Part Fourteen – II
In all honesty, going down the rabbit hole that is the POW/MIA issue is one of the most difficult things I’ve had to do. At the core of this issue are the families affected by their missing husbands, fathers and sons. For me, those are the people that matter most, and they are the ones who have suffered, lied to, manipulated and been left with a sense of suspended grief over the years. Hence why it is such a sensitive issue for me. I don’t want to add to that suffering.
I don’t believe what happened to John is the standard. I think that every case is individual, and I can’t speak for what happened to all the other men who remain missing. But, considering that, I don’t believe that John was the only one who survived, and I don’t believe him to be the only one who could have been possibly sent on to an Eastern Bloc country.
My personal feeling, from a logical standpoint and just looking at the evidence at hand, is that some men were left behind after the end of the war. When I say ‘some’, I’d estimate conservatively and say between two to three hundred. But, it could be as much as 600. A Soviet GRU translated document of Vietnamese origin was found by accident by an independent researcher (
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MA01/Lundy/v/vmorristest.htm). The document became known as the ‘1205 document’ – basically because the Vietnamese claimed to hold that many prisoners prior to Operation Homecoming – aka when the prisoners came home following the Paris Peace Accords in 1973. If this document is accurate, and there’s no firm reason to believe that it is not, that is 614 men who did not return during Homecoming. To put that into perspective, that’s a whole battalion of men that they could have been holding with no intention of release. Indeed, the document itself points to the fact that they planned to hold prisoners until there was full co-operation from the US Government.
Whether it was two hundred, or six hundred, what is clear to me is that the Vietnamese held back prisoners. Looking from their standpoint, they had to. They wanted prisoners as political leverage, they wanted prisoners to exploit technical knowledge, and they wanted monetary compensation to help rebuild the country.
Considering all that, and to put the whole thing into perspective, most men who remained missing were missing, and dead, body-not-recovered. Usually they were in involved in incidents where they couldn’t have possibly survived, such as a vehicle explosion, being lost at sea, as a result of a bomb, etc. Of the men still listed as missing, most of the men fit that category. Excavations teams over the years have revealed remains of some of these men and repatriated them.
I also find it likely that in some instances, men might have been captured and subsequently died in captivity – more likely in South Vietnam/Laos/Cambodia than in the North. In some of these cases, the Vietnamese held onto their bodies, and kept their remains in cold storage. Slowly over the years some of these bodies have been given back to the US Government, some of which have been planted in supposed ‘burial’ sites. Upon forensic examination of these remains, there has been clear evidence of nutritional depletion in the bones usually only seen in individuals who had starved over a period of time. There was no accounting for the fact that these men had been prisoners of war from the Vietnamese, and no admittance from the American government, either.
During investigations, there have been lists compiled of men who in all likelihood survived their incident, but as to which there is no full accounting. There are around 1000 men who the US Government still does not have full accounting, but this list, known as the ‘Last Known Alive’ list, contains the cases of around 400 men. John is on that list. It’s not the only list he’s on. There’s several lists out there highlighting different cases, and John’s case comes up, time and time again.
The reason why John’s case is so prominent is because he was sighted in a South Vietnamese prison camp as late as February 1973, along with five NCO’s (non-commissioned officers) – the exact moment Operation Homecoming was under way. The big problem for the American government was that John wasn’t in North Vietnam. He wasn’t on the list of prisoners that the Vietnamese had handed over to the government as a result of the Paris Peace Accords, either. The North Vietnamese defector who had sighted him and the 5 NCO’s revealed the prisoners were being held in South Vietnam to news outlets. The story was downplayed, the details muted. None of the major news outlets covered the story. In short, it was kept quiet, the lid firmly shut. The government did not want the truth to get out.
In 1973, John’s family in America had no clue of his fate. After Operation Homecoming when he didn’t come home, they believed him dead. In 1977, they had a memorial headstone placed for him in Arlington Cemetery, and the Army declared that he was missing, presumed dead.
John’s son wouldn’t find out about the February 1973 live sighting of his father until many years later, long after the war had ended.