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Bomb craters along the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos, August 1970.
Bomb craters along the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos, August 1970. Photo: U.S. Air Force, public domain. Shown for the time and place, not a photograph of Alan Bruce Cecil.

The Wall › Panel 18W › Oklahoma › Alan Bruce Cecil

ALAN BRUCE CECIL

Specialist Five · U.S. Army

September 4, 1946 – September 21, 1969

Service record

Alan Bruce Cecil, of Holdenville, Oklahoma, served as a Specialist Five in the U.S. Army. He died on September 21, 1969, in Laos, at age 23. His name is inscribed on Panel 18W, Line 119 of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

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Panel 18W · Line 119

Position of Panel 18W on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial

Names are inscribed in the order of loss, starting at Panel 1E at the apex and ending at Panel 1W. At the Memorial, find the panel number at the base and count down from the top line.

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Service

Branch
U.S. Army
Rank
Specialist Five (SP5)
Service
Regular
Occupation
Infantry Operations And Intelligence Specialist (11F)
Unit (as recorded)
SPECIAL FORCES
Born
September 4, 1946
Home of record
Holdenville, Oklahoma (Hughes County)

Casualty

Date of death
September 21, 1969
Age
23
Country
Laos
Casualty type
Hostile
Category
Killed in Action
Circumstance
Unknown
Remains
Not recovered as of the 2008 DoD record

Context · from the records

What was happening

29 names on the Wall carry the date September 21, 1969. In September 1969, 664 Americans whose names are on the Wall died in the war.

Special Forces, his unit in the record, lost 9 of its members that month.

He died in Laos while the air war over Laos was under way. From 1964 to 1973, U.S. aircraft bombed the Ho Chi Minh Trail and supported the war in northern Laos; many of the Americans lost over Laos were never recovered.

His remains had not been recovered when the 2008 record was compiled. The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency continues to search for Americans still missing from the war; families can find case information through dpaa.mil.

Read the history

On the Wall

Elsewhere

Also on Panel 18W, Line 119

Same unit, same day

From Holdenville

Source. U.S. Department of Defense, Defense Casualty Analysis System, Vietnam Conflict Extract Data File (as of April 29, 2008), Records of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Record Group 330, National Archives (NAID 2240992). Panel and line as recorded in that file. This page presents the official record and its historical context; no biography has been written for him yet. See something wrong? Report a correction.