U.S. Army PFC Douglas Jay Crawford, killed in action in Vietnam in 1971, received a final homecoming on Feb. 23 when Cornell University's U.S. Army ROTC presented his long-lost identification tags to his surviving family members in a brief, emotional ceremony in the Wortham Military Museum in Barton Hall.

The ceremony took place on the 35th anniversary of Crawford's death in a Viet Cong attack on an American artillery firebase in South Vietnam. His dog tags -- discovered in a U.S. Department of the Army file last summer -- were presented to his brother, Franklin, a staff writer for the Cornell News Service, and sister, Roberta, a musician who co-founded the Finger Lakes Chamber Ensemble.

"We have not come together to solve a mystery -- to ask why -- but rather to understand what and who the identification tags represent; and to thank Douglas Jay Crawford and to welcome him home," said retired Army Lt. Col. William W. Huling Jr., who served in Vietnam and is now a senior development officer at Cornell.

One of ROTC's functions is to provide casualty assistance to local families of service members in the event of "tragedy in a combat zone or a training accident," said Lt. Col. Glenn D. Reisweber, who lectures on military science at Cornell. "We accommodate the family with whatever they want, in the service of their loved one."

Crawford was a 20-year-old from Bay Shore, Long Island, serving as a radio communications officer with the 7th Batallion, 8th Artillery Regiment. He had only been in Vietnam for a month at the time of the attack on Fire Support Base Blue.

"Doug was a kind and deeply sensitive young man; he didn't volunteer for the Army, he was drafted," Franklin Crawford said. "I couldn't help but think my brother was there to help." See full text of his remarks.

Two of Douglas Crawford's friends from Long Island, fellow Vietnam-era veterans Tim and John Grauer, also attended the ceremony. The Grauer brothers remembered Doug as a witty and charming young man who loved playing sports.

"He was a very upbeat guy, a great wit and very funny," Tim Grauer said. "We'd play pickup football and baseball games, go to the beach; one of our favorite sports was meeting girls. He was very dapper. He was one of the leaders of our group -- we all looked up to him."

"I remember him coming home from basic [training] and how gung-ho he was," John Grauer said.

"Doug is in our hearts to this day," Tim Grauer said. "You can't know a guy like him and ever forget him."

Roberta Crawford said "His life was complicated, even for a young person. He didn't have a clear sense of orientation. Basic training might have provided some structure that was useful to him."

Veterans from Crawford's unit recently sent his family some photographs and a newspaper article by [former U.S. Vice President] Al Gore, then a military journalist reporting on the attack on Fire Support Base Blue. "He talked about the bravery and the courage and the chaos that occurred on that morning," said Huling, who also served at a fire base in 1971: "It was so very long ago, but it will always be yesterday to those of us who fought there, and to those of us who lost loved ones."

"The late '60s and early '70s were a difficult time for our nation," Huling said. "Our country was split apart by an unpopular war, and we had not yet learned how to separate our sentiments about war from the warriors who fight it."

Huling closed with a paraphrase of Shakespeare's words from "Henry V":

We would proudly die in that man's company
That cherishes his fellowship to die with us.
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall remember,
What feats he did that day.
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers,
For he who sheds blood with me
Shall be my brother. To whatever his end,
This day shall gentle his condition; and
Forever we will honor he who fought with us.