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Missing-in-Action: A Case Unresolved (Vietnam War)

Also I highly recommend you buy/borrow the books of Jenny Cockell -- she too recalled most of her memories from childhood into adulthood, so her books may be very helpful to you. Currently I'm reading one her books, and the fact she managed to resolve her previous life memories through research is highly encouraging.
 

Tanker,

What you describe sounds effectively what I see ninety percent of the time, small fragments such as that. Only very rarely have I had full blown flashbacks, replays which have not felt like memories, but actual post-traumatic stress flashbacks--these have more often than not been spontaneous too, and triggered by an external event. The fragmentary memories are more usual. Often I get impatient with the process, but it is how it is. If you look back on memories in your own current life it's much the same, in fact sometimes these meditations take me back to memories from my present life, ones of when I was a very small child and things I'd quite forgotten about.

I have found that the memories that keep repeating to me, however vague they may seem, often pertain to a real event. Take for instance one of the memories I was able to confirm via John's son. I repeatedly kept seeing for days on end a little boy holding his hand like he'd cut it. Finally whilst writing in my journal, I decided to document the event. I'd seen it about four times in different meditations by then. One of the aspects of the vision I could not understand was why his parents were not present, and also what on earth he was doing with his dad's knife. In fact I tried to fill the gap -- I imagined him playing outside with the knife in the dirt, I also imagined his parents arguing, hence why they were not watching the boy. I saw his sister was there with him, but not playing with the knife. I saw her crying, along with John's son as he held his hand. In fact when talking to John's son it turned out that he had been alone in the house at the time with his sister whilst his mom went out to pick up his dad from work. He found the knife in a cupboard, and had opened it (it was a switchblade) and then tried to close it but unfortunately grabbed it by the wrong end, resulting in a nasty cut. I tried to fill the gaps in the memory because I had not truly known where the kids were when they were playing with the knife, nor where he had gotten the knife from -- I had not seen it. I imagined he must have gotten the knife from a cupboard, but had no clue how he had gotten it still, considering dangerous objects were not stored within reach.

Such is the nature of memory. The events after that knife incident are a bit of a blur. There may have been an argument between John and his wife, lots of blaming I'm sure. That may have been what I had seen too. John's son doesn't recall what happened afterward.

That's why writing it all down is so important, whilst taking care not to fill in gaps. It helps in putting together the fragments to make a full picture.
 
I find it interesting how certain memories come to the foreground and others not. So far I’ve realised that certain memories have come to me because they left a lasting impression on my psyche... the knife incident for instance would’ve have shook up John, having come back fairly recently from Vietnam and seeing his boy covered in blood. Things could have ended a lot worse... and just I suppose it bought back certain memories of the war. In Vietnam as in any war, children were more often than not the victims caught inbetween... or the ones holding the gun. To see his son that way would have been a hell of a trigger.

Hope you find answers there Tanker, you seem to have a clear picture building up. Interesting regarding how you hear the language, too. The translation makes sense since you understood German back then. I’ve experienced the same listening to Vietnamese/Russian in these memories, I just know at some level what is being said even if I can’t fully grasp the words.
 
I'm not sure about my feelings about the Vietnam War, even now, to be honest. The feelings feel very mixed up and jumbled. There is some guilt there, but there is also a lot of anger. And fear. To deal with all the stuff that went on, I had to bury any feelings of sympathy. One incident stands out. John was patrolling with a group of Vietnamese/Americans, and we came across a small child's body. Instinct was to pick the child up, but something told me (as John) it was odd and out of place. One of my men actually went to pick the body up, but I told him to stop. Turns out the child's body had been wired up and booby trapped to some unexploded ordnance by the VC. Picking the child up could've killed or injured many men. The parents/village people were nearby, and crying. I guess they may have known.

As an officer, too much sympathy could have meant death to the men you were responsible for. The day by day stress of not really knowing who your enemy is really starts to take a psychological toll. You begin to take a stance of apathy. As bad as it sounds to my modern self, back then there was a dehumanisation of the Vietnamese/orientals, they were 'gooks', they were 'dinks'. It's not easy to talk about, but it's the truth, at least as I know it. You do what you can to survive mentally and physically.

Have you ever thought about learning German? I'm considering studying some Vietnamese. That would be a heck of a challenge, wouldn't it? I have in the back of my mind that I might visit Vietnam one day and I'd like to know some of the language to get around. I say that but the thought of 'going back' there scares the hell out of me.
 
Ah, landsend, I really know what you mean. I've heard of those sort of booby traps in the news. I think the VC must have been a terrible enemy to face, with ways so alien to our own. Those poor people in the villages, if it was their child. Must have been like killing it twice.

Alas, though, some of the SS had pretty cunning methods of trapping enemies, although I wasn't really aware of that side of things. My battles were fairly straightforward. I took orders, I drove where I was told, we fired, we usually hit the enemy. Not much to it, really, but that's a lie if you have feelings. I never did get to the apathy stage, although I can very well see how that became necessary to some people. I always reflected on the results of our actions, if there was time. War is unspeakable, brings out the best in people and the worst in people.

I'm surprised you'd contemplate going back to Vietnam, but perhaps it's something you need to do. You're braver than I am. I could never go back to Russia. Not under any circumstances. I don't want to hear about it, listen to its language, see its people. I know that's unfair and many Russians are good people, but as yet I have no method to forgive. Their ways were pretty alien, too. Not easy to forget.

I'm actually trying to learn German. It seems to come quite easily when I read it, but by the next day I've forgotten half of what I've read. I should think it's a lot easier than Vietnamese, though ... Good luck to you.

One of the most important but one of the more difficult lessons is forgiveness both of self and of others unconditionally, without it we only trap ourselves.
 
I agree entirely. How to do it successfully is another matter ... working on it.
"Working on it" may in a way be one of the tasks of a whole lifetime. Or perhaps a substantial part of a lifetime.

My journey in many ways doesn't have much in common with yours, I don't have any battles or conflicts in the military sense in my recent past lives. But I still found myself carrying a lot of tangled emotional webs, as well as aspects of personality which were not always constructive. These things were not acquired during my childhood or so-called formative years, they almost suddenly were unlocked and became part of who I was, as a young adult. Dealing with that mess has been an ongoing process. Some of the emotional stuff was dealt with first - not in a single day, but gradually over a period of weeks, reducing to a trickle in the next few years. But personality characteristics, not always positive ones, took much longer. One of the difficulties I found is that when something is effectively a part of who you are, those patterns can get repeated and even reinforced. Releasing oneself from that loop may not be easy - I'm no therapist, so I can't really help others, but for me it seems to take a combination of circumstances/situations, together with a conscious awareness or deliberate effort, to move in a direction one wants to go. For me, it's less about abstract thought, more about just living everyday life in a chosen way.
 
Ah yes... I’ve been reflecting on all this so how apt this has come up here. Actually just talking and opening about events that occurred to my past self in that life can send me into a downward spiral of depression.

Tanker I don’t want to go to Vietnam, I’d rather eat poisonous snakes alive (ironically something my past self did in captivity), but I feel I have to, to heal completely. I need to see myself how that country is now. I need to visit a few places with my modern eyes and I need to ultimately forgive.

Speedwell I relate totally to what you say as that has been my experience. Forgiveness is hard and often takes a lifetime or beyond... I hope one day I’ll look back and say I’ve forgiven. Living bitter and in fear of life and people is not how I want to spend all my existences. More than anything, I want to heal and move on but honor who I was then and forgive myself. Ultimately it comes down to that.
 
More than anything, I want to heal and move on but honor who I was then and forgive myself. Ultimately it comes down to that.
I do from time to time find references from other people (not ones I meet, but in the wider world), referring to my past-life identity in a variety of ways. I find it disheartening at times that so little attempt is made to view the world through the eyes of that person, instead it is dissected like a specimen in a laboratory, and most often revealing or declaring the shortcomings of the observer, while saying little of use about the subject in question. Thus I agree with you Landsend about "honor who I was then", it is important to do so. We are humans now, and consider we should treat one another with respect. So often that courtesy is not observed with regard to those who are no longer living. And so it falls to ourselves at least, to honour and respect the person we once were, as a fellow human-being. And then, if need be, forgive. There is in a way a difficulty in the way we view ourselves as separate from one another. When it comes to forgiveness, it may be something where we can forgive others, but not ourselves, perhaps. (Or maybe vice versa). But all are necessary parts of the process.
 
This reminds me of what I read just yesterday in Jenny Cockell’s book ‘Journeys Through Time’ - I’ve taken a screenshot of her words as she puts it better than I, ironically she was talking about men who had past lives during the Vietnam War but the same need for self forgiveness applies.

4ABA9416-7508-47E6-87CB-19AFF5196856.jpeg

Pg. 262 - Journeys Through Time - Jenny Cockell
 
"Working on it" may in a way be one of the tasks of a whole lifetime. Or perhaps a substantial part of a lifetime.

My journey in many ways doesn't have much in common with yours, I don't have any battles or conflicts in the military sense in my recent past lives. But I still found myself carrying a lot of tangled emotional webs, as well as aspects of personality which were not always constructive. These things were not acquired during my childhood or so-called formative years, they almost suddenly were unlocked and became part of who I was, as a young adult. Dealing with that mess has been an ongoing process. Some of the emotional stuff was dealt with first - not in a single day, but gradually over a period of weeks, reducing to a trickle in the next few years. But personality characteristics, not always positive ones, took much longer. One of the difficulties I found is that when something is effectively a part of who you are, those patterns can get repeated and even reinforced. Releasing oneself from that loop may not be easy - I'm no therapist, so I can't really help others, but for me it seems to take a combination of circumstances/situations, together with a conscious awareness or deliberate effort, to move in a direction one wants to go. For me, it's less about abstract thought, more about just living everyday life in a chosen way.
You're right, Speedwell - living everyday life in a chosen way is just what I do. I'm quietly getting on with helping as many people as I can in this life. It's only the smallest difference one can make, compared with all the killing one's done in the past, but every life made better here is some way towards redemption. My one Achilles' heel, forgiving the Russians, is the hard one to fix, and perhaps I'll never manage it, but at least I have no hatred in my heart.
 
but at least I have no hatred in my heart.
Perhaps that's all one can ask.

As I get older, sometimes I become irritated by some little things, maybe more than I used to. But at the same time, I've tried to eliminate the word 'hate' from my being. Sometimes I hear the word tossed around casually, as when someone says they hate a certain type of food, or something else of the ordinary kind. But to me, it is not something to be used lightly. Occasionally (very rarely, fortunately) I've seen it in the eyes of strangers I pass in the street, and it seems to me no matter how one might try to justify it, ultimately self-destructive.
 
Yes, landsend, forgiving oneself is the hardest. I salute you, thinking of going back to Vietnam. Seeing it with modern eyes might not be easy, although I suppose meeting the people in a friendly context might help. I can't imagine what that dreadful place was like, and the completely different form of warfare you had there compared to my experience. I don't think I'd have lasted long if I'd been fighting there.

Only you know what's right for you to do, and if that will heal you, then go. Don't leave it too long.

I will never go back to Russia. That much I'm certain of. I think it would be the end of me, for the second time. Not so much the brutality of those people, but the sheer scale of the loss is what I can't face. If I stood on those places, all I would see would be heap upon heap of dead Kameraden, frozen in the snow, as far as the eye could see. No graves, no memorials. Thousands of needless corpses, young men at the height of their glory. Myself among them. Sometimes I think I might die just thinking of it.

My feelings for the Vietnamese people are a bit mixed, to be honest. You had to admire the resilience, and hardships those people had gone through, war after war after war. They were also ingenious, in many ways.

I think that my feelings of hatred/fear stir up more when I think about communists, and communism in general. Especially considering that there never has been a full accounting for the suffering that communism itself has entailed throughout history, in the way that, for example, the Nazi's had the Nuremburg trials. You will see that people will wear clothing/attire with the communist star who are not communists persay, but you'd never see people openly sporting the Nazi Swastika in the same way. We have to ask ourselves why that is, considering the untold suffering that happened (and still happens) in the form of starvation, torture and slavery due to communism.

Tanker actually we are on the same footing there. I've always held a grudge against Russia and Russians, considering they were the center of the communist movement. I've seen that my past self ended up in the Soviet Union, possibly somewhere in the Urals after the Americans withdrew from Vietnam. I don't fully understand all those memories, they're part of a puzzle I'm trying to piece together, but my past self seemed to be working in some sort of missile bunker by day, living in a closed military town. I'm not quite able to put in words where all those feelings come from, perhaps it's blocked from me for some reason or other.
 
Landsend, you certainly have my agreement in one respect. I'm in the UK, and the example of Hitler is often brought out as the ultimate evil. But the same is not done with regard to Stalin. The impact of that era in the Soviet Union, not just during WWII, but also during the decades preceding it, as well as afterwards, are often brushed aside and excused away. It is a curious double-standard. But then we have double-standards in the present day too. Some countries are labelled as villains, and others lauded as heroic. And all the time our own actions (collectively, at international level) pass with scarcely a comment. In the past few years there has been concern in Europe over the huge number of migrants, but is seldom (never?) acknowledged that these are the direct result of Western interventions in so many countries.
 
I'm about to post something I wrote a couple of days ago. It's been my hardest post to write yet, but feel the need to get it out in the public sphere. I'll probably have the urge to delete it afterwards -- that's how bad it feels for me. However, I want to get it out there. Mostly because I want to talk about my friend Brownie, whose story deserves to be known.

I've taken the next steps in this journey to reach out to a therapist (well, he is a retired therapist) who lives not far from me. I realised that I'm desperate and would try anything, and needed an action plan so my current thinking is that some action is better than none. I spoke about him on another thread. He spoke over the phone to me wrt his own experiences of past lives. He specialises in PTSD, but knows about past lives and hypnosis. He's willing to work with me at no cost, since he is retired. He seemed a genuinely nice guy, also with a military background which helps, and has worked with military veterans with PTSD.

I'm hoping he can help me find some answers, or at least help me on the journey. I have a big internal blockage that needs that extra push. I'm trying to have realistic expectations about it all, but the anxiety/trepidation is killing me. Despite meditating and even attempting hypnosis with the help of my partner, I've never involved an external person in such a way before. I've also had bad experiences with counsellors. Needless to say I'm losing sleep over it. I'm not great at opening up to people.
 
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.
 
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(Continued) Finding Brownie

Before getting ahead of myself with these live sighting reports, I want to discuss my memories of John’s captivity prior to when the sightings occurred. Now, this is still a puzzle that I’m trying to piece together. The main reason I have trouble piecing these memories together is because they remain incredibly painful for me, and intricately embedded in my psyche.

As I mentioned before I have grown up with crippling phobias that relate to those days in captivity. These phobias have without a doubt negatively affected my life, have been there since I can remember, and contributed to me developing agoraphobia in my teens. They’ve been with me so long that I don’t remember a time when I did not hold those fears. I’ve done all in my power to avoid that deep rooted pain from being triggered. I’ve had to force myself to do things, and live my life. I think about all the missed opportunities throughout my life as a result of avoiding this pain, and there’s too much to count. I mourn for the person I once was, the man I once was. I wonder how my life might have been without the burden of that pain, and if I would have even chose this life at all.

But whether I like it or not, this is my life, my body, this is my pain. I can’t avoid or change that.

I recall watching the movie Papillon some years ago. It resonated with me on so many levels. There’s a scene where Papillon is in the isolation cell and delirious from starvation. He is basically almost dead, and slips into an hallucination. In the vision, he sees a man who tells him that he’s committed the greatest crime of them all – the crime of a wasted life. That scene burnt into my consciousness. It was talking directly to me.

A couple of days ago I forced myself to read an account written by a POW held in a South Vietnamese prison camp (‘Why Didn’t You Get Me Out?’ by Frank Anton). I’ve had this book over a year or so, but felt the need to give it a read now. Many things in his book were hard for me to read, but as he described an incident where a fellow POW lost the battle to live on, I broke down and sobbed uncontrollably.

Before I found John’s identity, I saw in a self-regression attempt that I shared my captivity with another man not long after being captured. It’s a man who I called ‘Brownie’ before I found out who he was, and, out of respect of privacy, I’ll refer to him as Brownie here.

John and Brownie saw the bottom of hell together. Brownie was really just a kid, not been in Vietnam even a month when taken prisoner. He didn’t deserve the cards he was dealt.

Seeing more about Brownie made me determined to find who he was. Based on my intuition and the things I’d seen, I put together a profile for him. To me, he was always young. He had brown hair, brown eyes. I always felt he had not been in country long before taken prisoner. I considered he may have been a Marine, but I wasn’t sure on that. I felt he was most likely a pilot, because when I searched for him, I kept looking for pilots. He also just did not seem to know a lot about our environment: the jungle. Hence my feeling he was young and green. Also logic told me he was most probably captured around the same time and area as John, in ‘69, or captured near to where John was being held.

One of my initial impressions of Brownie was that when he arrived in camp, he was terribly burnt on his back:

27 APR 18
Impression I have:
The guy had an injury when arrived in camp. His back was badly burnt? The skin appeared char-grilled (red, angry, skin peeling/puss, crusted). I made them/ they made some sorta poultice/dressing w/ banana - bamboo leaves and a white poultice, the leaves were to keep the poultice in place.


I placed little importance on that imagery at the time, thinking it bizarre. However, when I became aware of the identity of Brownie several months later, that snippet of the terribly burnt back came back to me. In April 1969, Brownie was involved in an helicopter incident in Quang Nam province, the province bordered to the north by Thua Thien where John was shot down. It seems Brownie was flying the same chopper as John, a Huey Cobra (the AH-1 G). According to the after action reports, his chopper broke apart, burning as it crashed. His co-pilot was thrown from the wreckage, his body was recovered. But there was no sign of Brownie. Capture seemed possible considering the circumstances. And I find it likely that he would have extensive burn injuries, considering his vehicle burnt and crashed.

It took me a while to find Brownie’s identity, and no amount of database trawling helped me find him. In fact I recall skimming past his name and face a few times, thinking he looked familiar but not clocking on. It was during meditation that his last name and face came clearly back to me, which will be discussed later.

Prior to Brownie arriving in camp, John seemed to have been alone, or at least that’s my current impression. He was not a compliant prisoner, and may have attempted several times to escape in those first couple of weeks. I recall listening in on one of the Vietnamese conversations. Their plan was to send him west, towards Laos, not north towards Hanoi. They planned to hold him back. There was also the leg injury, which at this point appeared to become infected.
 
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On 30 Apr 2018, I had quite a few snippets of captivity come to me in succession. Most of them were centered around Brownie. I don’t think they are in order, but they illustrate aspects of captivity shared with this man. It was not the first time I had seen this imagery, but it seemed to come very vividly to me during that particular meditation.

30 APR 18 ‘Captivity & Brownie’

#1 ‘Hooch’

It’s hot, humid and stinks of human excrement. We’re holed up here in our little hooch, which isn’t anything more than a bunch of bamboo stakes tied together, a thatched roof which leaks whenever it rains, and a floor pretty much the same. It’s uncomfortable to sleep, when sleep does come. I can feel every notch of the bamboo platform on my bones, on my joints. The stakes of bamboo aren’t dry, they’re wet, green with algae.

I’m constantly aware of something, and it’s something that I keep going back to, time and time again. It’s how they’ve got me tied up. Maybe cus I was so non-compliant, always causing trouble, they did this. Pretty much have my arms roped up at the elbows, and my hands tied up, or constrained somehow. It pushes my arms all the way back, and about the only way I can sit is stooping. I can’t lay down comfortably, and walking is usually out the question. They seem to keep me tied up this way most the time in these memories.

hoochsketch1.jpg
Sketch of 'hooch' -- to illustrate the pose/environment since my aspect was interior not exterior as viewed in sketch


#2 ‘Marching’

I have two vivid memories. One so far is of being marched through the jungle. I’m sort of aware of these things on a peripheral scale, as in truth I don’t think I can see much. Either its dark, or they have my eyes covered. They’re marching us, I guess me and I’m aware of another guy, ‘Brownie’. But there might have been more of us.
Well, they got us at gunpoint, under this dense, mountainous jungle and they’re moving us some place. They got my hands tied up in that way, at the arms, and at the hands. I’m aware of the muzzle of a gun jabbing me in the small of my back every so often. I’m aware they may have even had me on a sorta leash, to keep me walking along. I’m sure Brownie is up ahead.
Where we are walking is mountainous, hilly. The ground has jagged rocks hidden beneath the vegetation, so I can be walking on soft mossy ground or dead leaves at one point, then suddenly hit a rock with my bare foot. That causes me to stumble about, with my hands tied back in that fashion I don’t have much balance as it is, my body is pushed forward. I can’t see where the heck I’m going, and they are rough with me, not caring if I stumble, fall. Just that I keep moving. I try not to give them the satisfaction of falling. At least I have the knowledge that Brownie is with me, I’m not alone. That keeps me moving along.

#3 ‘Hooch – dysentery?’

The second vivid memory is back in that hooch (described earlier). Again, I’m aware of my hands / arms tied in that fashion. I’m staring at something, or aware of it. It’s a circular vessel, and its between where I am positioned, and where Brownie is. I’m guessing that is our latrine to last us through the night, or in case we can’t make it to the ‘toilet’. Although I seem to be tied up in this way I’m not sure how Brownie is – I was stooping, but Brownie was prone. Could be that he was tied up but unable to stay sitting, or was attempting to rest.

I’m aware that Brownie is writhing in agony. I’m not hundred percent certain what’s up, but I’m guessing he has gastrointestinal discomfort. I’m not able to do anything to help him, so I’m just sitting, watching the vessel / staring at him in his discomfort.

For some reason, I’ve been aware of this memory several times that we may have had no pants / clothes for protection. I was wondering about this. If our hands were tied back, not having pants on would allow us to use the toilet without soiling ourselves. Maybe we removed them before they tied us up for the period of time they had us like this. This was probably after several instances of the humiliation of soiling ourselves. And the fact that they found it unpleasant to came to see us, soiled and stinking. At least if we stayed clean, they didn’t have to deal with that. Maybe we bargained to keep our pants off using that point – who knows.

I’m worried about Brownie. I worry that he’s going to die here. He doesn’t deserve that. He’s just a kid, I don’t feel he was in country very long when they captured him. I don’t know if you can say who deserves this, who deserves that, but in the grand scheme of things I had a hell of a lot more reason to be holed up here than he ever did. Yet, the kid didn’t complain. He was a tough nut. The guy had pulled through before, and I was sure he could pull through again.

In this memory I get that sense, that he was sick again, and he was weak, he was thin. When I think about Brownie I remember (another young man who died during first tour). They were both young with their lives ahead of them, and there’s that sense of guilt. They even looked similar, too. They did not deserve their fates.
 
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#4 Watering hole

Well, I see myself down at some sorta brook or stream, some watering hole. I’m looking at my arms, and my body. My arms and body are covered with bodily fluids and filth. I have soap in my hands, but it’s doing nothing to get me clean. The ‘soap’ is just a caustic hunk of crap. The soap just slides right off the dirt, I try to lather it up my arms but it just doesn’t seem to penetrate the dirt. I’m out here in broad daylight, just trying to get clean.

There’s a guy up on the bank of the watering hole, think that might be Brownie. He’s stick thin, I can see his ribs, and he’s sitting there on his haunches. He’s also naked, so I guess this was bath time / laundry time. I’m aware he has a fishing rod, some sort of makeshift fishing rod and he’s looking at the fish on the non-bathing portion of this watering hole. They are small fish, nothing big, but a small fish is better than no fish. He’s staring at the fish below the surface, and focused on trying to catch them. The sun is really bright out here, and I’m aware of how hot and bright it is.

#5 Sgt. Pepper

I’m aware of one of our captors, how he looks, probably he’s one of the senior guys. He’s short, they’re all short, but this one is stocky and short, and his constitution seems to bring out the shortness in him. Anyway, I heard the word ‘Sgt. Pepper’, so maybe that’s what I called him. Or he reminds me (present me) of the Beetles in that album since he had something of a rarity amongst the orientals—he had a moustache. In reality it was a very thin, very fine line of hair above his lip that could be appropriated as a ‘moustache’. And then there was his uniform, which seemed unusually neat and tidy, he had some sort of green field cap, and a green uniform. Sgt. Pepper took himself very seriously, he was a premium excrement shoveller who believed every word he said. Maybe this guy was NVA – matches my feeling that he was senior and not just some lower VC cadre plucked from nearby stations.

#6 Poss. escape attempt

This next memory is a little blurry. I’m wearing clothing that the captors provided. It’s black, and I’m aware of someone’s hand on my shoulder (Brownies?) and we are walking along in the dark, in the jungle. I’m aware I have something in my hands, I’m not sure what, and I am carrying something. I don’t understand what this is. The landscape seems to be very hilly, very dense, maybe we are helping each other get up and over the terrain. (Could this be in a potential escape attempt?)

Next, I’m aware of one of them, a guy, and he’s about to bear down all his weight to hit Brownie with the butt of his rifle, or with a bamboo stick – some sort of punishment.

Just some speculation: I’m pretty sure that Brownie caught on that I was not just a three-months in country chopper pilot. He knew I knew their language, and pretty sure they caught onto that fact sooner or later, too. I’m not sure how much Brownie knew, but I had this feeling he saw me watching them, following their language. He realised I had a lot of survival knowledge, things that intelligent people might know – sure – but Brownie wasn’t dumb. He knew I knew too much even for your average grunt, and certainly for a three month in country chopper pilot.

I wonder if they tried to get at Brownie to find out more about me, since they weren’t getting any information from me.


#7 Snakes


Then I’m back in that first memory, or a similar one. Hands tied back, Brownie lying on the floor. It came to me just why he wasn’t tied up like me. Well, the guy was too weak. They didn’t see any point, considering the state he was in, he wasn’t going anywhere any time soon. He was that weak they just didn’t see the point. Maybe he couldn’t even move his arms, that’s how weak he was. Considering that, there was no point in tying him up.

So I’m staring into space, a little delirious, and I’m watching something. I’m aware of what it is I’m watching. Near Brownie there’s a snake. I don’t know how it got in here, but it did, and it’s heading toward Brownie. It’s quite a big snake. Now, this is the state I’m in. I’m not thinking - ‘that snake’s gonna bite Brownie’. I’m thinking - ‘I wish Brownie was strong enough to kill that snake so we can eat it’. I’m actually thinking of how I can get it with my hands tied back. I’m imagining or seeing myself throw my body down on it. I’m not thinking on how it might attack us. I’m starving, I’m mad, and we are dying for food. Any food. I’m thinking that that snake might just save Brownie from dying of starvation.

# Brownie – dying?

I have this memory of looking at Brownie’s face. I have this feeling of comforting him. He was losing bodily fluids. I’m pretty sure he wasn’t even aware of me next to him. I had that vision of him throwing up clear liquid, just throwing up, his body retching but nothing coming up, but sometimes a fluid that was clear came up and you couldn’t be sure where that was coming from as he couldn’t keep anything down. Maybe I was there just trying to get fluid into him, but he wouldn’t have any of it. And it kept coming back up, probably from both ends. It’s like his body was just getting rid of everything it could.

So I’m looking at that round potato head of his, I thought he was a gonner, the moment he was sick I thought he was a gonner as the light just seemed to go out of his eyes, he lost the will to fight. And it was downhill from there on. His eyes looked huge in his face as he had lost so much weight, I could see his cheekbones, the actual shape of his skull. So that was it, I was looking at this kid, this poor kid, nothing but skin and bones. He was dying. No one knew where he was. No one knew of his suffering but me. He would never win any medal for the valor he’d shown, the sort of valor that you wouldn’t find in a million.
 
The memories are scattered all over the place. They are hard memories, and sometimes not visual at all. I may have the events mixed up in the time frame, but I’ve more or less figured the following may have occurred:

- John was captured, and moved west to the Laos border. He was kept in isolated jungle camps.

- He may have attempted to escape a couple of times, but that proved impossible as his leg became infected. There were beatings with sharpened bamboo sticks for non-compliance. Frequent interrogations that ended nowhere. John was kept shackled up.

- A month or so later, he was joined by Brownie. Brownie was badly injured with a burn along his back. Nevertheless, the presence of another American boosted John’s morale, and his will to escape.

- John and Brownie were marched to different camps, often at night time in the pitch black darkness. Sometimes their eyes may have been covered so they could not see where the camp was situated.

- John and Brownie were thin, and weak from the meagre rations given to them, and the harshness of the jungle conditions. They would fish and catch food, sometimes snakes and rats and insects to supplement the rice given to them.

- Although John had been telling his captors that he had no idea of anything, Brownie quickly caught on that this was not the case. John suspected that they beat Brownie to get information out of him regarding himself. At the time there were tensions between John and Brownie due to the interrogations. John kept telling Brownie to resist. Eventually, their captors caught on that John was not who he said he was.

- John plans an escape attempt. The plan was to wait until dry season. He had made several bamboo tools, nothing more than sharpened bamboo that could be easily hidden, but could be used as a makeshift knife. He used one of these implements to be rid of his shackles. He and Brownie made off in the middle of the night whilst the guard who was supposed to be watching them slept. They were caught an unknown amount of time later during broad daylight. By then, it seemed like John’s face was scabbed from lack of water and sun exposure. Both he and Brownie were very weak.

- Both John and Brownie were shackled up once they were re-captured. Their punishment was brutal. Already weakened by the escape attempt, their rations were cut to minimal amounts to ensure they did not attempt another escape. Both John and Brownie came down with a really bad case of dysentery. Being shackled up for months on end, they were forced to soil themselves where they lay. Delirium followed. Both men were starving to death, and neither could help the other. This is when John had the near-death experience.

- John was taken from the hooch and examined by one of his captors. His captor would not touch him, and used the muzzle of his rifle to move his face. John’s last thought before he blacked out was for Brownie. He was leaving Brownie behind, and he had no idea what would become of him. John never saw Brownie again.

Other times I wonder if Brownie died in captivity. God knows, both of them got so sick that I wondered if they both died. As I said a while back, before I even knew who John was I had seen Brownie in captivity. Where, and how we were kept was a such a bad, bad place. If only people could realise that such torture does not just end at the grave.

Conclusion – Finding an old friend

This post has been my hardest yet to write. I didn’t want to write it, yet, here I am. Am I just torturing myself? I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to write this. I don’t want Brownie to exist. I don’t want to believe it happened.

In a recent meditation the following came to me:

16 SEP 18

I'm in a room, behind a table. A man is seated opposite me, he has a a white shirt, sleeves rolled up, short brown/grey hair. He appears to be an intelligence officer. He is debriefing/interrogating me. The man hands me a paper, and asks me if I know who this is. It is a dossier containing information about the person. The dossier contains information about a man called 'Patterson'*. There is a b&w photograph on the dossier, I have seen that face before. (NOTE: Me, present me, has seen that face whilst looking for info about John/Brownie.)

Past me says to the intel officer that yes, I had seen Patterson in Vietnam whilst in captivity. He asks me if I know where he is now. I said that I did not, that we were separated, and I did not know what became of him. I implied more or less that I believed he was most likely dead.

*not his real last name.


The knowledge came very sure to me. Yes, that was Brownie. There was no fanfares, streamers didn’t fly, there was no ecstasy. It was just a knowing, and a sad one at that. Finally I could see his face, and acknowledge him. All I can say is that the feeling is of having shared something so deeply painful, that I almost don’t like looking at him. It was the same when I saw his photo/name prior to acknowledging him. Pretty similar to how I felt looking at John when I was trying to find him, too.

Just yesterday I was looking through the archives trying to find if I could pinpoint where he (Patterson) was shot down in Vietnam on the maps. Whilst looking through a file, there was an extract of a letter that was sent from his wife to the president. It was sent two years after her husband was declared missing. I didn’t want to read that letter, but found myself unable to stop myself. His wife was obviously distraught, and from that, I could see that she very much loved her young husband who was taken from her prematurely. She said that she didn’t think she could continue with her life and thanked God daily for their young son, who was two at that time, to give her the strength to do so.

Patterson was just twenty-one when he was shot down in Vietnam and taken prisoner. He’d only been in country a month. Just like the young man who had died during John’s first tour, he had been married to a woman who loved him, and had a young baby who he never got to know.

It’s hard to put into words how I feel about it all. Sometimes I feel the pain of Patterson’s wife in that letter. Then I look at my kids now, and I break down, and I cry.
 
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@landsend
Your story is very compelling and fascinating. Thank you for writing your experience in such great detail.

You brought up that whilst you were just falling asleep/ waking up that you'd have little snippets of memories. For the last couple days (and one time over this last weekend) I feel like I've been experiencing the same thing. Once I wake up, I know I had the dreams and barely remember them (although I do remember certain aspects of them, but not in great detail). It's as if some parts of the dreams/ memories slip away once I become more awake.

what I remember from these little snippets of memories, is seeing soldiers on what I think is a battle field. I could see the top of their helmets (like I'm floating or seeing them from above), the ground beneath them is muddy. They're also laying on their stomachs and the soldiers are holding guns (the guns they were holding look like rifle's to me).
I also had a weird thing that happened when I woke up from seeing these visions last night (I think I was experiencing the same vision I had had the night before). It's really hard to explain but it felt like I was "gone" and it felt like I (or something) came back into my body. I felt a rush of some sort of energy coming into my body, after this happened I felt super confused on what just happened and everything seemed surreal (I still have no idea what happened). This probably doesn't make any sense, not sure if you or any one else has experienced something similar.

Did you have a meditation technique that you used when you were trying to receive memories?
 
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@landsend
Your story is very compelling and fascinating. Thank you for writing your experience in such great detail.

You brought up that whilst you were just falling asleep/ waking up that you'd have little snippets of memories. For the last couple days (and one time over this last weekend) I feel like I've been experiencing the same thing. Once I wake up, I know I had the dreams and barely remember them (although I do remember certain aspects of them, but not in great detail). It's as if some parts of the dreams/ memories slip away once I become more awake.

what I remember from these little snippets of memories, is seeing soldiers on what I think is a battle field. I could see the top of their helmets (like I'm floating or seeing them from above), the ground beneath them is muddy. They're also laying on their stomachs and the soldiers are holding guns (the guns they were holding look like rifle's to me).
I also had a weird thing that happened when I woke up from seeing these visions last night (I think I was experiencing the same vision I had had the night before). It's really hard to explain but it felt like I was "gone" and it felt like I (or something) came back into my body. I felt a rush of some sort of energy coming into my body, after this happened I felt super confused on what just happened and everything seemed surreal (I still have no idea what happened). This probably doesn't make any sense, not sure if you or any one else has experienced something similar.

Did you have a meditation technique that you used when you were trying to receive memories?

Hello there

What you experienced regarding the energy rush/returning to body feeling is actually very common — it’s known as an out-of-body experience. I have experienced the same, there’s a wealth of knowledge about it out there. Look up author ‘Robert Monroe’ — his books detail the experiences he himself had.

What you describe is precisely how my memories come to me whilst waking up. Loss of detail is normal. Try and get into the habit of writing it down when you wake up.

My meditation technique is described in this thread further back. Basically I find a quiet moment where I will not be disturbed, close my eyes whilst seated and do a relaxation technique for 10-15 minutes. I try to focus on my past life memories from there and usually I start seeing imagery, feelings or impressions.

Best
Landsend
 
Hello there

What you experienced regarding the energy rush/returning to body feeling is actually very common — it’s known as an out-of-body experience. I have experienced the same, there’s a wealth of knowledge about it out there. Look up author ‘Robert Monroe’ — his books detail the experiences he himself had.

What you describe is precisely how my memories come to me whilst waking up. Loss of detail is normal. Try and get into the habit of writing it down when you wake up.

My meditation technique is described in this thread further back. Basically I find a quiet moment where I will not be disturbed, close my eyes whilst seated and do a relaxation technique for 10-15 minutes. I try to focus on my past life memories from there and usually I start seeing imagery, feelings or impressions.

Best
Landsend

I was still in the process of reading your thread when I wrote that and I came across your meditation process later :) I’ll have to try it out sometime

I’ll look into the out of body experience thing.

Thanks!
 
Part Fourteen - III

Although the US Army never officially recognised that John was a prisoner-of-war, there were live sighting reports pertaining to him. Of the records available on the internet to this day, three of these reports stand out to me. It is my strong feeling that important aspects of John’s MIA case are not available to the public eye, and as extension of that, his family. My reasons for thinking this are many, but a partial index documents from John’s classified file states that it contains ‘Code Word’. Anyone who understands anything about US clearance levels will understand that Code Word will mean that only a select few will be privy to the information. Furthermore, files are usually only classified as Code Word when the information could be considered a national security threat if revealed. You do have to ask what on Earth could be ‘Code Word’ about a deceased POW’s missing status. Unless, of course, he wasn’t dead when the war ended.

The troubling aspect of the three sightings that are available to the public eye is that they all pertain to a man who seems to be, in some form or fashion, collaborating with enemy forces. Analysts drew the conclusion that the sightings pertained to John. Indeed the description of two of the sightings are eerily similar despite them being many miles and years apart.

On March 19th 2017 I had a dream that made me incredibly comfortable. I’ll re-cap it below:

I’m under some trees near a river. I am part of a group of Americans and Orientals. We (the Americans) are not wearing American uniforms. I appear to be wearing the garb of my captors-guerilla type, not specifically uniformed. I look at an American. He appears unkempt. The Americans look emaciated.
There is a lot of tension in the air.
Later, the prisoners are marching in a line, a single file. I am outside of the line. I have a rifle in my hands. I am not the only American outside of the line. There is at least one other, along with Oriental ‘guards’.

The path we are marching is wide. It appears well travelled, muddy, with orange-red earth. It is very open, surrounded by green vegetation in the distance. There is a river nearby (beyond a bank lower than the path). There is a sense of urgency. We need to move quickly due in part to being so exposed.

An American within the line (a prisoner) starts making trouble. He is very thin, emaciated, and unkempt, his hair is greying, he has a full unkempt beard, a furrowed brow, grey-tinged skin and a sunken face. He starts shouting profanities, aimed mostly at myself and the other American(s) out of the line. In weakness, he falls, holding up the line of other prisoners.

The Oriental guards quickly decide to punish him. Their method of punishment involves asphyxiation and water. They punish him until he stops moving. I’m pretty sure in their harsh punishment, they kill him. Nobody does anything, or could do anything about it. The march continues.


This is a reoccurring image. I’ve seen it now a handful of times in meditations. John travelling along this dusty path with a group of prisoners. John and another guy are always holding what appears to be AK-47’s or similar.

Based on reading various accounts of POW's, and based on my original hunch that this was Laos, I believe this path is likely to have been part of what was known as the Ho Chi Minh trail. The Ho Chi Minh trail, for those of you who do not know, was the path that the Viet Cong/North Vietnamese Army and civilians used to pass supplies and personnel from North Vietnam to South Vietnam. The path was carved out of the Laotian and Cambodian landscape, just across the border from Vietnam – which of course made it very handy for them since the US was not officially at war with either of those countries.

Ho+Chi+Minh+Trail.jpg

I was pretty dismissive of that dream considering what I was being shown. I did not like what I was being shown, for one. However, I cannot draw conclusions without a bigger picture. So far I only have fragments to work from. There are many possibilities what this could be. I find it unacceptable that John was collaborating with the enemy. But if he wasn’t then what on Earth was going on?

This leads me to the first live sighting report that I want to discuss. This sighting occurred in Laos in 1971, and was reported by a North Vietnamese defector in February 1973.

THE LAOS SIGHTING

In 1971, a Squad Leader of the NVA 2nd Star Division observed two US POWs in Savannakhet province, Laos. He observed them on three separate occasions. On one occasion he saw them having lunch with the personal of the military staff and political officers. This again is a reoccurring image for me – first popping up on July 4th 2017:

I was sitting and eating with a group of Orientals, inside a hooch. I had a rifle in my hands.

I was then with a small group of Orientals, high in the mountainous jungle. I had a rifle, but was wearing noncombatant clothes.

Covert operations against the South Vietnamese comes to mind – mindless/numbness.


It has appeared many times in meditation, but saw it very detailed in Aug 2018:

I'm in an oblong hooch/room, there's two entryways either side that are open and let air/sunlight through. A table or platform of some kind acting as a table fills the room. Orientals are sitting either side of the table, eating lunch (rice) out of bowls.

I'm aware of one guy who has dark skin, dark longish hair and a red bandana along his forehead. He's standing with his rifle poised over his shoulders. I'm aware he's not Vietnamese, but Laotian.

I try to clarify what's happening with myself. I'm aware that I am, too, seated with my captors. I'm wearing a pale green uniform of some kind. I do not see that clearly.

I try to again clarify, and suddenly the vision changes. I feel that my hands are now tied back, I'm still seated with a bowl of rice in front of me. A guy (I don't know which guy), is jabbing me repeatedly with the muzzle of his rifle, right in my neck. He wants me to eat the rice like a dog out of a bowl, forcing my head down with his rifle every time he jabs me. Every time he jabs me, he shouts something that sounds like (to present day me) 'Ji! Ji! Ji!' It's very fast, very swift talk, I had trouble hearing the sound but it probably translates to 'Eat! Eat! Eat!'


Moving on with the Laos ‘71 sighting --

The defector then describes the following:
... the POW's were collaborating with the divisions political and military staff offices in a proselyting effort directed toward U.S soldiers.

To clarify what this means, the report states the following:

Before launching an attack into US units in Laos and South Vietnam, the division would conduct proselyting efforts in an attempt to to convince U.S. soldiers to join the communist side, to desert or to return to the United States.

The report then goes on to list the descriptions of the two US POWs:

The source observed the POW's for the first time from a distance of about two meters. One was about 30 yrs old, about 1.80 meters tall and weighed about 90 kilos. He had a heavy build, a pink complexion, a long face, short brownish blonde hair, a receding hairline, a high straight nose, brown eyes, white regular teeth, a round mouth, a red mole under his lower left lip. He was wearing a green NVA uniform consisting of a short sleeve shirt and trousers. He was also wearing a white metal 'Seiko' wristwatch, and a large gold ring with a ruby on his left hand.

This description matches John very closely, to the point that the report concluded that the records concluded the source probably observed him. The description of the second POW was inconclusive, but, based on his description, I have reasons to believe it is the guy I saw in my Ho Chi Minh trail dream. I’m still looking to identify this POW, but have a few potential candidates.

The family debated whether or not John had a ring as described by the source. Lo and behold, they found this in a family photograph:

mcdonn10.png

It shows that the ring is a gold ruby ring as described by the source. I’ve seen this ring in many photographs, including photos of John when he was younger. I have a recurrent feeling that it was his High School ring, and he wore it as a lucky memento. Because it was an identifying feature, it most likely would have been in John’s Army records.

Finally, another curious note is that the source states that he had been told the two POW's were captured in Quang Nam province. John was most likely captured in Thua Thien province bordering that province. But if you recall, the man who I identified as Brownie crashed in Quang Nam province. Is there a possible correlation there, or an indication of where John could have been kept in those early capture memories?
 
Hi landsend, I was wondering why you sometimes call your pl self John and then sometimes Terry? I suspect Terry was his name after he returned to the U.S. - true? Must have missed the explanation.
Happy new year btw!
 
I don’t recall what he was called when he returned to US. I’m still figuring it out as I keep hearing names similar to his previous name as Terry

His first name was John and his second name Terence, friends called him Terry. In my head he is Terry, but formally he is John. Hence when I was trying to figure out his name in the beginning I kept hearing Jerry, before I settled with John — it was me mixing the two names together.

Happy New Year to you, friend. Am planning to post a continuation here in the next few days.
 
PART FOURTEEN - IV

THE BA TO SIGHTINGS


As well as the aforementioned Laos sightings, there are two sightings (and other correlating sightings in the same area/time frame) in Ba To, Quang Ngai province, South Vietnam. These sightings span from late 1972 to early 1973.

In April 1973, yet another North Vietnamese defected to the South. His name was Nguyen Thanh Son. In his initial debriefing, Nguyen stated he had seen five American NCO’s as well as an American Artillery Captain as late as February 1973 in a Ba To prison camp.

What is the significance of this? Well, it was significant enough for it be of ‘Urgent Political Sensitivity’ and for the powers at be to have the story killed.
Nguyen Thanh Son defected two days before all the POWs were declared home, or dead. The timing of his defection is of note, suggesting that Nguyen himself was in all likelihood a double agent working for the Americans.

If the Laos citing possibly pertained to John, this other sighting was accurate down to the defector sighting John’s first name, the fact he was from Texas, and an accurate physical description to the point of a 1 and a half inch scar that John had behind his left ear.
Basically, the sighting couldn’t possibly pertain to anybody else.

According to the defector, John was said to be giving instruction on the use of a captured 105 mm Howitzer to the communists ‘under the threat of death’, is how it was put. In other words, help us, or we will shoot you all dead.

On the May 15 2017 this came to me:

I’m being led to a nearby village/hooch, escorted by armed men. My hands are tied back. There’s a sensation of being blindfolded.

In this hooch, I’m showing a small group of Orientals how to calculate distance/range using my hands and fingers as a reference.


Then on January 29 2018 this appeared to me in a dream:

The impression is of chaos, the camp I’m at is under siege. I recall that it was muddy (brownish mud), daytime and raining heavily, raining so heavily the mud was sliding down and creating a river through the camp. I appear very thin, bedraggled and have no shoes. This camp does not look American, but Vietnamese, most likely communist Vietnamese. In the camp were bamboo huts on stilts, surrounded by jungle. I appear to be putting together some sort of of black metal tubing, repeatedly, the action is repetitive. It’s very dirty and degrading work. Deep down I know what I’m doing is for my survival – there appears to be no choice on my part. There is a desperate feeling about what I’m doing.

In hindsight, I found this image whilst researching 105mm howitzers –

TUBING2.jpeg

My realisation is that what I could have been seeing were the shells or the casing of the rounds. The repetitive sensation was the reloading of the howitzer. That also explains the desperation that I felt of being under attack and having no choice but to assist an enemy who were keeping me captive.

There was another report in the Ba To region by a woman who sighted two Caucasians with AK-47s around the same time frame as the other sighting. I discovered that sighting through my independent research, later finding that another analyst also felt that it could pertain to John.

So – there you have it. The reports dry up after 1973 because apparently all Americans came home. Only Bobby Garwood remained, returning in 1979. But everyone knows he was a traitor so it doesn’t count. Right? If only it were as simple as that. There are conflicting sides to even Garwood’s story. Some are adamant he was a turncoat, others have written books about how he was used as a psychological tool by the communists against other POWs and how he was just trying to survive.

So, what is the truth? I suspect that the truth lies somewhere in between. There are dots in Garwood’s story that don’t add up if he was entirely innocent, but likewise if he were an outright traitor, it doesn’t make much sense either.

Which brings me to my own story, and to Terry. What happened to him? Unlike Garwood, he was not a Marine, nor a private, but a Special Forces captain who had extreme hatred for the communists, knowledge of intelligence operations, the AH-1G Cobra helicopter, artillery and, most importantly for the Ruskies, missile technology.

I’ve been shown some things that are hard to chew. Yet I have found written evidence in different places, different sources, all effectively describing the same things that I’ve seen myself and found so very hard to believe. I’ll leave that for my next post.
 
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PART FIFTEEN – A Turncoat is a Man Abandoned


The last couple of years have been surreal, incredibly surreal. It’s still difficult to get my head round it all. Some days I don’t think much of Terry beyond a thought or two – other days he dominates my whole day from morning till I go to sleep. The visions now come in concentrated periods. Sometimes an insight will occur to me whenever I’m ‘drawn’ to read something.

What I’ve found is that opening up to my life as Terry has made me confront my current life. I’m questioning where I am at, where I’m going in this life, and beyond.

But the major issue here is that Terry’s life remains unresolved. All I have is fragments of a puzzle that I’m piecing together, and doing my hardest not to interpret the overall picture. Sometimes I feel doubtful that I’ll ever reach a resolution. I try not to dwell on that thought and trust the process. So far it’s been largely something out of my hands. Something bigger than me has been leading me to the next clue, and the next and so on.


Drug use – a tool of exploitation

As mentioned in an earlier post, I saw Terry at one point very sick to the point he lost consciousness and possibly died. I’m unsure when this could have occurred, but it was probably early 1971.

During his recuperation, he was fed bowls of ‘milky broth’ which I deduced was most likely rice water. An oriental cure for dysentery, rice water is a broth made from the left over water of boiling rice. This would have been very palatable for him in his condition, and ultimately at that point, it saved his life. The Vietnamese had to feed him, he was too weak to even lift his head.

Now, this is pure conjecture, I want to make that clear – but, I can’t shake the feeling that his bowls of innocent rice water might not have been entirely innocent. In other words this would have been an excellent opportunity to spike an uncooperative officers food to ultimately make him more pliable. I’ve found documents that pertain to Viet Cong furnishing drugs to manipulate POWs, and of course this is something that was not beneath the Soviets. A high ranking Eastern-bloc defector, General Jan Sejna, attested to the Soviet use of drugs as a tool of mind control. A lot of this is outlined in the book ‘Betrayed’ by Joseph D. Douglass who debriefed Gen. Sejna over a period of many years.

This may not be the case, and it may just be a residual distrust and dislike for the communists that I hold, but if I was the enemy in their position it would make complete sense to make such a move.

At that point I also believe that Terry’s true identity, including his tactical knowledge, was somewhat known to the communists. Either way, they wanted Terry alive, and they wanted to exploit his knowledge. And, more importantly, they wanted to keep Terry segregated from the bulk of POWs that were to be eventually repatriated.

A parallel Vietnamese prison system

It’s been my feeling, through research and gut instinct, that Terry was kept in a separate prison system from the bulk that were repatriated in 1973. Whilst reading the book about the assassination attempts of Bobby Garwood’s life, ‘Spite House’ by Monika Jensen Stevenson, I came across this theory fleshed out in a way that seemed to lock into place with everything that I know about Terry.

First of all, Monika Jensen writes that this separate prison system was run by the military proselytizing section – Cuc Binh Van / Soviet – basically, this was the Vietnamese equivalent of the Soviet KGB. This prison system was highly secret. According to the author, only a select few Americans officials were aware of this separate prison system.

Most interesting of all is that the Cuc Binh Van / Soviet took charge of prisoners who were suspected of having been involved in covert action or intelligence. I know that Terry fits in this category – he is listed as having worked in intel in Saigon in early 1966 as part of an intel network for highly secretive operations over the border in Cambodia. Furthermore, he was a Special Forces officer. Most Special Forces had some background in intel work.

So, what happened to those who were placed under the charge of this separate prison system? Most never got out. Garwood is the only one who ‘officially’ got out, and then he was painted as an outright traitor to smear his name, and credibility. Although Garwood did not work in intel, he was one of the drivers assigned to General Walt – Walt who was the commander of the Marines in I Corps in 1965. The NVA assumed that because Garwood held this prestigious position that he too had to have been working covertly for the CIA, further backed up by the fact that all of Walt’s drivers were assigned as G-2 (intelligence).

I found this paragraph written by Jensen Stevenson particularly telling:

Once American intelligence learned that a prisoner had been associated with Cuc Binh Van/Soviet, and used for communist propaganda purposes, the usual assumption was that the man had either turned after being taken prisoner, or had voluntarily defected to do propaganda work.’

Another point that the author made was that Garwood and other prisoners were forced by the enemy to carry arms to arouse suspicion and sew dissension amougst prison camp populations. She further states that Garwood insisted that the firing pin from his weapon had been removed, rendering it useless.

One potential sighting of Terry describes a prisoner working with the ‘military proselytizing section’, and the other describes a Caucasian carrying an AK-47 rifle (something that I had also seen in a vision prior to finding that sighting). Giving that I find it very hard to grasp that Terry was willingly collaborating, all this paints a troubling picture. A picture of psychological manipulation, torture and brainwashing.

In my heart, I know that Terry was not a turncoat. Terry’s loyalty was always with the United States. He dedicated his life to freedom and all it stood for, his extensive training and tours in Vietnam attest to that. Following the war, following the fall of Saigon, Vietnam turned into a police state – no one, in truth, was free. Terry’s one and only desire was to die on home soil and get the the truth out about the government who had abandoned him.

It’s interesting to note that the US expected Bobby Garwood to be taken to the Soviet Union to be paraded as a propaganda tool for communism. He never was. Why? Perhaps the Russians had bigger trophies. Either way, by a stroke of luck and ingenuity, Garwood managed to get out of Vietnam prior to being shipped off anywhere else.

But, what about Terry?
 
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Moscow Bound

To begin to understand what happened to Terry, I need to look back on the dream I had when I was seventeen.

In the dream, I was aware of how I looked, and the fact that I was in an American town. The fact it was North America (as opposed to Europe, for instance) felt very certain to me back then, there was no doubt about it. The buildings, the cars, and even the way the lighting appeared made me certain of where I was.

I find it hard to recall some details of the dream, such as what exactly I had been doing in the building prior to being shot. I recall, however, being left with a sense of confusion. The confusion was this – I had not expected to be shot in the moment. It was a surprise.

I tried to rationalise that I’d been caught in the cross fire of some sort of bank holdup, that my death was that of the unlucky bystander. But it just didn’t sit well with me, either. I knew I’d been in the Vietnam War in that life, so the fact I didn’t try to retaliate in that situation didn’t make sense. In the dream, I became aware of the armed men coming up behind me, and then I was shot. I just couldn’t place what on Earth my death was trying to show me. Could I have been robbing the bank? But robbing the bank – surely I’d have been a little more prepared. My face wasn’t covered. There is no recall of asking anyone to hand over money. And, if I had been robbing the bank, I would’ve been pointing a gun, holding a gun – I don’t recall doing either of that. Again, that didn’t make much sense. At the time, I wasn’t entirely sure the building was a bank. To this date, I do not know what the building was.

Around April 2017, after watching the documentary of Terry’s son talking about his dad’s MIA case, I was hit with several visions, mostly of the chopper crash in Vietnam and captivity. Progressing past the point where Terry appeared to have died of dysentery, there was a recurrent image – an image of boarding a ‘civilian’ airliner, one that I knew was bound for the USSR. My initial instinct was to open my eyes, and dismiss what I had seen. For a while afterwards, I played it round and round my head – am I delusional and unable to accept that my death had been unremarkable, so painfully degrading and alone? If it weren’t for the dream that had come to me as a teen, I would’ve dismissed it then and there.

In May 2017 came a vision, one I’ve now seen many times –

Sitting in a darkened room, at a desk. There is a feeling of immense sadness. In front of me on the desk are papers, or a letter that I’m writing. The papers in front of me are related to the POW/MIA issue. I’m going to try and expose what I know, and in doing so, put my life in grave danger.’

In that vision, the weight of the world really was on my shoulders. It felt like whatever I was going to expose was akin to writing my own death warrant.

Along with that vision came another view of my 2007 dream, with more details of the building where the shooting occurred. These details, like the other vision, are recurrent. I recall the highly polished tiles, the American flag on a pole on the side of the building outside, the steps up to the building, the exterior which appeared modern for the times (70s/80s architecture), the glass doors. Despite this, I still could not located the building, nor identify it. As before, it appeared formal and official.

Then, on June 14 2017, I had the following dream:

I’m situated inside a bunker/control center. Inside this control center, there are many screens, dials and switches. I appear to be working on these machines.

This control center was situated on the edge of a small village in the hills of an isolated region. It appeared Eastern European. I saw that the local women wore head scarves, and the people in the village were dirt poor, keeping goats as livestock.

Outside the bunker/control center were underground silos.

There was a dominating building in the hills. It was known to be housing American POWs for ‘research purposes’.


The local people were highly suspicious of the building. There were rumors circulated as to its purpose. The people of the village knew, but did nothing, nor did they speak out about it.

I felt a strong need to do something, to infiltrate the building, but in truth, I could do nothing. There was a sense that, although I was working for ‘them’, I was not truly free.’


Although the dream was vivid, I was dismissive of elements. Parts, I felt, could have been symbolic, such as the building holding the POWs. Other parts – I was not so sure. The area and the vision of the people in the hills all seemed real, as well as the imagery of working in some sort of control center.

In July 2017, the day I contacted Terry’s son, a series of imagery came to me in succession. As well as the scenes of being taken captive and captivity, I once again saw myself boarding an airliner. After this, another vision came to me:

There is a conversation in a dim room between myself and two military officers behind a desk or table. The conversation is formal in tone. One of the men stands out as being Eastern European in origin. He leads the conversation. They interrogate me, asking me where I have been, what I know, and how my loyalties align. The response given is pre-made, robotic, without thought.’

Following that, I saw myself board yet another airliner. There was an impression of a visa of some kind. There was the sensation of the passing of a period of time (that I could not see in that moment), and, once again, I see myself in that room, at a desk, staring at those papers with the weight of the world on my shoulders.
 
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