Memorial marks Pembroke man’s life, sacrifice

Inscribed on a memorial monument in Middleborough, Mass., are the names of 15 Vietnam era war dead, local boys born and bred and well known to the townspeople who saw them grow up, graduate from high school, and go off to southeast Asia in the 1960s. All 15 will be remembered this Memorial Day when the monument is to be rededicated in its new setting at Veterans' Park, a site the town has built to honor all the Middleborough men and women who served the country in wars since the Revolution.

But one of the 15 names carved on the Vietnam stone was a mystery. No one in Middleborough seemed to know anything about Zane A. Carter. A member of the planning committee for this year's Memorial Day observance, Bob Lessard, was determined to find out about him. Research led him to a few facts: Technical Sergeant Zane Aubry Carter was born in 1930 at West Pembroke, Maine, joined the Air Force in 1949, and was killed with two other airmen in a plane crash on August 3, 1967, near Quang Ngai, South Vietnam.

Lessard never heard of West Pembroke, but he found the phone number of the town clerk and, through her, got in touch with the Pembroke Historical Society. Over the past few weeks, talks with former classmates at Pembroke High School and one-time family friends and neighbors, searches of old newspapers and other records, and information from Internet sites have led to answers about his connection to Middleborough, his life and his descendants.

"Quiet" and "polite" are the words that members of the class of 1949 use most often about Zane. He was a "good boy," say some who look back on themselves as teenage "hellions." He joined the service right after graduation, intending to make a career in the Air Force, and began a military life that took him far from Pembroke. He made few, if any, visits home, as far as old friends know. He later became more outgoing, a nephew remembers, and among the many friends he made in the service he was known as a "jokester," a "happy-go-lucky, optimistic sort of person."

Zane was born on Christmas day in 1930, the third child of Frank and Alice (Cushing) Carter. His brother Keith graduated from Pembroke High School with the class of 1941 and served in World War II, and his sister Laverne graduated in 1943. Disaster struck the young family in the 1930s at the height of the Depression C Frank died in 1934 when Zane was four, and Alice died in 1936 when Zane was six, and the three young Carter children were orphaned. Alice's parents, Millard and Martha Cushing, who had 10 children of their own, took in their grandchildren and raised them all in a small house on Route 1 that still stands and is still occupied by a family member.

The children attended local schools, first the Red School, the one-room structure that once stood diagonally opposite the Masonic hall, and later the Head of the Tides School on the site where the historical society's "Schoolhouse Park" is now. Each of the children left Pembroke after high school, Keith for military service and later a life in California, and Laverne for marriage and a life in Old Town. Both are now deceased.

The Air Force trained Zane as a flight engineer, and he saw combat duty in Korea in the early 1950s. Later he was stationed near Coventry, England, where he met June Williams, a young English girl he married in 1955. Their first child, Theresa, was born in England. Later he was transferred to Otis Air Force Base, not far from Middleborough, and served for six years as flight engineer aboard radar planes that patrolled the eastern coast of the United States. The family grew with the addition of Zane Jr. in 1962, and the Carters came to love the town of Middleborough. They bought a modest house in the Rock Village section, put down roots and began to plan for a life there when Zane retired from the military. On his days off, he liked to go on fishing trips with friends he made in the neighborhood.

In 1966, he was again tapped for combat duty, this time in Vietnam. He was due to come home in the fall of 1967 and anticipated retiring from the service a year and a half after that. The family in Middleborough had some financial struggles while Zane was in Vietnam; June made ends meet, but barely. They thought their situation would be improved when Zane's experience would help him get a well-paying civilian job.

In Vietnam, Zane was part of a three-man crew aboard a fixed wing aircraft built in Canada, the C-7 Caribou. It was, said the Air Force, "particularly suited to operating into short, primitive airstrips" where other planes could not land. The Caribou was considered the best military aircraft available at the time for emergency resupply operations, especially to remote Special Forces camps and firebases. In March 1967, Zane's crew set a record for ferrying 80,000 pounds of passengers and supplies to a base 25 miles away. The total tonnage mark was set in six hours flying time and 27 landings and takeoffs in a single day's operation.

On August 3, 1967, Zane and two other airmen, Capt. Alan Hendrickson and Capt. John Wiley, were killed in a tragic friendly fire incident as their plane was approaching the Duc Pho Special Forces camp, about 20 miles south of Quang Ngai. According to Vietnam Air Losses, published in 2001, it "was hit by a shell from a U.S. Army 155 mm Howitzer. The aircraft had flown into the line of fire and the shell blew off its entire rear fuselage and tail section. There is a well-publicized photograph of the aircraft taken during its fatal dive into the ground on the outskirts of the camp. Following this accident the Army and Air Force tightened up their coordination procedures for air operations near artillery fire zones.

The photograph -- taken by a UPI photographer on the ground just seconds after the hit -- was published in newspapers back home. In fact, June Carter saw it -- none of the crew was identified by name -- the day before she was notified her husband had been killed in action.

June decided that Zane should be buried in Pembroke in the lot with his parents. Air Force officers accompanied the casket here for a funeral at the tiny Peoples Methodist Church and burial at Forest Hill cemetery. Old friends and classmates attended the ceremony -- one remembers it was a damp and foggy day, chilly for August, and the sound of Taps played by the military bugler resonated mournfully among the old tombstones.

June and the children, then ages 10 and 5, also attended a ceremony at Otis Air Force Base. They received five posthumous awards to their husband and father, the Purple Heart, Distinguished Flying Cross, the Air Medal with Four Oak Leaf Clusters and additional Air Medals.

June wasn't able to keep the house in Middleborough. An article published in the local paper a few months after the burial reports, "Her small six-room Cape style home and tiny parcel of rocky land upon which the house stands was valued by the Board of Assessors at $13,000. Taxes amounted to $702, up some $400 over what they were less than three years ago. Assessors have refused to consider giving the family an abatement.

First June took the children to southern Maine, but things didn't work out there and the family moved to Florida. June Carter died there at the age of 49. Theresa now lives in Melrose, Mass., and Zane Jr. in Florida.

This Memorial Day, Zane will be remembered as always by his family. Those who knew him as a boy in Maine, those who knew him as a man in Middleborough, and those who only know about him also honor him this year.