 Elkins Inter-Mountain |
Remember...Cecil Wilbert Kittle Jr.
|
Cecil Wilbert Kittle Jr. was born March 15, 1940, in Glady, West Virginia, the son of Cecil and Omega Armentrout Kittle. Cecil had one brother and two sisters.
| Cecil attended Tygarts Valley High School. On July 20, 1962, he married Betty Irene Wilt in Elkins, West Virginia. They had two sons, Richard Nicholas and Randall Lee. |  Cecil Kittle and son Richard, 1965 Elkins Inter-Mountain |
Cecil Kittle entered the Army in July 1958. He served several tours of duty in Europe and, in 1961, was involved with activities surrounding the Berlin Wall crisis. In September 1965, Cecil Kittle, now a sergeant, arrived in Vietnam. He was a member of the 1st Air Cavalry Division, which was engaged in the heaviest fighting of the Vietnam War on Chu Pong Mountain. He served as a gunner on a helicopter and as a paratrooper. In November 1965 the military was taking in troops by helicopter to a clearing in the La Drang Valley in an effort to locate the North Vietnamese Army, and Sergeant Kittle was part of this operation. The Americans were attacked by an overwhelming number of North Vietnamese, and more than 300 troops were killed during the fighting. One of them was Sergeant Cecil W. Kittle, who died on November 17 of wounds received during the second North Vietnamese attack. Sergeant Kittle’s second son, Randall Lee, was born a month after his death.
 Barbour County monument to Vietnam veterans |
Sergeant Cecil Wilbert Kittle is memorialized on panel 3E, Row 82, of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington D.C. and on the Barbour County Vietnam War Memorial. |
West Virginia Archives and History welcomes any additional information that can be provided about these veterans, including photographs, family names, letters and other relevant personal history. For more information contact Constance Baston at (304) 558-0230.
