Council Rock alum died a hero in Vietnam. 54 years later, his family to receive his medals

As the ammo dump burned on his Army base in Vietnam, Frank Mebs got onto his bulldozer and attempted to snuff the flames. It was May 27, 1970.

Mebs, who lived in Newtown, was 20 when he died for his country after the pile exploded and he was killed. In all the years since, his family never received all of his medals, ribbons and honors.

Those will be presented at 9 a.m. on Memorial Day, 54 years to the day of his death, at the Jesse Soby American Legion Post in Langhorne Borough, said representatives of the Pennsylvania Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund.

Presenting will be Steve Kilde, of Lee’s Summit, Missouri. Kilde recovered what was left of the bulldozer, and also recovered Mebs.

“I assisted putting him on the helicopter to fly him out. He was gone,” Kilde said in a phone interview this week.

The incident left an emotional mark, mostly because Mebs’ selflessness likely saved the lives of hundreds of soldiers housed at Fire Support Base Vehgel, in Vietnam’s Thua Thien Province. The fire threatened to detonate three more artillery batteries near a battalion of 600 infantrymen on a hill near the city of Hue.

Mebs and another soldier were the only two killed.

The lack of full honors wasn’t the only slight the military bureaucracy delivered to the Mebs family.

“They weren’t told the circumstances of how Frank died, just that he was ‘blown up,’ in some sort of accident,” Kilde said.

Fire Base Vehgel was regularly targeted by the enemy.

About 1 a.m. May 27, 1970, officers sensed an imminent attack, based on mysterious movements outside the base. A mortar fell short, igniting the ammo dump. Mebs sprang to action. Twenty others joined. But as the fire spread, the others fled.

Mebs stayed on his bulldozer, fighting the flames.

Thirty years later, in 2000, another soldier, Don Aird, who eyewitnessed Mebs’ bravery, contacted his family in Bucks County. In a letter, he told what happened, that Frank had died a hero. It was too late for Mebs’ grieving mother, who died of an aneurism in 1971.

“It’s something that happens during combat, then you got other stuff to do, and you file it under ‘M’ for ‘memory’ and forget about it,” Kilde said.

Kilde could not forget. He retired from military service in 1983, then spent 19 years working for the Department of the Army. He was treated for PTSD.

“That pulled some memories out of me,” he said, including the death of Frank Mebs.

“That just haunted me,” he said. “A psychiatrist said, ‘What are you gonna do about it?’ And the only way I knew how to deal with it was to find out more.”

He searched online for info on Mebs.

“I saw his (military) records and I knew something wasn’t right. I knew he’d been awarded different medals and honors. How come he doesn’t have them in his record?” he said.

In 2018, he contacted the Mebs family.

“And ever since then I’ve been trying to right a wrong,” he said.

Finally, he received the medals and ribbons on Mebs’ behalf, and mounted them in a shadow box.

“The only thing I can figure is that the service officers — they didn’t do their job,” Kilde said. “If they had, they would have had everything ready for that family.”

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Mebs was 17 when he left Council Rock High School in 1966 to enlist and serve in Vietnam. The school has his portrait on display at Council Rock North High School, along with others who died in Vietnam and other wars.

At 10 a.m. Wednesday, May 29, Kilde will also speak at the dedication of county bridge 89, to be renamed “SP5 Frank Martin Mebs Bridge.”

The bridge spans Newtown Creek on Barclay Street, linking Newtown Township and Newtown Borough, said the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, which has named numerous bridges for Bucks County men who perished in Vietnam.

JD Mullane can be reached at 215-949-5745 or jmullane@couriertimes.com.

This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: 54 years after Newtown man died in Vietnam, family receives his medals