Go Back   Professional Soldiers ® > Hall of Heroes > POW/MIA

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 02-18-2011, 16:56   #1
Richard
Quiet Professional
 
Richard's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: NorCal
Posts: 15,370
James Leslie Moreland - MIA - Remains Returned

SP4 James L. Moreland
91B4S
ODA-113, 112 Company of 1st Mobile Strike Force Command (I Corps Mike Force)
MIA 7 Feb 1968 at ODA-101's battle for Lang Vei.

RIP Doc.

Richard


Green Beret James Leslie Moreland's remains to be buried in Bibb County 43 years after MIA in Vietnam
BirminghamNews, 18 fEB 2011

There's a spot marked in a small country graveyard near here for the long lost Green Beret. Now, after 43 years of uncertainty, the grave in Ashby Cemetery can be filled.

Burial for James Leslie Moreland -- missing in action in Vietnam since Feb. 7, 1968 -- will be May 14 in this isolated cemetery off Bibb County 2, south of Montevallo. Moreland was born in Bessemer on Sept. 29, 1945, moved to California in high school and in 1965 went to Vietnam as a medic in the elite Army Special Forces.

The 22-year-old was presumed dead after a ferocious battle at Lang Vei in South Vietnam. But his body wasn't recovered or identified. Finding the body and securing an ID turned into a decades-long quest until last month, when DNA earlier submitted by five relatives matched remains found at Lang Vei.

"It was very emotional coming up on the 43rd anniversary," said Linda Brown, 62, the youngest of the five Moreland siblings. The family had all come to accept James was dead, but they persisted on finding his body, Brown said.

"I had never given up," said Brown, who lives in Washington state near sister Edna Anita LaMoine, 73. "I said I wouldn't care if they identified just one bone fragment so we could say, 'Yes, it is our brother.'"

Unknown to the Moreland family at the time, a Christmas Day gift in 1972 to a 12-year-old girl added one more person to the long pursuit for answers. Kathy Strong of Walnut Creek, Calif., remembers asking for an MIA bracelet because it was the cool thing to have at the time. Santa Claus brought a bracelet with the name: James Leslie Moreland.

Now 50, Strong became close to members of the Moreland family after her hometown newspaper, the Contra Costa Times, several years ago chronicled how she had worn the bracelet for decades and had grown increasingly interested in Moreland's story.

Strong plans to attend the upcoming burial in Alabama, where she said she will relinquish her bracelet to be buried with the remains.

"My promise was to keep it until he came home and then give it back," Strong said.

Moreland's commanding officer, Paul Longgrear, who is an ordained minister, will officiate the service.

Longgrear led a strike force unit, which included Moreland, to help defend a Special Forces camp near the Laotian border. The camp was a "thorn in the side of the North Vietnamese," Longgrear said, and on Feb. 6, 1968, it came under heavy attack from enemy tanks. He said he remembered Moreland being seriously wounded in the head as he went to fetch a machine gun in an open area, aiming to keep it out of enemy hands. In the ensuing explosions and subsequent takeover, some men escaped, some were captured, some were killed. Moreland's body was never recovered.

"He was a great guy -- a great looking kid with a lot of confidence," said Longgrear, who lives in Pine Mountain, Ga. "He had that swagger. Green Beret tend to be that way."

Moreland's early childhood years were spent in the Birmingham area and in Selma, his sisters said. He went to Lyman Ward Military Academy in Camp Hill in the eighth and ninth grades. The family moved to southern California in 1962, and Moreland became an all-county football player at Western High School in Anaheim, playing on the same team as Andy Messersmith, who went on to become a Major League baseball player. After graduation, Moreland attended Fullerton Junior College but ultimately followed his two older brothers' footsteps into the military, albeit a different branch.

"I tried my best to get him to come to the Navy," chuckled retired Navy Seabee and older brother Robert D. Moreland, 75, of Lakeside, Calif. "But he liked to skydive."

When on June 5, 1978, the Army declared Moreland "presumed dead," his mother, Gladys Parks, organized a memorial service for him at Ashby Cemetery and dedicated a large granite marker in her son's memory. They played 'Ballad of the Green Beret' and tears flowed, Brown remembered.

Moreland's mother died April 1, 2001, but she talked to The Birmingham News in 1978 about the memorial.

"I just felt this memorial was one way I can honor him," she said. "But to me he's not dead. If they could have ever found some trace of him to give me, some little something to prove they found him, I could accept it. ... Maybe someday I will."

Dorothy Moreland, 81, of Montevallo, who is widower of the oldest Moreland sibling, Roger, said it is sad Parks won't see this day. But there's some comfort to be taken, she supposes, in the burial arrangement putting Moreland next to the graves of his mother and father.

When they lay him to rest, "brother'll be back home between mommy and daddy," she said.


http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2011/02/...lie_morel.html
Attached Images
File Type: jpg JLMoreland.jpg (6.9 KB, 57 views)
__________________
“Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whisky bottle in the hand of (another)… There are just some kind of men who – who’re so busy worrying about the next world they’ve never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results.” - To Kill A Mockingbird (Atticus Finch)

“Almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.” - Robert Heinlein
Richard is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-18-2011, 17:02   #2
ZonieDiver
Quiet Professional
 
ZonieDiver's Avatar
 
Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: Georgetown, SC
Posts: 4,204
Welcome home, Brother. Rest In Peace at long last.
__________________
"I took a different route from most and came into Special Forces..." - Col. Nick Rowe
ZonieDiver is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-18-2011, 18:02   #3
Raine_n_Roses
Asset
 
Join Date: Dec 2010
Location: Kansas
Posts: 28
Welcome Home....

I just read about this battle too. Wow so glad he has been brought home.

God Bless
__________________



Thank you For Your Great Service
Raine_N_Roses
Raine_n_Roses is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-18-2011, 18:04   #4
Susa
Guerrilla
 
Susa's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: Southern Cal
Posts: 195
Welcome Home.....
Susa is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-18-2011, 18:06   #5
f50lrrp
BANNED USER
 
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Monterey California
Posts: 392
Welcome home, brother.
f50lrrp is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-18-2011, 18:19   #6
Red Flag 1
Area Commander
 
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: UK
Posts: 2,952
Welcome home warrior!

Rest In God's Peace.
Red Flag 1 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-18-2011, 19:18   #7
Jgood
Quiet Professional
 
Jgood's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Currently FT. Bragg
Posts: 622
Welcome Home

Again those who do the work to bring home our fallen I say thank you
__________________
There is only one tactical principal which is not subject to change. It is to use the means at hand to inflict the maximum amount of wounds, death and destruction on the enemy in the minimum amount of time.
Gen. George S. Patton, Jr.
Jgood is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-18-2011, 22:10   #8
Sohei
Area Commander
 
Sohei's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2010
Posts: 1,690
Welcome home Warrior. Thank you so very much for your service and ultimate sacrifice. It's good to have you back.
Sohei is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-18-2011, 23:06   #9
The Reaper
Quiet Professional
 
The Reaper's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Free Pineland
Posts: 24,779
Welcome home, brother.

Thank you for your sacrifice.

You will not be forgotten.

TR
__________________
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - President Theodore Roosevelt, 1910

De Oppresso Liber 01/20/2025
The Reaper is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-19-2011, 02:35   #10
Stingray
Guerrilla
 
Stingray's Avatar
 
Join Date: Feb 2009
Location: Kansas
Posts: 243
James Leslie Moreland

Welcome home Warrior. Rest in Peace.

Sincerely,
__________________
Stingray

"In the fell clutch of circumstance, I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance, My head is bloody, but unbowed." William Ernest Henley
Stingray is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-19-2011, 04:51   #11
JJ_BPK
Quiet Professional
 
JJ_BPK's Avatar
 
Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: 18 yrs upstate NY, 30 yrs South Florida, 20 yrs Conch Republic, now chasing G-Kids in NOVA & UK
Posts: 11,901
RIP Brother,, Vaya con Dios..
__________________
Go raibh tú leathuair ar Neamh sula mbeadh a fhios ag an diabhal go bhfuil tú marbh

"May you be a half hour in heaven before the devil knows you’re dead"
JJ_BPK is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-19-2011, 06:10   #12
greenberetTFS
Quiet Professional (RIP)
 
greenberetTFS's Avatar
 
Join Date: May 2007
Location: Carriere,Ms.
Posts: 6,922
God Bless,Rest in Peace Warrior,Welcome Home at last................

Big Teddy
__________________
I believe that SF is a 'calling' - not too different from the calling missionaries I know received. I knew instantly that it was for me, and that I would do all I could to achieve it. Most others I know in SF experienced something similar. If, as you say, you HAVE searched and read, and you do not KNOW if this is the path for you --- it is not....
Zonie Diver

SF is a calling and it requires commitment and dedication that the uninitiated will never understand......
Jack Moroney

SFA M-2527, Chapter XXXVII
greenberetTFS is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-19-2011, 07:50   #13
Stras
Quiet Professional
 
Stras's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Der Vaterland
Posts: 2,311
Welcome Home Brother.

You can rest easy now, your war is over.
__________________
v/r
Stras
der Kriegskind SFA LXV

De Oppresso Liber
Stras is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-22-2011, 15:38   #14
Golf1echo
Area Commander
 
Golf1echo's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2010
Location: Western Carolina in the rainforest,4000' along the Eastern Cont. Div.
Posts: 1,426
Rest in peace and thank you!
__________________
"It is because they have so much to give and give it so lavishly...that men love the mountains and go back to them again and again." Sir Francis Younghusband

Essayons

By Dand

"In the school of the wilds,there is no graduation day"Horace Kephart
Golf1echo is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-22-2011, 20:14   #15
Debo
Quiet Professional
 
Debo's Avatar
 
Join Date: Apr 2007
Location: The ATX
Posts: 383
Welcome home.


D.
Debo is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply


Currently Active Users Viewing This Thread: 1 (0 members and 1 guests)
 
Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump



All times are GMT -6. The time now is 19:08.



Copyright 2004-2022 by Professional Soldiers ®
Site Designed, Maintained, & Hosted by Hilliker Technologies