Cadets hold Rotunda vigil

By Aaron Lee

Published: September 16, 2008

A 24-hour vigil for prisoners of war and those soldiers still missing in action ended with taps being trumpeted from the front north steps of the Rotunda on Tuesday evening.

The vigil began at 5:30 p.m. Monday with University of Virginia ROTC cadets — Air Force, Army and Navy — marching in pairs for 15-minute rotating shifts.

The vigil was organized by the Arnold Air Society — an ROTC honor society at UVa — as a tribute to National POW/MIA Recognition Day being observed Friday.

Eva Etzel, a second-year Air Force cadet, marched the final vigil shift on Tuesday with Jonathan Hylton, also a second-year cadet.

“We’re pretty much in the same boat they’re in,” Etzel said of the POWs and MIAs being honored. “And we may be called to make the same sacrifice one day.”

David Harker, a former Army staff sergeant captured in January 1968 while fighting in Vietnam, spoke at a ceremony ending the vigil.

“Here I was at age 22, getting ready to die,” Harker said of the fighting before his capture. “Not a very pleasant experience.”

Of the nine men who fought alongside Harker during that battle before his capture, four died during, or shortly afterwards, from wounds.

Harker told Tuesday’s crowd of roughly 300 that after his capture he was a POW for five years.

Of the five men who were captured with Harker, two more would die in a South Vietnamese prison camp of complications from their wounds and diseases they picked up inside the camp.

The three others who survived with Harker were later released.

In the time since his release, Harker, a Lynchburg native, has become an advocate for veterans affairs.

“I’m proud to be able to stand here today and say, ‘Thank you,’ to you,” Harker said, noting that close to a combined 88,000 service members are missing in action from World War II and the Korean and Vietnam wars.