In July 1973, I attended my first annual meeting of the National League of Families (aka “The League”) in Washington, D.C. Held in conjunction with USG POW/MIA family briefings, this was an opportunity to review the material in Jerry’s file. Like many others, I could only afford to make the trip because the DoD offered military flights to transport two primary next-of-kin for each POW/MIA.
The League’s annual meeting, held at the Statler-Hilton Hotel in downtown Washington, D.C., provided an opportunity to speak with analysts from the Department of the Army Casualty Assistance Office. Analysts collect and review information such as correspondence, maps, photographs, unit histories, and archives for information that correlates to a particular case.
Each service member’s file contains everything in their personnel records prior to his or her disappearance or capture, and any post-incident information pertinent to the case. In order to review a POW/MIAs file, a family member must make an official request. Never allowed to review the file alone, or remove any documents, POW/MIA family members can request copies of declassified case records.
A staff member sat at a table with me while I reviewed Jerry’s file. Sifting through my brother’s paperwork, I came across a report I hadn’t seen before: “Board of Investigation Proceedings of Case 1000,” dated March 1968. The thick document that captured my attention was a copy of an official Board of Inquiry convened on February 10, 1968, twenty days after the ambush, and chronicled the final moments of my brothers last known whereabouts.
The purpose of the Inquiry was to determine the status of LTC Joseph Seymoe, WO Gerald McKinsey, SSG Billy Hill, and Jerry. Six survivors, CPT Tommy C. Stiner, SP5 Willis M. Cox, SP5 David Howington, WO Lenny S. Lee, WO Robert E. Dean, and WO William M. Brown, had all been a part of the aborted mission to reinforce the besieged American soldiers in the village of Khe Sanh. They each gave sworn statements concerning their recollection of events on January 21, 1968.
The fourth witness called was WO Lennis Lee, aircraft commander of Chalk #2. He told the board Jerry rode on his chopper as a gunner and sat on the right side of the aircraft. Lee testified there was a building between his chopper and Chalk #1, the lead chopper, during the initial approach. According to Lee, Jerry jumped out the right side of Chalk #2 when his chopper returned to the plateau after Chalk #1 crashed. The last visual he reported of Jerry was when he passed by the rear of Chalk #3, which hovered to the front of Lee’s helicopter.
Hearing Officer CPT Hubert Benton asked Lee if he knew whether Jerry had actually reached the crashed helicopter. Lee said, “No Sir,” then told the board he had returned to the Old French Fort about three days after the ambush, “I have been back into the area or over the area since and I’ve seen what I believe to be his body and it’s in the general location it should be if he was killed.”
When asked from what altitude Lee responded, “From 100 to 150 feet. I could see it well enough to see blood on his pants.” He indicated the body lay “face down pointing up the hill.”
“The reason I say I believe it was Elliott,” Lee testified to the board, was Jerry “didn’t have on a chest protector, he had on a flak vest. Mr. McKinsey had on my chest protector, and it did not have the carrier it was just the protector. So he would have lost it as soon as he got out of his seat. Hill had on a flak vest also but he had a huge ugly face drawn on the back of it with bright ink and had it been him I would have definitely seen the face that was drawn on it.” Major James Carlisle asked Lee if the body that he saw had a cover on the head, a cap or helmet or any type.
“I don’t remember seeing his head as such Sir. He still had on a helmet of course when he got out of the aircraft but he was laying [sic] in bushes or part of his body was lying in bushes.”
“From the head up, or the shoulders up, or how much is actually visible?” Carlisle pushed.
“From his shoulders down,” Lee answered.
When asked if the body he saw was definitely American Lee said, “The only way I could say that would be to go down there and positively identify him. His boots w[ere] bloused.”
“Do you have any doubt in your mind that this is in fact Elliott?” Benton wanted to know.
“I believe it to be Elliott.” Lee stated.
“No doubt what so ever?” Benton insisted.
“No doubt what so ever.” Lee answered.
Carlisle asked how the ARVN troops they took into the area were dressed. Lee told him they wore both the stateside olive drab and jungle fatigues. Some of them may have had flak vests, he couldn’t say. However, Lee stated Jerry wore regular fatigues, and had his APS-S (aviator helmet) off when he left the helicopter. The conversation about a helmet confused me. At first, Lee stated that Jerry “had on a helmet of course when got out of the aircraft.” Later in his testimony, he said Jerry “had his APH-S off when he left the helicopter.” Conceivably, a discrepancy explained only by the fog of war.
At this point, the board asked Lee if there was any attempt other than his own, or the 282nd AHC, to reach the body and confirm the identity. Lee replied that MAJ Ronald Rex had told him a search party [Marines from the Khe Sanh Combat Base] initiated to go out had been cancelled. Lee told the board he took slides with a handheld camera from a “minimum of 7 to 800 feet above ground,” but he had sent the film off to be developed. Lee had mailed these same slides to my parents after his visit in late 1968. Unfortunately, the photos were unusable for identification due to altitude.
The sixth and last witness was WO William Brown, an Alley Cat gunship pilot. He told the board he had been flying gunner on January 21, 1968. Although Brown stated he had a real good view of what happened, he hadn’t seen anyone. Brown declared he had returned to the Old French Fort while on a January 24 support mission, three days after the loss incident.
“So I made a low pass, low level pass over the area of the downed aircraft and I saw a man down there in a flight suit, flight jacket and flak jacket,” Brown told the board. “Wasn’t a regular chest protector it was a flak deal. And I’m sure it wasn’t Hill because I saw Hill before we took off to go on the operation. He had all kinds of writing on the back of his flak jacket. Had a big head on the back of it. It said ‘Hill’ right across the back of it and I was that low that I could pick that up.
“There wasn’t any writing on the back of this one at all. And the man was lying on the right side of his face hands down. No hat on and nothing around to make you think it was mined or anything. Seemed like he la[i]d right where he fell when he first got it.”
“Who do you suppose this was?” MAJ Carlisle asked.
“Elliott,” Brown responded.
“Elliott. Why do you think it is Elliott rather than Mr. McKinsey, for instance.”
“Because I know Mr. McKinsey. I know Mr. McKinsey very well.”
“What altitude were you flying this low pass?”
“About four feet,” Brown responded.
“About four feet?” CPT Morris Schallenberger inquired further. “Could you actually see the person’s head? Head and shoulders of him?”
“Yes,” Brown explained, “on a profile...I didn’t recognize him. I didn’t know Elliott.”
Carlisle hit Brown with a string of questions, “Did the body have a helmet on?”
“No.”
“Flight helmet?”
“No.”
“Just a flak jacket?”
“Flight jacket, flak jacket, fatigue pants.”
“What color hair did the body have?”
“I don’t know, I believe I saw black but it couldn’t have been.
“You stated you did not know Elliott personally,” Benton asked, “Did you ever see him?”
“Yes sir,” Brown answered, “I had him pointed out to me the day after he got killed. It looked like him.”
“There’s no doubt in your mind that the body you saw on the ground is Elliott?”
“Yes Sir, it had to be by process of elimination. See McKinsey was quite small. Elliott, a big b
oy [6'2"], you could tell he was big. Hill is big too [5’7”], but he had blond hair that would be recognized and his flak jacket was marked.”
“And this flak jacket had nothing painted on it?”
“Nothing on the back of it. And I don’t know where I got the idea he had black hair but I guess Elliott didn’t, did he?”
“I don’t know.” Brown seemed confused. “I don’t know what made me say black, that’s what I could see in my mind was black hair.”
“You don’t feel that this could have been a Vietnamese body?” was the Board’s last question.
“With a flight jacket on? He had a flight jacket on right?” Brown decided, “No, it couldn’t have been it was too big.”
Based on the evidence presented at this time, the board determined that Seymoe and McKinsey were KIA. They also decided Hill and Jerry would continue in an MIA status. No one on the Board asked either Lee or Brown the exact location at the Old French Fort where they had seen the body on the ground. In 2006, thirty-six years later, Lee didn’t hesitate to tell me when I asked. He placed the KIA on the northeast slope of the Old French Fort.
Other than generic letters and occasional general welfare visits from Army Casualty, we had no real news of Jerry for the next three years. During the summer of 1976, I again traveled to Washington, D.C. to attend the League meeting in conjunction with government briefings. A planeload of POW/MIA families waited to depart from the Meridian Naval Air Station on a converted C-130. Once in the air, the steward announced we had the honor of traveling with two repatriated POWs. One piloted our converted C-130 aircraft, and the other was a fellow passenger. During the flight, both men took the time to sit and talk with me.
The pilot told me I should get on with my life. He said Jerry wouldn’t want me to waste my life looking for him. I didn’t want to be rude, but I silently wondered how someone held and tortured as a POW could possibly consider the search for a missing brother a waste of time.
The returned POW passenger, James, had an aura of quiet strength about him. One knew, without words, you could depend on him when the chips were down. James comments were similar to the pilot’s remarks. In his mind, military intelligence was forthright, there were no Americans abandoned in Southeast Asia. Out of respect, I politely disagreed with both former POWs. I knew the two men meant well, and were sincere in their concern for me, but just as there was no evidence Jerry was alive, there was no evidence he was dead.
To this day, people still think they are being helpful when they tell me I should, “Just get over it; let go of the past, Jerry’s not coming back.” I usually ask these sages an uncomplicated question, “If it was someone you loved who was missing, would “probably dead” be words powerful enough to make you give up without proof?”
The next morning I climbed the hotel stairs to the mezzanine to once again examine Jerry’s records with an Army Casualty Officer at my elbow, but found no new information. When I left the review area I ran into James, so mad he was red in the face. I asked him if everything was okay. He explained that he had just finished an analysis of his records. Located within the paperwork, James discovered a handwritten letter he sent to his parents while in captivity. His fury stemmed from the fact that his parents never received a copy of the letter. Even worse, his casualty status did not change from MIA to POW until his return. “If it happened to me, then it happened to others,” he told me. In retrospect, the Pentagon actually carried fifty-two POWs in an MIA status prior to Operation Homecoming.
James’ letter home was hard evidence he was alive. The letter would have relieved his family’s agony, and obviously provided a reason to expect his return. The military chose to disregard this significant piece of evidence that James was alive, rather than change his status from MIA to POW.
The Army hosted lunch at the hotel and seating was prearranged. A soft-spoken man with salt and pepper hair and black glasses sat to my right and engaged me in conversation. It soon became apparent that he worked for the Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) and his familiarity with Case 1000 details made me uneasy. Towards the end of the meal he asked, “What would your family do if the Army declared a Presumptive Finding of Death (PFOD) for your brother?”
“Fight it in court,” I answered without hesitation. He had no further questions and we finished eating in silence. There was no mention of a PFOD determination again for a long time.
Although Lee and Brown had both flown over the Old French Fort three days after the ambush, and both had seen an American body, their testimony to the 1968 Board of Investigation contained troubling inconsistencies. Initially, Lee said Jerry had a helmet on when he left the chopper, later he said he didn’t have on a helmet, but recalled that Jerry wore regular fatigues and a flak vest. From a hundred to a hundred fifty feet in the air, Lee could see a body on the ground only from the shoulders down because bushes blocked his view. Within twenty-five feet of the downed helicopter, Brown hovered four feet over a body lying on the right side of his face, hands down, who wore a flight suit, flight jacket and flak jacket, and had black hair.
Surely two witnesses with such diverse observations of the same scene would not qualify as adequate circumstantial evidence for the military to declare Jerry dead. However, as I considered the Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) question about how our family would react if the Army issued a PFOD for Jerry, and the discovery of James’ letter buried and ignored in his file, I began to question the integrity of the U.S. government’s handling of the POW/MIA matter on every level.
Hai Van Pass Da Nang, 1999.
Chapter Thirteen
The Promise
United States troops never lost a major combat battle in Vietnam. However, admirable intentions and undaunted courage did not stop the demoralizing political defeat our country endured throughout the diplomatic negotiations of the 1973 Paris Peace Accords.
Vietnam’s communist North and democratic South were bitter enemies. Conflict ensued before representatives even sat down. The North demanded a circular table; the South argued that only a rectangular table was acceptable. After many months, a compromise seated representatives of the North and South at a round table. Representatives of all other parties sat at individual square tables around them. This concession signaled the subtle beginning of the end for the government of South Vietnam.
President Nguyen Van Thieu viewed the treaty as a death sentence for his country, and initially refused to sign. His disagreement stemmed from a clause that would allow 145,000 NVA soldiers to remain south of the DMZ, and leave our South Vietnamese compatriots to fend for themselves against a very strong Communist backed military. Only a few months earlier, Nixon had privately pledged to Thieu he would order continued substantial aid to South Vietnam and “severe retaliatory action” if the North endangered South Vietnam. Nixon, desperate for a settlement, threatened total cut-off of American aid to the South if Thieu refused to order the Democratic Republic of Vietnam’s (DRV’s) representative, Tran Van Lam, Minister for Foreign Affairs, to sign the peace agreement.
Once the North agreed to an immediate cease-fire and the release of all American POWs within sixty days, President Nixon made his legendary announcement to the world on January 23, 1973. The United States, North and South Vietnam, and the Viet Cong had reached an agreement that would, according to Nixon, “end the war and bring peace with honor.”
Nixon and Kissinger assured the families a complete accounting of all the POW/MIAs would be a priority. For hundreds of anxious families, this declaration was a joyful message. We believed the cruel years of waiting were about to end. Kissinger met with twenty-two representatives of the National League of Families in the Roosevelt Room of the White House three days after Nixon’s announcement. He told the POW/MIA families, with the President in attendance, “They know that one condition on which we have not compromised is the issue of our men. We will brutally enforce the release of the men on the lists...the Communist has an obligation
. And they want many things from us—reconstruction aid, lifting of the mines, etc.—which we’ll be slow to act on until they have performed on the POWs.”
When questioned about U.S. reconstruction payments as an incentive to the North Vietnamese, Kissinger told the group, “They cannot hold our men in ransom. They must perform and fulfill their obligations. There is no set sum for reconstruction assistance. There cannot be any blackmail by them. After they perform, then there can be some action on the mines and some reconstruction assistance. We will provide some assistance because this will keep the situation quiet enough to let peace be firmly established, The North Vietnamese cannot both reconstruct and carry on heavy fighting.”
A League member questioned Kissinger, “Will the absence of information about a man lead to a presumption of death?” Kissinger adamantly responded, “No. After we have their list of POWs we will check this list against or own MIA list and will then submit the revised MIA list to the Communists. In North Vietnam it is almost inconceivable that they will hide any POWs. The men have generally been kept in compounds, they have met other men in the compounds, in their travels, etc.”
When asked what would happen if the North Vietnamese denied ever having captured men whose files contained photographs as POWs and which served to prove they had survived their loss incident, Kissinger was quick to reassure family members. “They better have a damn good explanation of where the man was held or where he is buried. Such cases where there have been photographs will be relatively easy. Another factor is that they know that is it not riskless for them to cross us.”
Two days after the League meeting, Kissinger returned to Paris where he secretly hand-delivered a letter from Nixon to North Vietnam’s Prime Minister, Pham Van Dong. The letter, dated February 1, 1973, indicated the U.S., “in accordance with its traditional policies,” would contribute $4.75 billion to postwar reconstruction, food, and other commodity needs without any political conditions. Kissinger failed to inform the North Vietnamese that Nixon’s assurance of funds required appropriation by the U.S. Congress.
Keeping the Promise: The Story of MIA Jerry Elliott, a Family Shattered by His Disappearance, and a Sister's 40-Year Search for the Truth Page 11
