It’s been nearly 45 years since Staff Sgt. Gail M. Kerns kissed the ground when he stepped back on United State soil, after surviving 1,439 days as a prisoner of war.
Kerns was shot on the left side of his head when he and his fellow American soldiers were ambushed March 27, 1969, on a reconnaissance mission in a remote region of South Vietnam, near the Cambodian border.
Up until that point, Kerns said his service in Vietnam was fairly uneventful, although it was lonely at times.
A Randolph County native and a 1965 graduate of Tygarts Valley High School, he had completed one year of electrical engineering studies at West Virginia University Institute of Technology when he was drafted.
