News and Events
Leader in Missing in Action Recovery is Veterans Day Speaker on Nov. 11
Col. Ward B. Nickisch USA (ret.) will be the keynote speaker for the Veterans Day ceremony at the Philadelphia Vietnam Veterans Memorial on Sunday, Nov. 11 at 12:30 p.m.
In addition, the Philly Pops Festival Brass will perform from 11:45 a.m. until the start of the ceremony.
Col. Nickisch has participated in recovery missions in Vietnam; and he served as a senior member of the United States Delegation to the first bilateral talks with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. His last assignment before retiring after 30 years of service was the Director of Casualty and Memorial Affairs for the US Army.
In that position, he supervised the US Army’s Central Identification Laboratory, Hawaii, which conducted search and recovery.
The unit became a part of the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC), which was then reorganized into the Defense POW/MIA identification and repatriation of the soldiers (of all military Services) whose bodies were never recovered from all prior wars. This became the Accounting Agency (DPAA) in January 2015.