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Dewey Albert Peter

Name:
Albert Peter Dewey
Rank:
Lieutenant Colonel
Serial Number:
0-911947
Unit:
OSS
Date of Death:
1945-09-26
State:
Illinois
Cemetery:
Manila American Cemetery, Manila, Philippines
Plot:
Tablets of the Missing
Row:
Grave:
Decoration:
Silver Star; Legion of Merit with Oak Leaf Cluster; French Croix de Guerre
Comments:

The younger son of Congressman Charles S. Dewey and his wife, Marie Suzette de Marigny Hall Dewey, and also a distant relative of New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey, Dewey was born in Chicago in 1916. He was known as A. Peter Dewey. He was educated in Switzerland at Institut Le Rosey, before attending St. Paul's School (Concord, New Hampshire). He graduated from Yale University where he studied French history and was a member of the Berzelius Secret Society. Later, Dewey also attended the University of Virginia School of Law. He was shot to death in a case of mistaken identity by Viet Minh troops in September 1945 when they believed him to be French. He was the first American fatality in French Indochina following WWII.
He has a cenotaph located in Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Arlington County, Virginia.

From Find a Grave:
United States Army Lieutenant Colonel. He became first American casualty in Vietnam while heading an OSS team as part of Project EMBANKMENT. That mission was to locate post World War II POW camps, graves of Americas KIA and possibly secondary intelligence in Saigon. En route to the airport after visiting a wounded member of his team having been shot being mistaken for a Frenchmen speaking French. The route was a shortcut and blocked with a checkpoint and while passing through, yelled something in French at several Vietnamese posted there alongside the road. He was shot at in response and was killed instantly flipping the unmarked jeep in a crash. Decades later, it was documented that the attack was an ambush. The jeep and his remains were dumped into a well and later reburied it in a nearby village of An Phu Dong. Major Dewey's body was not recovered making him the first solider Missing In Action in Vietnam. His name does not appear on the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial as American involvement in Vietnam did not officially start until 1955. U.S. Congressman out of Chicago Charles S Dewey is his father.