Exactly 54 years after his death, Bucks County war hero finally awarded full honors

Frank Mebs died more than 50 years ago on a burning hilltop in Vietnam. His heroic death saved hundreds of others.

Mebs, of Newtown, was a 20-year-old Army bulldozer operator on May 27, 1970, when an ammunition shed caught fire at Fire Support Base Veghel. Fighting to contain the flames, he pushed dirt over the burning heap with his bulldozer. The machine took the brunt of a blast that likely would killed the 600 men stationed on that hill near Hue, his fellow soldiers would later say.

On Monday, exactly 54 years to the day of his death, one of those soldiers stepped forward to make sure Frank Mebs received long overdue recognition for his bravery.

During a ceremony at the Jesse Soby American Legion Post No. 148 in Langhorne, Steve Kilde, a retired U.S. Army veteran, presented a handful of medals to Mebs’ family that were somehow omitted from the official Army record and never awarded to the family years ago, when Mebs posthumously received the Bronze Star.

Kilde, 83, who drove from his home in Missouri for the Memorial Day event, had been tasked with retrieving Mebs’ body from the wreckage that day more than half a century ago. After being diagnosed with PTSD in 2014, he had made it his mission to secure Mebs’ his forgotten honors — a mission that would end only after he successfully lobbied President Joe Biden for help last year.

On Wednesday, Kilde is to be a guest speaker when the Pennsylvania Vietnam Veterans Fund names County Bridge No. 89, which runs between Newtown Borough and Newtown Township, in honor of Mebs.

Kilde had never been able to forget the full measure of Mebs’ sacrifice. Both assigned to the 27th Engineer Battalion, Kilde had been dispatched to the explosion site to handle cleanup. The devastation was immediately clear.

“As we flew over in the helicopter, I saw a big hole — a great big hole,” he said. “You could see parts of the bulldozer. The blade was on a hill about 600 yards away. The radiator was on another hill.”

Hours earlier, Firebase Veghel artillery crews had fired two mortar rounds toward suspected enemy movement. One round fell short, striking the ammo dump. Mebs, who had dropped out of Council Rock High School in 1966 to enlist and was just two weeks away from finishing his tour, hopped onto his bulldozer.

“He started pushing dirt over the fire to extinguish it,” Kilde said. “His dozer got over the berm a little bit too far and got stuck because of the mud and rainy season.”

Instead of fleeing, Mebs stayed and struggled to free his bulldozer. That’s when the ammo blew.

“The bulldozer took the full brunt,” he said. “If it hadn’t, lord knows how many people would have been killed.”

Already into his second tour, Kilde filed away the incident in the back of his mind, and went on with the war.

For many years, Mebs’ family knew little about how Frank actually died. Originally, they had been told only that he had been killed in an accident, said his sister Bernice Schaffer. It wasn’t until 2000, when a soldier who credited his life to Frank’s heroism sought out the family, that they learned the full story.

“We never knew that’s not how it happened all those years,” she said.

As part of his PTSD treatment, Kilde told a doctor in 2014 about the incident he was never able to shake: the day Frank Mebs saved all those lives. And how it had mostly gone forgotten.

“Well, what have you done?” he remembered the doctor asking him. “And I said, ‘Nothing.’ And he said, ‘Well, do something.”

So, he did.

“Five days later, I typed his name into the computer, and up came his payment records,” he recalled. “I looked at the files that were there, and I’m saying, ‘This is not correct.’”

After searching for the Mebs family for four years, he asked them for photos of all the medals and ribbons they had received after Mebs’ death. Then, he began a campaign to access Mebs’ full military files.

“I sent letters to congressmen,” he said. “I sent letters to senators. I had to send a letter to the president of the United States and finally got an answer back. That, yes, these are the medals that he deserves.”

On Monday, during a ceremony held before Langhorne’s annual Memorial Day Parade, Kilde presented a full slate of medals to the Mebs family, including the Army Commendation Medal, the Good Conduct Medal, the Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross Medal, and a Presidential Unit Citation. (Mebs was not eligible for a Medal of Honor since the action he died in was deemed friendly fire.)

“I am here to award you medals that should have showed up 50 years ago,” he said, presenting the case of medals and ribbons to Mebs’ sister.

Afterward, Kilde said he felt relief — “closure.”

“It just wasn’t right,” Kilde said of the overlooked valor.

Frank Mebs’ niece, Meghan Frazer, 33, said her family was grateful.

“We’re able to honor my uncle, which is something we were never really able to do in the past, and it’s also been a beautiful journey to speak with Stephen and see his passion. He never left my uncle behind. He never left him behind in Vietnam, and he never left him behind now.”