After 23 Years, Slain Vietnam Warrior Is Home

The message was simple and heartfelt when the decorated military man greeted the slain comrade back from a war many have tried to forget.

“Welcome home, Bill Amspacher. Welcome home,” Naval Cmdr. St. Elmo Nauman Jr. said gently. “No longer are you among strangers and enemies, you are among friends.”

William H. Amspacher Jr. was buried Friday afternoon in Chatsworth near the base of the Santa Susana Mountains. For 23 years, Amspacher’s body is believed to have lain hidden in the village of Quang Vinh in Thanh Hoa Province of Vietnam.

The solemn service was special. Funerals for military personnel who had been listed as missing in action are a rarity.

The remains of 196 Americans have been recovered from Southeast Asia since the Paris peace accords were signed in 1973. An additional 2,387 Americans are still listed as lost in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, according to the government.

No Survivors

The Navy navigator and three others were on a mission to save a downed pilot when their radar plane was attacked on June 2, 1965, over the South China Sea. Witnesses saw one crewman jump from the plane, but his parachute never opened and he plummeted into the sea. The plane crashed on land, a short distance from shore, the witnesses said. The military believes there were no survivors.

For years, Amspacher’s mother and stepfather, Virginia and Bob Tiffany of Canoga Park, were left with only their memories and a bronze plaque from the Navy. They had placed the marker on a tombstone atop an empty grave.

The call from Washington this summer, said Bob Tiffany, “was a complete shock. After 23 years you sort of give up hope.”

The bodies of Amspacher, a petty officer 3rd class, and two of his comrades were among the 25 servicemen returned to the United States in July. The recovery was among the largest since the war’s end.

When Amspacher enlisted he was a teen-ager who didn’t know what he should do after high school. He volunteered to guarantee he could get into the Navy and ultimately be assigned to Naval air duty. After his first tour of duty in the Philippines, he volunteered for another and wound up in Vietnam.

After the funeral, three of Amspacher’s buddies from Canoga Park High School reminisced about their friend. The college professor, the physicist and the veterinarian had gone on to college and avoided Vietnam. They were not sure what prompted Amspacher to choose a different path.

“It probably meant something to him, whether it was a call to country or for the training,” said Mick Sears, an agriculture professor at Pierce College.

Amspacher’s friends recalled the laughs they had once shared. There was the time the police caught them painting an Athenian--the mascot of their senior class--on the Los Angeles River’s concrete wash. And the time Amspacher, the school basketball team’s manager, was made a player on the mediocre team because he was better than half the regulars.

21-Gun Salute

Members of the military color guard at Amspacher’s funeral were not much older than teen-agers. Most probably had not been born by the time the Valley boy died.

The sailors meticulously folded the American flag that had draped the coffin after riflemen fired a 21-gun salute. Someone scooped up the bullet casings and placed them in the flag that was given to Virginia Tiffany with condolences from the President.

Virginia Tiffany, 72, had never stopped hoping for a miracle. She wore dark sunglasses to hide the tears.

The belated funeral was a struggle for her.

“It’s extremely painful,” she said. “It’s like opening an old wound and pouring salt in it.”