A Tribute Long Coming

Dry's father, retired Navy Capt. Melvin H. Dry, worked for a quarter-century to find out what had happened to his son and to get him recognition for his actions, but he died in 1997.

Dry's mother, Catherine "Kitty" Spence Dry, who lives at an assisted living facility in McLean, was too frail to attend the ceremony, said Robert Dry, a longtime Washingtonian now serving with the U.S. Embassy in Paris. "She's very proud," he said.

Classmates, fellow SEALs and others who served with Melvin Spence Dry recalled a charismatic man with an easy manner that won the affection of peers and subordinates.

"He was a guy you wanted to be around," Mullen recalled yesterday.

"He was a terrific young man, one of those people whose men follow him because they respect him, not because he told them to do it," said John Chamberlain, who was commander of the submarine during the 1972 mission.

Based on intelligence that prisoners had formed a plan to escape and travel by boat on the Red River to the Gulf of Tonkin, the Navy initiated a rescue mission, Operation Thunderhead.

On the night of June 3, Dry and three members of his SEAL Team One platoon were launched from the Grayback in a mini-submarine to establish an observation post on a small island near the mouth of the Red River.

But the mini-sub went off course, and the SEALs were forced to scuttle it. They were rescued by helicopter and taken to a guided-missile cruiser.

Dry and his team were flying back to the Grayback on June 5 to resume the mission, but the helicopter had trouble finding the sub and was flying too high and too fast when the SEALs jumped. Dry's neck was broken on impact; the other men were rescued treading water the next morning, one with serious injuries.

Wilson was the last man to see Dry alive, and it fell to him to pull his body out of the water. "I hoisted Spence out and laid him on the deck," he recalled.

Ironically, the planned escape from the Hanoi Hilton was called off because it was deemed too risky. "It was a devastating disappointment to us," Dramesi recalled yesterday. "It was tragic in all ways."

The effort to recognize Dry was spurred by a 2005 article in the U.S. Naval Institute's magazine, Proceedings, co-authored by retired Navy captains Michael G. Slattery and Gordon I. Peterson.

The authors scoured formerly classified materials to piece together details and contacted participants, including Chamberlain. "When I found out they'd originally classified it as a training accident, I was stunned," Chamberlain recalled yesterday. As the on-scene commander, he submitted the paperwork for the medal.

"He agreed that this oversight needed to be corrected," said Peterson, who works as military legislative assistant to Sen. James Webb (D-Va.).

Said Dramesi, "I've been looking forward to this day for a long, long time."