‘It was a great loss’

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Charles Burgess, KIA in Vietnam, was intelligent and loved adventure

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  • Family members of U.S. Army PFC William Charles Burgess Jr., killed in Vietnam on June 4, 1969, gathered last year to see him honored as the Vietnam Veterans of America, Cumming Chapter 1030, presented a high school scholarship in his honor. The date of the presentation was exactly 50 years from the day Burgess was killed. From left are cousin Wayne McPherson, sister Elizabeth Minton-Mooney, nephew Steve Minton, sister Evelyn Morace and Raymond Morace.
    Family members of U.S. Army PFC William Charles Burgess Jr., killed in Vietnam on June 4, 1969, gathered last year to see him honored as the Vietnam Veterans of America, Cumming Chapter 1030, presented a high school scholarship in his honor. The date of the presentation was exactly 50 years from the day Burgess was killed. From left are cousin Wayne McPherson, sister Elizabeth Minton-Mooney, nephew Steve Minton, sister Evelyn Morace and Raymond Morace.
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William Charles Burgess
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Elizabeth Minton-Mooney recalls her mother was “always looking ahead, wanting to know what the future was going to be.” Toward that end, she sought help about her only son, Charles.

“Mother said she was praying for her children one time while we lived in Ellijay, and the Lord said so plain, ‘You will keep him about 21 years, and then I’ll call him home,’” Elizabeth shared. “When he died, she cried and was so upset, and told that story.”

U.S. Army PFC William Charles Burgess Jr., 21, was killed in action in Vietnam on June 4, 1969. He was drafted into the military in 1968 and deployed to Vietnam that December. As a member of Battery A, 1st Battalion of the 92nd Artillery, he died in the Kontum province. He was the son of Charlie and Mary Ellen McPherson Burgess.

Elizabeth added Charles was her father’s “pride and joy.”

“When Charles went into the Army he couldn’t hardly stand it,” she said last week. “He went missing in action, and then we found out about him. His body was home by June 13, best as I can remember.

“I was so broken up at that time. Nobody could believe Charles was gone. It hurt so bad. We had a lot of people come to the funeral home and were saying (the war) was so unnecessary, that we never should have gotten involved. It was so sad. People came to us and talked to us about Charles and all the good things he did. They were hurting too.”

Harold Pierce, a childhood buddy, said Charles remains in his memory to this day.

“I often think about Charles, and him getting killed— he was a good friend,” he said. “His daddy was known around Ellijay as a very intelligent man. Charles acted like his daddy a lot, intelligent and also quiet like his father. He didn’t have a lot to say, but if you got a conversation going he would engage. He was selective in the people he ran around with; he didn’t go for big crowds.” 

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PFC Charles Burgess is buried in New Hope Baptist Church Cemetery.

Harold said he and Charles would spend lots of time together, tromping around the woods of Gilmer County.

“I’d come down to his house, and it would be for hours, the whole afternoon,” he remembers. “He loved the outdoors, and was a man of adventure. We’d hang around the creek and talk, and then go across (Old) Highway 5 there, and some fields and woods, and there was another creek out there a good way from their house. We’d sit there on rocks with our feet hanging out in the water.”

Harold called Charles “very modest and humble-like.”

“I was really surprised when I heard he went into the Army,” he said. “I believe when Charles heard he was going to Vietnam, he said, ‘Wow, I’m going to get to see the jungle.’ He lived by Bible principles, because he was raised like that, the way my family was. We appreciated Bible principles. We kinda went our separate ways when we turned 16 and both got cars. He was a nice man, he sure was. It was a great loss. It was heartbreaking, it really hurt me. He had such a nice family — wholesome, country people.”

 

Burgess grave 2‘In dress blues’

A fellow churchgoer at New Hope Baptist, Angela Pierce Groenhout, said her familiy visited the Burgess family to pay their condolences.

“I was around 9 years old, and remember seeing a photograph of Charles in his casket,” she said. “It was a common practice during visitation in those days. I can see him in his dress blues. Not having any familiarity at the time with the military, I think it was impressed upon me even more. It was part of growing up in Ellijay; people visited for hours when someone died.”

Sister Evelyn Morace noted Charles worked with her father as an electrician and plumber.

“When he got home, I would take him to the closet and say, ‘Look, I ironed all your shirts today and shined your shoes for you,’” she said. “That was for him to go out on Saturday nights. And he would hug me and say, ‘You’re the best sister in the whole world!’ He was always so nice and pleasant … we played together with salt box cars, and us girls would cut paper dolls out of Sears & Roebuck catalogs. Charles was just a good guy.”

Elizabeth recalled the last time she spoke with her brother.

“He came by the house the last week of December (1968), before January 1 when he was sent to Fort Benning, and hugged us both,” she said. “We’d always been told we couldn’t kiss each other, on the face or on the lips. Charles kissed me anyway and said, ‘I won’t be back, Sis, I’m going home.’ And I said, ‘Oh yes, you will, Charles, you will.’ He said, ‘No, I’ve got a mission to do. I’ve got things to say to other people, and I just want you to know I love you, Sis, and I always have, and little sister Evelyn.’”

“Everybody loved Charles,” Evelyn said. 

Elizabeth believes Charles, with his knowledge of the Bible and following in the footsteps of his father Charlie, “would have been a preacher had he come back.”

“I just know he would,” she said. “He could talk to anybody, he could tell them what the Bible said and what it meant for your life. He was a great philosopher.”

 

How PFC Burgess dies 

In June of 1969, PFC William Charles Burgess, of Ellijay, was serving with a howitzer battery of the U.S. Army’s 1st Battalion, 92nd Field Artillery Regiment at the Ben Het Fire Support Base, located in Kontum Province in the Central Highlands area of Vietnam very near the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The Ben Het area is perhaps the most heavily fought over piece of terrain the battalion occupied, according to historical records. 

Burgess’ unit was providing artillery support for U.S. and South Vietnamese infantry units working to interdict troops and supplies from North Vietnam. Those troops and the Ben Het FSB (Fire Support Base) were under heavy artillery fire from North Vietnamese Regulars numbering around 5,000 troops.

Early on during the month-long, intense fighting, PFC Burgess, at 21 years of age, was killed by a 75mm recoil-less rifle. He, according to the unit’s history, was one of nine soldiers killed during the month.

Source: Cumming Chapter 1030, Vietnam Veterans of America