Closure After 50 Years: A Vietnam War Story By David Koontz It was another sultry hot and humid day at Udorn Air Base in Thailand. U.S. Air Force Maj. Roy Knight Jr. climbed into his A-1E Skyraider attack aircraft for a combat mission along the Ho Chi Minh trail. As he had done many times, Sgt. Dick Witvoet helped him strap into the cockpit, gave him his two canteens of frozen water, and told him to come back safely.
“I thought about him almost every day,” said the 75-year-old Witvoet. “It was just like unfinished business that really ate at me. And I could only imagine how his family must have agonized over the unknown.” Roy Knight III was only 10 years old when he said the last goodbye to his dad and had just celebrated his 11th birthday when he was shot down. The loss of his father was horrific.
He never came back.
“The impact was quite significant and by the time I was 13 or 14, I was a pretty angry and unhappy young man headed way down the wrong path,” said Knight, who was born in Fukuoka, Japan. “My mother gave me military school as an option and I seized it. The next three years helped form me as some very great men, old warriors, took over for my dad and really helped me.”
On May 19, 1967, Maj. Roy Knight Jr. was listed as Missing in Action.
For both men, decades would pass without knowing what ultimately happened to a friend and father.
“It broke my heart not knowing if Maj. Knight had been captured by the North Vietnamese or killed in action,” said Witvoet, a crew chief with the 602nd Fighter Squadron. “It’s real hard to handle when something like this happens to someone you feel a certain responsibility for and expect to see them when they return.”
“The American POWs were finally released from Hanoi in 1973,” remembered Witvoet. “I was home watching TV as the plane landed in California. I was hoping to see Maj. Knight coming off the flight, but he wasn’t there. My heart sunk. It was like losing a close friend. I still had a feeling of despair.”
Maj. Knight’s Skyraider was shot down over Laos. His loss hit the entire squadron hard. Witvoet remembered that he had a caring personality that endeared him to the enlisted personnel in the squadron.
Over the course of the next 40 years, Knight would be in routine contact with various the Department of Defense agencies tasked with finding and identifying those missing or killed in action during the Vietnam War.
After Witvoet rendered the traditional salute, the young Air Force pilot taxied for takeoff and a few minutes later disappeared with his wingman over the lush-green rolling hills.
“He was just an all-around nice guy who took the time to talk to the airmen,” said Witvoet, a 1964 graduate from Kelloggsville High School in Wyoming, Mich. “Not all of the officers were like that. He always appreciated what we did – which was to make a difference in what he did – and he treated us with respect.”
Witvoet left the Air Force in 1969 and returned to Michigan to work in the family business, but he never forgot Maj. Knight.
Sgt. Dick Witvoet refuels an A-1E Skyraider at Udorn Air Base in Thailand during the Vietnam War. 12
WWW.HomelandMagazine.com / FEBRUARY 2022
“While we didn’t know early on if dad had made it out of the airplane, after many years I came to the conclusion that he perished in the crash,” said Knight, a 65-year-old marketing executive with a Californiabased cookie company. “This conclusion was further bolstered by artifacts that were recovered by crash site excavations.” The breakthrough finally came more than five decades later in 2019. “The recovery was made in February and March,” said Knight, who lives in Valley Center, Calif., just north of San Diego. “It took about two months for the scientists to make the identification. They are very careful to do this completely so there was never any doubt. We got the word at the end of May.”
