Name: Charles Carroll Parish
Rank/Branch: 03/USN
Unit:
Date of Birth: 7 February 1943
Home City of Record: Lexington, VA
Date of Loss: 5 July 1968
Country of Loss: NVN
Loss Coordinates:
Status (in 1973): Missing in Action
Category: 2
Acft/Vehicle/Ground: F4J
Other Personnel in Incident:
Fant, Robert (released)
Source:
Compiled by Homecoming II Project and the P.O.W. NETWORK 27
March 1992 from one or more of the following: raw data from U.S.
Government agency sources, correspondence with POW/MIA families,
published sources, interviews. Copyright 1992 Homecoming II Project.
REMARKS:
SYNOPSIS:
After graduation from the Naval Academy in 1964, LCdr. Parish
was ordered to flight training. This was completed 1 1/2 years later at
which time he was ordered to a fighter squadron attached to the carrier,
AMERICA, on which he went first to the Mediterranean and then to
Vietnam, where he flew a number of missions. On July 5, 1968 his son was
born. On July 25, 1968, his Phantom was shot down over North Vietnam and
he was declared missing in action. Some months later the north
Vietnamese revealed that the RO had been captured at the time of the
incident and was a POW.
Tragically, reports of Americans still held in captivity continue to flow into the U.S. intelligence community. Many officials who have seen these largely classified reports are convinced that hundreds of Americans are still alive in Southeast Asia, still prisoners of a war that most Americans would like to put behind them.
Many fear the books are being closed on Americans who are alive. If so, what would they think of us for allowing it to happen? How many would serve the next time their country called them if they knew they could be abandoned?
