SOUTH PORTLAND, Maine — It will be one monument in one small Maine town, but for Jennifer Kirk and her father, Cliff Sargent, it will be a tribute 57 years delayed.
Sargent’s brother, SPC4 Donald Sargent, who grew up in Cornish, was an Army Ranger assigned to a special Ranger unit in March 1962, when that team of 93 soldiers was sent on a mission to Vietnam. The family says the soldiers boarded Flying Tiger Flight 739 in California, together with the crew, several CIA officers, and two South Vietnamese Army soldiers.
The mission, the family says, was top secret.
“It was a CIA operation and it was a secret operation. Nobody knew, and nobody told,” said Cliff Sargent, who said his brother came home for brief leave before shipping out and wouldn’t say anything about it.
It was the last time Donald Sargent’s family would see him.
The plane disappeared over the Pacific, believed to have exploded in the air somewhere off the Philippines. No trace of the plane was ever found.
No details of the mission were released, either. Sargent said the military and government kept the secret, and have continued to do so.
“Yes, it was 57 years not knowing what happened and why, and what the assignment was,” Clifton Sargent said.
“We just had to accept it. My mother would never accept it. She knew ‘til the day she died he would walk through the door, but I didn’t because I knew.”
He said the family tried over the years to learn the story of the mission, even asking Senator Collins to ferret out the details, but they couldn’t be found.
Sargent was telling the story at a Wreaths Across America event when WAA founder Morrill Worcester overheard.
Told that those soldiers are not listed on the Vietnam memorial, Worcester promised to build a special monument to those who were killed on the Flying Tiger flight.
Jennifer Kirk, who says she never knew her uncle Donald, will join the rest of her family at a ceremony in Columbia Falls, where Wreaths Across America will unveil the new memorial. She expects many other families will be there, too.
“I think it will mean some great comfort and peace, and maybe a little closure for everybody because their names will be forever remembered because they are etched in stone.”
Besides Donald Sargent, two other Maine men were among those 93 Army Rangers on the Flying Tiger flight.
They are SPC Leonard wedge, believed to have been from Millinocket, and SGT Frank Pelkey of Farmington.
The memorial will be unveiled Saturday in Columbia Falls, close to the new veteran's cemetery and the home of Wreaths Across America.