PERSONAL DATA
Home of Record: Hampton, VA
Date of birth: 06/27/1946
MILITARY DATA
Service: United States Marine Corps
Grade at loss: E3
Rank: Lance Corporal
ID No: 2135358
MOS: 0811: FIELD ARTILLERY CANNONEER
Length Service: 02
Unit: C BTRY, 1ST BN, 12TH MARINES, 3RD MARDIV, III MAF
CASUALTY DATA
Start Tour: 03/15/1966
Incident Date: 10/27/1967
Casualty Date: 10/27/1967
Age at Loss: 21
Location: Quang Tri Province, South Vietnam
Remains: Body recovered
Casualty Type: Hostile, died outright
Casualty Reason: Ground casualty
Casualty Detail: Misadventure
URL: www.VirtualWall.org/dw/WestfallBL01a.htm
ON THE WALL Panel 28E Line 088
Gini Westfall of Port Charlotte, Fla. fingers her Gold Star Mother’s pin on her collar as she stares at her son’s name on “The Moving Wall” that came to Fort Myers, Fla. Her 21-year-old son, Bronson, was killed in Vietnam in June 1967.
She emerged slowly from the car with cane in hand and walked hunched over along a serpentine concrete path. At its end was The Wall.
The Wall looked like black marble. It was covered with 58,219 engraved names. Someone was reading each name on the wall into a big, black speaker slowly and distinctly one-by-one.
As she hobbled onto the 8-foot-wide walk way that ran along in front of The Wall, Gini Westfall of Port Charlotte, Fla. was greeted by a Vietnam veteran in a black beret wearing a blue blazer, white shirt and red tie. He was talking to a group of a dozen middle school students about The Wall.
Dave McMichael, the vet with the beret, must have spotted the gold star on her collar.
Greg Tonjes, a Marine Corps veteran of Vietnam, gives Gini a hug after finding her son’s name on The Wall.
“May I give you a hug?” he asked Gini, a stranger, as she walked past. He threw his arms around her and whispered something softly in her ear as they embraced for a few seconds before The Wall. When he released her there were tears in his eyes.
He composed himself for a moment. Then he turned to the young people around him and said, “She is a Gold Star Mother. She is a very special person because her son was killed in Vietnam.”
Gold Star Mothers had their origin in World War I. It was a club no mother wanted to belong to, but thousands did. Gini has been one of them for 14 years.
Gini holds her Gold Star Mother’s pin and a free-form nugget pendant she had made out of Bronson’s high school graduation ring.
The five-pointed star on a field of blue in the center of a small round gold pin attached to her denim shirt told her tale louder than words. This Gold Star Mother lost Lance Cpl. Bronson Lee Westfall, U.S. Marine Corps, killed in action in Vietnam.
Gini was on her way to Fort Myers to find her son’s name on The Moving Wall that was in town for the weekend. It’s a three-quarter replica of the Vietnam Wall Memorial on The Mall in Washington, D.C. The Moving Wall travels the country.
When her son was killed in Vietnam at the age of 21, the family lived in Hampton, Va., outside Norfolk. Bronson graduated from high school there in 1965 and joined the Marine a few months later.
He was a Marine cannoneer. He had finished his year’s service in ‘Nam in June ’67, his mother recalled as she rode along on her way to Fort Myers to see The Wall. Bronson volunteered for another six months firing the Marines’ big guns on the front lines in Quang Tri Province. He was scheduled to be discharge from the service in December, just in time for a holiday wedding to his high school sweetheart, Debora Drum.
It was Halloween when a Marine Corps major showed up at the Westfall’s front door late one afternoon.
“My husband and I had gone to a dinner party that evening. We were trying to take a break from our problems at home. My mother was in the final stages of Alzheimer’s disease. We got someone to take care of her that evening.
“The major told the lady staying with my mother,”I’m suppose to find them. But I’ll be back in the morning. Don’t tell them I came by,” Gini recalled. “The woman didn’t say a word.
“Sunday morning we got up and there was the major. I went into shock when he told us Bronson had been killed in Vietnam. My mother went out of her mind and had to be taken to the hospital,” she said.
They could have buried their son in Arlington National Cemetery outside Washington, D.C. However, they decided that he would rather be buried in a cemetery in his hometown of Hampton, Va., that he loved so much. That’s what they did.
“On the way to the cemetery, the funeral process was lead by a Marine Corps staff car that held Bronson’s honor guard. An American flag flew from a bracket on the bumper of the car.
“I looked out the window and there was this little black boy standing on the curb. The 10 or 12-year-old boy saluted the flag as we went by. I’ll never forget it.”
Lance Cpl. Bronson Westfall was killed in action while serving as a cannoneer with the 3rd Marine Division in Vietnam.
The inscription on Bronson’s headstone reads:
Death answers so many prayers.
It is the soul unleashed
And the completion of a task well done.”
“That poem was written the day of my son’s death by his bride to be,” she said. “We put it on his gravestone.”
What are her feelings about the Vietnam War?
“I think probably when you start to ask why, you’re never going to get an answer. So I never did ask why. It was a fact and that was sad enough,” Gini said. “I could get very aggravated thinking about Bronson’s death, but that does no one any good.
“I feel better coming to see The Wall. It’s something you can do that’s almost tangible. Grief is a very personal thing with each person. Each person deals with it in their own fashion,” she said.
She hobbled off, weaving her way through the crowds of young people and adults on the walkway. She was following Greg Tonjes, another Vietnam vet sporting a beard and wearing a green canvas jungle hat and vest covered with Marine insignias. Tonjes had volunteered to find what she was looking for.
Bronson L. Westfall’s name pops through the tracing paper after the paper is rubbed with a led pencil.
There it was at the end of Row 88, about three-quarters of the way down panel 28-E: “Bronson L. Westfall.”
Tonjes took a piece of tracing paper and a #2 pencil. He placed the paper over Gini’s son’s name and rubbed the pencil over the paper ever so gently. Ghost-like, the name popped through the thin white paper in shades of gray.
He handed it to her. Then he gave her a long hug. The salt-and-pepper bearded Marine stepped back, spoke quietly to her and faded into the crowd.
For a long while Gini Westfall leaned on her cane, fingered the Gold Star Mother’s pin on her collar as she stared at her son’s name. She wouldn’t come close enough to the wall to run her fingers over his name. It was as if the wall was cursed.
Then she placed both hands on the handle of her crooked aluminium cane and seemed to block out the world around her as she looked intensely at the last name in Row 88—Bronson L. Westfall.
Bronson was my next door neighbor in the Grandview neighborhood in Fox Hill from 1962 until his death in Vietnam in 1967. Those who knew him remeber a free spirited magnetic personality that put smiles on the faces of people in every room he entered. When the Marine Corps announced his death, they applied the word "misadventure" to his memoriam. Misadventure was a catch all for non combat related deaths, in Bronson's case, a misfired "short" artillery round. Life, however, has a way with finding us all, eventually, in a circle of truth, and so it did in this case. Several years ago, I found the web site of Bronson's old Marine Corps artillery unit, saw his name, and left a comment regarding our boyhood friendship. To my amazement, I received an email several weeks later from a man who had been Bronson's gunnery sergeant at the time, and place of his death. This gentleman told me the truth, and why the Marine Corps was reluctant to do so in 1967. Bronson and a squad of Marine's had occupied an outpost in a remote area, a listening post to alert the main fire base to the movement of enemy troops in the area. They were discovered, and in the black of night, attacked by an overwhelming force of North Vietnamese regular soldiers. Bronson's unit was being over run, and Bronson, being the ranking Corporal, called in artillery on his own position in a last act of desperation to repeal the enemy. The resulting, devastating fire by friendly artillery killed many of the enemy, and caused them to withdraw, but not before Bronson himself was mortaly wounded. Any press release that revealed the true nature of Bron's death would have been embarrasing to the Marine Corps, so a misadventure friendly fire label was attached to the cause of death. Bronson's parents never knew of this act of gallantry before they too died, consistent to the theme of lies that characterized that entire war. But, the spectre of truth, persistent to be gently revealed to me, his child hood friend who had eventually walked the same ground as Bronson in Vietnam, several years later, presented itself in the unlikely form of a neighbor, who had been with Bron when he fell. His name is Woody, and sometimes we get together, although not often. When we do, we do not have much to say, but stare off into the distance, with our thoughts and moist eyes, comfortable in the presence of another who knows the truth.
Bobby Bryant (1965)
Bronson was a great friend and colleague. He was KIA in Vietnam on October 27, 1967.
He has been, and will continue to be missed.
I found this info on the Vietnam Wall website; www.VirtualWall.org/dw/WestfallBL01a.htm
Bronson Lee Westfall
Lance Corporal
Deborah Anne Outten (Fisk) (1966)
Bronson Westfall
Westfall’s File
Name: Bronson L. Westfall
Age: 21
Hometown: Hampton, Va.
Entered Service: 1965
Discharged: 1967
Rank: Lance Corporal
Unit: Company C, 1st Battalion, 12th Marine Regiment, 3rd Marine Division
Commendations: Purple Heart
Deborah Anne Outten (Fisk) (1966)
Gold Star Mother visits Moving Vietnam Wall
In Vietnam War on April 3, 2010 at 7:36 pm
Gini Westfall of Port Charlotte, Fla. fingers her Gold Star Mother’s pin on her collar as she stares at her son’s name on “The Moving Wall” that came to Fort Myers, Fla. Her 21-year-old son, Bronson, was killed in Vietnam in June 1967.
She emerged slowly from the car with cane in hand and walked hunched over along a serpentine concrete path. At its end was The Wall.
The Wall looked like black marble. It was covered with 58,219 engraved names. Someone was reading each name on the wall into a big, black speaker slowly and distinctly one-by-one.
As she hobbled onto the 8-foot-wide walk way that ran along in front of The Wall, Gini Westfall of Port Charlotte, Fla. was greeted by a Vietnam veteran in a black beret wearing a blue blazer, white shirt and red tie. He was talking to a group of a dozen middle school students about The Wall.
Dave McMichael, the vet with the beret, must have spotted the gold star on her collar.
Greg Tonjes, a Marine Corps veteran of Vietnam, gives Gini a hug after finding her son’s name on The Wall.
“May I give you a hug?” he asked Gini, a stranger, as she walked past. He threw his arms around her and whispered something softly in her ear as they embraced for a few seconds before The Wall. When he released her there were tears in his eyes.
He composed himself for a moment. Then he turned to the young people around him and said, “She is a Gold Star Mother. She is a very special person because her son was killed in Vietnam.”
Gold Star Mothers had their origin in World War I. It was a club no mother wanted to belong to, but thousands did. Gini has been one of them for 14 years.
Gini holds her Gold Star Mother’s pin and a free-form nugget pendant she had made out of Bronson’s high school graduation ring.
The five-pointed star on a field of blue in the center of a small round gold pin attached to her denim shirt told her tale louder than words. This Gold Star Mother lost Lance Cpl. Bronson Lee Westfall, U.S. Marine Corps, killed in action in Vietnam.
Gini was on her way to Fort Myers to find her son’s name on The Moving Wall that was in town for the weekend. It’s a three-quarter replica of the Vietnam Wall Memorial on The Mall in Washington, D.C. The Moving Wall travels the country.
When her son was killed in Vietnam at the age of 21, the family lived in Hampton, Va., outside Norfolk. Bronson graduated from high school there in 1965 and joined the Marine a few months later.
He was a Marine cannoneer. He had finished his year’s service in ‘Nam in June ’67, his mother recalled as she rode along on her way to Fort Myers to see The Wall. Bronson volunteered for another six months firing the Marines’ big guns on the front lines in Quang Tri Province. He was scheduled to be discharge from the service in December, just in time for a holiday wedding to his high school sweetheart, Debora Drum.
It was Halloween when a Marine Corps major showed up at the Westfall’s front door late one afternoon.
“My husband and I had gone to a dinner party that evening. We were trying to take a break from our problems at home. My mother was in the final stages of Alzheimer’s disease. We got someone to take care of her that evening.
“The major told the lady staying with my mother,”I’m suppose to find them. But I’ll be back in the morning. Don’t tell them I came by,” Gini recalled. “The woman didn’t say a word.
“Sunday morning we got up and there was the major. I went into shock when he told us Bronson had been killed in Vietnam. My mother went out of her mind and had to be taken to the hospital,” she said.
They could have buried their son in Arlington National Cemetery outside Washington, D.C. However, they decided that he would rather be buried in a cemetery in his hometown of Hampton, Va., that he loved so much. That’s what they did.
“On the way to the cemetery, the funeral process was lead by a Marine Corps staff car that held Bronson’s honor guard. An American flag flew from a bracket on the bumper of the car.
“I looked out the window and there was this little black boy standing on the curb. The 10 or 12-year-old boy saluted the flag as we went by. I’ll never forget it.”
Lance Cpl. Bronson Westfall was killed in action while serving as a cannoneer with the 3rd Marine Division in Vietnam.
The inscription on Bronson’s headstone reads:
Death answers so many prayers.
It is the soul unleashed
And the completion of a task well done.”
“That poem was written the day of my son’s death by his bride to be,” she said. “We put it on his gravestone.”
What are her feelings about the Vietnam War?
“I think probably when you start to ask why, you’re never going to get an answer. So I never did ask why. It was a fact and that was sad enough,” Gini said. “I could get very aggravated thinking about Bronson’s death, but that does no one any good.
“I feel better coming to see The Wall. It’s something you can do that’s almost tangible. Grief is a very personal thing with each person. Each person deals with it in their own fashion,” she said.
She hobbled off, weaving her way through the crowds of young people and adults on the walkway. She was following Greg Tonjes, another Vietnam vet sporting a beard and wearing a green canvas jungle hat and vest covered with Marine insignias. Tonjes had volunteered to find what she was looking for.
Bronson L. Westfall’s name pops through the tracing paper after the paper is rubbed with a led pencil.
There it was at the end of Row 88, about three-quarters of the way down panel 28-E: “Bronson L. Westfall.”
Tonjes took a piece of tracing paper and a #2 pencil. He placed the paper over Gini’s son’s name and rubbed the pencil over the paper ever so gently. Ghost-like, the name popped through the thin white paper in shades of gray.
He handed it to her. Then he gave her a long hug. The salt-and-pepper bearded Marine stepped back, spoke quietly to her and faded into the crowd.
For a long while Gini Westfall leaned on her cane, fingered the Gold Star Mother’s pin on her collar as she stared at her son’s name. She wouldn’t come close enough to the wall to run her fingers over his name. It was as if the wall was cursed.
Then she placed both hands on the handle of her crooked aluminium cane and seemed to block out the world around her as she looked intensely at the last name in Row 88—Bronson L. Westfall.
She cried.
Robert Wilson Flournoy (1965)
Bronson was my next door neighbor in the Grandview neighborhood in Fox Hill from 1962 until his death in Vietnam in 1967. Those who knew him remeber a free spirited magnetic personality that put smiles on the faces of people in every room he entered. When the Marine Corps announced his death, they applied the word "misadventure" to his memoriam. Misadventure was a catch all for non combat related deaths, in Bronson's case, a misfired "short" artillery round. Life, however, has a way with finding us all, eventually, in a circle of truth, and so it did in this case. Several years ago, I found the web site of Bronson's old Marine Corps artillery unit, saw his name, and left a comment regarding our boyhood friendship. To my amazement, I received an email several weeks later from a man who had been Bronson's gunnery sergeant at the time, and place of his death. This gentleman told me the truth, and why the Marine Corps was reluctant to do so in 1967. Bronson and a squad of Marine's had occupied an outpost in a remote area, a listening post to alert the main fire base to the movement of enemy troops in the area. They were discovered, and in the black of night, attacked by an overwhelming force of North Vietnamese regular soldiers. Bronson's unit was being over run, and Bronson, being the ranking Corporal, called in artillery on his own position in a last act of desperation to repeal the enemy. The resulting, devastating fire by friendly artillery killed many of the enemy, and caused them to withdraw, but not before Bronson himself was mortaly wounded. Any press release that revealed the true nature of Bron's death would have been embarrasing to the Marine Corps, so a misadventure friendly fire label was attached to the cause of death. Bronson's parents never knew of this act of gallantry before they too died, consistent to the theme of lies that characterized that entire war. But, the spectre of truth, persistent to be gently revealed to me, his child hood friend who had eventually walked the same ground as Bronson in Vietnam, several years later, presented itself in the unlikely form of a neighbor, who had been with Bron when he fell. His name is Woody, and sometimes we get together, although not often. When we do, we do not have much to say, but stare off into the distance, with our thoughts and moist eyes, comfortable in the presence of another who knows the truth.