to be there; otherwise he wouldn’t have joined the Marines.”
By the early morning of May 10, Scott and a few dozen soldiers were overrun by thousands of North Vietnamese soldiers. A barrage of rockets and gunfire erupted just after 3 a.m. as waves of soldiers attacked from on top of a hill.
By dawn, the North Vietnamese had backed off. Helicopters rescued the wounded, but they came under fire again and couldn’t remove the dead. Scott, who had been hit by shrapnel, was limping through what was left of the camp and found Hempel’s body lying in a dug-out pit.
Scott said there’s some peace knowing Hempel’s remains were recovered. But he said he would like to see Hempel’s sacrifice recognized by officials closer to home.
“I think for what he did everyone should be proud of him,” Scott said in August. “He was just a kid when he gave his life. They should honor him for what he did.”
Contact the writer: (714) 445-6685 or vnguyen@ocregister.com
