Brownlee, Charles Richard, Col

This Veteran has an (IMO) In Memory Of Headstone in Courts of the Missing at the Honolulu Memorial, Hawaii, with another in Santa Fe National Cemetery, Santa Fe, NM

Note:"On Christmas Eve, 1968, Major Charles R. Brownlee's F105D aircraft was shot down over Laos between the city of Ban Phaphilang and the Ban Karai Pass. Brownlee successfully ejected from his plane and landed safely on the ground. On Christmas Day, Doug King volunteered to be aboard an HH3E helicopter leaving Nakhon Phenom Air Base to rescue Major Brownlee. The helicopter located the pilot, believed to be dead by then, and King was lowered 100 feet into the jungle to the ground. Once on the ground, King freed Brownlee from his parachute, secured him to the rescue device and dragged him to a point near the hovering helicopter. Suddenly enemy soldiers closed in and began firing. King radioed that he was under fire and for the helicopter to pull away. Brownlee was secured to the hoist cable, but King had not yet secured himself to the cable. When the helicopter pulled away, the hoist line snagged in a tree and broke, dropping King and Brownlee about 10 feet to the ground. No news surfaced about King or Brownlee until February 1986, when a Lao refugee came to the United States and reported that he had witnessed King's capture, and watched as he was taken away in a truck. The refugee's story matched most details of King's loss incident. Less clear were the details of Brownlee's fate, although a 1974 list published by the National League of POW/MIA Families states that he survived his loss incident."

Source: http://www.pownetwork.org/bios/b/b062.htm

see Notes