An unexpected find in a Vietnam shop, a journey home for a Marine's dog tag
Karina Bland
In December 1966, Billy Bresnahan was home on leave for Christmas, back in the small town of Ashburnham, Massachusetts, at the house where he'd grown up.
As he caught up with family and friends, Billy nudged his brother-in-law, Ron Skaife, and in a low voice asked if he’d go with him to the small bar up the street for a beer. Billy looked worried.
At 19, Billy wasn’t old enough to drink, but the bartender served him anyway. Billy had just finished basic training as a new Marine and would be shipping out in a few days to Vietnam.
Billy didn't drink much of his beer. He cupped his hands around the glass, quiet for a time, and then, finally, he turned to Ron.
“I want you to take care of my sister,” Billy said.
Ron nodded. He was 40 and had been married to Billy’s sister, Lorraine, for almost 10 years by then. Billy had been 9 at their wedding, had worn his first suit.
Of course Ron would take care of Lorraine, he had assured Billy. Why was he worried?
“I know I won’t be back,” Billy said. Just like that. Matter of fact.
Marine Pfc. William J. Bresnahan didn’t make it back from Vietnam. His body was returned in a casket and buried on June 12, 1967, at Saint Denis Cemetery, not far from his home, with full military honors.
His personal effects — photographs, letters from home, his money clip, high school class ring and service medals, including a Purple Heart — arrived later at the house in a big manila envelope.
One thing was missing. His dog tags.
In Vietnam, a tangle of dog tags
In March, Linda Gayles wandered into a small museum in Ho Chi Minh City in southern Vietnam.
The retired schoolteacher from Phoenix had been traveling for two months with her cousin. They had met up in Bangkok and then traveled through Thailand, Cambodia and Myanmar. They had spent the last 19 days in Vietnam.
Now it was March 6, Gayles' last day in the city formerly known as Saigon.
It was hot and humid and the museum was mostly empty except for a group of schoolkids and a photographer taking pictures of a bride and groom.
In the gift shop, in an 8-foot-long glass display case, Gayles spotted a collection of old Zippo lighters, like the ones carried by servicemen during the Vietnam War, and next to those, a scattering of dog tags.
Gayles asked to see them. The shopkeeper told her she could have a lighter for 455,460 dong, or about $20; the dog tags were 227,730 dong each, or about $10.
There were nine different dog tags.
Soldiers typically wear two identical tags, one that could be collected and the information on it used to notify the family in the event of a fatality, the second left with the body.
During the Vietnam War era, the silver metal rectangles, curved at the corners and worn on a ball chain, were stamped with the Marine’s name, service number, gas mask size and religion.
The ones in the glass case in the museum gift shop looked old, flecked with what looked like rust, or maybe dried blood.
Gayles caught her breath.
As a freshman at Arizona State University, living in Manzanita Hall, she had marched in protest of the Vietnam War, down Mill Avenue and across campus to an all-night sit-in near the tennis courts.
In that moment, she thought about how badly returning soldiers were treated, spit on and called baby killers, blamed for the war instead of the government that had sent them there.
Her brother-in-law, Russell Lintecum, had done three combat tours in Vietnam with the Army’s 101st Airborne Division. He came home from the war wounded and different.
In the museum gift shop, Gayles felt a sudden responsibility.
“That’s somebody,” she thought, picking up a dog tag. “That’s somebody who probably didn’t come home and whose family would want that.”
Gayles had a friend who collected military paraphernalia. He had once tracked down the family of a soldier whose medals he had found at a yard sale. She would ask him for help.
Gayles picked out a battered Zippo lighter engraved with “VIETNAM BINH LONG 69-70” on the front and on the back, “OH! LORD DON’T LED (sic) ATOMIC BOMB DROP ON ME.”
MORE: Project aims to put a face to every name in Vietnam memorial
Then her hand hovered over the dog tags.
She couldn’t take them all because she had only a small carry-on and a backpack already busting at the seams. She picked out the dog tag with the most unusual name, thinking it would be easiest to trace.
BRESNAHAN
B.J. JR.
2266454
USMC M
CATHOLIC
Everyone called him Billy
William J. Bresnahan Jr., was born in Gardner, Massachusetts, on Feb. 4, 1948, the son of William J. Bresnahan Sr. and Rose J. Bresnahan.
Everyone called him Billy.
He was 12 years younger than his sister, Lorraine. They grew up in the small town of Ashburnham, about 2,500 people at the time.
Billy’s best friend was A.J. Peterson. They met in first grade and were part of a group, five boys in all, called the Five Grenades. No one remembers whether they named themselves that or it was given to them. They all wanted to be John Wayne.
The boys were in the same Scout troop, the only one in town. Mr. Briggs was their scoutmaster, overseeing activities at the Scout house next to the town swimming hole where the boys spent most of their summers.
The boys rode bikes, built forts and fished in the Quabbin Reservoir. Lorraine remembers how, at 15, Billy would bring her his catch and clean it in her front yard.
Everyone knew Billy, and everyone liked him. “He was something else,” his brother-in-law would say.
Billy took a part-time job at Independent Lock Co., where his dad worked, to earn enough money, with a little help from his dad, to buy a 1965 moss green Pontiac GTO.
Billy and A.J. were more interested in cars than girls at the time, but with the car, they attracted the girls. Billy was on the high school football team. The boys became Eagle Scouts within months of each other.
At 16, Billy volunteered at the Ashburnham Fire Department as a junior cadet, sitting in on training sessions and cleaning equipment. At 18, he could become a firefighter. But Billy had other plans.
News from Billy's letters
Peterson doesn’t remember Billy pining to go into the military. Back then, teachers would sometimes tell a boy to straighten up, or he’d end up in the military and get himself killed in Vietnam.
But he and Billy saw the movie "PT 109" when it came out in 1963, in Technicolor and Panavision. In the picture, U.S. Navy Lt. John F. Kennedy uses his family's influence to get himself assigned to the fighting in the Solomon Islands during World War II and takes command of a beat-up Motor Torpedo Boat, PT-109.
Five months after the movie was released, Kennedy was assassinated.
RELATED: The faces of Arizona's Vietnam fallen: All present and accounted for
Billy was bright. College material. Peterson was going to Norwich University in Vermont, but Billy wasn’t interested.
They graduated from Oakmont Regional High School, and Billy drove the car to Boston on Aug. 22, 1966, to enlist in the Marine Corps.
He went to basic training in Parris Island, South Carolina, and was assigned to Company K, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines. He came home on leave that Christmas, when he took his brother-in-law for a drink, and then shipped out for Vietnam.
Billy was good about writing home. He sent letters to his parents, Ron and his sister. Lorraine would keep them all in a box.
Billy wrote to Peterson, about how much he missed home, particularly the people. He wrote to his scoutmaster, the football coach, the fellow who owned the gas station and the police chief who pulled Billy and A.J. over for speeding.
In town, at the gas station, the Scout house, the post office and the fire station, people exchanged news from Billy's letters.
And then the letters stopped.
'We've got some bad news'
Ron was at work when he got a call from Lorraine.
Two Marines in dress uniform had knocked on the front door of Billy’s parents' house. Lorraine’s voice wavered as she told Ron, “We’ve got some bad news.”
Billy had been wounded on May 13, 1967, during Operation Union as his company came up against enemy fire in the Quang Tin province. He was pulled out by medics and evacuated by helicopter to a U.S. Navy hospital ship.
Billy died almost two weeks later, on May 26, 1967, on board the USS Sanctuary.
His regiment was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation by President Lyndon Johnson.
Billy was buried at Saint Denis Cemetery in his hometown with full military honors on June 12, 1967, a year to the day he had graduated from high school.
Later, in the place where Billy had played as a kid, where he swam in the swimming hole and attended Scout meetings, a flagpole went up and a marker went in, renaming it the William J. Bresnahan Memorial Park.
Finding the families
A week after Linda Gayles got back from Vietnam, with the dog tag and Zippo lighter tucked in her backpack, she invited her friend Randy Debes and his girlfriend, Cathi Searles, to her house in Ahwatukee Foothills for lunch.
The three of them had been classmates at Coronado High School in Scottsdale, where they graduated in 1968, and friends since.
“Hey, I found something for you,” Gayles told Debes, handing him the Zippo lighter. And then more carefully, she handed him the dog tag. “Look at this.”
Debes is a collector, with a particular interest in military items. His house in Scottsdale is like a museum.
In 2003, Debes had wandered into a massive yard sale spread across 2 acres while on a business trip in Indiana. There, he found a box containing five medals.
He asked the woman selling them if she had ever tried to locate the soldier’s family. She told Debes that she hadn’t, because the man was black.
She knew that because she had obtained the medals when she bought the contents of an abandoned storage unit and there had been letters and photographs. She had thrown the letters out but kept the medals in case they were worth something.
She wanted $20 for them.
READ: Marine vet quits job over 'Semper Fi' tattoo, finds truer calling at VA hospital
Debes had a quick choice to make: Chew her out or pay her the $20 and leave without a word. He paid the $20 and left without a word. He was determined to find the family.
The only clue about the medals' owner was a woman’s name on an envelope inside the box: Peggy McClatchey.
Debes looked up her address in directories and asked the Army for help. For a year, he mailed out letters that came back. Wrong Margaret McClatchey. Wrong address.
And then, a year after he started looking, Debes got a phone call from Peggy McClatchey in Missouri.
The medals belonged to her husband, Jewel McClatchey, a Specialist Four in the Army’s 9th Infantry Division, 2nd Battalion, 39th Infantry, C Company. He was wounded in the Dinh Tuong province and died on Jan. 27, 1968. He was 20.
His daughter was born five days after he was killed.
In 2010, McClatchey asked Debes to stand in for her husband at her daughter’s wedding, sitting next to her at the wedding and at the head table at the reception.
Billy wasn't forgotten
Debes expected it might take months to find the family of B.J. Bresnahan Jr., Marine, size medium gas mask, Catholic, with only the information on the dog tag.
But after lunch that day, Debes sat down at his computer and tapped in Billy's name. He came across a listing on the virtual Vietnam Wall website for William J. Bresnahan Jr., and then a website outlining an effort to build the William J. Bresnahan Scouting and Community Center in Ashburnham, Massachusetts.
Debes left a voice mail at the number listed. He couldn’t believe it would be that easy.
The next day, Valorie Daigle called Debes back, listening silently as Debes described the dog tag and how it had been found.
She thought it was some sort of scam. There were so many out there.
Over the phone, Debes read aloud the information on the dog tag. Daigle knew everything the man said about Billy was available on the community center’s website because she had written it herself.
Daigle had been a firefighter with the Ashburnham Fire Department in 2001 when she noticed that Billy’s memorial near the old swimming hole and Scout house was in bad shape.
Weeds had grown up around the marker. There was a flagpole but no flag.
Daigle had moved to Ashburnham in 1978 from Winchendon, just nine miles away. So while she hadn’t known Billy, she knew of him and his family. She and the other firefighters had cleaned up the area, a community-service project of sorts.
A few days after the cleanup, Billy’s brother-in-law, Ron Skaife, had come to see her at the fire station. He told Daigle, “I heard you want to do something about that memorial down there. Well, so do I.”
The two of them came up with a plan and then recruited others to help. They started a non-profit in 2002 and began raising money, mostly through raffles, bake sales, yard sales, dinners and concession sales, to build a community center in Billy’s honor.
MORE: The World War II vet and the sixth-graders who made him their friend
The town donated 5 acres of land that had been foreclosed on and offered a 99-year lease for $1.
A contractor dug out the site for free. A company cut the price for the cement by half. Another contractor poured the foundation for free.
They used the money they raised to buy supplies and, in September 2011, students from the Montachusett Regional Vocational Technical School took it from there. They did the carpentry, masonry, electrical work and plumbing, raising a 5,000-square-foot, two-story building.
Two and a half years later, the project ran short of money. So they are fundraising again.
When the center is finished, Billy’s memorial stone and flagpole will be moved to the grounds.
Sending the tag home
Now there was a stranger from Arizona on the phone, telling her that he had Billy’s dog tag.
It had been 51 years since Billy was killed, 43 years since the end of the Vietnam War. Could this be real?
She promised Debes she would give Billy’s brother-in-law his phone number.
Just a few hours later, Ron called.
Debes was overjoyed. He jotted down the address and then carefully wrapped the dog tag. He wrote a letter, thanking Ron's family for Billy’s service. He asked Gayles to look it over.
She was happy the dog tag would be returned to Billy's family. She said tearfully that she wished she had gotten all the dog tags.
Gayles emailed the museum, asking to arrange to buy the other eight. Someone emailed her back and said they would let the shopkeeper know. But no one ever got back to her.
From his previous experience, Debes knew the tag could bring closure to Billy's family. “It’s important to get those things — the medals, the dog tags — back to the people they belong to, to their families,” he said.
Debes could only wait — and hope — that it showed up in Ashburnham.
Bringing the others back
Billy’s best friend, A.J. Peterson, knew Gayles felt badly about leaving the other dog tags behind. He thought he had a solution.
His daughter Shelby Peterson works for the U.S. Department of Commerce in Utah. She has a colleague in Hanoi who might be able to help.
On April 4, she emailed Tim Cannon, a foreign-service officer who had been working in Hanoi for almost three years. He served in the Marines from 1982 to 1987.
Cannon agreed to help. He flew to Ho Chi Minh City two days later, on April 6. He went first to the gift shop in the city museum where Gayles had purchased Billy’s dog tag. There were none in the glass cases. The shopkeeper had shrugged.
“We don’t have any,” she said.
Outside the museum, Cannon scanned the nearby shops and restaurants. He asked a guard if he knew where he might buy military dog tags. The guard directed him to a vendor in a nearby market.
When Cannon explained what he was looking for, the vendor spread 30 or so tags out on a battered stool. Cannon suddenly was crying, overwhelmed.
The vendor brought out more tags, hundreds, some matching pairs.
He would only let Cannon buy 100, and he wanted $1,000.
“No way,” Cannon told him in Vietnamese. He explained if the dog tags were real, he would return them to their men’s families.
Cannon talked the vendor into taking $230 for 100 tags.
READ: They were few, but proud, these women who joined the Marines in WWII
“Just let me have them all,” he told the vendor. The vendor refused and told Cannon to come back another time.
In Hanoi, Cannon went over the tags with a magnifying glass, recording the information on each. He bundled them in groups of 10, wrapped in rubber bands, and turned them over to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.
Before Cannon leaves Vietnam in July for his next assignment, he said, he will go back to Ho Chi Minh City, buy more tags and bring them home.
Billy's home
Two days after Debes put the package in the mail, Skaife called to say it had arrived at the house where Lorraine and Billy were raised, the house where Lorraine was living when she and Ron married in 1957 and they had celebrated that Christmas before Billy shipped out.
They had moved in to take care of Lorraine's mother, Rose, after she was diagnosed with cancer. She died in 1994.
Ron has taken care of Billy’s sister Lorraine, as he promised, through 61 years of marriage, three children, grown now, and grandchildren.
Ron is retired from his machinist job. He is the superintendent at the Saint Denis Cemetery, where Billy is buried, his parents next to him now.
One day, he and Lorraine will be buried there, too.
Ron is 81 and Lorraine, 82. Her memory is failing, as is her eyesight.
She can surprise Ron with what she does remember, sometimes vividly. How old Billy was at their wedding and how he wore his first suit. How a teenage Billy brought her fish and cleaned it in the front yard. How one time he brought her a pheasant.
She remembers that her brother was killed in the war and that he came home in a casket, his possessions following in a manila envelope.
Except for his dog tags.
Ron told Lorraine that Billy's tags, one of them anyway, had been found, that once the community center is finished, the tag will be part of a display, along with an American flag, picture and medals, in Billy's honor.
When the package arrived from Arizona, Ron carefully cut open the hard plastic envelope and unrolled the bubble wrap. Inside was another small plastic envelope. Inside that was Billy’s dog tag.
Just the one. But his.
Ron gently placed it in his wife’s hand. She closed her fingers around it and smiled.
“Billy’s home,” she said.
Reach Bland at karina.bland@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8614.
READ MORE: