By Bobby Ardoin
Eunice News
Correspondent
Sixty years ago, the deaths of six Eunice servicemen became all too personal for the family and friends who once knew them as vibrant, smalltown youths.
From 1966 until 1970, some city residents became mournfully familiar with the geographic locations of remote South Vietnam provinces such as Quang Tri, Binh Duong and Quang Nam, where the “Eunice Fallen Six,” earned Purple Hearts and other service medals that signify valor.
The four-month period from May until September in 1968 was particularly agonizing as three Eunice Marines were killed in unrelated combat action from May through September.
Since their burials in three different Eunice cemeteries, Charles Ray Williams, Jimmy Williams, Alvin Monday, Donald Sistrunk, Donald Feucht and Andrus Floyd Duplechain have been remembered as young men who never attained what are normally considered adult lives.
Their names and 13 other St. Landry Parish men who were killed in Vietnam will be remembered on Monday during an annual Memorial Day remembrance ceremony that begins at 10:30 a.m. inside the Yambilee Building in Opelousas.
Eunice has also done its part in honoring those who died in Vietnam.
A marker at Central Middle School was dedicated in 2020 to commemorate Charles Ray Williams, Jimmy Williams and Monday, who once attended Charles Drew High in Eunice.
In 2014, the city honored the six deceased servicemen on Memorial Day during an event organized by a pair of Eunice-area veterans organizations.
Vietnam even helped spawn a novel written by former Eunice resident and St. Edmund graduate Ben Reed, who based his 2002 published book, “My Dying Breath,” on his experiences as a Marine who served and was wounded during his military tour in Vietnam.
Charles Ray Williams
According to information provided from multiple military records, Army Sgt. Charles Ray Williams, then 23, was declared dead on Feb. 8, 1966, after first being reported as missing following a helicopter incident listed as non-hostile.
Jimmy Williams
While serving as a rifleman with the First Marine Division in Quang Nam Province, records show that private first class Jimmy Williams, 21, died after encountering small arms fire on August 30, 1968..
Andrus Floyd Duplechain
Quang Nam Province again proved deadly for a Eunice man, as Duplechain, an Army private first class, records indicate, died as a result of small arms fire on Sept. 28, 1970. Duplechain, then 21, was serving as a corpsman for a headquarters company.
Alvin Monday
Monday, 23, a Marine lance corporal attached to a rifle assault team, was posthumously awarded a Silver Star – the third highest military decoration for combat bravery – on Sept. 9, 1968 in Quang Tri Province,
Donald Feucht
The St. Edmund graduate and 20-year-old Marine lance corporal, died at a military hospital in Da Nang, South Vietnam on May 7, 1968, a day after being wounded from ground fire in Quang Nam, records show.
Donald Wayne Sistrunk
Sistrunk was a 21-year-old Army sergeant who was killed during an enemy ambush in Thua Thien Province on April 10, 1970, as he helped direct his soldiers back to a base camp located in Phu-Bai Province.
Remembering Donald Feucht
Kirk Hayes, who apparently served closely with Feucht when they were Marines, left a thoughtful April 25, 2026, message for Feucht on the Vietnam Memorial Fund web page.
Hayes wrote, “You are often thought of, Donald. The older I get the more I think of you…It has been a long time since you passed away and the years that have accumulated reveal as the time of our reunion gets closer…Death is an entity we cannot control and causes so much pain, but here is, as always, a saving grace. That grace is when I cross the threshold you crossed long ago. Semper Fi, Donald.”
Tribute for Donald Siistrunk
On Feb. 27, 2003, Beverly Sistrunk Teal wrote also on the Veterans Memorial website, a moving tribute to her brother.
She wrote: “My brother, who used to take my friends and me to all the basketball games, even though you were six years older than us. Before you left, you gave all of your things away, your car, you gave our brother Emmett, all your tapes (of course they were 8-tracks), our sister Donna Sue, your Army ring you received at graduation and me – yourself…I tried to be brave for mama and I was until I was alone. I missed you so much then and I miss you now as much. I love you so much.”