Lieutenant Colonel Bruce G. Johnson

Bruce Gardner Johnson, born on July 15, 1937, in Harbor Beach, Michigan, was the eldest of four children of Claire and Lucille Johnson and distinguished himself from youth through adulthood in leadership, athletics, personal integrity, and service. He studied education at Wheaton College in Illinois from 1955 to 1959, participated in ROTC, coached a youth basketball team to the Chicago city championship in 1957, and married his high school sweetheart, Kathleen Weiss of Port Hope, Michigan; they later had three children, Bruce, Bryan, and Colleen. After graduation he was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Army and served at Fort Benning, Georgia, Fort Riley, Kansas, and East Berlin, Germany, where he briefly served in President Kennedy's Honor Guard and aided German civilians seeking freedom into West Germany. In November 1963 he was selected as a Military Adviser to the South Vietnamese government, completed more than a year of Green Beret training, and was assigned as a Captain to MACV Command north of Saigon. He was known for helping Vietnamese people, especially children, by sharing his canned rations. Three weeks before his tour was to end, a Special Forces camp near Dong Xoai was attacked on the night of June 9, 1965, and the next day he was among the soldiers flown by helicopter to assist the survivors. The helicopter carrying him was shot down, and he was the only survivor of the crash. After he radioed his status, the crash site came under heavy fire and the second helicopter could not land. A search a few days later brought reports from local villagers that the Viet Cong had captured an American, but Bruce was never found and was declared Missing In Action at age 27. While listed as MIA, he was promoted to Major and later to Lieutenant Colonel, became one of the longest MIAs on record from the Vietnam War, was listed by the U.S. Army as presumed dead on February 27, 1978, and his remains have not been found.

Harbor Beach, Michigan · United States