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June 09, 1999 02:54 AM EST READING, Mass. (AP) _ Richard Holt was hunkered down in graduate school when his older brother took off for Vietnam with Marine Fighter Attack Squad 542. He didn't agree with his brother's decision to enlist, but figured they'd have plenty of time to debate it later. He never got the chance to say goodbye. He'll get that chance this weekend, when the remains of Capt. Robert Holt are returned from the jungle where they lay for nearly 30 years. Holt was 26 when his fighter plane crashed and exploded during a September 1968 bombing mission over the Quang Binh Province of Northern Vietnam. Details are incomplete, but the crash was likely caused by enemy fire. The crash site, now overgrown jungle, was off limits to Americans until the early 1990s when Vietnamese officials began allowing the recovery of remains. Holt's remains were recovered in 1994, and this week the Department of Defense said they had been positively identified and would be returned to his family. He will be laid to rest near his mother's grave in a Reading cemetery. ``I was against him being there, which he understood and accepted, '' said Richard Holt, 54, of Westchester County, N.Y. ``We had gotten closer as we got older, so it was really hard (to lose him).'' COPYRIGHT
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Remains
of Vietnam vet to be brought home after 30 years