Helo pilot killed in Vietnam laid to rest - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

Helo pilot killed in Vietnam laid to rest

BILLINGS, Mont. — About 200 friends and family members gathered at a funeral service Friday to remember a Billings soldier whose helicopter was shot down during the Vietnam War and whose remains had been missing for nearly four decades.

The remains of Army 1st Lt. Paul G. Magers were returned to Montana in a flag-draped casket Wednesday.

Magers was killed June 1, 1971, when the AH-1 Cobra helicopter he was in was shot down in Quang Tri Province, South Vietnam. He was 25. Also killed in the crash was 34-year-old Chief Warrant Officer Donald L. Wann of Shawnee, Okla.

The men’s remains were recovered in 2008 and 2009, and were identified in March through DNA testing.

Lana Bittner, who graduated with Magers from Central Catholic High School in 1963, was one of about 30 classmates who attended a funeral Mass at Holy Rosary Church in Billings.

“It’s been such a long journey,” she said, noting that she is glad Magers’ family finally has closure.

But at the insistence of the family, particularly of Magers’ 92-year-old mother, Cecilia Farris Magers, the service was meant to celebrate the soldier’s life more than commemorating his death.

Dressed in a flower-print jacket and a blue blouse and slacks, she danced a short jig with another one of her sons in front of Magers’ casket while bagpiper John Pierson played “Wings.”

Pierson said the traditional regimental song, played to honor military aviators, is usually performed at a more somber pace, but Cecilia Magers asked for a more upbeat tempo.

After the funeral service, about 170 kindergartners, first-graders and second-graders from St. Francis Primary School lined the street holding small American flags as a hearse took Magers’ remains to the Yellowstone County Veterans Cemetery near Laurel.

James Mariska, an Army veteran who serves on the board of the cemetery, said Magers’ burial was “for every vet who wasn’t welcomed home from Vietnam.”

Magers was buried with full military honors.