More Than 30 Years Later, Navy Restores Ensign's Honor

By Steve Vogel
Washington Post

Thursday, June 21, 2001; Page PG19

Ensign Andy Muns disappeared while serving aboard a Navy ship moored in the Philippines during the Vietnam War. He lost his life, and then he lost his honor.

The Navy listed him as a deserter, suspecting that he had stolen money from the ship's safe.

For more than 30 years, Muns's family pushed for more answers, convinced that there had been an injustice. They have finally been vindicated. The Navy now says Muns was killed by a shipmate when he interrupted a burglary aboard the ship in 1968.

At Arlington National Cemetery this month, the Navy held a funeral service for Muns with full military honors.

"Andy, we always knew you were a man of honor "and today everybody else knows it, too," his brother Thomas Muns told nearly 200 family members and friends who attended the ceremony June 8.

In Missouri, Michael Edwards LeBrun, who served with Muns as a petty officer aboard the USS Cacapon, has been charged with the killing. LeBrun has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial.

If LeBrun is convicted, the Muns case will be the oldest homicide ever solved by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service's cold-case unit, said Larry Jackson, a spokesman at NCIS headquarters at the Washington Navy Yard.

It was the prompting of the family, particularly, that caused the Navy to reopen the case. "We always knew that someday something had to happen," said Muns's younger sister, Mary Lou Taylor, of Wisconsin. "We had to do something to make it right."

Andy Muns, from New Jersey, had joined the Navy after graduating from Gettysburg College. After reporting for service on the Cacapon, an oiler, he sent his family a postcard from Hong Kong saying he was having a grand time. "That was generally how he approached life "as an adventure," Taylor said. "Andy was a very open, friendly person, very good looking, quick to make friends."

Muns disappeared while the ship was moored in Subic Bay. The refueling vessel had been supporting Navy operations in Vietnam. Muns was the ship's payroll officer and LeBrun, a petty officer 2nd class, was a supply clerk.

Navy investigators found $8,000 missing from the ship's safe and suspected that Muns had taken the money. The family never believed it.

"It would have been totally out of character for him," Taylor said. But she said she often wished it were true, because at least that would have meant he was alive.

The case became inactive after Muns was never found. The family sought redress from the Navy without success. But when Taylor brought the case to the attention of the cold-case squad several years ago, she found agents willing to listen. The probe was reopened in 1998.

"There were some questions that needed to be answered," said Pete Hughes, the special agent who took charge of the investigation.

After some new investigation, the agents interviewed LeBrun, the last man reported to have seen Muns. During a follow-up interview, LeBrun described the killing, according to court testimony. The Navy investigators contend that when Muns happened upon a burglary, LeBrun beat and strangled the officer and dumped his body in an oil tank, according to news accounts of a March hearing in federal court in Kansas City.

NCIS agents were among those who attended the ceremony at Arlington, along with some of Muns's shipmates and about 80 relatives from across the country. "It was really fitting for someone whose honor was being restored after 33 years," Taylor said.

At the ceremony, Taylor was given the flag that draped her brother's empty casket.

"That's what she's wanted for 33 years "the American flag due her brother, who rather than a thief and deserter as the Navy first ruled, was really a hero defending American property," said her cousin, Kent Collins.

D-Day Vets Honor the Fallen

Bob Sales landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day with B Company of the 116th Infantry Regiment. Every man in his boat but Sales was killed or wounded as the men landed.

Sales believes he survived only because a swell threw him off the side of the boat. Most of the 30 men with him were mowed down by machine gun fire as they came off the ramp. "The rest of them dropped in the water right when they came off the boat," Sales said. "There was no defense."

"I wasn't the best soldier, not by far," Sales said. "The best soldiers all were killed."

Sales, from Madison Heights north of Lynchburg, was among hundreds of D-Day veterans who attended the ceremony dedicating the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, Va., on June 6, the 57th anniversary of D-Day.

Now in a wheelchair, Sales was helped to his feet by a Virginia National Guard officer so he could stand for the playing of taps.

Sales expressed astonishment after being swamped by well-wishers and autograph seekers. But the real tribute, he said, was to the men who did not make it home.

"I think it's kind of a farewell to the men who died," Sales said.

At the ceremony, attended by about 15,000 people, D-Day veterans read short vignettes meant to capture the scope and drama of the invasion.

Among those who spoke was Bedford resident Roy O. Stevens, whose twin, Ray, was among the 19 Bedford men in Company A of the 116th who died in the first wave of the landing.

The boat Roy Stevens was on sank before making it to the beach, and he was rescued from the water and brought back to England. Stevens made it back to Normandy four days later and heard that his company had taken terrible casualties. He visited a makeshift graveyard and found that his brother had been buried with the rest. "I was hoping all along I wouldn't find it," he said.

With a brutal battle to break out from Normandy just starting, there was little time to mourn. "We were about 3,000 miles from home, we didn't have a shoulder to cry on. You had to take it and go on," Stevens said.

From those dark days 57 years ago, it was hard to imagine the honor that was bestowed upon Bedford, with a visit from the president and the attention of the world. "I never, ever thought it'd happen to this little town," Stevens said after the ceremony.

At the dedication, President George Bush spoke before a sculpture showing Army Rangers scaling a granite wall. Above the president was a huge granite arch inscribed with the word "Overlord," the code name for the invasion.

The foundation that built the memorial has raised $19 million for its construction and operation, including about $8 million in state and local money. No federal funding is involved.

Military Matters appears on the first and third Thursdays of each month. Steve Vogel can be reached at vogels@washpost.com via e-mail.

© 2001 The Washington Post Company