Captain Hugh “Mac” McNeil Byrd, Jr. US Army “CATKILLER 1-5”
220th Aviation Company, 212th Aviation Battalion, 1st Aviation Brigade - Catkillers Born 22 October 1943 Pueblo CO Home City of Record: Berea KY Date last seen: 09 January 1969 Quang Tri Province, South Vietnam Also Missing: Major Kevin O'Brien of Farmingville, NY |
On 9 January 1969, Capt. Hugh Byrd, pilot, and 1st Lt. Kevin O'Brien, observer, comprised the crew of a Cessna O1G Bird Dog on a visual reconnaissance mission over Khe Sanh, Quang Tri Province, South Vietnam. Their mission was to search out and identify enemy targets for Kevin O'Brien's artillery battery at Khe Sanh to fire upon. During the mission, the Bird Dog was diverted from its primary mission to assist a ground reconnaissance team locked in battle with an enemy force of unknown size in the rugged jungle covered mountains near Khe Sanh. After assisting the team by providing additional targets for the artillery battery, another Forward Air Controller arrived on station.
Hugh Byrd and Kevin O'Brien began their return flight to Hue/Phu Bai Airfield located approximately 60 miles from Khe Sanh. By 1940 hours, weather conditions deteriorated along their flight path to the point Capt. Byrd radioed he was not sure of their position because the Bird Dog was not equipped for instrument flight. Further, he reported they were flying at an altitude of 3000 feet and were also low on fuel. Several radar stations tried, but were unable to get a definite fix on its position. However, they were able to maintain constant radio contact with the aircrew. Based on the direction of flight, the primary radar operator advised Capt. Byrd to climb to greater altitude because of rugged mountains peaks in the area the aircraft was believed in. At that point no further transmissions were heard. It was believed that the plane went down in extremely rugged, heavily forested mountains approximately 9 miles east of the South Vietnam / Laos border.
Search and rescue operations were initiated at first light, but were broken off after a few days due to poor weather conditions. They resumed once the weather cleared, but again failed to locate any trace of the aircraft or its crew. In August 1975 a refugee reported seeing 2 downed US aircraft in the general area where the Bird Dog vanished. He described one as an F5 jet and the other one as an L19. He was told that two Americans on the L19 were killed and buried 1 kilometer from the crash. However, he was unable to provide information on the exact location of the burial site. The Army feels this report could possibly relate to this loss incident because the O1 was formerly known as the L19. Their remains have never been recovered.
Mac Byrd was a flight school classmate (OFWAC 68-4 BLUE HATS) of mine and Don Long. He was from Berea, Kentucky and was married to one of the most beautiful women in the world, Elaine. He struggled somewhat in flight school but it was probably due to having a new daughter Scott and that gorgeous wife. Mac and Elaine were the epitome of what marriage and love are intended to be. They both had such a crush on one another and this was AFTER they were married.This picture of Mac is when he and I came up to sign in at the 212th at the end of July 1968. We were on our way to the 220th Catkillers where Mac is pointing. Notice that Major Pedersen was in command then but would be relieved on August 6. The night Mac and I spent in DaNang, we were talking to Gene Frey about the 220th mission at Phu Bai. He went on and on about the danger of the First Platoon mythmakers. About this time, Roger Bounds came in the club and he looked like he did a lot of times--just worn out and tired--and Gene said there is one of the mythmakers now. Roger told Mac more than he wanted to hear and he left saying "Finch you can go fly with the first platoon, I have too much to live for--their names are Elaine and Scott". Will never forget it. Mac was not in VietNam for fame or medals, but in simple obedience to duty. My wife and I were in a trailer with Mac and his family at Fort Rucker the night President Johnson said he would not run again. Mac knew we were still going to VietNam and was happy he had his WINGS to wear on his chest while serving his country.
Mac loved the 220th and became friends with everyone. He loved the BEAR, John Kovachs. Those two always teamed up on the volleyball court, playing "Jungle Rules" I might add to win a lot. Mac always palmed the ball and I constantly yelled at him about it and it did no good. Mac was a first lieutenant, who really did not care about rank once the duty day was done. He never considered himself a new guy. He gave Glenn Strange and Doc as much grief as they gave him about being "new".Sarge, BEAR, Andy, Grayson, Hudson and so on have all the stories about Mac. How big he was trying to fit in that small cockpit. How he wrote Elaine every day, how he never missed a meal, how much he felt the war was going in the wrong direction. He and I talked about coming up to the First Platoon but he was not impressed at all with the war stories and did not feel that being a mythmaker was that big a deal. He would say to me "little man" (he called me that in flight school), you are going to get yourself DEAD up there and no one back home will care.How Mac Byrd and his back-seat Kevin O'Brien got tasked for the mission is not important anymore. Combat is too unpredictable to discuss the issue anymore. When I landed at Dong Ha and was told where they were headed, out south of Khe Sahn I was shocked. First of all it was getting DARK and Mac had been gone too long. I called him from the ramp but lost com and had to go up to Dong Ha tower. There Mac and I had a few short conversations. I thought they were much longer but when the transcripts came out, they were either edited or the tapes were difficult to transcribe what was said.Mac clearly did not have enough fuel to get back from his current position (as he best described it), nor did he exactly know where he was due to the weather and darkness closing in. I kept telling him to climb and head east towards FEET WET. We had an Air Force Basketball trying to get a fix on his position as well as another aircraft who was trying to plot his transmissions. It seemed like forever trying to communicate with Mac. I was trying to recalculate his max endurance knowing well that even if he topped off his 42 gallons of which 41 were usable, he would have to ditch in the trees somewhere. Mac did not panic on the radio. His last transmissions were to tell me he had to get below the clouds to find his bearings. My last transmission was "Mac, you have to climb". His last transmission was at 8:02 PM.So 72 days after the Catkillers went looking for Lee Harrison, we began a search for another brother. The missing pilot and back-seat were in aircraft tail number 51-5059.The next morning I flew front seat while Sarge was in my back seat. Jack Bentley and everyone else who could breathe flew 8 hours a day for three days to no avail.Here is a quote from Jack Bentley's letter home.'This one is going to be sad and I have reservations as to whether I should write it. After all of the good you've heard about VietNam, I'm afraid I'll shatter it a bit today. One of our pilots went down last night and we've heard no word from him since. Today we searched a 500 square mile area where he is presumed to be down. I flew 7 hours and tomorrow we plan to be up for 8. He went down trying to help some troops in close contact with the enemy. It was heroic but he was low on fuel and the weather was closing in. Part to the Catkiller heroism. It's like losing a brother and I've only known him a month. Phu Bai is a gloomy place and it will take awhile before we get over it. (MY NOTE-no one has ever gotten over it Jack). Mac had a wife and 9 month old son.'
I know most of you have your own special memory of Mac. Sarge, Grayson, Andy, BEAR, Bud, Bounds, Hudson, Doc, Hooper, Don Long, Pepe, Scruggs, Cortner, Major Wisby could probably all write something better than this.The bond of the Catkillers endures for a lifetime. The vision of Mac, walking in his flight suit with the legs that barely covered the tops of his boots (he never could get one long enough for him) will never go away. What haunts me even more is sitting in the tower at Dong Ha and not being able to help him.Quiet, unaffected heroism like Mac's has never been recognized in this country like Brokaw's Greatest Generation. It is up to those of us who served together to constantly remind those who are ignorant to this oversight of what happened in VietNam. Tell them we were losing 242 lives a WEEK in 1969 and that was an improvement over 1968. Compare that to IRAQ.The willingness to risk one's life to save another soldier in peril is what Mac did in my opinion. That is how I honor him in my thoughts. He was a wonderful person whose flame went out way too early. I say we toast him on Friday, January 9.Thanks for your time and service. God Bless America!
Charles Finch "Catkiller 1Letter to Scottie Byrd, Mac's daughter:
Always hard to talk about your father for so many reasons. I will try over the next few days to write several things that you may appreciate as you may have see some of Mac's behavior in others.
These will be random so bear with me.Mac was the slowest officer in the Catkillers. He and I would walk to the showers and I would be in a hurry and he would lollygag the 2 minute walk into 5 minutes. I would have my shower almost done and here he was just getting his soap out of its container. He never got in a hurry about anything.
We would walk to breakfast and I would literally have to push him into the mess hall. We would sit down, I would finish and here he would be just starting. And you could not get him to go any faster. He had this long gait in these worn out flip flops that made a sound that was easily recognized wherever he went.
He would be reading a letter from your mother and we would all be curious about what she was writing. He told us to hang on as he read and reread every word and it would drive us crazy as we wanted to know some news about you and your mother. He was not teasing us, but was letting the words sink in and then when he did talk, he had to mention how lucky he was to have you and Elaine.I did not have a child at the time and never knew the love of a child until I had my first when I returned from Vietnam. Mac was smitten with you more than any father in the Catkillers. He did not brag about you or try to impress us with his devotion, he was just Mac. So serious about so many things and so more mature than most of us. Mac never tried to be funny or popular. Many felt intimidated by him as he never had a ready smile on his face. He was extremely serious in the morning hours and when he would come out of his room, many times I would ask him if he was OK. Sometimes he would snap at me which I responded in my mature way by cussing him. Normally he would smile, knowing he had hit my hot button, and put me in a headlock of some kind. Mac and I had many disagreements mainly due to what he considered risky flying and because I did not treat my wife as well as he thought I should.He never felt the war was worth the loss of lives we were experiencing in those years. He was way out in front of us in knowing the US was not prosecuting the war to win. Those nights when he went off on the war, well it shocked everyone. He was like a big teddy bear, kind to one and all, total respect for every soldier, never pulling rank--- but when he got pushed about why we were in Viet Nam, man he got hot. And he would always stand up to make his argument, towering above everyone, and make his case stronger than anyone in the room. That always made me respect him even though I disagreed.When we lost another pilot in October 1968, Mac was devastated. He hated to see the loss and we could not bomb Hanoi or go after the harbors, airfields, etc. up north. Mac was very troubled and withdrew from many conversations for a long time. He was determined to survive the war and he told me in no uncertain terms that I would not. I wrote letters home expressing this more than once.Mac was so well liked by everyone because he was down to earth. He was so honest, so consistent in his behavior, so appealing when he smiled and laughed and so encouraging to everyone. He was not a cheerleader but recognized good people, good service, good food, good haircuts and good leadership. If I did something good on the DMZ or in North Viet Nam, he would say I was doing my job or did I risk my back seat's life again. He was tough on me all the time as he knew it kept me off balance which he liked.If Mac gave you a compliment, it was very much appreciated. When he would walk back to the kitchen to compliment the mess sergeant, it was sincere. On the other hand if the food was bad, he would not complain out loud but quietly tell one of the cooks that they were disappointing the troops.Mac was so special to all of us and it just rocked our world when we lost him. I have never got over it, cannot talk for very long without breaking up. Lost many friends, relatives, pets in my lifetime, but have never come to grips with Mac going down.Sincerely,
Charles FinchCatkillerPOSTED ON 2/6/01 - BY MAJ JERRY SPETTE, USAR-MI
I am proud to have served with the 220th as Catkiller-01 Hugh and the other birddog drivers were a fearless team of soldiers who accomplished their mission with little fanfare and a lot of guts.
Memorialized at Courts of the Missing at the Honolulu Memorial
Marker in Berea Cemetery, 500 Oak Grove Ct, Berea, KY Madison County, Ky
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington D.C. PANEL / LINE 35W/58
Captain Joseph Shaw Ross USAF
389th Tactical Fighter Squadron - 366th Tactical Fighter Wing - 7th Air Force
Born; 26 January 1943 Fort Thomas, Ky
Graduate Highlands High School Class of 1961 and inducted into the Highlands Athletic Hall of Fame
Graduate from the United States Air Force Academy - Class of 1966
Date last seen; 1 Aug 1968 Quang Binh Province, North Vietnam
Also missing; Colonel William J. Thompson of Houston, Texas
On 1 August 1968, Colonel Thompson, aircraft commander, and Captain Joseph Ross, pilot, comprised the crew of a McDonnell F4D Phantom jet, call sign "Coach 1", that was the lead aircraft in a flight of two. The flight departed DaNang Airbase, South Vietnam on a night armed reconnaissance mission over Quang Binh Province, North Vietnam.
Enroute to their assigned area, they were diverted by command to check out suspected truck traffic in the vicinity of their original target. Coach 1 dropped several sets of illumination flares that allowed them to confirm North Vietnamese truck traffic.
At 0310 hours, Colonel Thompson told Coach 2, their wingman, to circle the area while he made a bombing pass on the trucks. As the wingman circled the area, he noted a large explosion within several hundred feet of the moving targets. The crew of Coach 2 immediately attempted to establish contact with Coach 1, but was unable to do so.
In the darkness, the crew of Coach 2 saw no parachutes and heard no emergency beepers.
At daybreak an airborne command post monitored emergency electronic signals seemingly coming from the crash site. Further search efforts could not establish the whereabouts or source of those signals. Likewise, they found no trace of the aircraft's wreckage. Search and rescue efforts were terminated on 6 August and both William Thompson and Joseph Ross were listed as “Missing in Action”.
The area in which Captain Ross and Colonel Thompson went down, is near the Ban Karai Pass on the Laos/Vietnam border. It is mountainous with peaks ranging from 3500 - 4000 feet and deep valleys dense with multiple canopy jungle.
In January 1992, the Vietnamese government released a document entitled "Military Region 4 Air Defense Operations 1964 -1973 - Document Entry Reports." In it is logged the shoot down of an F4 on 1 August 1968 in the Xuan Son B ferry area by Battalion A of Regiment 280. The date, aircraft type and location correlated to the loss of Coach 1. Unfortunately there is no reference to the fate of the Phantom's aircrew.
In September 1993, a joint survey team conducted an air survey of Coach 1's loss location, but the survey team was not able to identify any crash site in this hostile terrain. Another joint survey team returned in April 1995 to conduct a ground search. Again no crash site was located. The team next researched Communist records, but could find no reference to that aircraft crash. Further, no local residents interviewed by the team were aware of any crash sites in the area.
Colonel Thompson and Captain Ross remain missing today.
Joe received the Distinguished Flying Cross with Oak Leaf Cluster, the Air Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster, and the Purple Heart Medal
Remembered;
Graduate War Memorial Wall at the United States Air Force Academy Cemetery in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Memorial Plaque on the Fort Thomas, Ky Bridge on Highland Ave over I-471.
Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall Washington D.C. Panel 50W, Row 45
Inscribed on the Courts of the Missing at the Honolulu May 26, 2014 Chris Mayhew, cmayhew@communitypress.com
Steve Ross has missed his brother every day since the F-4 Phantom plane U.S. Air Force Capt. Joseph Shaw Ross was piloting was shot down in Vietnam in 1968. He's glad people here have not forgotten.
A procession of 40 Rolling Thunder motorcycle riders rumbled through the city to the World Peace Bell in Newport May 21 in memory of Capt. Ross and others listed as POW-MIA.
Ross, was at the same DaNang, Vietnam air base where his brother was a pilot in the week leading up to his brother's plane being shot down on Aug. 1, 1968.
"So, out of fate or whatever, I had a very good fortune that I was with my brother in Da Nang before he got shot down," he said.
The evening before Capt. Ross was shot down, Ross said the brothers sat and talked about Fort Thomas, their friends and Northern Kentucky.
"We were making plans to go on R and R (leave) together, but unfortunately on that last day that I was there, that's the day my brother got shot down," he said.
Ross said he was fastened into an air transport on a runway in DaNang when it was stopped and two officers came in to tell him his brother's plane had just been shot down.
"I miss my brother dearly, and think about him every day," he said. "He was my idol."
Steve Ross, a 1966 graduate of Highlands High School, said his brother was on the school's state championship football team in 1960. Joseph Shaw Ross went into the U.S. Air Force Academy after graduating from Highlands in 1961, said his brother.
Ross said he was already in Nha Trang, Vietnam working as an airman and mechanic when his brother came to DaNang as a pilot. Capt. Ross was declared killed in action in 1977.
Remains of Capt. Ross have never been found, and his brother's DNA is on file with the federal government to test for a match if anything is ever found. The Department of Defense continues to provide the family with updates, he said.
"It's a real bad location where my brother was shot down – real mountainous and a lot of jungle," Ross said.
Ross said he's glad people in his hometown still remember his brother, too. "What they're doing here is fabulous,".
Eric Hempelman of Fort Thomas said he has been overwhelmed by how support and participation in the annual ride has grown since he started organizing the event five years ago when he was age 13. This was also the first year Hempelman rode a motorcycle in the ride.
"Seeing the community step up like it has, it makes me proud to be an American," he said.
Rolling Thunder rider Ernie Brown, of Villa Hills, said it is important to see the U.S. flag in front of a message pulled by a plane of "Never Forget POW-MIA" overhead
"Quickly, time heals wounds, but we can never let the sacrifice be forgotten," Ernie sai
Remembrance and love to my brother Joseph Shaw Ross
POSTED ON 11/14/01 - BY STEPHEN ROSS
Joe was my big brother and always was there to help me and we had a lot of good and bad times together. He brought me through alot when we were growing up. I miss him more than anything else. If anyone would like to contact me and talk about Joe, I would love it. My youngest son Joseph, who I named after Joe, is in the Air Force. The last thing I want to say is Joe I lFootball player, Air Force Officer, dear friendPOSTED ON 12/27/00 - BY WAYNE HETTEBERG Joe and I were friends and played high school football together. Although rivals He was a gifted player and a fierce competitor. I knew his family and the void everyone suffered after his disappearance. I miss him today and often think of him and what might have been. He is alive by the memory of those who remember.
Captain John Curtis Stringer, II US Army
Platoon Leader Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 11th Infantry, 1st Brigade, 5th Infantry Division
Born 12 Jan 1946 Boyd County, Kentucky
Graduate EKU 1969
Date last seen 30 November, 1970 Quang Tri Province, South Vietnam
Platoon Leader Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 11th Infantry, 1st Brigade, 5th Infantry Division
Born 12 Jan 1946 Boyd County, Kentucky
Graduate EKU 1969
Date last seen 30 November, 1970 Quang Tri Province, South Vietnam
John Curtis Stringer grew up in Grayson, KY, the son of prominent educators, John Curtis and Mary Stringer. He attended grade school and graduated from Prichard High School in Grayson, KY. John was a tall, athletic, very popular young man with a quick smile. He attended the Bagby Memorial Methodist Church which was about a block east of his home on Second Street.
He was active in the Boy Scouts, church activities, athletics, later becoming a standout baseball and basketball player on Prichard High School’s teams of the early ‘60s.
After high school in 1964 he went to Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond and enrolled in the ROTC. Upon graduation in 1969 John enlisted in the U.S. Army as a 2nd Lieutenant. While attending EKU John was a member of Sigma Chi Delta fraternity.
He was Platoon leader for Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 11th Infantry, 1st Brigade, 5th Infantry Division, on a combat mission in Quang Tri Province, South Vietnam.
1st Lt. Stringer's company was preparing to cross a river at Mai Loc, which flowed through dense jungle, about 15 miles east northeast of Khe Sanh, Quang Tri Province, South Vietnam. The river was swollen from rain and extremely muddy with jungle growth flourishing along both banks. Tree limbs and vines overhung the winding river's edge and the current flowed swiftly. A rope had been secured on both sides of the river with the help of a helicopter and John was the first one to attempt crossing it. As he reached mid-stream, he apparently lost his grip on the rope and was swept downstream in the swift current..
Searches on both banks of the stream were made by elements of Bravo company, but they found no trace of him. Both aerial and ground searches were initiated the next morning and continued through 10 December. Again, there was no sign of the missing platoon leader and was assumed as possible POW or MIA at that time.
His remains have never been recovered.
Rest easy
POSTED ON 10/21/14 - BY JD RUNYON
Rest easy John. I never got to tell you what an inspiration you were too me at EKU. God rest your soul, for you were a good man! Thanks.
POSTED ON 5/14/14 - BY SEAN TODD CAMPBELL
Capt. Stringer's mother was my 3rd grade teacher. She kept a portrait of her son on her desk at all times. She was an excellent teacher and a fine lady, but there was this perpetual sadness about Mrs. Stringer. My classmates and I were too young to understand why at the time. In fact, it was only several years after being in her class that I learned of her son's disappearance. Apparently, his remains were never returned to his family.
It's obvious now why Mrs. Stringer was so melancholy. It must have been torturous for her all those years; knowing but not knowing. Mrs Stringer passed away in the early 1990s. I remember thinking that she was finally reunited with her son, of whom she was so very proud and missed so very much!
I'll remember you and Capt. Stringer at Mass Mrs Stringer. Thank you so very for everything you did for me. You were an excellent teacher and I was fortunate to be in your class. May God bless and keep you and John, now and always!
Bravo Brothers salutes this brave soldier and we will never forget him. He is our brother and will be in our hearts forever - may he rest in eternal peace.
Marker in East Carter Memory Gardens, 1296 E Main St, Grayson, Ky
November 11, 2011 (Veteran’s Day) was a Patriot Guard Mission in Grayson
Marker in Richmond, Ky City Cemetery
Name on Veterans Memorial Wall EKU Campus
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington D.C. PANEL / LINE 6W/99
He was active in the Boy Scouts, church activities, athletics, later becoming a standout baseball and basketball player on Prichard High School’s teams of the early ‘60s.
After high school in 1964 he went to Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond and enrolled in the ROTC. Upon graduation in 1969 John enlisted in the U.S. Army as a 2nd Lieutenant. While attending EKU John was a member of Sigma Chi Delta fraternity.
He was Platoon leader for Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 11th Infantry, 1st Brigade, 5th Infantry Division, on a combat mission in Quang Tri Province, South Vietnam.
1st Lt. Stringer's company was preparing to cross a river at Mai Loc, which flowed through dense jungle, about 15 miles east northeast of Khe Sanh, Quang Tri Province, South Vietnam. The river was swollen from rain and extremely muddy with jungle growth flourishing along both banks. Tree limbs and vines overhung the winding river's edge and the current flowed swiftly. A rope had been secured on both sides of the river with the help of a helicopter and John was the first one to attempt crossing it. As he reached mid-stream, he apparently lost his grip on the rope and was swept downstream in the swift current..
Searches on both banks of the stream were made by elements of Bravo company, but they found no trace of him. Both aerial and ground searches were initiated the next morning and continued through 10 December. Again, there was no sign of the missing platoon leader and was assumed as possible POW or MIA at that time.
His remains have never been recovered.
Rest easy
POSTED ON 10/21/14 - BY JD RUNYON
Rest easy John. I never got to tell you what an inspiration you were too me at EKU. God rest your soul, for you were a good man! Thanks.
POSTED ON 5/14/14 - BY SEAN TODD CAMPBELL
Capt. Stringer's mother was my 3rd grade teacher. She kept a portrait of her son on her desk at all times. She was an excellent teacher and a fine lady, but there was this perpetual sadness about Mrs. Stringer. My classmates and I were too young to understand why at the time. In fact, it was only several years after being in her class that I learned of her son's disappearance. Apparently, his remains were never returned to his family.
It's obvious now why Mrs. Stringer was so melancholy. It must have been torturous for her all those years; knowing but not knowing. Mrs Stringer passed away in the early 1990s. I remember thinking that she was finally reunited with her son, of whom she was so very proud and missed so very much!
I'll remember you and Capt. Stringer at Mass Mrs Stringer. Thank you so very for everything you did for me. You were an excellent teacher and I was fortunate to be in your class. May God bless and keep you and John, now and always!
Bravo Brothers salutes this brave soldier and we will never forget him. He is our brother and will be in our hearts forever - may he rest in eternal peace.
Marker in East Carter Memory Gardens, 1296 E Main St, Grayson, Ky
November 11, 2011 (Veteran’s Day) was a Patriot Guard Mission in Grayson
Marker in Richmond, Ky City Cemetery
Name on Veterans Memorial Wall EKU Campus
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington D.C. PANEL / LINE 6W/99
ief Warrant Officer William Patrick Milliner
US Army
Troop B, 7th Squadron, 1st Cavalry, 164th Aviation Group
Born: 12 August 1950 - Louisville KY
1968 Graduate of Trinity High School and attended Western Kentucky University
Date last seen: 06 March 1971 - Laos
Also Missing: Chief Warrant Officer John F. Hummel - Barstow, Texas
US Army
Troop B, 7th Squadron, 1st Cavalry, 164th Aviation Group
Born: 12 August 1950 - Louisville KY
1968 Graduate of Trinity High School and attended Western Kentucky University
Date last seen: 06 March 1971 - Laos
Also Missing: Chief Warrant Officer John F. Hummel - Barstow, Texas
On March 6, 1971, John Hummel, pilot, and William Milliner, co-pilot, were flying an AH1G Cobra helicopter gunship (serial #67-15464), call-sign Writer 25, as the wingman in a flight of two helicopters returning from a mission providing gun support for an extraction of a downed aircrew consisting of 7 U.S. personnel in Laos.
While in route, the weather turned hazy. At about 2000 hours, the wingman notified his troop's forward operation at Khe Sanh, South Vietnam, that both gunships were planning to use a ground control approach. That was the last radio contact with Hummel's aircraft.
The lead gunship contacted Khe Sanh Control and was told to climb to 5000 feet and make a left turn to a heading of 020 degrees. The wingman was still with the lead aircraft at this time, but no radio contact could be established with him.
Shortly after, Ground Control informed the lead aircraft to turn to a heading of 070 degrees at 4000 feet. After a descending turn was initiated, Hummel and Milliner’s aircraft passed over the top of the lead aircraft. This separation occurred in the clear, and then the flight leader entered the cloud layer so no further visual sighting of Hummel and Milliner occurred. The lead aircraft landed safely.
Search and rescue efforts were begun for Hummel and Milliner, but had negative results. Hummel and Milliner were listed Missing in Action. Some years later, the Defense Intelligence Agency "rated" missing persons in Southeast Asia according to the degree of suspected enemy knowledge, using a scale of 1 to 5. Hummel and Milliner were classified "Category 1", meaning the U.S. had reliable information that the enemy knew the fate of Hummel and Milliner. Category 1 does not suggest whether an individual was alive or dead at the time this knowledge was obtained.
Another confusing aspect of the records of Hummel and Milliner is that the Defense Department classifies their loss as "non-hostile". This information does not seem to correlate with known enemy knowledge of their fates, unless reports were received that the two survived the crash of their aircraft only to stumble into enemy hands at a later time. Clarifying information is not available in public records.
Nearly 600 Americans were lost in Laos during the war in Vietnam. Although the Pathet Lao stated on several occasions that they held "tens of tens" of American prisoners, Laos was not included in the negotiations ending American involvement in the war, and the U.S. has never negotiated for the freedom of these men since that time. Consequently, not one American held in Laos has ever been released.
No one saw Hummel and Milliner die after their aircraft disappeared into the clouds. As participants in missions over Laos, which were often classified and dangerous, they were undoubtedly warned that they could be killed or captured. They may not have dreamed they would be abandoned.
I have spent more days and hours than I can count, trying to learn the identity of that scared young Chopper Pilot whom I saw for such a brief time in March 1971. After asking questions and doing research I was able to determine that the only unaccounted for Warrant Officers lost in that area during that time frame were William Milliner of Louisville, Kentucky and John Hummel of Barstow, Texas.
From the description I was able to obtain of Milliner, it appears almost certain that he is the American Prisoner I saw that day.
As I have stated, when I encountered him and his guards on the trail, he was clean and appeared uninjured. Yet when the 591 POWs were released two years later, the man I saw was not among them. The Vietnamese to this day, continue to deny any knowledge of him or of John Hummel. The fate of that helicopter pilot has haunted me for more than a quarter of a century. I sincerely believe that he was William Milliner.
I would like to add here the remote possibility exists that the man I saw was not William.
But even if it was not him, he was certainly someonE
Louisville, KY Courier Journal January 29, 1998
By Sheldon S. Shafer
County to fly POW flag; family says son is alive. A black-and-white prisoner of war flag will fly at the Jefferson County courthouse after the family of Army Warrant Officer William Milliner said they believe he remains alive and captive nearly 27 years after his chopper crashed in Laos.
Remembered;
Zachary Taylor National Cemetery Louisville, Ky Plot - Section MA (Memorial Section Next to Building), Site 25
Kentucky First Vietnam MIA Memorial - at the Government Center on Dixie Highway
POW☆MIA Memorial Benches - 1101 River Rd Louisville, Ky
Trinity Vietnam Memorial W. Peter Flaig Library Media Center- Trinity High School
Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall Washington D.C. - panel 4W, line 29
While in route, the weather turned hazy. At about 2000 hours, the wingman notified his troop's forward operation at Khe Sanh, South Vietnam, that both gunships were planning to use a ground control approach. That was the last radio contact with Hummel's aircraft.
The lead gunship contacted Khe Sanh Control and was told to climb to 5000 feet and make a left turn to a heading of 020 degrees. The wingman was still with the lead aircraft at this time, but no radio contact could be established with him.
Shortly after, Ground Control informed the lead aircraft to turn to a heading of 070 degrees at 4000 feet. After a descending turn was initiated, Hummel and Milliner’s aircraft passed over the top of the lead aircraft. This separation occurred in the clear, and then the flight leader entered the cloud layer so no further visual sighting of Hummel and Milliner occurred. The lead aircraft landed safely.
Search and rescue efforts were begun for Hummel and Milliner, but had negative results. Hummel and Milliner were listed Missing in Action. Some years later, the Defense Intelligence Agency "rated" missing persons in Southeast Asia according to the degree of suspected enemy knowledge, using a scale of 1 to 5. Hummel and Milliner were classified "Category 1", meaning the U.S. had reliable information that the enemy knew the fate of Hummel and Milliner. Category 1 does not suggest whether an individual was alive or dead at the time this knowledge was obtained.
Another confusing aspect of the records of Hummel and Milliner is that the Defense Department classifies their loss as "non-hostile". This information does not seem to correlate with known enemy knowledge of their fates, unless reports were received that the two survived the crash of their aircraft only to stumble into enemy hands at a later time. Clarifying information is not available in public records.
Nearly 600 Americans were lost in Laos during the war in Vietnam. Although the Pathet Lao stated on several occasions that they held "tens of tens" of American prisoners, Laos was not included in the negotiations ending American involvement in the war, and the U.S. has never negotiated for the freedom of these men since that time. Consequently, not one American held in Laos has ever been released.
No one saw Hummel and Milliner die after their aircraft disappeared into the clouds. As participants in missions over Laos, which were often classified and dangerous, they were undoubtedly warned that they could be killed or captured. They may not have dreamed they would be abandoned.
I have spent more days and hours than I can count, trying to learn the identity of that scared young Chopper Pilot whom I saw for such a brief time in March 1971. After asking questions and doing research I was able to determine that the only unaccounted for Warrant Officers lost in that area during that time frame were William Milliner of Louisville, Kentucky and John Hummel of Barstow, Texas.
From the description I was able to obtain of Milliner, it appears almost certain that he is the American Prisoner I saw that day.
As I have stated, when I encountered him and his guards on the trail, he was clean and appeared uninjured. Yet when the 591 POWs were released two years later, the man I saw was not among them. The Vietnamese to this day, continue to deny any knowledge of him or of John Hummel. The fate of that helicopter pilot has haunted me for more than a quarter of a century. I sincerely believe that he was William Milliner.
I would like to add here the remote possibility exists that the man I saw was not William.
But even if it was not him, he was certainly someonE
Louisville, KY Courier Journal January 29, 1998
By Sheldon S. Shafer
County to fly POW flag; family says son is alive. A black-and-white prisoner of war flag will fly at the Jefferson County courthouse after the family of Army Warrant Officer William Milliner said they believe he remains alive and captive nearly 27 years after his chopper crashed in Laos.
Remembered;
Zachary Taylor National Cemetery Louisville, Ky Plot - Section MA (Memorial Section Next to Building), Site 25
Kentucky First Vietnam MIA Memorial - at the Government Center on Dixie Highway
POW☆MIA Memorial Benches - 1101 River Rd Louisville, Ky
Trinity Vietnam Memorial W. Peter Flaig Library Media Center- Trinity High School
Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall Washington D.C. - panel 4W, line 29
On his 20th birthday, Larry Bullock was on a company-size operation in Binh Dinh Province. He had been on patrol for several days, and at the time of this incident, his unit was at a landing zone. He is listed among the missing with honor, because his body was never found to be returned to the country he served.
Pete Van Til - Medic, Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry
I was there that day.
I was 2nd platoon medic
Marker in Rainey-Inabnit Cemetery - Squib, Pulaski County, Ky
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington D.C. PANEL / LINE 13E/106
Pete Van Til - Medic, Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry
I was there that day.
I was 2nd platoon medic
Marker in Rainey-Inabnit Cemetery - Squib, Pulaski County, Ky
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington D.C. PANEL / LINE 13E/106
Captain James Vernon Dawson USAF
416th Tactical Fighter Squadron, 31st Tactical Fighter Wing, Tuy Hoa Air Base, South Vietnam Born 16 February 1940 - Ashland, Kentucky Graduate of Ashland High School Graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point - Class of 1963 Date Last Seen 16 July 1969 - South China Sea |
At a little after noon on July 16, 1969, Captain Dawson was the pilot of a North-American Super Sabre F-100D Fighter, call sign Elect 62, in a flight of two returning to Tuy Hoa Air Force Base from a combat mission. The flight leader landed first. During his final approach to land, Captain Dawson encountered strong crosswinds over the runway and was instructed by the control officer to go around for another approach. Dawson made no radio acknowledgement.
He appeared to apply power to his aircraft, and shortly thereafter, the Control Officer observed the canopy come off and the ejection seat fire as the aircraft rolled to the right with its nose low. At this time the aircraft was nearly one mile from the end of the runway and at an altitude estimated to be 300 feet above the South China Sea.
Captain Dawson’s parachute did not have enough time to deploy and it is questionable as to whether or not there was time for the pilot to separate from the ejection seat before hitting the water.
An Army helicopter was onsite within seconds followed by Air Force search and rescue helicopters, as well as two US Navy Swift Boats.
The HMAS Brisbane, a Royal Australian Navy guided missile destroyer, searched the area, along with the minesweeper USS Widgeon.
After the Widgeon discovered the main body of the wreckage with sounding gear, divers were put into the water. The fuselage was discovered in several large pieces; however, the divers were unable to locate the pilot or cockpit section.
An extensive search continued until dark on the day of loss, resumed the next day at dawn and continued until 1600 hours. Recovery personnel described the current of the waters as “swift and heading out to sea".
Captain Dawson’s remains have never been recovereD
Remembered;
Boyd County War Veterans Memorial - Armco Park Ashland, Ky
Courts of the Missing at the Honolulu Memorial in the National Memorial Cemetery
Headstone placed in his honor United States Military Academy Post Cemetery
West Point, New York Section XXXIV, Row C, Site 112.
Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall Washington D.C. - PANEL 20W / LINE 6
Elizabethtown, Ky Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall
Kentucky Vietnam Veterans Memorial Frankfort, Ky
Plaque in his honor inside Highlands Museum - Ashland, Ky
He appeared to apply power to his aircraft, and shortly thereafter, the Control Officer observed the canopy come off and the ejection seat fire as the aircraft rolled to the right with its nose low. At this time the aircraft was nearly one mile from the end of the runway and at an altitude estimated to be 300 feet above the South China Sea.
Captain Dawson’s parachute did not have enough time to deploy and it is questionable as to whether or not there was time for the pilot to separate from the ejection seat before hitting the water.
An Army helicopter was onsite within seconds followed by Air Force search and rescue helicopters, as well as two US Navy Swift Boats.
The HMAS Brisbane, a Royal Australian Navy guided missile destroyer, searched the area, along with the minesweeper USS Widgeon.
After the Widgeon discovered the main body of the wreckage with sounding gear, divers were put into the water. The fuselage was discovered in several large pieces; however, the divers were unable to locate the pilot or cockpit section.
An extensive search continued until dark on the day of loss, resumed the next day at dawn and continued until 1600 hours. Recovery personnel described the current of the waters as “swift and heading out to sea".
Captain Dawson’s remains have never been recovereD
Remembered;
Boyd County War Veterans Memorial - Armco Park Ashland, Ky
Courts of the Missing at the Honolulu Memorial in the National Memorial Cemetery
Headstone placed in his honor United States Military Academy Post Cemetery
West Point, New York Section XXXIV, Row C, Site 112.
Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall Washington D.C. - PANEL 20W / LINE 6
Elizabethtown, Ky Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall
Kentucky Vietnam Veterans Memorial Frankfort, Ky
Plaque in his honor inside Highlands Museum - Ashland, Ky
Pfc Gary Lee Hall USMC
E Company., 2nd Battalion., 9th Marines, 3rd Marine Division (machine gun team). Born: 26 July 1956 Covington KY Gary joined the Marines soon after graduating from Holmes High School in 1974. For a kid whose idol was John Wayne, Gary lived out the role of hero to the very end. Date last seen: 15 May 1975 Koh Tang Island, Cambodia Also Missing; Lcpl. Joseph N. Hargrove and Pvt. Danny G. Marshall |
n an era when many avoided their duty, 18-year-old Covington native Gary Lee Hall volunteered for military service.
The Holmes High School graduate and Purple Heart recipient is believed to be one of the last two American combat casualties of the Vietnam era.
Now, more than a quarter-century after his death, several groups are recognizing the young Marine machine gunner whose heroic actions mirrored the cinematic deeds of his boyhood idol, John Wayne.
Last seen covering his fellow Marines as they left the island of Koh Tang in Cambodia two weeks after the fall of Saigon, Pfc. Hall was listed as missing in action and declared dead July 21, 1976.
The local honors — a permanent display about his life and a street named after him — are coming at the behest of two people who never met Pfc. Hall.
Missy Beach, who wears Pfc. Hall's POW/MIA bracelet, is the daughter of a Korean War veteran
MAYAGUEZ INCIDENT LOSS
When U.S. troops were pulled out of Southeast Asia in early 1975, Vietnamese communist troops began capturing one city after another, with Hue, Da Nang and Ban Me Thuot in March, Xuan Loc in April, and finally on April 30, Saigon. In Cambodia, communist Khmer Rouge had captured the capital city of Phnom Penh on April 17. The last Americans were evacuated from Saigon during "Option IV", with U.S. Ambassador Martin departing on April 29. The war, according to President Ford, "was finished." 2Lt. Richard Van de Geer, assigned to the 21st Special Ops Squadron at NKP, had participated in the evacuation of Saigon, where helicopter pilots were required to fly from the decks of the 7th Fleet carriers stationed some 500 miles offshore, fly over armed enemy-held territory, collect American and allied personnel and return to the carriers via the same hazardous route, heavily loaded with passengers. Van de Geer wrote to a friend, "We pulled out close to 2,000 people. We couldn't pull out any more because it was beyond human endurance to go any more..."
At 11:21 a.m. on May 12, the U.S. merchant ship MAYAGUEZ was seized by the Khmer Rouge in the Gulf of Siam about 60 miles from the Cambodian coastline and eight miles from Poulo Wai island. The ship, owned by Sea-Land
Corporation, was en route to Sattahip, Thailand from Hong Kong, carrying a non-arm's cargo for military bases in Thailand.
Capt. Charles T. Miller, a veteran of more than 40 years at sea, was on the bridge. He had steered the ship within the boundaries of international waters, but the Cambodians had recently claimed territorial waters 90 miles from the coast of Cambodia. The thirty-nine seamen aboard were taken prisoner.
President Ford ordered the aircraft carrier USS CORAL SEA, the guided missile destroyer USS HENRY B. WILSON and the USS HOLT to the area of seizure. By night, a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft located the MAYAGUEZ at anchor off Poulo WaI island. Plans were made to rescue the crew. A battalion landing team of 1,100 Marines was ordered flown from bases in Okinawa and the Philippines to assemble at Utapao, Thailand in preparation for the assault.
The first casualties of the effort to free the MAYAGUEZ are recorded on May 13 when a helicopter carrying Air Force security team personnel crashed en route to Utapao, killing all 23 aboard.
Early in the morning of May 13, the Mayaguez was ordered to head for Koh Tang island. Its crew was loaded aboard a Thai fishing boat and taken first to Koh Tang, then to the mainland city of Kompong Song, then to Rong San Lem
island. U.S. intelligence had observed a cove with considerable activity on the island of Koh Tang, a small five-mile long island about 35 miles off the coast of Cambodia southwest of the city of Sihanoukville (Kampong Saom), and
believed that some of the crew might be held there. They also knew of the Thai fishing boat, and had observed what appeared to be caucasians aboard it, but it could not be determined if some or all of the crew was aboard.
The USS HOLT was ordered to seize and secure the MAYAGUEZ, still anchored off Koh Tang. Marines were to land on the island and rescue any of the crew. Navy jets from the USS CORAL SEA were to make four strikes on military
installments on the Cambodian mainland.
On May 15, the first wave of 179 Marines headed for the island aboard eight Air Force "Jolly Green Giant" helicopters. Three Air Force helicopters unloaded Marines from the 1st Battalion, 4th Marines onto the landing pad of the USS HOLT and then headed back to Utapao to pick up the second wave of Marines. Planes dropped tear gas on the MAYAGUEZ, and the USS HOLT pulled up alongside the vessel and the Marines stormed aboard. The MAYAGUEZ was deserted.
Simultaneously, the Marines of the 2/9 were making their landings on two other areas of the island. The eastern landing zone was on the cove side where the Cambodian compound was located. The western landing zone was a
narrow spit of beach about 500 feet behind the compound on the other side of the island. The Marines hoped to surround the compound. As the first troops began to unload on both beaches, the Cambodians opened fire. On the western beach, one helicopter was hit and flew off crippled, to ditch in the ocean about 1 mile away. The pilot had just disembarked his passengers, and he was rescued at sea.
Meanwhile, the eastern landing zone had become a disaster. The first two helicopters landing were met by enemy fire. Ground commander, (now) Col. Randall W. Austin had been told to expect between 20 and 40 Khmer Rouge
soldiers on the island. Instead, between 150 and 200 were encountered. First, Lt. John Shramm's helicopter tore apart and crashed into the surf after the rotor system was hit. All aboard made a dash for the tree line on the beach.
One CH53A helicopter was flown by U.S. Air Force Major Howard Corson and 2Lt. Richard Van de Geer and carrying 23 U.S. Marines and 2 U.S. Navy corpsmen, all from the 2nd Battalion, 9th Marines. As the helicopter
approached the island, it was caught in a cross fire and hit by a rocket. The severely damaged helicopter crashed into the sea just off the coast of the island and exploded. To avoid enemy fire, survivors were forced to swim
out to sea for rescue. Twelve aboard, including Maj. Corson, were rescued.
Those missing from the helicopter were 2Lt. Richard Van de Geer, PFC Daniel A. Benedett, PFC Lynn Blessing, PFC Walter Boyd, Lcpl. Gregory S. Copenhaver, Lcpl. Andres Garcia, PFC James J. Jacques, PFC James R. Maxwell, PFC Richard W. Rivenburgh, PFC Antonio R. Sandoval, PFC Kelton R. Turner, all U.S. Marines. Also missing were HM1 Bernard Gause, Jr. and HM Ronald J. Manning, the two corpsmen.
Other helicopters were more successful in landing their passengers. One CH53A, however was not. SSgt. Elwood E. Rumbaugh's aircraft was near the coastline when it was shot down. Rumbaugh is the only missing man from the
aircraft. The passengers were safely extracted. (It is not known whether the passengers went down with the aircraft or whether they were rescued from the island.)
By mid morning, when the Cambodians on the mainland began receiving reports of the assault, they ordered the crew of the MAYAGUEZ on a Thai boat, and then left. The MAYAGUEZ crew was recovered by the USS WILSON before the second wave of Marines was deployed, but the second wave was ordered to attack anyway.
Late in the afternoon, the assault force had consolidated its position on the western landing zone and the eastern landing zone was evacuated at 6:00 p.m. By the end of the 14-hour operation, most of the Marines were extracted
from the island safely, with 50 wounded. Lcpl. Ashton Loney had been killed by enemy fire, but his body could not be recovered. Protecting the perimeter during the final evacuation was the machine gun squad of PFC Gary L. Hall, Lcpl. Joseph N. Hargrove and Pvt. Danny G. Marshall. They had run out of ammunition and were ordered to evacuate on the last helicopter. It was their last contact.
Maj. McNemar and Maj. James H. Davis made a final sweep of the beach before boarding the helicopter and
were unable to locate them. They were declared Missing in Action. The eighteen men missing from the MAYAGUEZ incident are listed among the missing from the Vietnam war. Although authorities believe that there are
perhaps hundreds of American prisoners still alive in Southeast Asia from the war, most are pessimistic about the fates of those captured by the Khmer Rouge. In 1988, the communist government of Kampuchea (Cambodia) announced that it wished to return the remains of several dozen Americans to the United States. (In fact, the number was higher than the official number of Americans missing in Cambodia.) Because the U.S. does not officially
recognize the Cambodian government, it has refused to respond directly to the Cambodians regarding the remains. Cambodia, wishing a direct acknowledgment from the U.S. Government, still holds the remains.
--------------------------------
National Alliance of Families 02/26/00 Newsletter
Inadvertently Left Behind - Within the next several months, the Defense Department will announce the remains identification of servicemen lost on May 15th 1975, at the Kho Tang Island, Cambodia. Eighteen airman, sailors
and marines were lost during an attempt to free the U.S. merchant vessel Mayaguez. A detailed article by Lisa Hoffman of Scripps Howard News Service , published in the Washington Times, on February 23rd 2000 details incident and the evidence that three men were inadvertently left behind... alive. "...absent is a final accounting of the fate of three Marines who inadvertently were left behind on the island when the rest evacuated. They are believed to have been captured and executed days later."
"The tragic story of the Kho Tang battle began with the seizure of the Mayaguez off the southern coast of Cambodia, 12 days after the fall of South Vietnam's capital, Saigon. President Ford ordered U.S. forces to rescue the 39 crew members." "By the time the Marines launched their assault, the Cambodians had released the Mayaguez sailors on the Cambodian mainland. An intelligence failure left the Marines unaware that their services no longer were needed."
"More than 230 Marines stormed ashore on Kho Tang, expecting an easy job of overcoming a small enemy encampment numbering no more than 20. Instead, they were met by a well-armed force of 150. A furious battle lasted three hours. Among the losses was the CH-53A helicopter, on which 13 GIs died. In all, 18 U.S. troops were killed.
"The Marines drew back and waited 15 hours to be evacuated from the island, in what became one of the most dramatic rescues of the war. A three-man machine gun team, which included Covington, Ky., native Gary Hall, was
dispatched to protect the troops' flank during the withdrawal. But in the fog of battle, the team was mistakenly overlooked. It wasn't until the next day that their absence was realized. By then, it was too late to go back."
"Although their fate is not entirely certain, it is believed the trio survived for several days before being captured and killed. One reportedly was shot to death after being caught stealing food from the Khmer Rouge camp. The other two apparently were bludgeoned to death."
"It wasn't until 1992 that military investigators with the Pentagon's Joint Task Force-Full Accounting operation, which is in charge of accounting for U.S. MIAs, were able to explore either the island or the helicopter wreckage
just offshore."
"By 1995, the team - which faced obstacles ranging from unexploded ordnance, poisonous snakes, fierce storms and tropical diseases - had come up with an elaborate method of essentially salvaging the CH-53A chopper so it could be searched for remains. They built a dam around the helicopter and pumped out the water and sand.
"Despite a quarter century of squalls, tides and scavengers, the investigators managed to recover 161 human bone fragments and a few personal effects - all that was left of the GIs, according to Tom Holland, scientific director for the Army's identification lab. "Later, scientists determined that the bones came from 13 different men. It took another three years to "harvest" enough DNA from the bones and then match it with DNA samples taken from maternal relatives to definitively identify nine of them."
"That left four men unidentified. The remains of three of them were too small to obtain a DNA sample."
Three Marines were left behind on Koh Tang. They are Joseph Hargrove, Gary Hall and Danny Marshall. In the years, since that battle, we wonder if anyone has ever explained to the Hargrove, Hall and Marshall families how these men were "inadvertently left behind." Or, why it was "to late" to go back for them. Imagine what these men thought as they waited for rescue and their thoughts when they finally realized no one was coming for them.
One Family's Thoughts - The following was sent to us, by Sandy Hargrove. She is the sister-in-law of Joseph Hargrove, "inadvertently left behind" on Kho Tang Island. "Joseph Hargrove was lost on May 15th 1975 his 24th birthday. I know the whole Hargrove family just knows that Joseph was sacrificed. We were never told the truth."
"Joseph's older brother Lane was killed on April 21,1968. When Lane was going over he was asked if he wanted to go to Canada by one of his older brothers who had already done his time in the Army. Lane said no he wanted to go to Nam."
"In those days we honestly believed that the government cared about us as people. They wouldn't send someone to a foreign country and have him risk his life for no reason... or would they. What we know now and what we knew
then. With all that we have gone through I think we would have all gone to Canada with him." "So Lane was blown up stepping on a land mine and his little brother Joseph just got left behind. So will someone tell me how this country is a better place because it is missing Joseph and Lane Hargrove. Joseph is a human being not a number. How dare anyone to think they can just forget about them. If it wasn't for Ralph writing that article in Popular Science over a year ago I would still get the standard reply I usually get when I mention the Mayaguez. "The What?"
"Well Joseph never came home because of that What. How easily people forget . But now there is a movement out there to hold the government accountable. I love my country don't get me wrong but the people who run it haven't done a very good job as far as Viet Nam. If anything I hope the guys deaths will prevent this from happening again."
"There are other little Hargroves growing up now Thank you God. Maybe they all will have a chance to grow up and have families not just some of them.
The families that Lane or Joseph never had, leave a big empty spot at the family reunions." Sandy Hargrove
Newsweek Article BY MATTHEW M. BURKE ON 1/24/17
THE TRUTH ABOUT THE LOST MARINES OF THE VIETNAM WAR'S LAST BATTLE
About four decades ago, Scott Standfast fought in the last battle of the Vietnam War, and his memory of it is sharp—from the location of enemy positions to the smothering jungle foliage. But it’s not what he remembers that troubles him; it’s what he can’t recall about that traumatic day. He’s tried everything. In 2015, he even joined a group of veterans for a trip back to the battlefield where they met their former enemies. Some shook hands, trying to forgive and move on. The experience helped but not enough. “It's blocked out,” he tells me on the phone, choking up. “I'm sorry.”On May 15, 1975, Standfast, then a lance corporal and squad leader with an infantry battalion for the U.S.
Marine Corps, fought in what’s known as the Mayaguez Incident, a bloody, mostly forgotten battle on a Cambodian island commonly referred to as Koh Tang. It began when Khmer Rouge soldiers captured a U.S. container ship and its crew off the coast of Cambodia. The American military came to their rescue, but dozens of service members died during the operation. President Gerald Ford hailed the mission as a resounding success, but in the chaos of their exit, three Marines went missing: Joseph Hargrove, Gary Hall and Danny Marshall. The Marines later investigated and said that the three had disobeyed orders by not making it to the helicopters in time and that they were likely killed before the last U.S. chopper lifted off.
After the incident, Ford enjoyed one of the largest spikes in presidential approval ratings, but the trauma of the battle and the disappearance of their fellow servicemen gnawed at Marines like Standfast. The three lost men were members of a machine gun team assigned to his squad. They were supposed to be sitting next to him in that final helicopter out. Instead, they had vanished.Standfast doesn't remember being told they were missing that night. He doesn’t remember anyone lobbying to go back for them. He knows he went to the memorial service for his fallen comrades, but he can’t remember that either. The last thing he recalls is his chopper touching down in darkness on an aircraft carrier. Everything after that is blank. Perhaps it’s a way to protect himself from the pain. He manages to mostly keep that pain hidden, but there are signs of it beneath his hardened, jarhead façade. Sometimes he’s friendly and easygoing; the next moment he’s rigid and withdrawn.
He had come to Niceville because Cary Turner, a cousin of Hargrove’s, had called weeks earlier with surprising news: A former Air Force controller claimed he knew what had happened to his cousin and to the other two Marines. Standfast immediately began to plan his trip.
On the afternoon of May 12, 1975, the Mayaguez, an American cargo ship, was traveling from Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam) to Sattahip, Thailand, when Khmer Rouge forces in a skiff fired at it when it was two miles offshore from Cambodian territory. As the ship stopped, seven Khmer sailors carrying AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenade launchers climbed on board. The crew managed to send a distress signal, which was received by a private company in Jakarta, Indonesia, and forwarded to the U.S. Embassy there. Within hours, officials in Washington learned of the hijacking and scrambled the Air Force, dispatched the Navy and mobilized Marines from the jungles of Okinawa.Navy pilots watched from above as Khmer Rouge gunmen anchored the Mayaguez near Koh Tang and took the crew toward the mainland. But American officials largely ignored this intelligence and continued to plan a rescue operation on the island. Defense officials estimated there were as many as 200 hardened Khmer Rouge fighters armed with heavy weapons there, but no one passed this information down to the Marines who’d been ordered to attack the island. They were told to expect between 20 and 40 old men and farmers.Early in the morning of May 15, four American helicopters swooped toward the northern tip of Koh Tang, and the Khmer Rouge quickly shot two out of the sky. Both crashed on the beach or in the shallows, and a few survivors made it to the tree line. Others, some severely wounded, were forced to swim under withering fire out to sea, where they were rescued by U.S. servicemen on a small boat sent from a nearby destroyer. The other two choppers fared only slightly better—Khmer Rouge gunners damaged both of them as they tried to drop off Marines. One returned to the Thai coast for an emergency landing; the other limped out to sea where it crashed, killing one airman.Eventually, however, 131 Marines, Navy corpsmen and airmen made it onto the island, and for 14 hours they battled Khmer Rouge soldiers in close quarters.Shortly after noon, Standfast arrived with 100 reinforcements, including his machine gun team—Hargrove, Hall and Marshall. The fresh troops informed the Marines on the ground that an American destroyer had recovered the Mayaguez crew that morning, adrift in a fishing boat, and that Marines had seized the ship. Translation: They’d been sent into a raw firefight for no reason. Officials in Washington ordered a withdrawal, but planning and executing that would take time, so the Marines had to wait until the damaged fleet of helicopters could come to their rescue.
As a torrent of bullets flew through the air, Standfast set his machine gun team on the extreme right-hand side of the Marine position. Sergeant Carl Anderson set trip-flares in front of the team and checked the lines to make sure his fellow servicemen were OK, he says. American bombers then started pounding the jungle, and the shooting subsided as the Khmer Rouge retreated.Yet as darkness fell and the rescue choppers approached, the Communists crawled back to their spider holes and launched another assault on the Americans. Air Force pilots braved heavy fire in barely functioning helicopters, coming in one at a time to rescue the Marines, who were trying to beat back the Communists. With fewer U.S. servicemen on the ground, however, the Khmer Rouge advanced. On the west beach, as more and more Americans climbed into helicopters, Captain James Davis took charge of the remaining soldiers. Some, like Hargrove, Hall and Marshall, he had never met before. At one point, Davis took to the airwaves to say they were minutes away from being overrun.Before that could happen, he climbed into the last chopper. Some of the Marines on board that helicopter told the crew there were still men on the beach. The air crew asked Davis, the most senior officer on board, to weigh in, but he was relatively certain everyone had been picked up, according to Air Force radio transcripts.For the next few hours, military officials repeated Davis’s claims over and over—until they realized he was wrong.Ghosts in the Radio Air Force Staff Sergeant Robert Velie was behind his radio console aboard the EC-130E Airborne Battlefield Command and Control Center, a military transport aircraft with sophisticated communications gear. Velie and his team had coordinated the battle, communicating with the commanders, air support and men on the ground. As the last helicopter was leaving, Velie and company heard over the radio that all of the Marines had been picked up. They were directing the last few airstrikes on the island before heading home.Just after 8:20 p.m., Velie’s radio hissed, and he heard an American voice asking when the next chopper was coming back to get them. Velie was puzzled; he knew there were no more helicopters heading back to the island. In fact, there were gunships headed in, ready to hose it down. Velie asked the caller if he was at the last pickup site and why he hadn’t boarded the chopper. “We were told to lay cover fire [for the choppers] and they'd come back for us,” Velie recalls the man saying.Velie immediately thought it was a Khmer Rouge trick to lure in more helicopters, so he asked the caller for the authentication code. The Marine didn’t hesitate; he answered correctly with the proper response. Velie says his superior then told Navy commanders there were still Marines on the island. A short time later, the commanders responded: Davis, they said, had told them everyone was accounted for.
Velie’s commander radioed a destroyer in the area, the U.S.S. Harold E. Holt. Someone on the Holt instructed him to have the abandoned Marines make their way out to sea, where they would attempt to pick them up. But the men, Velie says, didn’t like that plan; they still believed a helicopter would come to their rescue.The Marine Corps report on the disappearance of the three men states that one was a poor swimmer and the other two couldn’t swim at all, so heading far out to sea in the dark would have been dangerous. Velie told the Marine on the radio that he and the others should immediately take cover, because the gunships were about to arrive. The Marine said, "Roger,” and soon two gunships pummeled the island with cannon fire.After the barrage, Velie called the Marine back. There was no answer.‘I Thought I Was at Fault’Velie isn’t the only one who disputes the Marine Corps version of what happened to those three servicemen. Private First Class David Wagner, among other Marines, told investigators the three gunners covered him as he loaded wounded men onto the helicopters—and said he even gave Hall ammunition.Air Force Staff Sergeant Ray Buran Jr. remembers the Marines’ call for help bolstering Velie’s claim. "[A Marine] did talk to someone [on board Velie’s aircraft],” he says. Buran was manning a different console on Velie’s aircraft, so he was not privy to the conversation, but he recalls hearing that the Marines were being chased and taking heavy ground fire, which differs slightly from Velie’s account.Anderson, the last American to see the three alive, according to military reports, doesn’t recall seeing them at the landing zone, but he does remember their call after the last chopper lifted off. He says he heard a recording of it in Okinawa, several days after the battle, while he was under investigation for leaving the Marines behind (he was cleared of responsibility). “There was a tape of [the Marines] that I thought the enemy had made,” he says. (According to Velie, the Americans recorded all radio communications with Marines on the ground.) “It was definitely Hall, Marshall and Hargrove,” Anderson adds. He can’t remember what they said, but he didn’t hear Cambodian voices on the tape, he says, and there was no evidence of coercion. “[The tape] got to me. I thought I was at fault.”With the three Marines possibly still alive but no longer responding, the U.S. military had a difficult decision to make. Velie says there were many possible reasons the Marines on the beach didn’t get back on the radio. His aircraft could have moved out of their range. Or they had been wounded or forced to hide because Khmer Rouge fighters were nearby. Because of their poor swimming ability, he doubts they tried going out to sea. His aircraft stayed in the area until after midnight, hoping to make contact again, but the radio remained silent.
Davis died in 2012. But years earlier, he told CBS News he had volunteered to go back to the island, but his request was denied. Velie, Anderson and Buran agree that returning to Koh Tang would have been incredibly dangerous. “There were no resources [to go back for them],” Buran says referring to the damaged helicopters. “Everything was shot down or shot up.”There really was only one hope left for the missing machine gun team: the Navy SEALs.Advocating Suicide On the night of May 15, Tom Coulter, then a lieutenant and leader of Navy SEAL Team 1’s Delta Platoon, arrived on the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Coral Sea while the smoke still hung above the Koh Tang battlefield. Coulter hadn’t heard about that mysterious last radio call, but sailors on the Holt said there was “a problem with the head count.” Coulter met with Navy Vice Admiral Robert Coogan, the Navy’s on-scene commander, and their meeting quickly turned heated. Coogan wanted to drop fliers over Koh Tang announcing that the SEALs were coming, Coulter says, then send the men ashore, unarmed, during the day to retrieve “Marine bodies” that “may or may not be on the beach.” Coulter thought Coogan was advocating suicide. “I told him we would not be taking that mission.”Coulter eventually persuaded the brass that the SEALs should plan their own mission. He suggested they go in armed and at night, to avoid being detected. He and his 13 men then headed to the Holt with two inflatable boats, and the destroyer turned back toward Koh Tang.The hour was late, Coulter recalls, when he was called into Holt Commander Robert Peterson’s quarters for a conference call with the White House. He doesn’t think President Ford was on the call, and he can’t be 100 percent certain, but he believes Coogan was on it, as was Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. “Someone on the call had an accent,” he says, referring to the German-born Kissinger. They were canceling the SEAL rescue operation, Coulter recalls, because “the risk was too high.” Kissinger did not respond to Newsweek requests seeking comment. Coogan; his superior at the Pacific Command, Admiral Noel Gayler; and Schlesinger are dead. Acting Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral James Holloway III tells Newsweek through a spokesman that he was not aware of any reports about Marines being left behind and that he does not recall any follow-up discussions about them.The following day, the destroyer U.S.S. Henry B. Wilson patrolled the coast of Koh Tang, looking for signs of survivors, while aircraft overhead scanned the thick jungle canopy, but there was no sign of Hargrove, Hall or Marshall. The U.S. decided not to launch a rescue mission.Two weeks later, Velie says, his superiors ordered him to never discuss the radio call again, but to this day, he can’t shake it. "I was the last one to talk to them,” he says. “I had to tell them that no one was coming back for them.”Bodies Dumped on the BeachIn the fall of 2012, I traveled to Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where I met the former garrison commander of Koh Tang in an empty café. Em Son is a thin, one-legged man with sun-leathered skin. At first glance, he looked too feeble to be the seasoned special forces commander and close associate of Pol Pot he claimed to be. But his eyes told a different story—they were dark, empty, fearsome.In the days following the Mayaguez battle, Son claimed he and his comrades noticed food was missing from a hut near the east beach. They accused each other, then set a trap to nab the thief. Later that evening, they caught Hargrove and held him overnight in a makeshift cell, where he told them about the two other surviving Marines. (Son said Hargrove gave up that information without being tortured.) The next day, as Son and several Khmer Rouge soldiers marched Hargrove to another holding area, the Marine tried to escape. Son said he shot him in the leg, and Hargrove fell. Then Son said he walked over to him and fired again, killing him on the spot. (He said killing him was humane, because there was no medical treatment for miles.) The Khmer Rouge, Son says, buried Hargrove by a mango tree nearby. Later that day, they caught Hall and Marshall, Son says, and took them to the mainland, where they handed them over to Khmer Rouge navy chief Meas Muth. The Communists held the Marines at a temple converted into a prison, but eventually, Son says, the guards marched the two Marines out to the beach, where they beat them to death. (Muth declined a Newsweek interview request through his lawyers.)The U.S. government has steadfastly disputed Son's claims, which have changed slightly over time, perhaps to avoid charges at the ongoing United Nations war crimes tribunal at Phnom Penh.In 2015, I returned to Cambodia, this time with Hargrove’s cousin Cary Turner, Standfast and six other veterans of the Koh Tang battle, to meet with Son again. We saw him speak at a ceremony commemorating the 40th anniversary of the battle. There, he told the same story he had given me, only this time he said he had fired a warning shot as Hargrove ran and accidentally killed him.Turner was frustrated. He had met Son before and heard a similar story. He had been to the island twice and even led excavations. Now, as he and translator Noma Sarvong huddled with the man who had killed his cousin, Turner pleaded with him for the truth about what happened that day, vowing there would be no repercussions.Son told him a similar war story about Hall and Marshall, but this time his account of Hargrove’s death was different. The morning after the battle, he said, five of Son’s men went down to a pool near Koh Tang’s east beach to get some water to cook rice. The fighters heard a noise on the other side of the water. When they went to investigate, a Marine fitting Hargrove’s description opened up on them, killing a Khmer Rouge captain who was Son’s friend. Hargrove fought until he ran out of ammunition, and then he was captured. Son said Hargrove had been wounded above the right knee and was hobbled, but the wound was dry, as if he had been shot the previous day. The fighters helped Hargrove into a nearby meadow, where they met up with Son. Hearing that the Marine had just killed his friend, Son shot Hargrove on the spot, by that mango tree, and ordered his men to bury him nearby.It was a disturbing story, but Turner was confident he finally had the truth—or at least something close enough to it. Son never denied pulling the trigger, and he stood behind previous statements about how the other two men died. He also said American officials had interviewed him, and he seemed genuinely perplexed that the U.S. government still claimed the men were unaccounted for.
Since the late 1990s, American investigators have aggressively taken to Koh Tang with picks and spades, and they have recovered the remains of 13 men who died in the battle. But they say they failed to find those of Hargrove, Hall or Marshall. In 2008, investigators dug where Son claimed he had ordered Hargrove buried. Until recently, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) wouldn’t comment on exactly what they recovered there, but in a recent interview with Newsweek, they said they found only Cambodian bodies near the mango tree and fragments of animal bones where Hall and Marshall were allegedly beaten to death.Turner, however, is skeptical about the agency’s findings—and he isn’t the only one. In recent years, DPAA has been embroiled in a series of scandals involving the remains of U.S. servicemen. One involved internal complaints that the agency had not properly recorded its work on Koh Tang in the search for Hall, Marshall and Hargrove. In fact, a Cambodian source—whose identity Newsweek is protecting because this individual is not authorized to speak to the press—strongly believes the body U.S. POW/MIA investigators removed near the mango tree in 2008 was an American. The remains were too tall to be Southeast Asian; the bones were long, according to the Cambodian source, and the Americans on the scene agreed. Charles Ray, the former U.S. ambassador to Cambodia and deputy assistant secretary of defense for POW/Missing Personnel Affairs, says U.S. government investigators told him as much. DPAA disputes this, saying its lab results proved otherwise, but the agency declined to provide proof of what it found to Newsweek or the Hargrove family.In 2016, DPAA announced it had found Hall’s ID card and personal items in an empty burial pit on Koh Tang. What it didn’t publicly disclose, according to Newsweek ’s Cambodian source, is that DPAA also found an American radio and a Marine flak jacket not far from where the last American chopper took off. The jacket had a name and a number in it. In an interview with Newsweek, DPAA officials acknowledged finding those items but declined to say to whom they belonged.They also told me they had thrown away both the radio and the flak jacket.Questions and Remains Back in Florida, Standfast leaned forward on the edge of his chair, listening intently as the aging airman transported him back to that harrowing battle with the Khmer Rouge and explained why he had finally come forward with his story. Now in his 70s, Velie felt the need to unburden himself.Standfast told me later that as he listened to Velie, he was mesmerized as one event spilled into the next. Velie spoke with authority, he said, without hesitation. He knew all the right acronyms and buzzwords and seemed of very sound mind. The former Marine had driven to Niceville a skeptic. Now, as Velie finished telling his story, he became a believer. “There’s no way this was rehearsed,” he said. “It was confirmation that they had been left on the island.”On their long drive home, Standfast and his wife discussed all that Velie had told them. He was happy to have learned the truth about that final, cryptic radio call. He isn’t sure if it’s enough to exorcise his ghosts, but it made him more determined than ever to help Hargrove’s cousin find the remains of the Marines who got left behind.
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In The Last Battle: The Mayaguez Incident and the End of the Vietnam War, published last year, author Ralph Wetterhahn offered one of the most complete accounts yet of what had happened to the three men left on the beach.
One Marine was captured the day after the battle and executed on the spot. Two others, including a soldier thought to be Pfc. Hall, evaded capture for several days. Mr. Wetterhahn reported the two were imprisoned on the main island for about a week, then brutally executed.
“For Hall, who joined the Marines as an 18-year-old boy, he had attained his manhood through the Corps and proved it better than his idol, John Wayne, ever could, humping the heavy machine gun up and down the beach and holding off the Khmer Rouge to the very end,” Mr. Wetterhahn wrote.
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Gary,
Like I said in the letter I left for Joseph I never knew you but did know one of the three of you men that were left behind on Koh Tang Island. He was PFC Danny G. Marshall. He was my best friend - we grew up in a small town in West Virginia and went to the same schools.
It was and still is a shame that our Government did to you three men what they did, but we now know what happened thanks to a man named Ralph Wetterhahn and his book "The Last Battle".
And Gary I want to tell you the same thing I said in the letters I left for Danny and Joseph: "JOB WELL DONE, Gary".
From a friend of one left behind,
Teleah Cross
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Cincinnati Enquirer 08/02/2001
Her brother, her hero Sister wants closure for Covington Marine lost during '75 Mayaguez rescue
mission By John Johnston The Cincinnati Enquirer
An emptiness surrounds Janet Hall Meadows' memory of the brave brother she lost 26 years ago. "I have no closure," Mrs. Meadows, who is 47 and lives in Tollesboro, Ky., says. "I have no grave I can visit." But she has a 16-year-old son named Kenton who is as tall and slender as the uncle he never knew. "He looks like Gary so much," Mrs. Meadows says......
“The only closure for me will be when they bring him back,” Mrs. Meadows, his sister, says. “He needs to be buried here. “He's my hero.”
“What this kid did was really incredible, but he died probably thinking no one would ever know what happened in his last two weeks,” Mr. Pangburn said. “He stayed at his post and did his duty to the last.”
Remembered
Memorial located in VFW Post 6095 Covington, Ky
Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall - Washington D.C. Panel W1, Line 130
The Holmes High School graduate and Purple Heart recipient is believed to be one of the last two American combat casualties of the Vietnam era.
Now, more than a quarter-century after his death, several groups are recognizing the young Marine machine gunner whose heroic actions mirrored the cinematic deeds of his boyhood idol, John Wayne.
Last seen covering his fellow Marines as they left the island of Koh Tang in Cambodia two weeks after the fall of Saigon, Pfc. Hall was listed as missing in action and declared dead July 21, 1976.
The local honors — a permanent display about his life and a street named after him — are coming at the behest of two people who never met Pfc. Hall.
Missy Beach, who wears Pfc. Hall's POW/MIA bracelet, is the daughter of a Korean War veteran
MAYAGUEZ INCIDENT LOSS
When U.S. troops were pulled out of Southeast Asia in early 1975, Vietnamese communist troops began capturing one city after another, with Hue, Da Nang and Ban Me Thuot in March, Xuan Loc in April, and finally on April 30, Saigon. In Cambodia, communist Khmer Rouge had captured the capital city of Phnom Penh on April 17. The last Americans were evacuated from Saigon during "Option IV", with U.S. Ambassador Martin departing on April 29. The war, according to President Ford, "was finished." 2Lt. Richard Van de Geer, assigned to the 21st Special Ops Squadron at NKP, had participated in the evacuation of Saigon, where helicopter pilots were required to fly from the decks of the 7th Fleet carriers stationed some 500 miles offshore, fly over armed enemy-held territory, collect American and allied personnel and return to the carriers via the same hazardous route, heavily loaded with passengers. Van de Geer wrote to a friend, "We pulled out close to 2,000 people. We couldn't pull out any more because it was beyond human endurance to go any more..."
At 11:21 a.m. on May 12, the U.S. merchant ship MAYAGUEZ was seized by the Khmer Rouge in the Gulf of Siam about 60 miles from the Cambodian coastline and eight miles from Poulo Wai island. The ship, owned by Sea-Land
Corporation, was en route to Sattahip, Thailand from Hong Kong, carrying a non-arm's cargo for military bases in Thailand.
Capt. Charles T. Miller, a veteran of more than 40 years at sea, was on the bridge. He had steered the ship within the boundaries of international waters, but the Cambodians had recently claimed territorial waters 90 miles from the coast of Cambodia. The thirty-nine seamen aboard were taken prisoner.
President Ford ordered the aircraft carrier USS CORAL SEA, the guided missile destroyer USS HENRY B. WILSON and the USS HOLT to the area of seizure. By night, a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft located the MAYAGUEZ at anchor off Poulo WaI island. Plans were made to rescue the crew. A battalion landing team of 1,100 Marines was ordered flown from bases in Okinawa and the Philippines to assemble at Utapao, Thailand in preparation for the assault.
The first casualties of the effort to free the MAYAGUEZ are recorded on May 13 when a helicopter carrying Air Force security team personnel crashed en route to Utapao, killing all 23 aboard.
Early in the morning of May 13, the Mayaguez was ordered to head for Koh Tang island. Its crew was loaded aboard a Thai fishing boat and taken first to Koh Tang, then to the mainland city of Kompong Song, then to Rong San Lem
island. U.S. intelligence had observed a cove with considerable activity on the island of Koh Tang, a small five-mile long island about 35 miles off the coast of Cambodia southwest of the city of Sihanoukville (Kampong Saom), and
believed that some of the crew might be held there. They also knew of the Thai fishing boat, and had observed what appeared to be caucasians aboard it, but it could not be determined if some or all of the crew was aboard.
The USS HOLT was ordered to seize and secure the MAYAGUEZ, still anchored off Koh Tang. Marines were to land on the island and rescue any of the crew. Navy jets from the USS CORAL SEA were to make four strikes on military
installments on the Cambodian mainland.
On May 15, the first wave of 179 Marines headed for the island aboard eight Air Force "Jolly Green Giant" helicopters. Three Air Force helicopters unloaded Marines from the 1st Battalion, 4th Marines onto the landing pad of the USS HOLT and then headed back to Utapao to pick up the second wave of Marines. Planes dropped tear gas on the MAYAGUEZ, and the USS HOLT pulled up alongside the vessel and the Marines stormed aboard. The MAYAGUEZ was deserted.
Simultaneously, the Marines of the 2/9 were making their landings on two other areas of the island. The eastern landing zone was on the cove side where the Cambodian compound was located. The western landing zone was a
narrow spit of beach about 500 feet behind the compound on the other side of the island. The Marines hoped to surround the compound. As the first troops began to unload on both beaches, the Cambodians opened fire. On the western beach, one helicopter was hit and flew off crippled, to ditch in the ocean about 1 mile away. The pilot had just disembarked his passengers, and he was rescued at sea.
Meanwhile, the eastern landing zone had become a disaster. The first two helicopters landing were met by enemy fire. Ground commander, (now) Col. Randall W. Austin had been told to expect between 20 and 40 Khmer Rouge
soldiers on the island. Instead, between 150 and 200 were encountered. First, Lt. John Shramm's helicopter tore apart and crashed into the surf after the rotor system was hit. All aboard made a dash for the tree line on the beach.
One CH53A helicopter was flown by U.S. Air Force Major Howard Corson and 2Lt. Richard Van de Geer and carrying 23 U.S. Marines and 2 U.S. Navy corpsmen, all from the 2nd Battalion, 9th Marines. As the helicopter
approached the island, it was caught in a cross fire and hit by a rocket. The severely damaged helicopter crashed into the sea just off the coast of the island and exploded. To avoid enemy fire, survivors were forced to swim
out to sea for rescue. Twelve aboard, including Maj. Corson, were rescued.
Those missing from the helicopter were 2Lt. Richard Van de Geer, PFC Daniel A. Benedett, PFC Lynn Blessing, PFC Walter Boyd, Lcpl. Gregory S. Copenhaver, Lcpl. Andres Garcia, PFC James J. Jacques, PFC James R. Maxwell, PFC Richard W. Rivenburgh, PFC Antonio R. Sandoval, PFC Kelton R. Turner, all U.S. Marines. Also missing were HM1 Bernard Gause, Jr. and HM Ronald J. Manning, the two corpsmen.
Other helicopters were more successful in landing their passengers. One CH53A, however was not. SSgt. Elwood E. Rumbaugh's aircraft was near the coastline when it was shot down. Rumbaugh is the only missing man from the
aircraft. The passengers were safely extracted. (It is not known whether the passengers went down with the aircraft or whether they were rescued from the island.)
By mid morning, when the Cambodians on the mainland began receiving reports of the assault, they ordered the crew of the MAYAGUEZ on a Thai boat, and then left. The MAYAGUEZ crew was recovered by the USS WILSON before the second wave of Marines was deployed, but the second wave was ordered to attack anyway.
Late in the afternoon, the assault force had consolidated its position on the western landing zone and the eastern landing zone was evacuated at 6:00 p.m. By the end of the 14-hour operation, most of the Marines were extracted
from the island safely, with 50 wounded. Lcpl. Ashton Loney had been killed by enemy fire, but his body could not be recovered. Protecting the perimeter during the final evacuation was the machine gun squad of PFC Gary L. Hall, Lcpl. Joseph N. Hargrove and Pvt. Danny G. Marshall. They had run out of ammunition and were ordered to evacuate on the last helicopter. It was their last contact.
Maj. McNemar and Maj. James H. Davis made a final sweep of the beach before boarding the helicopter and
were unable to locate them. They were declared Missing in Action. The eighteen men missing from the MAYAGUEZ incident are listed among the missing from the Vietnam war. Although authorities believe that there are
perhaps hundreds of American prisoners still alive in Southeast Asia from the war, most are pessimistic about the fates of those captured by the Khmer Rouge. In 1988, the communist government of Kampuchea (Cambodia) announced that it wished to return the remains of several dozen Americans to the United States. (In fact, the number was higher than the official number of Americans missing in Cambodia.) Because the U.S. does not officially
recognize the Cambodian government, it has refused to respond directly to the Cambodians regarding the remains. Cambodia, wishing a direct acknowledgment from the U.S. Government, still holds the remains.
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National Alliance of Families 02/26/00 Newsletter
Inadvertently Left Behind - Within the next several months, the Defense Department will announce the remains identification of servicemen lost on May 15th 1975, at the Kho Tang Island, Cambodia. Eighteen airman, sailors
and marines were lost during an attempt to free the U.S. merchant vessel Mayaguez. A detailed article by Lisa Hoffman of Scripps Howard News Service , published in the Washington Times, on February 23rd 2000 details incident and the evidence that three men were inadvertently left behind... alive. "...absent is a final accounting of the fate of three Marines who inadvertently were left behind on the island when the rest evacuated. They are believed to have been captured and executed days later."
"The tragic story of the Kho Tang battle began with the seizure of the Mayaguez off the southern coast of Cambodia, 12 days after the fall of South Vietnam's capital, Saigon. President Ford ordered U.S. forces to rescue the 39 crew members." "By the time the Marines launched their assault, the Cambodians had released the Mayaguez sailors on the Cambodian mainland. An intelligence failure left the Marines unaware that their services no longer were needed."
"More than 230 Marines stormed ashore on Kho Tang, expecting an easy job of overcoming a small enemy encampment numbering no more than 20. Instead, they were met by a well-armed force of 150. A furious battle lasted three hours. Among the losses was the CH-53A helicopter, on which 13 GIs died. In all, 18 U.S. troops were killed.
"The Marines drew back and waited 15 hours to be evacuated from the island, in what became one of the most dramatic rescues of the war. A three-man machine gun team, which included Covington, Ky., native Gary Hall, was
dispatched to protect the troops' flank during the withdrawal. But in the fog of battle, the team was mistakenly overlooked. It wasn't until the next day that their absence was realized. By then, it was too late to go back."
"Although their fate is not entirely certain, it is believed the trio survived for several days before being captured and killed. One reportedly was shot to death after being caught stealing food from the Khmer Rouge camp. The other two apparently were bludgeoned to death."
"It wasn't until 1992 that military investigators with the Pentagon's Joint Task Force-Full Accounting operation, which is in charge of accounting for U.S. MIAs, were able to explore either the island or the helicopter wreckage
just offshore."
"By 1995, the team - which faced obstacles ranging from unexploded ordnance, poisonous snakes, fierce storms and tropical diseases - had come up with an elaborate method of essentially salvaging the CH-53A chopper so it could be searched for remains. They built a dam around the helicopter and pumped out the water and sand.
"Despite a quarter century of squalls, tides and scavengers, the investigators managed to recover 161 human bone fragments and a few personal effects - all that was left of the GIs, according to Tom Holland, scientific director for the Army's identification lab. "Later, scientists determined that the bones came from 13 different men. It took another three years to "harvest" enough DNA from the bones and then match it with DNA samples taken from maternal relatives to definitively identify nine of them."
"That left four men unidentified. The remains of three of them were too small to obtain a DNA sample."
Three Marines were left behind on Koh Tang. They are Joseph Hargrove, Gary Hall and Danny Marshall. In the years, since that battle, we wonder if anyone has ever explained to the Hargrove, Hall and Marshall families how these men were "inadvertently left behind." Or, why it was "to late" to go back for them. Imagine what these men thought as they waited for rescue and their thoughts when they finally realized no one was coming for them.
One Family's Thoughts - The following was sent to us, by Sandy Hargrove. She is the sister-in-law of Joseph Hargrove, "inadvertently left behind" on Kho Tang Island. "Joseph Hargrove was lost on May 15th 1975 his 24th birthday. I know the whole Hargrove family just knows that Joseph was sacrificed. We were never told the truth."
"Joseph's older brother Lane was killed on April 21,1968. When Lane was going over he was asked if he wanted to go to Canada by one of his older brothers who had already done his time in the Army. Lane said no he wanted to go to Nam."
"In those days we honestly believed that the government cared about us as people. They wouldn't send someone to a foreign country and have him risk his life for no reason... or would they. What we know now and what we knew
then. With all that we have gone through I think we would have all gone to Canada with him." "So Lane was blown up stepping on a land mine and his little brother Joseph just got left behind. So will someone tell me how this country is a better place because it is missing Joseph and Lane Hargrove. Joseph is a human being not a number. How dare anyone to think they can just forget about them. If it wasn't for Ralph writing that article in Popular Science over a year ago I would still get the standard reply I usually get when I mention the Mayaguez. "The What?"
"Well Joseph never came home because of that What. How easily people forget . But now there is a movement out there to hold the government accountable. I love my country don't get me wrong but the people who run it haven't done a very good job as far as Viet Nam. If anything I hope the guys deaths will prevent this from happening again."
"There are other little Hargroves growing up now Thank you God. Maybe they all will have a chance to grow up and have families not just some of them.
The families that Lane or Joseph never had, leave a big empty spot at the family reunions." Sandy Hargrove
Newsweek Article BY MATTHEW M. BURKE ON 1/24/17
THE TRUTH ABOUT THE LOST MARINES OF THE VIETNAM WAR'S LAST BATTLE
About four decades ago, Scott Standfast fought in the last battle of the Vietnam War, and his memory of it is sharp—from the location of enemy positions to the smothering jungle foliage. But it’s not what he remembers that troubles him; it’s what he can’t recall about that traumatic day. He’s tried everything. In 2015, he even joined a group of veterans for a trip back to the battlefield where they met their former enemies. Some shook hands, trying to forgive and move on. The experience helped but not enough. “It's blocked out,” he tells me on the phone, choking up. “I'm sorry.”On May 15, 1975, Standfast, then a lance corporal and squad leader with an infantry battalion for the U.S.
Marine Corps, fought in what’s known as the Mayaguez Incident, a bloody, mostly forgotten battle on a Cambodian island commonly referred to as Koh Tang. It began when Khmer Rouge soldiers captured a U.S. container ship and its crew off the coast of Cambodia. The American military came to their rescue, but dozens of service members died during the operation. President Gerald Ford hailed the mission as a resounding success, but in the chaos of their exit, three Marines went missing: Joseph Hargrove, Gary Hall and Danny Marshall. The Marines later investigated and said that the three had disobeyed orders by not making it to the helicopters in time and that they were likely killed before the last U.S. chopper lifted off.
After the incident, Ford enjoyed one of the largest spikes in presidential approval ratings, but the trauma of the battle and the disappearance of their fellow servicemen gnawed at Marines like Standfast. The three lost men were members of a machine gun team assigned to his squad. They were supposed to be sitting next to him in that final helicopter out. Instead, they had vanished.Standfast doesn't remember being told they were missing that night. He doesn’t remember anyone lobbying to go back for them. He knows he went to the memorial service for his fallen comrades, but he can’t remember that either. The last thing he recalls is his chopper touching down in darkness on an aircraft carrier. Everything after that is blank. Perhaps it’s a way to protect himself from the pain. He manages to mostly keep that pain hidden, but there are signs of it beneath his hardened, jarhead façade. Sometimes he’s friendly and easygoing; the next moment he’s rigid and withdrawn.
He had come to Niceville because Cary Turner, a cousin of Hargrove’s, had called weeks earlier with surprising news: A former Air Force controller claimed he knew what had happened to his cousin and to the other two Marines. Standfast immediately began to plan his trip.
On the afternoon of May 12, 1975, the Mayaguez, an American cargo ship, was traveling from Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam) to Sattahip, Thailand, when Khmer Rouge forces in a skiff fired at it when it was two miles offshore from Cambodian territory. As the ship stopped, seven Khmer sailors carrying AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenade launchers climbed on board. The crew managed to send a distress signal, which was received by a private company in Jakarta, Indonesia, and forwarded to the U.S. Embassy there. Within hours, officials in Washington learned of the hijacking and scrambled the Air Force, dispatched the Navy and mobilized Marines from the jungles of Okinawa.Navy pilots watched from above as Khmer Rouge gunmen anchored the Mayaguez near Koh Tang and took the crew toward the mainland. But American officials largely ignored this intelligence and continued to plan a rescue operation on the island. Defense officials estimated there were as many as 200 hardened Khmer Rouge fighters armed with heavy weapons there, but no one passed this information down to the Marines who’d been ordered to attack the island. They were told to expect between 20 and 40 old men and farmers.Early in the morning of May 15, four American helicopters swooped toward the northern tip of Koh Tang, and the Khmer Rouge quickly shot two out of the sky. Both crashed on the beach or in the shallows, and a few survivors made it to the tree line. Others, some severely wounded, were forced to swim under withering fire out to sea, where they were rescued by U.S. servicemen on a small boat sent from a nearby destroyer. The other two choppers fared only slightly better—Khmer Rouge gunners damaged both of them as they tried to drop off Marines. One returned to the Thai coast for an emergency landing; the other limped out to sea where it crashed, killing one airman.Eventually, however, 131 Marines, Navy corpsmen and airmen made it onto the island, and for 14 hours they battled Khmer Rouge soldiers in close quarters.Shortly after noon, Standfast arrived with 100 reinforcements, including his machine gun team—Hargrove, Hall and Marshall. The fresh troops informed the Marines on the ground that an American destroyer had recovered the Mayaguez crew that morning, adrift in a fishing boat, and that Marines had seized the ship. Translation: They’d been sent into a raw firefight for no reason. Officials in Washington ordered a withdrawal, but planning and executing that would take time, so the Marines had to wait until the damaged fleet of helicopters could come to their rescue.
As a torrent of bullets flew through the air, Standfast set his machine gun team on the extreme right-hand side of the Marine position. Sergeant Carl Anderson set trip-flares in front of the team and checked the lines to make sure his fellow servicemen were OK, he says. American bombers then started pounding the jungle, and the shooting subsided as the Khmer Rouge retreated.Yet as darkness fell and the rescue choppers approached, the Communists crawled back to their spider holes and launched another assault on the Americans. Air Force pilots braved heavy fire in barely functioning helicopters, coming in one at a time to rescue the Marines, who were trying to beat back the Communists. With fewer U.S. servicemen on the ground, however, the Khmer Rouge advanced. On the west beach, as more and more Americans climbed into helicopters, Captain James Davis took charge of the remaining soldiers. Some, like Hargrove, Hall and Marshall, he had never met before. At one point, Davis took to the airwaves to say they were minutes away from being overrun.Before that could happen, he climbed into the last chopper. Some of the Marines on board that helicopter told the crew there were still men on the beach. The air crew asked Davis, the most senior officer on board, to weigh in, but he was relatively certain everyone had been picked up, according to Air Force radio transcripts.For the next few hours, military officials repeated Davis’s claims over and over—until they realized he was wrong.Ghosts in the Radio Air Force Staff Sergeant Robert Velie was behind his radio console aboard the EC-130E Airborne Battlefield Command and Control Center, a military transport aircraft with sophisticated communications gear. Velie and his team had coordinated the battle, communicating with the commanders, air support and men on the ground. As the last helicopter was leaving, Velie and company heard over the radio that all of the Marines had been picked up. They were directing the last few airstrikes on the island before heading home.Just after 8:20 p.m., Velie’s radio hissed, and he heard an American voice asking when the next chopper was coming back to get them. Velie was puzzled; he knew there were no more helicopters heading back to the island. In fact, there were gunships headed in, ready to hose it down. Velie asked the caller if he was at the last pickup site and why he hadn’t boarded the chopper. “We were told to lay cover fire [for the choppers] and they'd come back for us,” Velie recalls the man saying.Velie immediately thought it was a Khmer Rouge trick to lure in more helicopters, so he asked the caller for the authentication code. The Marine didn’t hesitate; he answered correctly with the proper response. Velie says his superior then told Navy commanders there were still Marines on the island. A short time later, the commanders responded: Davis, they said, had told them everyone was accounted for.
Velie’s commander radioed a destroyer in the area, the U.S.S. Harold E. Holt. Someone on the Holt instructed him to have the abandoned Marines make their way out to sea, where they would attempt to pick them up. But the men, Velie says, didn’t like that plan; they still believed a helicopter would come to their rescue.The Marine Corps report on the disappearance of the three men states that one was a poor swimmer and the other two couldn’t swim at all, so heading far out to sea in the dark would have been dangerous. Velie told the Marine on the radio that he and the others should immediately take cover, because the gunships were about to arrive. The Marine said, "Roger,” and soon two gunships pummeled the island with cannon fire.After the barrage, Velie called the Marine back. There was no answer.‘I Thought I Was at Fault’Velie isn’t the only one who disputes the Marine Corps version of what happened to those three servicemen. Private First Class David Wagner, among other Marines, told investigators the three gunners covered him as he loaded wounded men onto the helicopters—and said he even gave Hall ammunition.Air Force Staff Sergeant Ray Buran Jr. remembers the Marines’ call for help bolstering Velie’s claim. "[A Marine] did talk to someone [on board Velie’s aircraft],” he says. Buran was manning a different console on Velie’s aircraft, so he was not privy to the conversation, but he recalls hearing that the Marines were being chased and taking heavy ground fire, which differs slightly from Velie’s account.Anderson, the last American to see the three alive, according to military reports, doesn’t recall seeing them at the landing zone, but he does remember their call after the last chopper lifted off. He says he heard a recording of it in Okinawa, several days after the battle, while he was under investigation for leaving the Marines behind (he was cleared of responsibility). “There was a tape of [the Marines] that I thought the enemy had made,” he says. (According to Velie, the Americans recorded all radio communications with Marines on the ground.) “It was definitely Hall, Marshall and Hargrove,” Anderson adds. He can’t remember what they said, but he didn’t hear Cambodian voices on the tape, he says, and there was no evidence of coercion. “[The tape] got to me. I thought I was at fault.”With the three Marines possibly still alive but no longer responding, the U.S. military had a difficult decision to make. Velie says there were many possible reasons the Marines on the beach didn’t get back on the radio. His aircraft could have moved out of their range. Or they had been wounded or forced to hide because Khmer Rouge fighters were nearby. Because of their poor swimming ability, he doubts they tried going out to sea. His aircraft stayed in the area until after midnight, hoping to make contact again, but the radio remained silent.
Davis died in 2012. But years earlier, he told CBS News he had volunteered to go back to the island, but his request was denied. Velie, Anderson and Buran agree that returning to Koh Tang would have been incredibly dangerous. “There were no resources [to go back for them],” Buran says referring to the damaged helicopters. “Everything was shot down or shot up.”There really was only one hope left for the missing machine gun team: the Navy SEALs.Advocating Suicide On the night of May 15, Tom Coulter, then a lieutenant and leader of Navy SEAL Team 1’s Delta Platoon, arrived on the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Coral Sea while the smoke still hung above the Koh Tang battlefield. Coulter hadn’t heard about that mysterious last radio call, but sailors on the Holt said there was “a problem with the head count.” Coulter met with Navy Vice Admiral Robert Coogan, the Navy’s on-scene commander, and their meeting quickly turned heated. Coogan wanted to drop fliers over Koh Tang announcing that the SEALs were coming, Coulter says, then send the men ashore, unarmed, during the day to retrieve “Marine bodies” that “may or may not be on the beach.” Coulter thought Coogan was advocating suicide. “I told him we would not be taking that mission.”Coulter eventually persuaded the brass that the SEALs should plan their own mission. He suggested they go in armed and at night, to avoid being detected. He and his 13 men then headed to the Holt with two inflatable boats, and the destroyer turned back toward Koh Tang.The hour was late, Coulter recalls, when he was called into Holt Commander Robert Peterson’s quarters for a conference call with the White House. He doesn’t think President Ford was on the call, and he can’t be 100 percent certain, but he believes Coogan was on it, as was Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. “Someone on the call had an accent,” he says, referring to the German-born Kissinger. They were canceling the SEAL rescue operation, Coulter recalls, because “the risk was too high.” Kissinger did not respond to Newsweek requests seeking comment. Coogan; his superior at the Pacific Command, Admiral Noel Gayler; and Schlesinger are dead. Acting Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral James Holloway III tells Newsweek through a spokesman that he was not aware of any reports about Marines being left behind and that he does not recall any follow-up discussions about them.The following day, the destroyer U.S.S. Henry B. Wilson patrolled the coast of Koh Tang, looking for signs of survivors, while aircraft overhead scanned the thick jungle canopy, but there was no sign of Hargrove, Hall or Marshall. The U.S. decided not to launch a rescue mission.Two weeks later, Velie says, his superiors ordered him to never discuss the radio call again, but to this day, he can’t shake it. "I was the last one to talk to them,” he says. “I had to tell them that no one was coming back for them.”Bodies Dumped on the BeachIn the fall of 2012, I traveled to Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where I met the former garrison commander of Koh Tang in an empty café. Em Son is a thin, one-legged man with sun-leathered skin. At first glance, he looked too feeble to be the seasoned special forces commander and close associate of Pol Pot he claimed to be. But his eyes told a different story—they were dark, empty, fearsome.In the days following the Mayaguez battle, Son claimed he and his comrades noticed food was missing from a hut near the east beach. They accused each other, then set a trap to nab the thief. Later that evening, they caught Hargrove and held him overnight in a makeshift cell, where he told them about the two other surviving Marines. (Son said Hargrove gave up that information without being tortured.) The next day, as Son and several Khmer Rouge soldiers marched Hargrove to another holding area, the Marine tried to escape. Son said he shot him in the leg, and Hargrove fell. Then Son said he walked over to him and fired again, killing him on the spot. (He said killing him was humane, because there was no medical treatment for miles.) The Khmer Rouge, Son says, buried Hargrove by a mango tree nearby. Later that day, they caught Hall and Marshall, Son says, and took them to the mainland, where they handed them over to Khmer Rouge navy chief Meas Muth. The Communists held the Marines at a temple converted into a prison, but eventually, Son says, the guards marched the two Marines out to the beach, where they beat them to death. (Muth declined a Newsweek interview request through his lawyers.)The U.S. government has steadfastly disputed Son's claims, which have changed slightly over time, perhaps to avoid charges at the ongoing United Nations war crimes tribunal at Phnom Penh.In 2015, I returned to Cambodia, this time with Hargrove’s cousin Cary Turner, Standfast and six other veterans of the Koh Tang battle, to meet with Son again. We saw him speak at a ceremony commemorating the 40th anniversary of the battle. There, he told the same story he had given me, only this time he said he had fired a warning shot as Hargrove ran and accidentally killed him.Turner was frustrated. He had met Son before and heard a similar story. He had been to the island twice and even led excavations. Now, as he and translator Noma Sarvong huddled with the man who had killed his cousin, Turner pleaded with him for the truth about what happened that day, vowing there would be no repercussions.Son told him a similar war story about Hall and Marshall, but this time his account of Hargrove’s death was different. The morning after the battle, he said, five of Son’s men went down to a pool near Koh Tang’s east beach to get some water to cook rice. The fighters heard a noise on the other side of the water. When they went to investigate, a Marine fitting Hargrove’s description opened up on them, killing a Khmer Rouge captain who was Son’s friend. Hargrove fought until he ran out of ammunition, and then he was captured. Son said Hargrove had been wounded above the right knee and was hobbled, but the wound was dry, as if he had been shot the previous day. The fighters helped Hargrove into a nearby meadow, where they met up with Son. Hearing that the Marine had just killed his friend, Son shot Hargrove on the spot, by that mango tree, and ordered his men to bury him nearby.It was a disturbing story, but Turner was confident he finally had the truth—or at least something close enough to it. Son never denied pulling the trigger, and he stood behind previous statements about how the other two men died. He also said American officials had interviewed him, and he seemed genuinely perplexed that the U.S. government still claimed the men were unaccounted for.
Since the late 1990s, American investigators have aggressively taken to Koh Tang with picks and spades, and they have recovered the remains of 13 men who died in the battle. But they say they failed to find those of Hargrove, Hall or Marshall. In 2008, investigators dug where Son claimed he had ordered Hargrove buried. Until recently, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) wouldn’t comment on exactly what they recovered there, but in a recent interview with Newsweek, they said they found only Cambodian bodies near the mango tree and fragments of animal bones where Hall and Marshall were allegedly beaten to death.Turner, however, is skeptical about the agency’s findings—and he isn’t the only one. In recent years, DPAA has been embroiled in a series of scandals involving the remains of U.S. servicemen. One involved internal complaints that the agency had not properly recorded its work on Koh Tang in the search for Hall, Marshall and Hargrove. In fact, a Cambodian source—whose identity Newsweek is protecting because this individual is not authorized to speak to the press—strongly believes the body U.S. POW/MIA investigators removed near the mango tree in 2008 was an American. The remains were too tall to be Southeast Asian; the bones were long, according to the Cambodian source, and the Americans on the scene agreed. Charles Ray, the former U.S. ambassador to Cambodia and deputy assistant secretary of defense for POW/Missing Personnel Affairs, says U.S. government investigators told him as much. DPAA disputes this, saying its lab results proved otherwise, but the agency declined to provide proof of what it found to Newsweek or the Hargrove family.In 2016, DPAA announced it had found Hall’s ID card and personal items in an empty burial pit on Koh Tang. What it didn’t publicly disclose, according to Newsweek ’s Cambodian source, is that DPAA also found an American radio and a Marine flak jacket not far from where the last American chopper took off. The jacket had a name and a number in it. In an interview with Newsweek, DPAA officials acknowledged finding those items but declined to say to whom they belonged.They also told me they had thrown away both the radio and the flak jacket.Questions and Remains Back in Florida, Standfast leaned forward on the edge of his chair, listening intently as the aging airman transported him back to that harrowing battle with the Khmer Rouge and explained why he had finally come forward with his story. Now in his 70s, Velie felt the need to unburden himself.Standfast told me later that as he listened to Velie, he was mesmerized as one event spilled into the next. Velie spoke with authority, he said, without hesitation. He knew all the right acronyms and buzzwords and seemed of very sound mind. The former Marine had driven to Niceville a skeptic. Now, as Velie finished telling his story, he became a believer. “There’s no way this was rehearsed,” he said. “It was confirmation that they had been left on the island.”On their long drive home, Standfast and his wife discussed all that Velie had told them. He was happy to have learned the truth about that final, cryptic radio call. He isn’t sure if it’s enough to exorcise his ghosts, but it made him more determined than ever to help Hargrove’s cousin find the remains of the Marines who got left behind.
_______________________________________________________
In The Last Battle: The Mayaguez Incident and the End of the Vietnam War, published last year, author Ralph Wetterhahn offered one of the most complete accounts yet of what had happened to the three men left on the beach.
One Marine was captured the day after the battle and executed on the spot. Two others, including a soldier thought to be Pfc. Hall, evaded capture for several days. Mr. Wetterhahn reported the two were imprisoned on the main island for about a week, then brutally executed.
“For Hall, who joined the Marines as an 18-year-old boy, he had attained his manhood through the Corps and proved it better than his idol, John Wayne, ever could, humping the heavy machine gun up and down the beach and holding off the Khmer Rouge to the very end,” Mr. Wetterhahn wrote.
__________________________________________
Gary,
Like I said in the letter I left for Joseph I never knew you but did know one of the three of you men that were left behind on Koh Tang Island. He was PFC Danny G. Marshall. He was my best friend - we grew up in a small town in West Virginia and went to the same schools.
It was and still is a shame that our Government did to you three men what they did, but we now know what happened thanks to a man named Ralph Wetterhahn and his book "The Last Battle".
And Gary I want to tell you the same thing I said in the letters I left for Danny and Joseph: "JOB WELL DONE, Gary".
From a friend of one left behind,
Teleah Cross
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Cincinnati Enquirer 08/02/2001
Her brother, her hero Sister wants closure for Covington Marine lost during '75 Mayaguez rescue
mission By John Johnston The Cincinnati Enquirer
An emptiness surrounds Janet Hall Meadows' memory of the brave brother she lost 26 years ago. "I have no closure," Mrs. Meadows, who is 47 and lives in Tollesboro, Ky., says. "I have no grave I can visit." But she has a 16-year-old son named Kenton who is as tall and slender as the uncle he never knew. "He looks like Gary so much," Mrs. Meadows says......
“The only closure for me will be when they bring him back,” Mrs. Meadows, his sister, says. “He needs to be buried here. “He's my hero.”
“What this kid did was really incredible, but he died probably thinking no one would ever know what happened in his last two weeks,” Mr. Pangburn said. “He stayed at his post and did his duty to the last.”
Remembered
Memorial located in VFW Post 6095 Covington, Ky
Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall - Washington D.C. Panel W1, Line 130
Lance Corporal Martin William Prather - USMC
Delta Company, 3rd Recon Battalion, 3rd Marine Division Born; 09 June 1947 Louisville KY Graduated with Platoon 151, 1st Battalion, Marine Corps Recruit Depot - Parris Island, South Carolina on 30 April, 1966 Date last seen; 05 September 1967 Quang Tri, South Vietnam Loss Coordinates: 164000 North 1070000 East |
Lance Corporal Prather was part of a 9 man Reconnaissance Patrol operating in the Quang Tri Province. While in an LZ awaiting extraction by helicopters, the Patrol suddenly came under heavy enemy automatic weapons fire. Martin was hit with one of the first bursts.
Due to intense hostile fire, Lance Corporal Prather could not be recovered. His Patrol returned to the scene of the battle the following morning, but because of high enemy concentrations he could not be retrieved.
Further recovery efforts were deemed too costly in additional personnel losses, and the area was bombed with napalm and explosives.
Martin’s remains have never been repatriated.
3rd Recon Battalion message, debrief report for 3rd Force Recon patrol #436-67
His father Robert served in the United States Army and was a Prisoner Of War in World War II.
Letters;
From Kay -
Marty was my kid brother and proud to be a Marine. Our family is equally proud. Mom told another mother who was sorry he didn't make it home to pray that your son does half as well as mine, and he will always succeed.
From a Marine Recon Brother -
Marty,
I was sorry to hear you didn't make it back from patrol. Words could not express the feelings we had since we could not bring you back. Hope to see you home in the future.You're a great guy. Miss you Buddy.
Martin has a military marker in his memory at St Michael's Cemetery, 1153 Charles Street Louisville,Ky
Kentucky First Vietnam Memorial - next to Southwest Government Center Dixie
Highway Louisville, Ky
POW☆MIA Memorial Bench - 1101 River Rd Louisville, Ky
His name is inscribed on the Courts of the Missing at the Honolulu Memorial.
Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall Washington D.C. on Panel 26E - Line 3
Due to intense hostile fire, Lance Corporal Prather could not be recovered. His Patrol returned to the scene of the battle the following morning, but because of high enemy concentrations he could not be retrieved.
Further recovery efforts were deemed too costly in additional personnel losses, and the area was bombed with napalm and explosives.
Martin’s remains have never been repatriated.
3rd Recon Battalion message, debrief report for 3rd Force Recon patrol #436-67
His father Robert served in the United States Army and was a Prisoner Of War in World War II.
Letters;
From Kay -
Marty was my kid brother and proud to be a Marine. Our family is equally proud. Mom told another mother who was sorry he didn't make it home to pray that your son does half as well as mine, and he will always succeed.
From a Marine Recon Brother -
Marty,
I was sorry to hear you didn't make it back from patrol. Words could not express the feelings we had since we could not bring you back. Hope to see you home in the future.You're a great guy. Miss you Buddy.
Martin has a military marker in his memory at St Michael's Cemetery, 1153 Charles Street Louisville,Ky
Kentucky First Vietnam Memorial - next to Southwest Government Center Dixie
Highway Louisville, Ky
POW☆MIA Memorial Bench - 1101 River Rd Louisville, Ky
His name is inscribed on the Courts of the Missing at the Honolulu Memorial.
Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall Washington D.C. on Panel 26E - Line 3
The United States' last official "live" prisoner of war is now presumed killed in action. His children said a formal goodbye, October 4, 1994, to a man whose disappearance nearly 30 years ago virtually consumed their lives. His name, date of birth and date of death were chiseled on his wife's Arlington Cemetery headstone.
At about 11 a.m. on April 29, 1965, Capt. Charles E. Shelton's RF101C "Voodoo" aircraft departed Udorn Air Base, Thailand, as the lead plane in a flight of two aircraft on a photo-reconnaissance mission over northern Laos. (The second aircraft, flown by Capt. Richard L. Bilheimer, is thought to be an F105 serving armed escort.) Shelton was serving his second Southeast Asia tour of duty. Based in Okinawa, he served 30-day rotations at Udorn after which he returned to Okinawa. His family was preparing to celebrate his 33rd birthday that night when he returned.
Bad weather aborted attempts to photograph the first target. Shelton and Bilheimer continued to their second target near Sam Neua, Laos, less than 50 miles from the Lao/North Vietnam border and less than 100 miles from China's Yunnan Province. The Sam Neua area was the communist Pathet Lao headquarters, with command facilities, training centers, communication equipment and personnel quartered in a jumble of mountain and river caves.
Shelton and his wingman descended to 3,000 feet above ground level as they
neared the target. Shelton was just lining up for his first photo at 11:59 a.m. when fire erupted from the center of his plane. Shelton asked his wingman if he had been hit.
"Roger. You are on fire," was the reply.
The wingman saw the canopy of Shelton's plane fly off and watched as Shelton ejected and parachuted to the ground.
A few hours later, two rescue planes spotted Shelton and his parachute on a tree-covered ridge. They talked to him by radio and told him a helicopter would pick him up in a half-hour. Shelton indicated that he was in good condition, and used his radio to direct rescue forces.
In Okinawa, the wing commander came to tell Marian Shelton that her husband had been shot down, was OK and evading capture, and that he should be picked up by midnight, Okinawa time.
Before Shelton had left Okinawa, he had detailed with his wife all the things she should do if he were killed. He told her about their finances, advised her on what kind of car and house to buy. The greatest threat was death, although Laos was considered a "safe" flight. Neither of them had heard of Americans being captured in Southeast Asia.
Rescue helicopters approached to pick Shelton up, but because of adverse weather closing in, rescue was delayed. After the sun went down, Shelton removed his parachute from a tree, buried it and hid while Pathet Lao forces searched for him. With the shroud of low clouds and approaching darkness, it was impossible for rescue crews to see Shelton, but radio contact indicated that he was OK and still evading. Rescue efforts were suspended until first light on April 30.
Again, bad weather and enemy fire thwarted the rescue. When the weather finally broke on May 2, Shelton was nowhere to be found. The search was finally called off on May 5, and Shelton was listed as "Missing in Action, believed captured." The search for Shelton had involved 148 missions by military aircraft flying a combined total of more than 360 hours. Not included in this figure are the missions flown by Air America -- the CIA's airline -- whose brave pilots flew countless rescue missions over Laos.
One search mission, according to a 1966 Air Force document, involved a Controlled American Source ground search team. The team was inserted by Air America aircraft. The team, according to the document, included Shelton's wingman, Capt. Richard L. Bilheimer, who was on hand to pinpoint the location Shelton was last seen. The pilot's participation in the search was unprecedented, and Air Force later claimed to have no record of Bilheimer's participation in the search. The ground search was unsuccessful.
Shelton had evaded the enemy for three days, but was finally captured by two platoons of Pathet Lao militia. A villager later reported that witnessing Shelton's capture, and his status was changed to Prisoner of War.
Rallier reports also confirmed his capture, as did reports by special indigenous rescue team members. U.S. Intelligence indicate Col. Shelton was held in caves in the vicinity of Ban Nakay Teu and Ban Nakay Neua in Tham Sue Cave (VH193564) in northeast Laos with another POW who is thought to be David Hrdlicka. These were the very caves he was trying to photograph, and intelligence sources indicate he was held here for at least the next 3 ½ years.
Shelton was an uncooperative prisoner from the start and is infamous for his many escape attempts as described by a continual flow of intelligence over the years since he was captured. The reports are summaries of interviews with villagers, informants, defecting Pathet Lao soldiers and refugees. The documents tell of escapes, resistance, rescue attempts and possibly the last straw: killing three interrogators.
Shelton was first taken to the Sam Neua city jail and escaped twice, only to be recaptured. On his first trip to prison he refused to walk and was carried there by soldiers, according to some reports.
He was then taken to the Pathet Lao Supreme Command headquarters cave and interrogated. He reportedly gave no information.
Tony Weisgarber, Shelton's squadron operations officer, recalled Shelton as being "a solid citizen...he was very solid, very reliable. Physically, he was a very solid person. He was built like a tree stump."
Shelton was joined by other American POWs, most unidentified in reports. After spending an unknown period in the caves near Sam Neua, they were moved to a new Pathet Lao complex of caves along a river.
Shelton allegedly tried to escape again. Reports over the next three years tell of three to eleven caucasian prisoners in the area, one of them in chains or manacles. The prisoner in irons was believed to be Shelton. He was by this time considered "incorrigible" by the Pathet Lao and some reports described him held in a shallow ditch or pit with bars over the top.
Marian Shelton knew nothing of these events except that her husband was still alive and rescue attempts were being made. She was told to not to talk about her husband's incident. The U.S. Embassy in Vientiane, Laos cabled officials in Washington D.C. with warnings to be prepared with a story or keep silent about the shoot-down. Laos was still denied territory, and a credible story had to be devised explaining the presence of American aircraft in Laos.
Ironically, Shelton's mission did not count toward the 100 missions needed to rotate him back to the U.S. The flight was considered a "non-counter" because Laos was considered safe territory.
Only after the war ended did Marian Shelton get other information or see copies of reports when she began using the Freedom of Information Act to gain some knowledge of her husband's fate.
Defense Department records indicate that Shelton's photograph appeared in a Soviet newspaper and he was named in a broadcast tape recording.
A May 13, 1967 photo which appeared in the Vietnam Courier bearing the caption, "An American airman captured in Laos," is in Shelton's casualty report file. The face of the airman is blacked out by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), but the presence of the photo in the file seems to indicate that the airman is Shelton.
State Department and CIA records show that at least four teams were inserted into the Sam Neua area to look for Shelton after he was a known captive. At least one attempt was planned and vetoed. Richard Secord, the retired Air Force general accused of conspiring to illegally divert proceeds from the U.S./Iran arms sales to Nicaraguan rebels, has said that he planned a 1967 rescue attempt on behalf of Shelton and Hrdlicka, but his CIA superiors vetoed the plan in favor of an alternative effort that did not work.
Ernie Meis, a retired phonto reconnaissance pilot, said he took aerial photos of a prison cave in August 1968 for a planned Shelton rescue mission. He was briefed that Shelton was being held there in a shallow grave with bars on the top because of his numerous escape attempts. He was told there was a guard standing over Shelton with a hand grenade and a couple of other guards with bayonets who would poke him and keep him awake. Meis was told there was going to be a rescue attempt. Meis flew the mission and took a lot of ground fire, but photographed the cave. Meis was never told if the rescue attempt took place.
In 1983, Meis was told by an ex-CIA agent of an attempt to rescue Shelton. This dramatic account details an operation code-named "Duck Soup." Sources differ as to the timeframe, which was first thought to be late fall of 1965, and later believed to be in 1971. The most detailed versions relating to 1971 include two American POWs -- Shelton and Hrdlicka.
According to multiple sources, including former military personnel, Shelton and Hrdlicka were returned to northern Laos in 1971. Vietnam and the U.S. were negotiating about POWs but there were no direct negotiations with the Pathet Lao. By then the two POWs had spent almost six years in the Pathet Lao-North Vietnamese prison system, including time in the Laotian communist headquarters complex in Sam Neua.
A small team of CIA-supported Hmong tribesmen was assigned the task of entering the prison area and leading the prisoners out. A Chinese man coordinated the identification of the specific prisoners and the designated rescue team.
Rosemary Conway, a CIA operative who was captured in Laos in 1975, adds that
her guards told her a story about a famed American POW named Charles Shelton. They said he had killed three Vietnamese interrogators, beating them to death with a metal chair. When Conway was expelled from Laos later in 1975, she returned to Chicago and began working with Hmong refugees arriving in the U.S.
In 1976, two former Hmong intelligence officers told Conway that Shelton and Hrdlicka had been rescued by a Hmong team and turned over to an American team of "CIA agents and Army Special Forces."
The multi-source account states that Shelton and Hrdlicka were rescued in Operation Duck Soup and held for about 10 days, and then returned to their captors. Scenarios for this rescue-return say the POWs were either returned to gather more intelligence information about the communist Pathet Lao headquarters where they were being held, returned to protect the cover of the rescuers, or that the party had been attacked and the two Americans were recaptured. One version says the rescuers, posing as communists, showed off the highly conspicuous Americans as prisoners they had captured. The ploy worked until they came to a village where a North Vietnamese Army company had set up shop.
Supposedly, the NVA commander reminded them of the policy to turn American POWs over to them and the rescue team, not wanting to blow their cover,relinquished "custody" of the Americans. Some versions state that there was a heated argument among the "captors" as to whether they should turn the prisoners over to the enemy, but ultimately they did, and Hrdlicka and Shelton concurred with the decision.
A Medal of Honor recipient related to David Hendrix that he was a friend of one of the Special Forces members of the team and confirmed the Duck Soup report, adding that his friend, to his knowledge, was the only team member left alive. The friend, still on active duty, would not confirm the story because activities in Laos were considered very sensitive and he was obligated to protect such information.
The U.S. Ambassador to Laos, William H. Sullivan stated that Duck Soup "rang a bell in his mind, but (he) couldn't remember what it was." He added that he believed it had to do with a rescue of a POW who was returned to enemy hands because of the death of the liberator.
One of the last documents released by CIA about Shelton was a two-page report dated January 5, 1969. The report states, "On 10 June 1968 two of four American pilots held prisoner in Tham Sua cave...south of Ban Nakay Neua...in Houaphan Province, Laos, were sent to Hanoi, one of the American pilots, described as an older man, killed three North Vietnamese Army (NVA) soldiers when they attempted to interrogate him. The elder pilot refused to answer the NVA officers' questions and instructed the other pilots not to cooperate as well.
"The killings occurred when the North Vietnamese attempted to chain the pilot to a desk -- he overturned the desk on his captors and beat three of them to death with the chain before guards overpowered him. Following the incident, the older pilot and one of the younger pilots (believed to be Hrdlicka) were sent to Hanoi. The reason given for the transfer was that the two pilots were considered to be incorrigible cases by the Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese."
Shelton's official record ends with the move to Hanoi, but the search continued for his wife. Having raised five children alone, ranging from age one to age thirteen, she also determinedly tracked down information on her husband. In her efforts, she has received many incredible responses which she relates with her characteristic wry humor. Marian says she has received so many conflicting reports that some have "Charles buried next to himself." U.S. officials have discounted some reports saying they relate to "albino Laotians," not Americans. In Laos, Soth Petrasi jokingly told her her husband had been "eaten by a tiger."
The Pathet Lao, when pressed for further information, claimed that both Shelton and Hrdlicka had died in captivity, but that American bombing had destroyed their graves and their bones had been scattered. Mrs. Shelton discounted this information, because DIA told her on April 9, 1982 that it knew where her husband was being held.
Between 1981 and 1985, Shelton allegedly was in Camp 214 near Tchepone, Laos. Information given Shelton's family by an alleged former terrorist stated that Shelton was called "Shaker" and was balding, had no teeth, and "was not in great shape."
In 1984, then-Secretary of the Air Force Vern Orr said Shelton would be retained in active POW status until the fate of every American missing from Southeast Asia was known. The decision was made despite an Air Force review board recommendation four years earlier that Shelton be declared presumed dead.
A former American intelligence agent said that in August 1986 he was told by U.S. intelligence analysts that Shelton was again moved to Vietnam in April 1985, this time to an island prison known as Ho Thach Bai, northwest of Hanoi. The island prison, under triple-canopy jungle and accessible only by boat, is in the northwest corner of a man-made reservoir northeast of En Bai and is the Alcatraz of Vietnam. A large prison at En Bai (Yen Bai) was well-known during the war, but the island prison was created especially for post-war POWs of major stature, according to the agent. U.S. POWs were in this category, he said.
Reports in November 1986 suggest that Shelton was teaching in a high-security military prison in the Haiphong area of Vietnam.
Capt. Shelton has been promoted to the rank of Colonel since he was first captured. He remains the only Prisoner of War who has not been arbitrarily declared dead by his government. He is one of nearly 600 Americans lost in Laos. Because the U.S. did not formally recognize the communist government of Laos, it refused to negotiate with the Pathet Lao for the "tens of tens" of Americans the Lao publicly stated they held. Consequently, neither Charles Shelton nor any Americans held by the Lao have ever been released.
Former DIA chief LtGen. Eugene Tighe says that Vietnam, not Laos, holds the key to missing Americans: "It's naive to call Laos an independent nation" because of Vietnam's military presence and influence in Laos.
Vietnam spokesman Tran Trong Khanh said in New York, "Without our cooperation the issue cannot be solved. We have the information."
In August 1987 AP news stories reported that Lao officials had agreed to account for three Americans known to be prisoners in their country. Among them was Charles Shelton. No accounting has been made since that report.
In protest of the major party presidential candidates' silence on the POW/MIA issue, a campaign was launched in late 1987 to put Charles Shelton on the ballot for the office of President of the United States.
His wife once said, "This will always be with me, if it takes 10 years, 20 years, whatever. I will hold on. Someone, somewhere knows where my husband is." It has been nearly a quarter of a century since Charles Shelton saw his wife and family. Isn't it time we did whatever it takes to bring him home?
His Distinguished Flying Cross with Valor Citation reads:
Captain Charles E. Shelton distinguished himself by heroism while participating in aerial flight as pilot of an unarmed RF-101 reconnaissance aircraft over hostile territory 29 April 1965. On that date, Captain Shelton volunteered to fly an important Bomb Damage Assessment mission known to be particularly hazardous because of large concentrations of hostile anti-aircraft positions in the area to be photographed. Penetrating at low altitude and high speed, with utter disregard for personal safety, he found the target heavily defended, but nevertheless, in order to gain badly needed photo-intelligence, he pressed his determined run, only to have his aircraft sustain a direct hit in the fuel tanks, forcing him to eject. The outstanding heroism and selfless devotion to duty displayed by Captain Shelton in the face of heavy odds reflect great credit upon himself and the United States Air Force.
On October 4, 1990, Dorothy Marian Vollman Shelton took her own life in San Diego, California. She married Charles E. Shelton in 1952 at age 17. Her brother was Missing in Action from World War II and has not been heard from since. Marian Shelton is a casualty of the Vietnam War and the continued government policy of abandonment of American servicemen. She was buried next to her husband's empty grave in Arlington National Cemetery. Those of us that had the honor to know her and call her friend, will never forget her passion nor her courage. She was "Charlie's Angel," and an inspiration to us all. She worked for years with organizations supporting the views of POW/MIA families.
Remembered
On September 18, 1999, The Colonel Charles E. Shelton Freedom Memorial was dedicated in Owensboro, Kentucky. The granite and limestone memorial was erected overlooking the Ohio River in Smothers Park.
Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall Washington D.C. Panel 1E, Line 111
At about 11 a.m. on April 29, 1965, Capt. Charles E. Shelton's RF101C "Voodoo" aircraft departed Udorn Air Base, Thailand, as the lead plane in a flight of two aircraft on a photo-reconnaissance mission over northern Laos. (The second aircraft, flown by Capt. Richard L. Bilheimer, is thought to be an F105 serving armed escort.) Shelton was serving his second Southeast Asia tour of duty. Based in Okinawa, he served 30-day rotations at Udorn after which he returned to Okinawa. His family was preparing to celebrate his 33rd birthday that night when he returned.
Bad weather aborted attempts to photograph the first target. Shelton and Bilheimer continued to their second target near Sam Neua, Laos, less than 50 miles from the Lao/North Vietnam border and less than 100 miles from China's Yunnan Province. The Sam Neua area was the communist Pathet Lao headquarters, with command facilities, training centers, communication equipment and personnel quartered in a jumble of mountain and river caves.
Shelton and his wingman descended to 3,000 feet above ground level as they
neared the target. Shelton was just lining up for his first photo at 11:59 a.m. when fire erupted from the center of his plane. Shelton asked his wingman if he had been hit.
"Roger. You are on fire," was the reply.
The wingman saw the canopy of Shelton's plane fly off and watched as Shelton ejected and parachuted to the ground.
A few hours later, two rescue planes spotted Shelton and his parachute on a tree-covered ridge. They talked to him by radio and told him a helicopter would pick him up in a half-hour. Shelton indicated that he was in good condition, and used his radio to direct rescue forces.
In Okinawa, the wing commander came to tell Marian Shelton that her husband had been shot down, was OK and evading capture, and that he should be picked up by midnight, Okinawa time.
Before Shelton had left Okinawa, he had detailed with his wife all the things she should do if he were killed. He told her about their finances, advised her on what kind of car and house to buy. The greatest threat was death, although Laos was considered a "safe" flight. Neither of them had heard of Americans being captured in Southeast Asia.
Rescue helicopters approached to pick Shelton up, but because of adverse weather closing in, rescue was delayed. After the sun went down, Shelton removed his parachute from a tree, buried it and hid while Pathet Lao forces searched for him. With the shroud of low clouds and approaching darkness, it was impossible for rescue crews to see Shelton, but radio contact indicated that he was OK and still evading. Rescue efforts were suspended until first light on April 30.
Again, bad weather and enemy fire thwarted the rescue. When the weather finally broke on May 2, Shelton was nowhere to be found. The search was finally called off on May 5, and Shelton was listed as "Missing in Action, believed captured." The search for Shelton had involved 148 missions by military aircraft flying a combined total of more than 360 hours. Not included in this figure are the missions flown by Air America -- the CIA's airline -- whose brave pilots flew countless rescue missions over Laos.
One search mission, according to a 1966 Air Force document, involved a Controlled American Source ground search team. The team was inserted by Air America aircraft. The team, according to the document, included Shelton's wingman, Capt. Richard L. Bilheimer, who was on hand to pinpoint the location Shelton was last seen. The pilot's participation in the search was unprecedented, and Air Force later claimed to have no record of Bilheimer's participation in the search. The ground search was unsuccessful.
Shelton had evaded the enemy for three days, but was finally captured by two platoons of Pathet Lao militia. A villager later reported that witnessing Shelton's capture, and his status was changed to Prisoner of War.
Rallier reports also confirmed his capture, as did reports by special indigenous rescue team members. U.S. Intelligence indicate Col. Shelton was held in caves in the vicinity of Ban Nakay Teu and Ban Nakay Neua in Tham Sue Cave (VH193564) in northeast Laos with another POW who is thought to be David Hrdlicka. These were the very caves he was trying to photograph, and intelligence sources indicate he was held here for at least the next 3 ½ years.
Shelton was an uncooperative prisoner from the start and is infamous for his many escape attempts as described by a continual flow of intelligence over the years since he was captured. The reports are summaries of interviews with villagers, informants, defecting Pathet Lao soldiers and refugees. The documents tell of escapes, resistance, rescue attempts and possibly the last straw: killing three interrogators.
Shelton was first taken to the Sam Neua city jail and escaped twice, only to be recaptured. On his first trip to prison he refused to walk and was carried there by soldiers, according to some reports.
He was then taken to the Pathet Lao Supreme Command headquarters cave and interrogated. He reportedly gave no information.
Tony Weisgarber, Shelton's squadron operations officer, recalled Shelton as being "a solid citizen...he was very solid, very reliable. Physically, he was a very solid person. He was built like a tree stump."
Shelton was joined by other American POWs, most unidentified in reports. After spending an unknown period in the caves near Sam Neua, they were moved to a new Pathet Lao complex of caves along a river.
Shelton allegedly tried to escape again. Reports over the next three years tell of three to eleven caucasian prisoners in the area, one of them in chains or manacles. The prisoner in irons was believed to be Shelton. He was by this time considered "incorrigible" by the Pathet Lao and some reports described him held in a shallow ditch or pit with bars over the top.
Marian Shelton knew nothing of these events except that her husband was still alive and rescue attempts were being made. She was told to not to talk about her husband's incident. The U.S. Embassy in Vientiane, Laos cabled officials in Washington D.C. with warnings to be prepared with a story or keep silent about the shoot-down. Laos was still denied territory, and a credible story had to be devised explaining the presence of American aircraft in Laos.
Ironically, Shelton's mission did not count toward the 100 missions needed to rotate him back to the U.S. The flight was considered a "non-counter" because Laos was considered safe territory.
Only after the war ended did Marian Shelton get other information or see copies of reports when she began using the Freedom of Information Act to gain some knowledge of her husband's fate.
Defense Department records indicate that Shelton's photograph appeared in a Soviet newspaper and he was named in a broadcast tape recording.
A May 13, 1967 photo which appeared in the Vietnam Courier bearing the caption, "An American airman captured in Laos," is in Shelton's casualty report file. The face of the airman is blacked out by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), but the presence of the photo in the file seems to indicate that the airman is Shelton.
State Department and CIA records show that at least four teams were inserted into the Sam Neua area to look for Shelton after he was a known captive. At least one attempt was planned and vetoed. Richard Secord, the retired Air Force general accused of conspiring to illegally divert proceeds from the U.S./Iran arms sales to Nicaraguan rebels, has said that he planned a 1967 rescue attempt on behalf of Shelton and Hrdlicka, but his CIA superiors vetoed the plan in favor of an alternative effort that did not work.
Ernie Meis, a retired phonto reconnaissance pilot, said he took aerial photos of a prison cave in August 1968 for a planned Shelton rescue mission. He was briefed that Shelton was being held there in a shallow grave with bars on the top because of his numerous escape attempts. He was told there was a guard standing over Shelton with a hand grenade and a couple of other guards with bayonets who would poke him and keep him awake. Meis was told there was going to be a rescue attempt. Meis flew the mission and took a lot of ground fire, but photographed the cave. Meis was never told if the rescue attempt took place.
In 1983, Meis was told by an ex-CIA agent of an attempt to rescue Shelton. This dramatic account details an operation code-named "Duck Soup." Sources differ as to the timeframe, which was first thought to be late fall of 1965, and later believed to be in 1971. The most detailed versions relating to 1971 include two American POWs -- Shelton and Hrdlicka.
According to multiple sources, including former military personnel, Shelton and Hrdlicka were returned to northern Laos in 1971. Vietnam and the U.S. were negotiating about POWs but there were no direct negotiations with the Pathet Lao. By then the two POWs had spent almost six years in the Pathet Lao-North Vietnamese prison system, including time in the Laotian communist headquarters complex in Sam Neua.
A small team of CIA-supported Hmong tribesmen was assigned the task of entering the prison area and leading the prisoners out. A Chinese man coordinated the identification of the specific prisoners and the designated rescue team.
Rosemary Conway, a CIA operative who was captured in Laos in 1975, adds that
her guards told her a story about a famed American POW named Charles Shelton. They said he had killed three Vietnamese interrogators, beating them to death with a metal chair. When Conway was expelled from Laos later in 1975, she returned to Chicago and began working with Hmong refugees arriving in the U.S.
In 1976, two former Hmong intelligence officers told Conway that Shelton and Hrdlicka had been rescued by a Hmong team and turned over to an American team of "CIA agents and Army Special Forces."
The multi-source account states that Shelton and Hrdlicka were rescued in Operation Duck Soup and held for about 10 days, and then returned to their captors. Scenarios for this rescue-return say the POWs were either returned to gather more intelligence information about the communist Pathet Lao headquarters where they were being held, returned to protect the cover of the rescuers, or that the party had been attacked and the two Americans were recaptured. One version says the rescuers, posing as communists, showed off the highly conspicuous Americans as prisoners they had captured. The ploy worked until they came to a village where a North Vietnamese Army company had set up shop.
Supposedly, the NVA commander reminded them of the policy to turn American POWs over to them and the rescue team, not wanting to blow their cover,relinquished "custody" of the Americans. Some versions state that there was a heated argument among the "captors" as to whether they should turn the prisoners over to the enemy, but ultimately they did, and Hrdlicka and Shelton concurred with the decision.
A Medal of Honor recipient related to David Hendrix that he was a friend of one of the Special Forces members of the team and confirmed the Duck Soup report, adding that his friend, to his knowledge, was the only team member left alive. The friend, still on active duty, would not confirm the story because activities in Laos were considered very sensitive and he was obligated to protect such information.
The U.S. Ambassador to Laos, William H. Sullivan stated that Duck Soup "rang a bell in his mind, but (he) couldn't remember what it was." He added that he believed it had to do with a rescue of a POW who was returned to enemy hands because of the death of the liberator.
One of the last documents released by CIA about Shelton was a two-page report dated January 5, 1969. The report states, "On 10 June 1968 two of four American pilots held prisoner in Tham Sua cave...south of Ban Nakay Neua...in Houaphan Province, Laos, were sent to Hanoi, one of the American pilots, described as an older man, killed three North Vietnamese Army (NVA) soldiers when they attempted to interrogate him. The elder pilot refused to answer the NVA officers' questions and instructed the other pilots not to cooperate as well.
"The killings occurred when the North Vietnamese attempted to chain the pilot to a desk -- he overturned the desk on his captors and beat three of them to death with the chain before guards overpowered him. Following the incident, the older pilot and one of the younger pilots (believed to be Hrdlicka) were sent to Hanoi. The reason given for the transfer was that the two pilots were considered to be incorrigible cases by the Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese."
Shelton's official record ends with the move to Hanoi, but the search continued for his wife. Having raised five children alone, ranging from age one to age thirteen, she also determinedly tracked down information on her husband. In her efforts, she has received many incredible responses which she relates with her characteristic wry humor. Marian says she has received so many conflicting reports that some have "Charles buried next to himself." U.S. officials have discounted some reports saying they relate to "albino Laotians," not Americans. In Laos, Soth Petrasi jokingly told her her husband had been "eaten by a tiger."
The Pathet Lao, when pressed for further information, claimed that both Shelton and Hrdlicka had died in captivity, but that American bombing had destroyed their graves and their bones had been scattered. Mrs. Shelton discounted this information, because DIA told her on April 9, 1982 that it knew where her husband was being held.
Between 1981 and 1985, Shelton allegedly was in Camp 214 near Tchepone, Laos. Information given Shelton's family by an alleged former terrorist stated that Shelton was called "Shaker" and was balding, had no teeth, and "was not in great shape."
In 1984, then-Secretary of the Air Force Vern Orr said Shelton would be retained in active POW status until the fate of every American missing from Southeast Asia was known. The decision was made despite an Air Force review board recommendation four years earlier that Shelton be declared presumed dead.
A former American intelligence agent said that in August 1986 he was told by U.S. intelligence analysts that Shelton was again moved to Vietnam in April 1985, this time to an island prison known as Ho Thach Bai, northwest of Hanoi. The island prison, under triple-canopy jungle and accessible only by boat, is in the northwest corner of a man-made reservoir northeast of En Bai and is the Alcatraz of Vietnam. A large prison at En Bai (Yen Bai) was well-known during the war, but the island prison was created especially for post-war POWs of major stature, according to the agent. U.S. POWs were in this category, he said.
Reports in November 1986 suggest that Shelton was teaching in a high-security military prison in the Haiphong area of Vietnam.
Capt. Shelton has been promoted to the rank of Colonel since he was first captured. He remains the only Prisoner of War who has not been arbitrarily declared dead by his government. He is one of nearly 600 Americans lost in Laos. Because the U.S. did not formally recognize the communist government of Laos, it refused to negotiate with the Pathet Lao for the "tens of tens" of Americans the Lao publicly stated they held. Consequently, neither Charles Shelton nor any Americans held by the Lao have ever been released.
Former DIA chief LtGen. Eugene Tighe says that Vietnam, not Laos, holds the key to missing Americans: "It's naive to call Laos an independent nation" because of Vietnam's military presence and influence in Laos.
Vietnam spokesman Tran Trong Khanh said in New York, "Without our cooperation the issue cannot be solved. We have the information."
In August 1987 AP news stories reported that Lao officials had agreed to account for three Americans known to be prisoners in their country. Among them was Charles Shelton. No accounting has been made since that report.
In protest of the major party presidential candidates' silence on the POW/MIA issue, a campaign was launched in late 1987 to put Charles Shelton on the ballot for the office of President of the United States.
His wife once said, "This will always be with me, if it takes 10 years, 20 years, whatever. I will hold on. Someone, somewhere knows where my husband is." It has been nearly a quarter of a century since Charles Shelton saw his wife and family. Isn't it time we did whatever it takes to bring him home?
His Distinguished Flying Cross with Valor Citation reads:
Captain Charles E. Shelton distinguished himself by heroism while participating in aerial flight as pilot of an unarmed RF-101 reconnaissance aircraft over hostile territory 29 April 1965. On that date, Captain Shelton volunteered to fly an important Bomb Damage Assessment mission known to be particularly hazardous because of large concentrations of hostile anti-aircraft positions in the area to be photographed. Penetrating at low altitude and high speed, with utter disregard for personal safety, he found the target heavily defended, but nevertheless, in order to gain badly needed photo-intelligence, he pressed his determined run, only to have his aircraft sustain a direct hit in the fuel tanks, forcing him to eject. The outstanding heroism and selfless devotion to duty displayed by Captain Shelton in the face of heavy odds reflect great credit upon himself and the United States Air Force.
On October 4, 1990, Dorothy Marian Vollman Shelton took her own life in San Diego, California. She married Charles E. Shelton in 1952 at age 17. Her brother was Missing in Action from World War II and has not been heard from since. Marian Shelton is a casualty of the Vietnam War and the continued government policy of abandonment of American servicemen. She was buried next to her husband's empty grave in Arlington National Cemetery. Those of us that had the honor to know her and call her friend, will never forget her passion nor her courage. She was "Charlie's Angel," and an inspiration to us all. She worked for years with organizations supporting the views of POW/MIA families.
Remembered
On September 18, 1999, The Colonel Charles E. Shelton Freedom Memorial was dedicated in Owensboro, Kentucky. The granite and limestone memorial was erected overlooking the Ohio River in Smothers Park.
Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall Washington D.C. Panel 1E, Line 111
Major Alan Paul Mateja USAF 7th Air Force, 388th Tactical Fighter Wing, 17th Wild Weasel Wing Born : 29 July 1945 Louisville, KY He was a 1968 Graduate of the University of Louisville’s J. B. Speed School. A Distinguished Graduate through the Air Force ROTC Program and winner of the Society of American Military Engineers ROTC Award. Date last seen: 16 April 1972 - Haiphong Area, North Vietnam Also missing; Lieutenant Colonel Orvin C. Jones, Jr of Newport News, Virginia |
On 16 April, 1972, a F-105G Thunderchief Fighter-Bomber Jet, call sign "Suntan 02” departed Korat Royal Thai Air Force Base in Thailand. Flown by then Captain Alan P. Mateja, and then Captain Orvin C. Jones Jr, Weapons/Systems Officer, taking part in a two-plane surface-to-air missile suppression mission over North Vietnam.
Due to technical problems, the mission was late arriving to the in-flight refueling point. With both aircraft low on fuel when they arrived, the flight leader instructed “Suntan 02” to top off and attempt to reach the mission target area as soon as possible, and assist aircraft already there. After leaving the refueling point, Major Mateja and Lt. Colonel Jones were not heard from again.
A pilot in the target area later reported he had seen 2 surface to air missiles launched south of the Haiphong target area, and one of them explode. He also reported seeing aircraft debris. It was believed the downed aircraft was Suntan 02.
Because this location was in a well defended enemy territory, no search and rescue efforts were initiated. An electronic search was unsuccessful. No remains, wreckage, or equipment has ever been found.
Major Alan Mateja left behind a wife and 2 sons.
He was a 1968 Graduate of the University of Louisville’s J. B. Speed School
A Distinguished Graduate through the Air Force ROTC Program and winner of the Society of American Military Engineers ROTC Award
Last September, 2018 there was a dedication of the University of Louisville ROTC gym in the memory of Alan. The gym is located on U of L's campus in Dougherty Hall, home to both the Army and Air Force ROTC units.
A couple of messages we have found left on remembrance websites --
1 “Your profile was the first one I've read since learning about MIA’s. To my amazement, I found out we're both from the same hometown, Louisville, Ky. Your sacrifice and sense of duty will always be remembered by me. God bless.”
2 “To a man I love yet never met, I’ll wear your bracelet with pride and honor.
Each time I visit your name on this Pensacola, Florida Wall, I feel you touch my hand as I stand here. You will never be forgotten as long as I live. I will one day meet you in heaven.” Major Alan Mateja, you are not forgotten..
Marker in Kentucky First Vietnam Memorial next to Southwest Government Center on Dixie Highway.
Marker at POW*MIA Memorial 1101 River Rd Louisville, Ky
Zachary Taylor National Cemetery Louisville, Ky - Section MA Site 26
Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall Washington DC Panel 1W, Line1
Due to technical problems, the mission was late arriving to the in-flight refueling point. With both aircraft low on fuel when they arrived, the flight leader instructed “Suntan 02” to top off and attempt to reach the mission target area as soon as possible, and assist aircraft already there. After leaving the refueling point, Major Mateja and Lt. Colonel Jones were not heard from again.
A pilot in the target area later reported he had seen 2 surface to air missiles launched south of the Haiphong target area, and one of them explode. He also reported seeing aircraft debris. It was believed the downed aircraft was Suntan 02.
Because this location was in a well defended enemy territory, no search and rescue efforts were initiated. An electronic search was unsuccessful. No remains, wreckage, or equipment has ever been found.
Major Alan Mateja left behind a wife and 2 sons.
He was a 1968 Graduate of the University of Louisville’s J. B. Speed School
A Distinguished Graduate through the Air Force ROTC Program and winner of the Society of American Military Engineers ROTC Award
Last September, 2018 there was a dedication of the University of Louisville ROTC gym in the memory of Alan. The gym is located on U of L's campus in Dougherty Hall, home to both the Army and Air Force ROTC units.
A couple of messages we have found left on remembrance websites --
1 “Your profile was the first one I've read since learning about MIA’s. To my amazement, I found out we're both from the same hometown, Louisville, Ky. Your sacrifice and sense of duty will always be remembered by me. God bless.”
2 “To a man I love yet never met, I’ll wear your bracelet with pride and honor.
Each time I visit your name on this Pensacola, Florida Wall, I feel you touch my hand as I stand here. You will never be forgotten as long as I live. I will one day meet you in heaven.” Major Alan Mateja, you are not forgotten..
Marker in Kentucky First Vietnam Memorial next to Southwest Government Center on Dixie Highway.
Marker at POW*MIA Memorial 1101 River Rd Louisville, Ky
Zachary Taylor National Cemetery Louisville, Ky - Section MA Site 26
Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall Washington DC Panel 1W, Line1
1st Lieutenant John Douglas Hale US Army
Troop B, 2nd Squadron, 17th Cavalry, 101st Airborne Division Call Sign - Banshee 13 Born: 07 December 1942 Louisville KY Home City of Record: Brandenburg KY He was a Teacher in Meade County Schools, and served as Constable before he enlisted. Date last seen 08 March 1971 - Quang Tri Province, South Vietnam Other Personnel Missing: Sgt. Robert E. Grantham, Los Angeles CA |
On March 8, 1971, 1st Lt. John D. Hale, pilot, and SGT. Robert E. Grantham, observer, were on board an OH6A "Loach" helicopter conducting an armed reconnaissance mission around Tiger Mountain in the infamous A Shau Valley with an AH1G Cobra gunship and a UH1A “Huey” helicopter as a control ship. The Loach was attempting to start a fire on a hilltop by dropping incendiary grenades.
When 1st Lt. Hale's aircraft later made a pass over the area to see if the fire had started, it began receiving ground fire. The crew of the Cobra gunship saw the ground fire and engaged a target while instructing Hale to break away. Lt. Hale called after he broke away, "I'm taking fire from 3 o'clock." The Cobra gunship then broke away from the first source of gunfire to engage the second. At that time both the Loach and Cobra pilots reported taking fire.
In the next radio transmission, 1st Lt Hale reported that he was hit and was going down, and asked if he was in sight. The Cobra gunship did see him and called the Huey control ship to confirm the sighting, but the control ship could not spot Hale's aircraft. The gunship began dropping white phosphorous grenades to help illuminate the area of Hale's aircraft.
At the time Hale called that he was going down, his aircraft seemed to come apart and begin spinning, as if it had a tail rotor failure.Numerous objects were seen flying out of the aircraft while it was spinning, and according to members of the other aircrews, they believed those things were being jettisoned by Sgt Grantham in order to lighten the aircraft in the hope of regaining control and altitude.. The spinning slowed at about 500 feet above the ground, but increased again prior to impact. The aircraft exploded upon impact with the ground.
The Huey control ship went over the crash site and hovered there, looking for survivors, but due to the intense enemy fire, it had to leave the area. The control ship returned, but saw no survivors on either hover. The largest part of the aircraft that could be seen was what appeared to be the left engine door. An electronic search was unsuccessful. No ground search was possible because of the intense enemy activity.
Hale and Grantham went down in an area so hot that no one could go in for them.
Because of this, the U.S. believes there is a strong probability that the Vietnamese know exactly what happened to them and to their aircraft. By 1973, aerial photographs revealed no sign of the aircraft; presumably, the aircraft parts had been salvaged by villagers or soldiers. They have never been found.
Additional information about this casualty:
Hale was shot down by a .51 cal. located on Tiger Mountain. You can get more information from VHPA members Bill Jones and Jim Miller as one or possibly both were covering Hale on that date. Hale relieved me on station and I did not find anything on the mountain that day. We were on the way back when I heard that he had been shot down. His aircraft exploded on impact. - from Steve Pullen
__________________________________________________________________
You Are Not Forgotten - 1/22/03 - By Jack Hammell
Doug,
We knew each other when I was an enlisted man at Fort Knox and you were still a civilian. Then we met again at the Armor Officer Basic Course, and went on to flight school. I got to Quang Tri Province in June '71 to find that you had been shot down 90 days earlier.
You were a good friend and a fun guy, and I have never forgotten you - and never will.
Rest in peace, buddy.
______________________________________________________
Marker in Bennett Cemetery, Meade County, KY
Plaque in Riverfront Park, Brandenburg, Ky - Base of Flag
Vietnam Memorial Wall Washington D.C. Panel/Line 04W-032
When 1st Lt. Hale's aircraft later made a pass over the area to see if the fire had started, it began receiving ground fire. The crew of the Cobra gunship saw the ground fire and engaged a target while instructing Hale to break away. Lt. Hale called after he broke away, "I'm taking fire from 3 o'clock." The Cobra gunship then broke away from the first source of gunfire to engage the second. At that time both the Loach and Cobra pilots reported taking fire.
In the next radio transmission, 1st Lt Hale reported that he was hit and was going down, and asked if he was in sight. The Cobra gunship did see him and called the Huey control ship to confirm the sighting, but the control ship could not spot Hale's aircraft. The gunship began dropping white phosphorous grenades to help illuminate the area of Hale's aircraft.
At the time Hale called that he was going down, his aircraft seemed to come apart and begin spinning, as if it had a tail rotor failure.Numerous objects were seen flying out of the aircraft while it was spinning, and according to members of the other aircrews, they believed those things were being jettisoned by Sgt Grantham in order to lighten the aircraft in the hope of regaining control and altitude.. The spinning slowed at about 500 feet above the ground, but increased again prior to impact. The aircraft exploded upon impact with the ground.
The Huey control ship went over the crash site and hovered there, looking for survivors, but due to the intense enemy fire, it had to leave the area. The control ship returned, but saw no survivors on either hover. The largest part of the aircraft that could be seen was what appeared to be the left engine door. An electronic search was unsuccessful. No ground search was possible because of the intense enemy activity.
Hale and Grantham went down in an area so hot that no one could go in for them.
Because of this, the U.S. believes there is a strong probability that the Vietnamese know exactly what happened to them and to their aircraft. By 1973, aerial photographs revealed no sign of the aircraft; presumably, the aircraft parts had been salvaged by villagers or soldiers. They have never been found.
Additional information about this casualty:
Hale was shot down by a .51 cal. located on Tiger Mountain. You can get more information from VHPA members Bill Jones and Jim Miller as one or possibly both were covering Hale on that date. Hale relieved me on station and I did not find anything on the mountain that day. We were on the way back when I heard that he had been shot down. His aircraft exploded on impact. - from Steve Pullen
__________________________________________________________________
You Are Not Forgotten - 1/22/03 - By Jack Hammell
Doug,
We knew each other when I was an enlisted man at Fort Knox and you were still a civilian. Then we met again at the Armor Officer Basic Course, and went on to flight school. I got to Quang Tri Province in June '71 to find that you had been shot down 90 days earlier.
You were a good friend and a fun guy, and I have never forgotten you - and never will.
Rest in peace, buddy.
______________________________________________________
Marker in Bennett Cemetery, Meade County, KY
Plaque in Riverfront Park, Brandenburg, Ky - Base of Flag
Vietnam Memorial Wall Washington D.C. Panel/Line 04W-032
Major Carl Berg Mitchell USAF
Born: 2 September, 1928 Mt. Sterling, Kentucky Service Years 1951 - 1964 1952-1959, 9th Bomb Wing 1952-1959, 5th Bombardment Squadron, Medium 1962-1964, 1st Air Commando Squadron, 34th Tactical Group Date last seen - 14 January 1964 Bien Hoa Province, South Vietnam Also missing; Captain Vincent J. Hickman, Navigator from New York |
Known as "Cully" to his family and "Mitch" to his friends, was from Mt. Sterling, Kentucky, where his mother had a farm originally homesteaded by his Anderson forebearers. The farm, town and his family were the home of Cully's heart since he began life in 1928 as an Army brat. His father, Carl Berg, graduated from West Point in 1920. He married Mary English Anderson in 1922 and at the time of Cully's birth was teaching at Culver Military Academy in South Bend, Indiana. A younger brother, Corwin, arrived a few years after Carl and, until their father's suicide in 1938, the young family spent the majority of their time stationed in the South. Cully's boyhood loves included golf, swimming, riding horses and spending summers in Kentucky on the farm.
West Point appointments were hard to come by because of the war, Cully attended Sullivan's Prep in Washington, DC for a year. There he placed third out of a thousand examinees on the Presidential Appointment Exam.
Cully became a plebe in 1946 at West Point and was a little more prepared than many of his classmates for the discipline of military life. Although recognized for his intellect, he also was known for taking the time to explain or review an academic problem; to demonstrate a military procedure; or to sit down and listen to a problem and consider it with thoughtfulness. He was, however, a notorious teaser, to the extent that he mortified people at times. His roommate, just married and preparing to leave on his honeymoon, found a letter from a former girlfriend conspicuously planted amongst his belongings.
Cully did well at West Point graduating in 1950, and his desire to fly led to his commission into the Air Force. While attending Basic Pilot Training in Sherman, Texas, he and his cohorts often went to Dallas. During this time he began to date Colleen Hill, whose mother, Irene, was occasionally serenaded late in the evening with "Goodnight Irene" by Cully and his buddies. In August of 1951, with new wings on his uniform, he and Colleen were married.
By February of 1952 Cully was assigned as a B‑29 pilot to the 50th Bomb Squadron, 9th Bomb Wing, Travis Air Force Base, California, and became a part of the Strategic Air Command and its expanding nuclear deterrent. At the onset, he not only demonstrated that he was a fine pilot and a promising young officer but also showed tremendous dedication. He took advantage of opportunities to do more, volunteering to serve as the squadron ground training officer and as the squadron security officer. After he and his B‑29 crew achieved combat ready status, they began frequent overseas deployments for training and nuclear alert operations.
By the mid 1950s, Cully and his young family were stationed at Mountain Home AFB, Idaho where son Michael and daughter Shelley were born. Mary Elizabeth, the eldest, had been born in Dallas while Cully was away on a mission. Cully was assigned to the 9th Bomb Wing, which was transitioning to the all‑jet B‑47 bomber, the centerpiece of SAC's nuclear deterrent force. Cully worked hard with his crew and they achieved the highest crew level within SAC Select Crew Status. Cully advanced from assistant squadron operations officer to squadron adjutant to aircraft commander, demonstrating his excellent abilities as a pilot and as a resourceful leader of men.
The nature of Cully's assignments and his inherent talents led to his interest in the acquisition process for both the advanced manned strategic aircraft and the advanced ballistic missile systems. When he became eligible for career diversification, he was selected to attend the University of Michigan where he received his masters, with honors, in astronautical and aeronautical engineering in 1961.
His next assignment was to Air Force Systems Command Ballistics Systems division in Los Angeles and then San Bernardino, California as a management systems officer. He was appointed by Headquarters, AFSC as a primary team member to define the AFSC management approach to systems definition, earning him the Air Force Commendation Medal and recognition by his commanding officer as "the most outstanding officer of his grade in the entire organization."
Cully's love of flying never diminished, however, and with the expansion of US involvement in Vietnam in 1963, he decided to volunteer as an Air Force advisor and B‑26 pilot. Cully was keenly aware that many of his classmates had served in the Korean War, and he felt that his military career would not be complete without combat experience.
Cully left his family on 14 November 1963 to join the Air Command Squadron at Bien Hoa, Vietnam where he began flying combat missions in support of friendly ground forces. His last mission. with his copilot, Vincent J. Hickman, and their Vietnamese observer, was on 14 January 1964. It was subsequently recorded by Lieutenant Lee Kaster in a letter dated June 1964 as follows:
On 14 January 1964, Cully and Vince were scrambled at 1800 and instructed to rendezvous with their Forward Air Control for a strike on VC structures. At 1810, the FAC marked a target with smoke and told them to drop napalm on it. Cully dropped two cans squarely on it. During the pass, the FAC noticed groundfire about 100 meters north of the target. He told CulIy and Vince about it, and Cully answered. "Roger, we'll come around and hit it." As he started his final approach. the plane nosed in and crashed into the jungle 30 kilometers northeast of the Bien Hoa Air Base. Although a medical unit was dispatched to the crash site, it was unable to secure the area due to additional heavy enemy fire.
When the area was finally searched five days later, no survivors were found.
Cully was posthumously awarded the nation's second highest medal for valor, the Air Force Cross, and the citation read:
CITATION:
The President of the United States of America, takes pride in presenting the Air Force Cross to Major Carl Berg Mitchell, United States Air Force, for extraordinary heroism in military operations against an opposing armed force as an Advisor-Pilot of a B-26B aircraft in the 1st Air Commando Squadron, 34th Tactical Group, Bien Hoa Air Base, Vietnam, in action on 14 January 1964. On that date, Major Mitchell voluntarily exposed himself and his aircraft during low level flights over hidden Viet Cong machine gun installations. Despite heavy machine gun fire, which repeatedly struck his aircraft, Major Mitchell aggressively continued his efforts to locate and destroy the machine gun installations until his badly damaged aircraft crashed and burned. Through his extraordinary heroism, superb airmanship, and aggressiveness in the face of hostile forces, Major Mitchell reflected the highest credit upon himself and the United States Air Force.
"The death of a man in his prime is never easy to understand, and Cully had much to live for ‑ to see his children grow up, to return to his "Old Kentucky Home" and to farm. He was a dedicated and accomplished Air Force officer who gave his life for what he believed in, and that is a privilege. He has been loved and missed by many."
Interesting note: Because there was not a formal declaration of war by Congress, Mitchell and Hickman were listed by the Defense Department as non-combat deaths. At the time, Air Force personnel in Vietnam were there in
the role of advisors (explaining the need for a Vietnamese observer on the aircraft).
Remembered
Headstone placed in his honor in the West Point Cemetery, West Point, New York.
Name engraved on Vietnam War Monument in front of Montgomery County War Memorial Courthouse, Mt Sterling, Ky
Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall Washington D.C. PANEL / LINE 1E/40
___________________________________________
Major Mitchell’s father, Carl Edwin Berg, served with the Wisconsin National Guard in France during WWI.
From France he entered the academy and graduated with the class of 1920. Carl served in the 1st Cavalry and the 120th Field Artillery of the Wisconsin National Guard from 16 July 1917 to 1 July 1918 which served in France. He was appointed to West Point from that unit. The 120th Field Artillery came into being on 22 September 1917 at Camp MacArthur, Waco, TX, as a part of the 57th Field Artillery Brigade, better known as the Iron Brigade. The 120th Field Artillery Regiment previously had been the 1st Wisconsin Cavalry.
The history of the 1st Wisconsin Cavalry goes back to Civil War days. The 120th Field Artillery, as part of the 57th Brigade continued its training at Camp Mac Arthur, with the 32nd Infantry Division until February 1918, when the entire division was ordered to Europe. The 120th Field Artillery landed at Liverpool, England and then by rail to South Hampton and across the English Channel to Le Havre, France.
In France the 120th trained at Camp De Coetquidan, an old French Artillery Camp. It was here that it was equipped with French 75's and horses. Shortly before the 57th Brigade was ordered to the front in Alsace, the 2nd Battalion of the 120th was sent to Saumur, France with its batteries acting as training batteries for the Saumur Artillery School. The balance of the Battalion arrived in Belfort with the 57th Brigade on 8 June and marched to the front as a part of the 32nd Division, for the first time since leaving Camp Mac Arthur.
The 120th Field Artillery went into action in the Chateau-Thierry sector on 1 August 1918 near Rancheros in support of the 32nd Division. After the 32nd Division had taken Juivgay, the 32nd Division was relieved by the 2nd Moroccan Division, which included the famous "French Foreign Legion". The 120th Field Artillery remained on the line in support of the Foreign Legion and helped blast a path for the charge of the Legionnaires.
The 120th along with the 57th Brigade, was congratulated for the part they played in this action by the Commanding General of the Moroccan Division, by General Panot, French Corps Commander, and by General Mangin. He died Feb. 12, 1938
Captain Carl E. Berg is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
Colonel Joseph Castleman Morrison USAF 555th Tactical Fighter Squadron, 432nd Tactical Recon Wing, 7th Air Force Born 13 November 1930 Lexington, KY 1948 Graduate of Louisville Male High School Graduate of Georgetown College - Georgetown, Ky Ordained Baptist Minister Date last seen 25 November 1968 Western Quang Binh Province, North Vietnam. Also missing 1st Lieutenant San D. Francisco of Burbank, Washington, co-pilot Udorn Airfield, Thailand |
On 25 November 1968, then Major Joseph C. Morrison, pilot, and 1st Lieutenant San D. Francisco, co-pilot, comprised the crew of a McDonnell Douglas Phantom II Fighter (F-4D) call sign “Grommet 2,” that was the number 2 aircraft in a flight of two. Grommet flight’s mission was to provide fighter escort for an unarmed RF4C aircraft on a photo reconnaissance mission against NVA forces preparing to transport war material through the Ban Karai Pass, then down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The intended target was Route 137, the primary road running from the major North Vietnamese port city of Dong Hoi, Bo Trach District, Quang Binh Province, to the North Vietnamese and Laos border and through the Ban Karai Pass.
At 1241 hours, the flight leader reported they crossed into North Vietnam just north of the Ban Karai Pass. At 1242 hours, Grommet 2 reported they were at 1720N 10612E, heading of 13 degrees, at an altitude of 1000 feet, traveling 540 knots and “We’ve taken a hit.” He further reported both crewmen were uninjured and were ejecting from their crippled Phantom. Joseph Morrison and San Francisco landed on the ground approximately 3 miles east of the border and 4 miles north of the pass itself, in extreme western Quang Binh Province, North Vietnam.
The reconnaissance pilot immediately broke off his photo run and climbed to altitude in order to remain in the vicinity to provide any assistance he could. Grommet Lead heard a steady beeper and notified Crown 6, the Airborne Command and Control aircraft, that his wingman was down and gave their location by coordinates and proximity to a delta reference point. Further. Grommet Lead and the crew of the reconnaissance aircraft spotted the wreckage of Grommet 2 and both parachutes within 700 meters of an enemy encampment on the west side of the primary road running through the pass. On the east side of the road they also saw numerous enemy personnel and trucks preparing to enter the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
Misty 41, the Forward Air Controller in the area, relayed the information to Invert Control, the ground control center, and proceeded to the area where he sighted the aircraft wreckage. The pilot of Misty 41, who was now the onsite control aircraft for all search and rescue (SAR) efforts to recover Joseph Morrison and San Francisco, established voice and visual contact immediately with Major Morrison.
A short time later, at 1315 hours, the FAC was also able to establish probable contact with 1st Lt. Francisco. The voice reply that Misty 41 received was extremely garbled; however, a review of the taped conversation convinced both the pilot and observer they had in fact made contact with Grommet 2’s co-pilot. It was believed that San Francisco landed in very close proximity to enemy personnel and was “detained” shortly after the initial radio contact with him was established.
Major Morrison managed to evade capture during the rest of that day and night. The next morning voice contact was re-established at 0555 hours, 26 November, by the new FAC on station, Misty 11. The FAC pilot also noted that the parachutes, which had been visible on the 25th, were no longer visible on 26 November. Also on 26 November 1968, the Vietnam People’s Army published news that referenced the shoot down of an American aircraft and the capture of the two pilots although the article did not specifically mention either crewman by name.
Once communication was established with Major Morrison, SAR aircraft were called in. Unfortunately, because of very poor weather conditions, no attempt to pick up the pilot was possible. The last known contact with Major Morrison was at 0723 hours by Misty 21. At that time he confirmed he was still okay.
Over the next several hours numerous unsuccessful attempts were made to contact both Joseph Morrison and San Francisco. Finally all search and recovery efforts were terminated at 1727 hours when no further voice or beeper signals could be established with either downed crewman. At the time formal SAR efforts were terminated, Joseph Morrison and San Francisco were both listed Missing in Action. In the years after the war’s end, the status of both men was acknowledged to be Prisoner of War rather than merely missing.
On 9 August 1989, a team from the Joint Casualty Resolution Center (JCRC) traveled to Quang Binh Province to conduct an investigation into the loss of Grommet 02 and they successfully located the crash site of the Phantom. In addition to finding the wreckage, the team interviewed local residents of the area and received hearsay information that one or two crewmen were buried in the area.
In April 1991 the US government released a list of Prisoners of War and Missing in Action who were known to be alive in enemy hands and for whom there is no evidence that he or she died in captivity. This list, commonly referred to today as the USG’s “Last Known Alive” list, included both San Francisco and Joseph Morrison.
In July and August 1991, JCRC personnel were provided documents from Bo Trach District, Quang Binh Province that identified both crewmen as casualties. There was also an indication that US wartime remains had already been recovered from the area, but the team members were not given anything of substance to support that claim. During this same trip, JCRC personnel visited the museum of the 280th Air Defense Regiment that contained wartime memorabilia. Items found included Major Morrison’s US Air Force issued revolver and a data plate from their aircraft with a description that credited the 105th Air Defense Battalion, 280th Regiment, with the shoot down.
In 1992, a National Security Agency (NSA) correlation study of all communist radio intercepts pertaining to missing Americans, which was presented to the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs in a classified format, was finally declassified and made public. According to this document, 3 North Vietnamese radio messages were intercepted and correlated to this incident. The NSA synopsis states: “Note; downed in immediate vicinity of enemy encampment. Initial voice contact established with both crewmen. Two aircraft shot down, an RA-5C with one crewman dead (Thum) and one crewman captured (Stamm), and an F-4D with one crewman “pick up” (captured), (Francisco or ……….). The US aircraft that was …. In the Do Lung (1845N 10518E) area was shot down by a missile … there were two pilots, one had died and the other had been picked up. Another aircraft had been shot down at Quang Binh (1730N 10620E) and the pilot had also been picked up. Further discussion involved the possible use of an AN-2 to transport the two pilots from Vinh to Hanoi. An AN-2 conducted a round-trip flight between Bai Thuong and Vinh on 26 November. Possibly involves the proposed transfer of the two US pilot POWs north from Vinh. DIA preliminary assessment, DIA concurs with the initial correlation for this case. The …. Indicates at least one of the two crew from this aircraft was rescued. DIA had this information in their files and both individuals were listed by DIA as POWs at homecoming based on that info. This latest review … did not add anything new to Ref. 1329.
In late 1992, a large number of photographs from the North Vietnamese Central Army Museum in Hanoi were turned over to the United States. In these black and white pictures were five pertaining to the pilot and copilot of Grommet 2. Two of the photos show Major Morrison lying dead on the ground. The nametag on his flight suit is easily readable and confirms his identity. One is a full body photo and the other is a head and shoulders view.
The other three photos show a variety of gear and aircraft wreckage carefully laid out. That gear includes: Both men’s ID cards, 2 pistols and gun belts, 1 helmet, 1 survival knife, 2 survival radios, 1 watch, both Geneva Convention cards, Joseph Morrison’s drivers license, a small gear bag bearing the insignia of their squadron, both life preserver inspection cards, a portion of a shot record belonging to one of the men, a $20.00 bill, a film cartridge from the aircraft, and wreckage to include one of the engines and the tail section.
The evaluation of these photos by US government personnel concluded Joseph Morrison died in a shoot-out with the North Vietnamese, and that he probably made the decision he was not going down without a fight and/or he was not going to allow himself to be captured.
Update 2018 - For Major San D. Francisco, a site was excavated this year, and although the recovery of what was reported as pieces of “life support” material appeared to be initially promising, Francisco was not found. Another site will be dug up and searched in the spring of 2019 by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.
From L.E. Martin - Friend and schoolmate
A friend remembered -
I remember this man, "J.C", he was known to us at Georgetown College in Kentucky, and I honor his memory and his sacrifice. He was an upperclassman, but I shall always remember his friendship to a lowly freshman in the phys.ed. class he was employed to conduct. He was a Kappa Alpha, and I know when he emerged from his downed plane, the spirit and tradition of that fraternity must have spurred him to go down fighting as had been the case of many of his brothers before him in countless battles
Memorial Day 1999
Marker - Veterans Park 650 Southpoint Dr Lexington, Ky
Marker - Arlington National Cemetery, Memorial Section H
Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall Washington D.C. PANEL 38W, LINE 60
At 1241 hours, the flight leader reported they crossed into North Vietnam just north of the Ban Karai Pass. At 1242 hours, Grommet 2 reported they were at 1720N 10612E, heading of 13 degrees, at an altitude of 1000 feet, traveling 540 knots and “We’ve taken a hit.” He further reported both crewmen were uninjured and were ejecting from their crippled Phantom. Joseph Morrison and San Francisco landed on the ground approximately 3 miles east of the border and 4 miles north of the pass itself, in extreme western Quang Binh Province, North Vietnam.
The reconnaissance pilot immediately broke off his photo run and climbed to altitude in order to remain in the vicinity to provide any assistance he could. Grommet Lead heard a steady beeper and notified Crown 6, the Airborne Command and Control aircraft, that his wingman was down and gave their location by coordinates and proximity to a delta reference point. Further. Grommet Lead and the crew of the reconnaissance aircraft spotted the wreckage of Grommet 2 and both parachutes within 700 meters of an enemy encampment on the west side of the primary road running through the pass. On the east side of the road they also saw numerous enemy personnel and trucks preparing to enter the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
Misty 41, the Forward Air Controller in the area, relayed the information to Invert Control, the ground control center, and proceeded to the area where he sighted the aircraft wreckage. The pilot of Misty 41, who was now the onsite control aircraft for all search and rescue (SAR) efforts to recover Joseph Morrison and San Francisco, established voice and visual contact immediately with Major Morrison.
A short time later, at 1315 hours, the FAC was also able to establish probable contact with 1st Lt. Francisco. The voice reply that Misty 41 received was extremely garbled; however, a review of the taped conversation convinced both the pilot and observer they had in fact made contact with Grommet 2’s co-pilot. It was believed that San Francisco landed in very close proximity to enemy personnel and was “detained” shortly after the initial radio contact with him was established.
Major Morrison managed to evade capture during the rest of that day and night. The next morning voice contact was re-established at 0555 hours, 26 November, by the new FAC on station, Misty 11. The FAC pilot also noted that the parachutes, which had been visible on the 25th, were no longer visible on 26 November. Also on 26 November 1968, the Vietnam People’s Army published news that referenced the shoot down of an American aircraft and the capture of the two pilots although the article did not specifically mention either crewman by name.
Once communication was established with Major Morrison, SAR aircraft were called in. Unfortunately, because of very poor weather conditions, no attempt to pick up the pilot was possible. The last known contact with Major Morrison was at 0723 hours by Misty 21. At that time he confirmed he was still okay.
Over the next several hours numerous unsuccessful attempts were made to contact both Joseph Morrison and San Francisco. Finally all search and recovery efforts were terminated at 1727 hours when no further voice or beeper signals could be established with either downed crewman. At the time formal SAR efforts were terminated, Joseph Morrison and San Francisco were both listed Missing in Action. In the years after the war’s end, the status of both men was acknowledged to be Prisoner of War rather than merely missing.
On 9 August 1989, a team from the Joint Casualty Resolution Center (JCRC) traveled to Quang Binh Province to conduct an investigation into the loss of Grommet 02 and they successfully located the crash site of the Phantom. In addition to finding the wreckage, the team interviewed local residents of the area and received hearsay information that one or two crewmen were buried in the area.
In April 1991 the US government released a list of Prisoners of War and Missing in Action who were known to be alive in enemy hands and for whom there is no evidence that he or she died in captivity. This list, commonly referred to today as the USG’s “Last Known Alive” list, included both San Francisco and Joseph Morrison.
In July and August 1991, JCRC personnel were provided documents from Bo Trach District, Quang Binh Province that identified both crewmen as casualties. There was also an indication that US wartime remains had already been recovered from the area, but the team members were not given anything of substance to support that claim. During this same trip, JCRC personnel visited the museum of the 280th Air Defense Regiment that contained wartime memorabilia. Items found included Major Morrison’s US Air Force issued revolver and a data plate from their aircraft with a description that credited the 105th Air Defense Battalion, 280th Regiment, with the shoot down.
In 1992, a National Security Agency (NSA) correlation study of all communist radio intercepts pertaining to missing Americans, which was presented to the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs in a classified format, was finally declassified and made public. According to this document, 3 North Vietnamese radio messages were intercepted and correlated to this incident. The NSA synopsis states: “Note; downed in immediate vicinity of enemy encampment. Initial voice contact established with both crewmen. Two aircraft shot down, an RA-5C with one crewman dead (Thum) and one crewman captured (Stamm), and an F-4D with one crewman “pick up” (captured), (Francisco or ……….). The US aircraft that was …. In the Do Lung (1845N 10518E) area was shot down by a missile … there were two pilots, one had died and the other had been picked up. Another aircraft had been shot down at Quang Binh (1730N 10620E) and the pilot had also been picked up. Further discussion involved the possible use of an AN-2 to transport the two pilots from Vinh to Hanoi. An AN-2 conducted a round-trip flight between Bai Thuong and Vinh on 26 November. Possibly involves the proposed transfer of the two US pilot POWs north from Vinh. DIA preliminary assessment, DIA concurs with the initial correlation for this case. The …. Indicates at least one of the two crew from this aircraft was rescued. DIA had this information in their files and both individuals were listed by DIA as POWs at homecoming based on that info. This latest review … did not add anything new to Ref. 1329.
In late 1992, a large number of photographs from the North Vietnamese Central Army Museum in Hanoi were turned over to the United States. In these black and white pictures were five pertaining to the pilot and copilot of Grommet 2. Two of the photos show Major Morrison lying dead on the ground. The nametag on his flight suit is easily readable and confirms his identity. One is a full body photo and the other is a head and shoulders view.
The other three photos show a variety of gear and aircraft wreckage carefully laid out. That gear includes: Both men’s ID cards, 2 pistols and gun belts, 1 helmet, 1 survival knife, 2 survival radios, 1 watch, both Geneva Convention cards, Joseph Morrison’s drivers license, a small gear bag bearing the insignia of their squadron, both life preserver inspection cards, a portion of a shot record belonging to one of the men, a $20.00 bill, a film cartridge from the aircraft, and wreckage to include one of the engines and the tail section.
The evaluation of these photos by US government personnel concluded Joseph Morrison died in a shoot-out with the North Vietnamese, and that he probably made the decision he was not going down without a fight and/or he was not going to allow himself to be captured.
Update 2018 - For Major San D. Francisco, a site was excavated this year, and although the recovery of what was reported as pieces of “life support” material appeared to be initially promising, Francisco was not found. Another site will be dug up and searched in the spring of 2019 by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.
From L.E. Martin - Friend and schoolmate
A friend remembered -
I remember this man, "J.C", he was known to us at Georgetown College in Kentucky, and I honor his memory and his sacrifice. He was an upperclassman, but I shall always remember his friendship to a lowly freshman in the phys.ed. class he was employed to conduct. He was a Kappa Alpha, and I know when he emerged from his downed plane, the spirit and tradition of that fraternity must have spurred him to go down fighting as had been the case of many of his brothers before him in countless battles
Memorial Day 1999
Marker - Veterans Park 650 Southpoint Dr Lexington, Ky
Marker - Arlington National Cemetery, Memorial Section H
Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall Washington D.C. PANEL 38W, LINE 60