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| One of Us |
Recently declassified material. Some disturbing, sad, and uplifting information. It is 50 minutes long but well worth watching. https://vimeo.com/user32618373...124635885/cac76f8ca9 Password: hanoi ( all lower case ) | ||
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I spent about two months in Vietnam in 2004 digging up POW/MIA remains. We stayed at the new Hanoi Opera Hilton hotel which is down the street from the old POW prison. I toured the prison and was pretty overwhealmed by the entire experience. Vietnam is a weird place, I saw death everyday, we had folks die in front of us while we stood outside our hotel waiting on the jeeps to take us to the dig sites. Death comes early and often in Vietnam. So much that the open market sells mortuary supplies. Very strange, there were 4 of us standing there, me a Army CPT MD, a USAF Medic and a Army mortuary affairs tech waiting, and a little motor scooter made a bad turn infront of a big bus full of people and his brains got smeared into the cement. We had been there a few days and by then it was kind of normal. Sad place. | |||
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My question: how many US POWs are still alive and being held in RVN or elsewhere? | |||
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None! My mother's cousin (2nd cousin, cousin uncle?, anyway), he was the first Wyoming POW during the Vietnam war. Got killed at Cam Duc airfield. Harry Bob Coen is his name. I spent enough time with the folks at Joint Task Force Full Accounting to know that they have accounted for everybody within a few thousand yards. There is an incredible amount of Vietnam jungle and farmland to dig up and recover those Vets in. It is going to take some time. They were able to identify the 3 missions I went on down to person fairly quickly. The problem with a lot of those place is they spent months after the Tet fire bombing the hell out of that place then using dozers to push everything over. Considering the cash involved in every recovery and how much we pay in bribes to make stuff happen, I feel fairly confident in saying that eventually 95% of everyone will be accounted for. The rare ones that drowned in the river, or were buried in a local cemetery in an unknown grave might never come to light. Saying that, I spent an three weeks digging up graves looking for a helocopter pilot. We found him, but I saw a lot of dead Viets in the process. | |||
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Thank you for the effort you made. People are capable of being good. Governments not so much. Not sure we did not leave some living MIA's in that hell hole. | |||
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The word I got was after the North Vietnamese took the country over they executed all the American-Viet love children, there would have been American and Australian soldiers that would have been on the run and got killed by local villages, but the intel does not show that any US GI's still exist in Vietnam. It's a fairly free nation, anyone is welcome to go there and look around. The Australians do quite a bit of tourism there, as do the French. It's pretty open. Anyway, a lot of that Vietnam generation had friends and family members that were lost over there, and it is a tragedy. It was the first modern war, with modern reporting and I don't think the Viet or US governments knew exactly how to clean up the pieces after the war. Joint Task Force Full Accounting works hard by sending 20-30 missions per year all over Vietnam (and other places WW2, WW1, Korea, Iraq) to get those US military members and bring them home. | |||
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http://www.dpaa.mil/portals/85...g/pmsea_una_p_ca.pdf Here is a perfect example of what I am talking about. There is only one unaccounted for POW on this list. He happens to be a CIV, probably worked for Christians in Action or some other gov agency. This is California, so it is going to be one of the bigger list. The rest of them they know where they are, but it takes a ton of money to go over there and dig everyone up and bring them home. For the three missions I went on, here's the synposis. F-105, shot down in a lake, we had to drain the lake and pull the guy out of the aircraft. Reminded me why I hated snakes. Oh do I ever hate snakes. H-1 Crash, pilot survived everyone else lost at sea. Pilot killed in local village and buried in their cemetery. A-6 Crash, pilot ejected safety to be captured. Bombadier, crashed with aircraft and we recovered him there. | |||
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I spent 20 years in the miliary, including 4 deployments to Afghanistan, 3 to Somalia, 1 to Iraq and 1 to Kosovo. Bringing home Vietnam Era POW/MIA remains is the single greatest mission I ever did. | |||
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Did you watch the video? Any comments? | |||
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Yes, VADM Stockdale is a hero, especially for not leaving those to die and risking his life and the lives of those men by sticking his neck out to save the greater group. | |||
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If we look at PO1(SEAL/FPJ) Marcus Latrell and what he endured in Afghanistan which was comparitivly a very short experience compared to the hell of the Hanoi Hilton. Latrell to me is a hero, I would bet that he has incredible survivors remorse over the lives that were lost on the initial rescue attempt. He probably doesn't consider himself to fit that mold. Can you imagine if Stockdale would have taken the deal and left several hundred POW's to die in Hanoi? | |||
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| One of Us |
Amazing Mike | |||
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