News-Info-Alerts

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Re: Humanitarian Who Searched For US POWs-MIAs Passes

Date: August 11, 2001

"Charleston Gazette - Search continues for MIAs
by Rosalie Earle - earle@wvgazette.com

Charleston Gazette Managing Editor Rosalie Earle recently visited Asia with six other journalists on a journalism fellowship.

HANOI - Sr. Col. Tran Van Bien fought against the French and Americans on several fronts. Several of his children died fighting and are still unaccounted for.

"He was a soldier's soldier," recalled Ron Ward, an American who worked with the Vietnamese officer.

The 65-year-old Bien died on a mission to find the remains of American soldiers assumed dead for more than a quarter of a century.

Why?

"He believed in it because he was a humanitarian. He said 'It's the right thing to do,"' answered Ward, a casualty-resolution specialist who worked closely with Bien and the others killed in the helicopter crash this past April in Quang Binh Province, Vietnam.

Seven Americans and nine Vietnamese died on the 65th mission of the Joint Task Force - Full Accounting program. The mission of the task force is to provide the fullest accounting possible of American servicemen missing in action during the Vietnam War.

There are 1,495 Americans still missing in action from the Vietnam War. In comparison, there are 78,000 MIAs from World War II; 8,000 MIAs from the Korean Conflict; and 112 MIAs from the Cold War era.

Each 30-day mission usually involves six digs and costs from $800,000 to $1 million.

Ward and two of his colleagues, Capt. Mac Lago and Lt. Col. Michael Denbroski, were quizzed by a group of journalists visiting Hanoi in early June. Does it make sense, they were asked, to risk more lives and to spend millions of dollars to recover bone fragments of people long assumed to be dead.

The three men repeatedly stated that wasn't their decision. The U.S. government has made the fullest possible accounting of MIAs its highest priority with Vietnam. They are just following orders, they insisted.

Still, one sensed that those in the joint task force took pride in completing a mission, by solving a mystery and overcoming formidable obstacles.

Vietnam is a long, narrow country about the size of Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee combined. The distance from north to south is roughly the distance from Pennsylvania to Florida.

Through records and witness accounts, the task force knows the locations of the remains of most of the MIAs who can be found. Getting there and what can be found are another matter.

The task force members told of one mission investigating the crash of a C-130 into a rocky cliff. The cargo plane was carrying munitions. "There's not a lot left," Ward said.

The crash site is on a jungle hillside with a slope of about 60 to 70 degrees.

The team had to establish a base camp from which it operated every day. Underbrush had to be cleared. Hazards included poisonous snakes. The team, which included civilian anthropologists, was required to dig down to sterile soil in its attempt to find bone fragments.

Last summer, the recovery team had to block a main highway that now skirts a known crash site. On another occasion, the team had to wait until midnight to dig up a cemetery to avoid upsetting the local villagers. A remaining challenge is how to conduct a dig beneath a dwelling where several families live.

In all, Ward said recovery teams have reviewed 28,019 documents and artifacts turned over by the Vietnamese. "The Vietnamese have given us all the documents asked for," he said.

Out of the 1.3 million Vietnamese who died during the war, there are still 300,000 unaccounted for. "They do remind us of that," Ward said.

Those numbers include only the "revolutionary soldiers," not the missing and the dead South Vietnamese who fought for the Republic of Vietnam.

Since 1993, in just Vietnam, the remains of 140 individuals have been uncovered, identified and returned to their families.

"In reality, we aren't going to recover all the bodies," said a high-ranking Western diplomat speaking on background.

He insisted that the recovery effort was one of the most honorable things for America to do. "It shouldn't be suggested that it's too expensive, too dangerous. It shouldn't be stopped now."

He pointed out that the joint recovery effort opened the door for Americans to return to Vietnam.

It was only after the Vietnamese showed substantial cooperation in accounting for missing servicemen that the U.S. government decided to pursue a trade agreement with Vietnam.

The joint recovery effort provided opportunities for the U.S. and Vietnamese militaries to work together, building confidence and trust, the diplomat said.

"The commitment tells our men in uniform that they are not going to be forgotten, and their families.

"It's a psychological thing in the military. You don't leave someone behind," he said."