Santa Ana : Name Added to Plaque Listing Vietnam Dead

Allen J. Du Roy did not die in a hail of Viet Cong bullets, nor was he shot down over Hanoi. Instead, he was killed when he stepped on a U.S. land mine near the Cambodia-South Vietnam border on April 18, 1971.

Because Du Roy wasn’t listed as “killed in action” on Defense Department records, he wasn’t included in a list of more than 300 names inscribed on a Civic Center memorial honoring Orange County men who died in the Vietnam War. When the county dedicated the memorial at the Civic Center Plaza in 1980, Du Roy’s parents, who attended the ceremony, asked why their son was not included.

“I went up to look for his name and it wasn’t there,” said Ruth Du Roy, who swiftly began lobbying various local and state legislators--with little success. “They said that because he stepped on one of our mines, he couldn’t be included. Because he wasn’t shot by the North Vietnamese. I found nothing but a dead end.”

Finally, she went to the Veterans Memorial Committee. Today, five years after the memorial was dedicated, her battle will end.

“I’ve fought for this for the last five years,” she said. “He served our country, he was killed over there and I think he has as much right as any soldier to be honored for what he did.”

The oversight will be remedied when members of the Veterans Memorial Committee add Du Roy’s name to a bronze plaque that lists four other county residents also overlooked on the original list. Du Roy, who was a 22-year-old private with the 104th Airborne Division when he died, was added to the list after the committee researched military records, said chairman Major M. Anderson.

In addition to their efforts to list Du Roy and other slain veterans on the memorial, Anderson said, the committee has raised enough cash to complete the four-sided structure, which was originally intended to also honor county residents who died in World Wars I and II and the Korean War. Those plans were dropped by the county due to a lack of funds, he said.

Plaques honoring those who died in the other three wars are in production and will be dedicated on Nov. 9, one on each of the seven-foot triangular pillars that form the memorial. Committee member Doug Boeckler said the plaques will not list names of the dead because Defense Department records weren’t sophisticated enough to give county, or even state, lists.

The committee has raised more than $16,000 for the project, most of it from private firms and veterans groups. A plaque will also be added to the Vietnam side to be used for further additions to the list. Boeckler said several other names are under consideration and research is being conducted.