Hundreds of people are expected to gather Saturday to honor a Hope soldier who was killed during the Vietnam War and will soon be returning home.
Master Sgt. James "Jim" Holt was declared missing in action Feb. 7, 1968 -- exactly 47 years ago Saturday. Using his siblings' DNA, scientists at the Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii identified Holt's remains in December, and he was officially designated as accounted for Jan. 10.
According to the Prisoner of War/Missing in Action Network, Holt is presumed to have been killed while fighting against a North Vietnamese attack on his camp. He was 26 with a wife and two daughters.
Holt will be buried in Arlington National Cemetery at an unknown date.
Holt's older brother, George Holt, said the family finally has "closure," adding: "You never give up hope. You just don't ever give up hope."
The Texarkana chapter of the Vietnam Veterans Association is holding a public memorial service for Holt at 11 a.m. Saturday in Washington, Ark., at the town's gymnasium, 127 Arkansas 195 South. Gregory Beck, president of the Vietnam Veterans of America chapter, said about 400 people will attend, including Holt's extended family and veterans who served alongside him.
Chapter members will tell the story of Holt's death. They also will read aloud the names of the 15 Arkansas servicemen who were declared missing during the Vietnam War and have not been accounted for.
According to the latest records from the Department of Defense's POW/MIA Accounting Agency, 2,646 Americans disappeared during the Vietnam War in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and China. The agency's investigators continue to pursue leads to find the 1,636 who have not been recovered.
"We're kind of all like brothers," said Beck, a Marine Corps veteran. "That's one of our brothers coming home."
Holt grew up in Hope, the youngest of seven siblings. George Holt, now 76, said he, Jim and one of their sisters were all born within a four-year span.
"We weren't 45 months apart, the three of us," he said. "We ran around together from the time we could crawl."
Following his older brother's lead, Jim Holt joined the U.S. Army soon after graduating from Hope High School. While George Holt spent most of his service in Germany, his younger brother trained for years to become a medic in the Special Forces, during which time he married and had two daughters.
Before he deployed to Vietnam, Jim Holt spent a couple of days at George's home near Hope, hunting squirrels and "talking about where he was going," George Holt said.
When he left, Jim Holt's daughter Rebecca was 2, and his younger daughter Jennifer was "crawling around in diapers."
"He left here in September or October," George Holt said. "It was a 13-month trip, and he wasn't there four or five months."
Jim Holt was in Company C of the 5th Special Forces Group and based at Lang Vei, a Special Forces camp located in the northwest corner of South Vietnam near the Laotian border. He was at the camp Feb. 6-7, 1968, during the Battle of Lang Vei -- when the North Vietnamese attacked.
According to the POW/MIA Network, Holt grabbed an anti-tank weapon and destroyed three tanks as they approached. During the fight, a soldier watched Holt run to an ammunition bunker to get more weapons.
"And that was the last time he was seen," Beck said.
Holt was one of 10 Americans killed, captured or declared missing during the Battle of Lang Vei, according to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial website.
An Army colonel traveled to Hope to tell Holt's mother that he was missing in action, George Holt said. For a while, the Army would update the family each month about efforts to find their lost son and brother.
Seven years later, Holt's status was changed to "died while missing," and his family honored him with a headstone in Old Washington Cemetery, where the Holts have been buried since the 1800s, George Holt said.
After Jim Holt was presumed dead, his wife remarried and she and their daughters relocated to Florida.
Holt received more than a dozen awards, including the Purple Heart and Silver Star Medal, and he was promoted from sergeant 1st class to master sergeant while missing in action. In 2013, he was inducted into the Arkansas Military Veterans Hall of Fame.
In the past 30 years, George Holt has attended regional and national POW/MIA group meetings and seen his brother's name on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. He's also talked to a few men who said they served with Holt, including one who told George he wouldn't be alive if it hadn't been for his brother.
"He said that first tank was bearing down on his position -- about to wipe him out -- when Jim got that rifle and gave him time to get out," George Holt said. "He did a pretty good job over there in Vietnam. Everybody declares him a hero."
Metro on 02/06/2015