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August 5, 2006

Coming home

Veteran remains return home to Edmond after 38 years

Patty Miller

EDMOND — These words, “Coming home,” are bittersweet for Laverne Ransbottom, mother of 1st Lt. Fredrick Joel Ransbottom.

Ransbottom is the last Oklahoman to be named a casualty of the 10-year-long Vietnam War, and his remains were flown in June to Honolulu from Vietnam, the first leg of his journey back home to Edmond.

From Honolulu they were sent to a lab for confirmation where they are awaiting DNA identification by the government. Then they will be flown home to his family.

In the 38 years Freddy Joe, as he was known by his family and friends, has been unaccounted for, his father Fredrick Ransbottom has passed on.

Ransbottom was the leader of a reconnaissance platoon known as “Snoopy 6” with E Company, 2nd Battalion, 1st Infantry, 196th Infantry Brigade, 23rd Division, Americal. His platoon was defending a Special Forces airstrip at Kham Duc for which he received a Silver Star. The camp was strategically located near the Ho Chi Minh trail just 10 miles east of Laos.

On Mother’s Day 1968, the airstrip came under the third day of heavy attack, and it was on this day that Ransbottom was listed as missing.

“I can sit here and still remember that day,” Laverne Ransbottom said. “I remember thinking that he has to be alive; he can’t be dead, he is so young and so good.”

Fred Ransbottom had graduated from Putnam City High School in 1965 and had just finished his first year of college at Oklahoma Baptist University, where he was majoring in hospital administration. He and his friend from high school, Clint Wheeler, both decided to join up.

“Fred had such a tender heart, he couldn’t bear to see anything suffer,” Laverne said.

But most of all, Fred Ransbottom was a leader. One of the men who served under him told Laverne Ransbottom at a meeting with the survivors of his group that Fred was the one they trusted to follow.

According to Mrs. Ransbottom, “He said, ‘Fred didn’t tell us to do something, he was always there right on the front. He led us, even when he didn’t have to be the first one out.’”

The medic in his unit also had high praise for Ransbottom.

“I’m going to use a term that today is very much overused,” said Allen “Doc” Hoe of Honolulu. “Lt. Fred Ransbottom was ‘awesome.’ He was a soldier’s soldier ... a breath of fresh air. We were all very young and he cared about us, and he showed it.”

In a letter Fred Ransbottom had written to Ira Waters, the pastor of Cherokee Hills Baptist Church, which was his home church in Oklahoma City, he said, “I wish I knew if God will hold me responsible for taking another man’s life in a time of war. I hope I will not be faced with a situation that requires me to take another man’s life.”

Although that would not be the case. On May 12, that Mother’s Day in 1968, when the three mountains in Kham Duc were under heavy fire, one of which was Outpost 2, the last transmission made by one of the two radio men, Maurice Moore or Skip Skivington, was that Lt. Ransbottom was going from man to man giving encouragement and aiding the wounded.

The last words radioed a few minutes later by Ransbottom were, “We’re shooting them as they come through the d----.”

Each person deals with loss in their own private way. For Fred’s father it eventually meant accepting that Ransbottom did not survive that day’s battle.

For his mother it was dealing with his loss one day at a time, not wanting to accept that he was gone, but not wanting any harm to come to him as a prisoner of war either.



A midnight phone call

Midnight last March, Donny Ransbottom, who is Fred’s youngest brother, and his family were awakened by the ringing of the telephone. Donny and his wife immediately went to his mother’s house to deliver the message.

“On the other end was a casualty officer from Honolulu who began reading a report telling Donny that a man by the name of Brad Strum was to be the lead anthropologist on a dig that was to be centered on the mountain at Kham Duc where Freddy was thought to be,” Laverne Ransbottom said.

The anthropologist believed officials had been digging in the wrong spot on previous excavations and that they had not gone deeply enough to find the remains.

“He believed that the air strikes that covered the outpost in the end moments of the battle at Kham Duc pushed the ground up and over the remains of the men,” she said.

“The area he was referring to was the size of a football field. Brad felt that after they cut away the trees and brush, that they would have to dig at least 6 feet down in order to find the remains of our boys.”

The excavation was authorized and the group of men left for Kham Duc and what was to be the last dig looking for remains of Outpost 2.

The team returned June 30 to Honolulu with what are believed to be the remains of now Major Frederick Joel Ransbottom and Skip Skivington. Ransbottom’s name had been placed on a prisoner of war list for 11 years so he attained the rank of major before being reclassified once again as MIA.



Waiting for Freddy Joe

With more than 35 trips to Washington, D.C., during the past 38 years as well as trips to Honolulu, this was one trip Laverne Ransbottom was determined to make.

“My (youngest) son, Donny, and I went to Honolulu to meet with the men who brought back what I believe to be Freddy’s remains. My middle son, Larry, was unable to make the trip.”

In a special service, the two young men’s remains were repatriated.

“Repatriation is a service that the Army performs when the flag-draped caskets were brought back home from Vietnam and touches American soil for the first time,” she said.

“I just thanked God. I was so thankful that he was not a POW and had not suffered for years,” Laverne Ransbottom said.

It was a powerful moment for this mother and the brother who was four years younger than Fred Ransbottom, who was his role model.

“There were so many people there and television cameras that I didn’t want to openly cry, I was just so thankful that Freddy was on his way home,” Laverne Ransbottom said.

Donny Ransbottom has mixed emotions about his brother’s return.

“For us, his coming home is a long-awaited and what will be a joyful occasion when it finally happens,” Donny Ransbottom said. “Although, to this day I am still wondering what ‘remains’ we will have to bury.”

Even without DNA confirmation, Laverne Ransbottom is convinced the remains belong to her son.

His 1965 Putnam City High School class ring with his initials inscribed was found along with his dog tags and his leather billfold with identification inside.

“Both his brother and I placed his class ring on our finger,” Laverne Ransbottom said.

That was a moment in which time stopped, if only briefly, for the two.

“I can’t express the feelings that went over me, to be that close to Freddy,” she said. “At last, he was coming home.”

So now, bittersweet though it is, Laverne Ransbottom awaits the return of her eldest son. Ransbottom spends time each day making plans for the funeral services, or as she says, the celebration of his life, when his remains have at last come home.

He will be buried next to his father Fredrick at Memorial Park Cemetery.

“He could have been buried at Arlington, but he has been gone too long. It is time he came home for good,” Laverne Ransbottom said.

Text Only
Coming home
by Patty Miller , , Sat Aug 05, 2006, 10:38 PM CDT
Local News
090310 freedom ride1.jpg

MARK SCHLACHTENHAUFEN | THE EDMOND SUN John Hobbs, of Purcell, holds a flag that would be flying on his Honda Gold Wing during the ride to Leavenworth, Kan. Hobbs said he is riding to support Michael Behenna and the rest of the Leavenworth 10. The riders hit the road Friday morning.

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