Melvin Wayne Finch was a gunship pilot whose aircraft was shot down by enemy ground fire in March 1972. Finch was captured and later died in captivity. His remains were recovered and returned to Panola for burial in Black Jack Cemetery in 1985.
this story was wrote in the panolian paper for may 25,2009 memorial ceriomomal
Wayne Finch
The last Panola County Vietnam War casualty that we know about was Army helicopter pilot Captain Melvin Wayne Finch.
When Finch died on September 6, 1972, he was alone except for the company of a fellow prisoner of war, a South Vietnamese Army officer who would later provide the information about the lonely death of a Panola County soldier far from home.
Finch had attended Batesville High School through his tenth grade year, but he and his dad moved to Louisiana after his mother died. Former Panola resident Doug Fargo knew Finch then as a fellow paperboy, distributors of the afternoon daily newspapers from Memphis and Jackson then regularly distributed in Batesville.
Fargo next encountered Finch in Vietnam as a fellow soldier. Fargo was an infantryman, Finch a gunship pilot. Finch's first Vietnam tour began in June 1968 and lasted 18 months due to a pilot shortage. He returned in March, 1972 and was shot down the next month.
"We called him 'John Wayne' Finch," Fargo recalled.
A fellow pilot said that Finch flew so low that he seemed scared of heights. Others said he was scared of nothing.
When his helicopter crashed from ground fire in 1972 in Kontum Province, his co-pilot said that Finch, though wounded, initially followed him. However, when the helicopter exploded when they were about 10 yards away, Finch appeared to become disoriented and ran toward the enemy instead of in the opposite direction.
Intense searches in enemy-held territory failed to locate the missing gunship pilot, but after POWs were released by the North Vietnamese in 1973, intelligence officials were able to piece together the story of the rest of Finch's life. Wounded and weak, Finch was left behind as their communist captors force-marched prisoners north. Finch died on September 9, 1972, according to the South Vietnamese officer who was a fellow prisoner at the time of his death.