Vietnam: one name — Private First Class James Noble Kalil

25 March 1944 – 18 August 1965

The banking: St. Joseph County's Vietnam dead stand at 54 on the Virtual Wall's home-of-record lists, a figure the South Bend pass verified three ways — against the Defense Department's casualty file extract and the Wall's two renderings — and the allocation is exact: thirty-one for South Bend, sixteen for Mishawaka, six for Walkerton, and one for Osceola. The Mishawaka wars file banked that one man by name at its boundary, so the county's arithmetic would be complete: "The county's fifty-four close with one man under Osceola, the other Penn Township town — Private First Class James Noble Kalil." He is counted nowhere in Mishawaka's roll; he is claimed here.

The man, at the record's full strength: the Virtual Wall's Indiana page carries exactly one name under OSCEOLA, and its memorial page for him reads: "James Noble Kalil / Private First Class / A CO, 1ST AMTRAC BN, 3RD MARDIV, III MAF / United States Marine Corps / Osceola, Indiana / March 25, 1944 to August 18, 1965 / JAMES N KALIL is on the Wall at Panel 2E, Line 58." The federal casualty file's rendering agrees line for line: "KALIL JAMES NOBLE | PFC | MARINES | OSCEOLA | 18AUG65 | S.VIETNAM | 25MAR44 | HOSTILE, KILLED." So: a Marine of A Company, 1st Amphibian Tractor Battalion, 3rd Marine Division, III Marine Amphibious Force, killed in action in South Vietnam on 18 August 1965, aged twenty-one; his name stands at Panel 2E, Line 58 of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. What does not extend is printed with the same plainness: no province and no circumstance of his death is stated in any source read (his battalion's July 1965 command diary places Company A at Chu Lai under the 4th Marines in that period, but no record read ties his own death to a place or an action, and none is asserted); no burial place for him was found in any open source searched; no profile for him was retrieved from the Wall of Faces — printed precisely as not-retrieved, not as nonexistent; and no local memorial naming him was found, the town's memorial question standing in the posts article below. One absence inside the record deserves print whole: his own battalion association's memorial page, read whole, lists for 18 August 1965 only Corporal Rowland Joseph Adamoli — Kalil's name does not appear anywhere in his battalion's memorial list, although the federal file and the Wall carry him as A Company, killed the same day. The omission is printed as found; this section does not explain it. The settlers for everything unextended stand in the closing register: the battalion's August 1965 command chronology, the county veterans index's K page, the Tribune's August 1965 obituary file, and the Wall of Faces search by home city.

Sources:

2. The Virtual Wall — Indiana home-of-record page and the Kalil memorial page, read.
3. Combat Area Casualties Current File rendering (NARA), Indiana list — the Kalil row.
4. 1st Amphibian Tractor Battalion association memorial page — read whole; the omission as found.