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THE UNCOUNTED CASUALTIES, Part 2
by
Roge r Sois et
Since my initi al segm ent on this story abou t the
unrec ogniz ed casu altie s of the Vietn am War (CR Sept/
Oct 1994 ), I
have been fortu nate to recei ve nume rous cont ribut ions
to my
resea rch. As I furth er indic ated in my Freedom of Infor
mati on
Foll ies (CR Jan/F eb 1995 ), the leve l of coop erati on I have
expe rienc ed with the U.S. gove rnme nt in my resea
has been
disap poin ting. Secr ets have a way of build ing a rch
mome
ntum of
thei r own, as succe eding gene ratio ns of bure aucr ats figh
lids shut and door s close d ... that whic h has been denie t to keep
d for
thirt y years can be pote ntial ly dama ging to pres ent poli
ticia ns
and their appo intee s, so they reso lutel y conti nue to guard
the
reco rds.
But littl e bits and piec es keep slipp
out, as the forty eigh t diffe rent sourc es I used to tabu lateing
my findi ngs atte st.
What I have asser nbled --the name s, rank s wher e appl icab
le, statu s,date of disap peara nce and natio nalit y of six hund red and
and women who were caug ht up in the conf lict in Sout heas nine men
t Asia
betw een the years 1945 and 1980 --is testim ony to our coun
try's
invol veme nt in that conf lict befo re 1959 , afte r 1975 ,
and
in more
ways than just the over t U.S. mili tary effo rt.
All of which may not sound like news to some, but what
is a
reve latio n is the fact that our gove rnme nt cont
inue
s
to
keep
track of peop le pres ently categ orize d as "deta inees " by
Defe nse Intel ligen ce Agen cy (DIA). When such peop le are the
not
inclu ded in our "Mis sing- in-A ction " discu ssion beca use
they
are
not mili tary, my curi osity is arou sed.
Our gove rnme nt is very spec ific on the numb
mili tary
casu altie s from the war: 58,19 1. This inclu des er252of name
have been added since the Vietn am Vete rans Mem orial was s that
dedi cated
in 1982 , and it was the circu msta nces invo lving this addi
that cause d my initi al inqu iry. Why were we stil l addin tion
g names
more than ten years later ?
The answ er was simp le: some who died durin the war, due
to
the place and mann er of death , did not fit into g any
neat
categ
ory
and so were recor ded elsew here; year s later , afte r appe
als
and
reco nsid erati on, some (but not all) of these were picke
d up. And
peop le who were wounded in Vietn am, Laos or Camb
odia
but
die of those wounds unti l years late r were elig ible for did not
inclu sion
in the casu alty reco rd for the war, and there by could
be
by havin g thei r names added to the Wall . Being an inqu hono red
isiti ve
perso n, I asked if this happ ened auto mati cally .
No, I was told; an appl icati on had to be
ved by the
Depa rtmen t of Defe nse. How long does such apprappro
oval
Year s
in some case s, and no one in auth ority will respo nd take?
to
my
ques tions on how many appl icati ons are pend
how many have
been decli ned, and how many have neve r been ing,
subm
itted (requ ests
can be made only by the imme diate fami ly).
Jan Scrug gs, the chie f arch itect behin d the Wall and the
Mem orial foun datio n, respo nded to my criti cism
on this poin t by
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-2telling me that he did not bother himself with this aspect of
the war, but simply depended on the DoD to provide him with the
names. He also told me that he had found the government to be
completely cooperative in every respect, and that my concern for
the WIAs (wounded-in-action) who later died was unfounded. I did
note, however, that about a year later Al Santoli wrote an
article for Parade magazine announcing the "In Memory" album as
an addition to the Memorial. This album carries an Honor Roll of
servicemen who died as a result of their participation in the
war, but for one reason or another have been deemed ineligible
for inclusion on the Wall. A year ago it held seventy names,
predominately of men who died after the war of either Agent
Orange complications or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder suicide.
Case closed? Not quite. Aside from those who never had an
application made to either the Department of Defense or the "In
Memory" section of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Foundation, what
about the u.S. civilians and the non-Vietnamese foreign
nationals?
I noticed that ~any such entries exist in the
Defense Intelligence Agency's listing, both for dead and missing.
According to James Wold, Assistant Secretary of Defense, the
"select foreign nationals" listed as dead or being kept tabs on
are the "citizens of a foreign country who were incarcerated in a
Southeast Asia prison during the Vietnam War." Which did not
answer my question, why would we be interested? Obviously we
were making no attempt to keep track of all foreign nationals in
Hanoi's prison system, as that would include a few hundred
thousand Vietnamese, Chinese, Cambodians and Laotians.
The answer, still a bit vague, finally came from Charles
Henley, the Directory of External Affairs in the Defense POW/MIA
Office. According to Henley, "certain foreign nationals are
included in the PMSEA' due to their association with the United
States military forces and/or private organizations at the time
of their loss." He cites South Korean and Thai military, German
medical personnel and journalists as examples.
What about our missing covert warriors? According to the
Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee report dated May 23, 1991,
it is estimated that some 2,500 men are still unaccounted for in
this category. While I suspect that at least some of those men
are included in my list, the Defense Intelligence Agency informs
me that all responsibility for keeping track of missing civilians
lies with the Department of State.
I periodically follow up on my July 1993 Freedom of
Information Request to the State Department; they're still
working on it. I've got to wait my turn.
Operation Homecoming in March 1973 saw the emotional
repatriation of 591 men, and ever since there have been questions
and recriminations about the 2,200+ military personnel who are
still missing. Despite strong evidence that at least some of
them survived long after their capture, the Vietnamese have
steadfastly maintained that there are no more. Marine Robert
Garwood caused a sensation in 1979 when he managed to get word
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-3out that he was still a captive, and we promptly hit him with a
court-martial. Welcome home, Bob.
Then in 1992, Ted Schweitzer returned from Vietnam after
spending seven months in intrigue and researching archives of the
war in Hanoi ... archives which the Vietnamese government denied
ever existed. Gruesome pictures surfaced, and a pattern of
summary executions, mob violence and systematic torture emerged
to explain the missing men. This shocking story of depravity,
lies and deception emerged in Malcolm McConnell's 1995 book,
Inside Hanoi's Secret Archives.
The current situation, with a continuing trickle of bodies
along with the initial tantalizing information obtained by
"Operation Swamp Ranger" (Schweitzer's code name after he agreed
to work with the DIA) , appears to be the incentive behind the
Clinton Administration's drive to normalize relations with the
Vietnamese. The attitude of our government appears to be that
those men are dead, it's been a long time, so let's shake hands
and put it all behind us.
Not so fast. Even if all the military missing are dead,
what about the covert people, the missing U.S. civilians, the
South Korean, Australian and Thai troops who are still
unaccounted for, and the foreign nationals who were in some
capacity associated with us during the years of our Southeast
Asian nightmare? The Vietnamese, according to Ted Schweitzer,
will not turn over the evidence on the fate of most of our MIA
servicemen because they are afraid of an angry response (from
Clinton?!). But they have made no effort to explain about these
other missing people--perhaps because our government is not
asking.
Why open another can of worms?
Most intriguing of my sources is the "Live Sighting" report
from the DIA. It contains 4,280 reports which identify a named
or non-specific person, with date of sighting, country of
capture, and "comments". The comments on a sighting might range
from "a known scam" to "lAC APPV'D", this second presumably
meaning that a specific person was approved by the intelligence
committee as being the subject of the sighting on a particular
date. Some approvals took more than ten years after the date of
the sighting, and it is my conclusion that the sightings which
were finally "resolved" after many years with no additional proof
represent a convenient way to close the book. Part of this
discussion is the still-controversial process known as "Presumed
Finding of Death" by which a missing serviceman can be
administratively declared dead one year and one day after his/her
disappearance. Unresolved sightings of MIAs, much like the
unresolved sightings of UFOs, have a way of developing a life of
their own--so no doubt the people in DIA felt some pressure to
find a solution.
Numerous entries in the Live Sighting Reports state that a
person is "living freely", which is taken to mean not under
duress. I noted that Garwood is identified more than 300 times,
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going back as early as 1976. While at first simply listed like
all the other entries, he was later categorized as a "nonprisoner". This tracks with his own story (see Conversations
with the Enemy) in which he described how he slowly won the
confidence of his guards over a period of fourteen years. But
notice the 1976 date--we knew about him still alive in Vietnam
three years before he smuggled out a message!
There are more "non-prisoners" (Thomas Schooley, B.R.
Brennan, Johnny King, McKinley Nolan) still being reported, as
well as "non-U.S. (French)" and "former detainees". That last
category really intrigues me--how would a group of chair-jockeys
in the Defense Intelligence Agency know whether or not the
sighting of an American or other non-Vietnamese was of a person
"living freely" as a "non-prisoner"? And "former detainee" means
someone who had been previously categorized as a "detainee" and
is no longer being held prisoner. There is no evidence that any
IAC personnel have visited Vietnam or Laos to interview any of
these men who allegedly are staying there of their own free will.
Meanwhile, if the person is no longer being detained, it
would be nice if that individual would be identified so we could
scratch one off the list of the missing ... but those sightings
carry no specific identification. Are they civilians or
"sanitized" military, perhaps, names not on our MIA list?
According to Director Henley there are no additional names on the
classified version of PMSEA, only the coordinates of each loss.
I wonder.
The category of "detainee" applies to twelve named
individuals who are not military MIAs. All but two of these men
are identified as U.S. citizens who were captured after the fall
of South Vietnam in 1975. I consider these to be the most
significant of my findings, and accordingly list them by name
along with their date of capture:
James W. Clark
Ronald K. Dean
Chris Delance
John D. Dewhurst
Michael Flecker
Stuart Glass
Frederick Graham
Kerry G. Hamill
Lance MacNamara
David L. Scott
4/21/78
11/24/78
11/24/78
10/13/78
7/22/84
10/13/78
6/8/83
10/17/78
4/21/78
11/24/78
The other two, identified as "Taylor" and "Bosque", are of
unknown nationality with no dates of capture cited.
Another disturbing finding in my research is the presence of
information on military personnel who were killed in the course
of their service in Southeast Asia, yet they are not carried as
casualties of the war. Possibly the circumstances of their
deaths required that they not be honored by having their names
-5placed on the Wall ... or possibly they just fell through an
administrative crack. Having had a man in my platoon who
overdosed on heroin while AWOL in 1970 (his body was found at
Danang) whose name is proudly on the Wall, I find it difficult to
believe there were causes of death which would exclude someone
from being memorialized. Yet I find numerous cases where
Americans died with a body to prove death (i.e., Air Force MAJ
Harlan Davis who died 7/7/72 in Thailand) or without a body
(i.e., E3 Michael Combs, last seen on 11/12/67 in Vietnam) whose
names are not tabulated as part of the toll from the war.
CPT Harry Cramer had the misfortune to die before the
official tabulation began in 1959; his date of death was
10/21/57. But he was still in the u.s. Armed Forces, and he
still died in Vietnam. Yet he doesn't count.
Was there a desire to keep the numbers of fatalities down
wherever possible? Consider Marine 1st Lieutenant William F.
Kohlrusch whose A3B (Skywarrior) jet crashed in the South China
Sea on 4/1/68. His death did not merit inclusion on the Wall.
Or the C2A flying from Subic Bay to Tan Son Nhut which crashed at
sea on 12/12/71--all ten men on board were in the U.S. Navy, all
died in the incident, and none are on the Wall. 2 There are many
more such examples.
The civilian aspect of our war in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia
is difficult to quantify without the cooperation of the State
Department. But the fact that many non-military u.S. citizens
died there is beyond dispute; the fact that many are still
missing is also documented. Eleanor Vietti, an American doctor
captured in 1962 and now rumored to have married a captive French
doctor, is but one of an ever-growing list of Americans whose
bodies have never been recovered but are nonetheless carried as
"dead". Reuben Bailon, James Ackley, Dewey Ball, Charles Dean,
Eugene DeBruin, Jerry Degnan, Allen Blewett and Henry Blood ... and
that's just the Americans on my first three pages. Many more of
the missing on the first three of my thirteen total pages of
"uncounted casualties" are from France, the Philippines, Germany,
South Korea, Canada, Australia and Britain, with the largest
number being of unknown nationality. All missing, all supposedly
dead--and no one's counting them as casualties of war.
Just as the 591 military POWs who returned and the nineteen
military escapees I found are not counted as casualties of the
war, so too are the civilian returnees and escapees omitted.
I
have found 255 civilians who were released after spending varying
lengths of time as guests of the Vietnamese, Laotians, et. al.
At least 33 of these were women, possibly more. Due to my
unfamiliarity with Thai, Japanese, Filipino and other languages'
first names, as well as the use of initials or even no first name
given, I was unable to distinguish sex in all cases. I did,
however, notice that of the four civilians who escaped, two of
them were female--Linda and Michelle Smith. Good show, ladies.
Certainly the level of prisoner releases is in excess of the
general public peIception for this activity. The bulk of these
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releases occurred during the war, but quite a few have taken
place as recently as 19BB. Have deals been quietly made to
secure their release? Reportedly the French were still paying
generous fees to "maintain cemeteries" for their fallen soldiers
in Vietnam into the 1970s ... and some 1500 French Metropolitan
troops were freed in that same decade, twenty years after their
war in Southeast Asia ended. 3 Perhaps we have followed suit.
Oddly enough, another aspect of the war that the general
public has an inaccurate perception on is the number of military
personnel who escaped captivity. For many years after the war,
my personal impression was that there had been no escapes, and
then a few years ago I learned of the exploits of Army first
lieutenant Nick Rowe. As he narrates in his book, Five Years to
Freedom, he survived brutal imprisonment to kill one of his
jailers and escape in 196B. But he was not alone in his heroism.
As cited previously, there were at least nineteen U.S. military
escapees who have received scant attention. Private E2 R.
Anderson, E4 Everett King, E5 Lee Brewer, E4 Larry Aiken, Private
E2 Walter Hamilton, E4 W. Taliaferro, EB Harry Mitchell ... the
enlisted men predominate on this short list. Perhaps the lack of
rank is the reason for a lack of recognition.
On the other side of the equation are some names and numbers
that our government understandably does not want to vent. These
are the men variously described as AWOLs, deserters, "staybehinds" and a few other less printable epithets. My list
contains 25 names of men who went "over the hill" up to 2B years
ago, and according to service regulations men AWOL more than
thirty days are to be reclassified as deserters. Unless there is
something unusual about the circumstances surrounding the
disappearance, in which case a finding of Missing-in-Action might
be considered. These men are all still carried as Absent Without
Official Leave, possibly because it sounds less offensive.
At least three more, Robert Greer, Fred Schreckengost (both
Marines) and Michael LaPorte (Navy) are all carried as KIA/BNR,
for Killed In Action/Body Not Recovered and their names are on
the Wall. Greer and Schreckengost reportedly went AWOL in 1964
and are back in the U.S. after spending time in the former Soviet
Union. LaPorte was seen in Hanoi after defecting .in 1967, and
has been reported back in Los Angeles. If these men are back,
they are probably living quietly under assumed identities. I'd
change mine, too. But why are their names on the Wall?
Three more deserters are back among us, under their real
names. Veto Baker, Jon Sweeney and Douglas Beane all returned,
Sweeney via Russia and Sweden, Beane after a few years Down
Under. But in the midst of the uproar (which included one
suicide) surrounding accusations of collaboration against a few
the 591 returnees, the charges against these three anti-heroes
were dropped. Apparently some genius in the Judge Advocate
General Corps decided that if the legitimate POWs were not to be
held to the harsh letter of the Universal Code of Military
Justice, then neither should these uncontested traitors.
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What would we do without lawyers to guide us?
The AWOLs and deserters are carried on the PMSEA list, but
they are not counted as casualties of the war. So the definition
of casualty as including the dead, wounded and missing is not
quite as all-inclusive as it sounds. Servicemen whose duty
station, place of death or manner of disappearnce did not fit
into a proper administrative format have been systematically
denied the honor of placement on the Wall, right along with our
AWOLs and deserters. This association by exclusion is wrong.
The totals on the wounded for the Vietnam War are no more
than estimates--my inquiries on the WIAs' to the Department of
Defense, Departments of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines
were, after numerous detours and delays, responded to with the
advice that the records on the wounded servicemen for the Vietnam
War were in a shambles. Incomplete, not organized and/or left in
Vietnam after the units were withdrawn. So do the former North
Vietnamese have our records? Maybe if we asked ...
Odd that the service branches claim they do not have WIA
records, when National Archives says it does. But the Archives'
records on the wounded casualties are not yet available for
distribution, according to researchers who have attempted to
extract this data.
The Archives does have a file called CACCF (Combat Area
Casualties File) under the records of the Office of the Secretary
of Defense. This is record group 330, and reportedly contains
80,010 individual files of members of the Army, Coast Guard, Air
Force, Marines and Navy who died or disappeared during Vietnam.
This is about 20,000 more than the number of names on the Wall,
and includes (but is not limited to) such categories as:
Aircraft Loss/Crash at Sea
Vehicle Loss/Crash
Gunshot or Small Arms Fire
Artillery/Rocket
Other Weapons
Explosive Device (Grenade, Mine, Booby Trap, ect.)
Heart Attack (Myocardial Infraction, Coronary Thrombosis, ect.)
Stroke (Cerebrovascular Accident)
Misadventure (Friendly Fire)
Illness/disease
Suicide
Accidental Self Destruction
Intentional Homicide
Accidental Homicide
Other Accident
Other Causes
Unknown or Not Reported
The italicized spelling errors above are not mine; address
your critiques to the Secretary of Defense.
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,
-8The CACCF file is for hostile killed and missing, nonhostile killed and missing, personnel who have been returned to
military control, and "current captured". Aside from the absence
of the civilians and "select" foreign nationals, this should have
the information I am looking for. When and if I am ever able to
access it, perhaps we will discover a need for another Wall
roughly the same size as the original memorial.
If we indeed have another 10,000 dead American military to
honor (assuming half the additional names are for returnees--I
doubt that there have been that many, but let's assume), and
probably more than that in foreign nationals who fought and died
in our service, and certainly our 2,500 covert "civilians"
deserve recognition, along with the missing or dead missionaries,
medical personnel, U.S. Department of Agriculture employees,
contractors of all description ... and the existing Wall is already
pretty full.
Could it be that simple? Are the numbers being kept down in
order to put an end to the addition of names on the limited space
on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial? Surely not out of any lack of
respect for the sacrifices of Americans and our allies. Surely
not out of crass protectionism for those who lied about covert
activities, bungled military operations, and our inability to
secure freedom for captive Americans.
Surely not.
Roger Soiset is a college history professor and author who has
contributed past articles to Conservative Review. He is a combat
veteran of Vietnam and lives in Lilburn, Georgia. Researchers
who would like a copy of his complete list of "Other Captives and
Casualties in Southeast Asia 1945-1989" can do so by sending
requests to the Editor. Kindly enclose sufficient funds to cover
copying and mailing expenses.
ENDNOTES
1. U.S. Personnel Missin , Southeast Asia (And Selected Forei n
Natl.ona s) (U), "Alp a Report", Defense Prl.soner of War Ml.ssl.ng
in Action Office Reference Document, November 1993.
2. Letter from Mrs. Brenda Hoffman, sister of Jim Coon.
number RG407, all personnel stationed at U.S. Naval
Communications Station (Cubi Point), FPO SF 06656.
Flight
3."An Examination of U.S. Policy Toward POW/MIAs", U.S. Senate
Committee of Foreign Relations, May 23, 1991.
4. Wounded-in-Action.
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