DANVILLE Funeral for Pfc. Charles Allen
(Chuck) Hilbert, 20, Parksville, who was killed May 22 in Vietnam, will
be 2 p.m. Monday, Parksville Baptist Church. The body is at
Preston-Pruitt Funeral Home here.
[The Courier-Journal, Louisville, KY, 07 Jun 1969, Sat. Page 39] |
The day he left his mother's house for the last time,
Chuck Hilbert wrote a message in soap on a mirror: "I shall return,
April 15, 1970."
"It's still there," says Virginia Cook. "I won't let nobody wash it off."
Mrs. Cook's son was killed before the promised return date came. On
May 22, 1969, at the age of 20, he was shot in a rice paddy in Hau Nghia
Province in Vietnam.
A cedar chest in the Cooks' home in Parksville holds dozens of
mementoes from Charles A. Hubert's life: a glass case filled with
medals, official letters of sympathy and commendation, and photographs.
Among the most precious of these mementoes are Chuck's letters, including the one he carried in his pocket as he crossed the booby-trapped rice paddy that day in 1969.
"They wiped the blood off it and sent it to me," says Mrs. Cook, pulling the letter from a stack enclosed in a
rubberband. In the letter, Chuck wrote that the next day they were going to a "bad place," and that he would get through it, "God willing and the creek don't rise."
A member of the 82nd Airborne Division, Chuck was awarded a trophy for high marksman in his division at Ft Knox. He won several other medals, including a Purple Heart and Bronze Star. Mrs. Cook, the mother of four living and two deceased children, has seen war's ravages in' more than one instance. Her brother-in-law, Howard D. Cook, was killed In the Korean War and her first husband's
uncle, Bruner Hilbert, died during World War I.
Howard Cook was a musician who learned to play his first song on
the guitar or banjo at the age of about 12, recalls his brother Carlos
Cook of Parksville.
"The first song he ever learned to play was 'You Are My Sunshine,'"
says Carlos.
Another brother, Paul, who is Mrs. Cook's husband, describes Howard as
"friendly, outgoing. He didn't meet any strangers."
The youngest of 11 children of Arthur and Laura Cook, Howard joined
the Army at the age of 17. He had dropped out of high school and worked
for a while with Paul, clearing the right of way as the Rural
Electrification Administration put up lines in the county.
Paul, who fought in World War II, says his brother had planned to
marry the girl he left behind.
Cook is buried in the National Cemetery at Camp Nelson. Mrs. Cook
knows very little about David Bruner Hilbert, who died of meningitis
while fighting in France during World War I.
Hilbert is buried beside his nephew (Mrs. Cook's first husband),
William "Bud" Hilbert, and his great nephew Chuck in the Chambers
Cemetery, a small graveyard on a knob in Mitchellsburg. Bruner Hilbert's
gravestone says that he died Nov. 30, 1918, 27 years after he was born.
Though Mrs. Cook always had believed Bruner was killed in action,
Johnny Bruner Curtis of Parksville says his uncle died of an illness he
contracted while in the Army.
World War I was fought before Mrs. Cook was born, but the
undeclared and controversial Vietnam War that took her son is very real
to her even now.
"That was a politician's war and politicians should have fought
it," she says. "I don't know why those boys were there."
She says she begged Chuck to go to Canada rather than be drafted
into the Army. "He said, 'If the United States is worth living in, it's
worth fighting for,' but when they got there they realized they weren't
fighting for the United States."
[The Advocate-Messenger, Danville, KY, 08 Nov 1987, Sun. Page 17 & 19] |
[courtesy of Charlotte Raley McConaha]
Grave marker for Pfc Charles A. Hilbert in Chambers
Cemetery, Perryville (Boyle county), Kentucky.
Pfc Hilbert, a member of Company C, 508th PIR was
killed in action by multiple fragmentation wounds in Hua Nghia, South
Vietnam..
Pfc Hilbert was one of 242 casualties featured in the
LIFE
magazine June 27, 1969 cover article entitled "The Faces of the American Dead in Vietnam: One Week's
Toll."
He is memorialized on the
Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall: Panel 24W, Line 076.
|
PFC CHARLES ALLEN (Chuck) HILBERT, 20,
Parksvllle, son of Mrs. Paul Cook, Parksvllle, and Willie Hilbert,
Mitchellsburg, died in a land mine explosion on May 22 in Vietnam.
Funeral set 2 p.m. Monday at Parksvllle Baptist Church, with military
honors at the graveside in Chambers Cemetery, Boyle County. The body is
at Preston-Pruitt Funeral Home, Danville, where friends may call after
12 o'clock noon today.
[The Courier-Journal, Louisville, KY, 08 Jun 1969, Sun. Page 39] |
MEDALS AWARDED POSTHUMOUSLY
The Bronze Star and Purple Heart Medals were posthumously awarded
to Private First Class Charles A. Hilbert, Parksville, during ceremonies at the Lexington-Blue Grass Army Depot.
The soldiers mother, Mrs. Virginia C. Cook, received the medals. PFC
Hilbert was killed May 22 in Vietnam. PFC Hilbert was awarded the Bronze
Star Medal for meritorious service against the enemy in Vietnam from
April 18, 1969 until the time of his death. He was a member of Company
C, 1st Battalion, 508th Infantry, 82nd Airborne Division. Colonel Max
Etkin, depot commander, made the presentations.
[The Advocate-Messenger,
Danville, KY,
05 Oct 1969, Sun, Page
25] |