Corporal, E4 (Posthumous Promotion), US56958785, MOS 11B10
Home of Record: Tacoma, WA
Date of Birth: January 29, 1947, Age at time of loss: 21, Single
173rd Airborne Brigade (Separate), Binh Dinh Province, Republic of Vietnam
Start of Tour: December 19, 1967, Date of Casualty: May 5, 1968
Days in Country: 138
Casualty Type A1, Hostile, Multiple Fragmentation Wounds, Panel 55E - Row 021
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Cpl. Donald E.
Lowe, Forty Years After 5/5/68
By William Lowe
Don, it doesn’t seem like it’s been close to forty years
We received the word of our worst and greatest fears,
And your mother began to shed a river of many tears.
Forty years ago today we got that dreaded telegram,
That you died and gave your life far away in Vietnam
So many times I’ve ask,“Did anyone even give a damn?”
But forty years later, I know more about that fatal day
Because of men like “Doc” who said what they had to say.
You gave your life as a Hero; a brother will not run away.
You and Robert Allen turned, stood, and held your ground
Until the two of you had fired your last and final round.
Forty years later, on a Wall, your names are now found.
Freedom is not free, not now, nor was it forty years ago
And I doubt your whole story we will ever really know
When you gave it all at a place called “Battle of An Bao”.
Maybe you saved only one life, but probably many more.
Only God knows what happened there, forty years before,
Thousands of miles from home in that crazy, stupid war.
But forty years later, I’m as honored as any man can be,
Because forty years earlier you fought to make men free.
You helped make this world a little safer for men like me.
One day in the here-after I'll salute and shake your hand.
Maybe by then, I might even begin to see and understand
Why God took you, forty years ago, from this mortal land.
I loved you forty years ago, and I still won’t say goodbye,
Because in so many ways you left, but you didn’t really die.
You still live in my heart; I have dreams and sometimes cry.
You Are Remembered, Forty
Years Later, 05/05/08...
By both your family of brothers by birth, Bill and George, and brothers by choice, James
Fitzgerald & the men of the 1/50th
