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

by Elliott Donna E.

  I asked Gary if he thought it would be possible for me to get the entire document released under the McCain Act. Gary doubted both the report and the possibility the complete document would ever be declassified. As I attempted to solicit advice that would facilitate the addition of Jerry’s name to the Last Known Alive Discrepancy List, Gary asked to see what I’d written so far. When I handed my notes over, he glanced at them, stuck the papers in a folder, and said, “I’ll take care of it.”

  He then brought up the real purpose of our second meeting; he wanted me to contact DPMO when I returned to the U.S. I was to ask them to give me a name and telephone number for a contact person at DoD who private individuals, presumably Vietnam vets, could contact with information on a POW/MIA case. On several occasions, I’d discussed loss circumstances with Vietnam vets concerning other POW/MIAs. Vets often had additional or contradictory information on a case and didn’t know whom to contact directly. The soldiers I knew weren’t comfortable enough with the accounting command to simply write down narratives and hope the information somehow got into the right hands. They deserved assurance there would be follow-up investigation, and they expected courtesy notification of any MIA recoveries credited to the information they had provided. I agreed to notify Gary when/if DPMO responded.

  The next day our group traveled to Hue, checked into a hotel, and waited for Geof Steiner to make contact with Steve. Geof was stationed at Camp Carroll with the 2nd Bn, 9th Marines during the war, and was one of four Hotel Company survivors from the Battle of Mike’s Hill. In the early 1980’s he had begun a project in Cushing, Minnesota, and hand-planted over 100,000 trees in the Living Memorial Forest. Planting trees was Geof’s way to honor those who gave their lives in Vietnam and Korea. He received the National Arbor Day award for his efforts, acclaim from Presidents Ronald Regan and George Bush, Sr., and would later win the 2009 Jefferson Award for public service.

  On a return trip to Vietnam in 2000, Geof was responsible for locating the remains of six hundred NVA in a mass grave along Route 9. This discovery returned to the Vietnamese MIA families the largest single gravesite ever found in Vietnam. Geof, Danny, and I decided to travel from Hue to Dong Ha by taxi and carry the luggage since Dale, Steve, his wife Huong, and Geof’s two friends, Kieu and Hung, rode their own bikes. We would rent motorbikes from the hotel, and continue on to Khe Sanh the next day. On the dirt roads that covered most of the area, the bikes would allow much greater freedom of movement and save us many steps. Unskilled in the art of navigating on a motorbike, I decided to ride along with Dale.

  I hadn’t spent much individual time with him up to this point, but as I rode on the back of his bike, we connected. Dale possessed a sharp wit, a good sense of humor, and a straightforward manner. He had always known he would come back to Vietnam when the war was over. Although Vietnam is a beautiful country, the main draw for Dale was his dedication to doing all he could to help recover American MIAs. Dale returned to Vietnam in 1994, met his wife, also named Huong, while in Da Nang, and they married in 1999. He found it ironic that Vietnamese tradition called for the headstone of his father-in-law, who was Viet Cong, to now bear his engraved name as a family member.

  On the outskirts of Khe Sanh, I was able to pick out a house or building here and there that I remembered. I wondered what was going through Danny’s mind—if he recognized anything, or if bad memories reeled through his mind at the speed of light. Had I done the right thing to ask him to come here with me, or would it make his PTSD even worse? We stopped at the eastern edge of town to wait on Steve and Huong. I didn’t want to pressure Danny, but I couldn’t resist asking if he recognized anything.

  “No,” he drawled with Tennessee humor, “Maybe just that tree over there I peed on once.” We all laughed, climbed back on the bikes, and made a left off Highway 9 onto the only four-lane road in Khe Sanh. The blacktop road took us past the new soccer stadium all the way to the base of the Old French Fort.

  The Fort looked entirely different from my two previous visits. Now, just three years later, I could do nothing but stand and gawk at the doublewide blaze a bulldozer had cut directly through the middle of the northeast corner of the Old French Fort. Such a major disturbance of the loss site could easily have destroyed remains or valuable evidence. I looked down at my feet to hide my eyes. The sun had evaporated standing water in a low spot and scorched the barren soil into jagged tiles. The terrain reflected what my heart felt like, dry and cracked.

  Thanks to Danny, I now had someone along who could finally tell me if this was the indeed the last place Jerry had been seen alive. Maybe just knowing we were in the correct location would ease my mind. This alone would be worth the trip. Danny walked towards the northeast, down a trail that led to an electrical tower. He coolly surveyed the surrounding hills with his binoculars as I fell on the ground in a heap, soaked in sweat. He took a GPS reading: “18381617N 685922E...that’s in UTM [Universal Transverse Mercator],” he mumbled, “Just not right, the terrain’s not right.” He began to describe to Dale and me the path he and CPT Stiner had taken to evade the NVA when they ran from the crash site.

  Danny could see a distant hilltop to the east, and he wanted to go there and get a GPS reading. I dreaded the hilly miles of thick jungle we would have to tread to reach the hilltop he targeted. I was so hot my tongue felt like it was a fuzzy piece of wool about to choke me. We heard a bell clang in the distance; shortly a cow herded by a Bru man came along. I noticed he was carrying a yellow plastic dish detergent bottle in his pocket as a water canteen. I thought about the little things we Westerners take for granted. After Danny was satisfied with his GPS readings, we decided to stop exploration for the day.

  Danny wanted to visit the old combat base. When Dale turned down the now-paved road to the base, I was a bit surprised to see a large, new museum constructed along the lines of a Bru ethnic stilt model. Officials had realized most American veterans who returned to Vietnam wanted to visit their old battlegrounds, and the government wanted to capitalize on tourism. Once a one-room war museum, the new Ta Con Airport Monument Complex now displayed a UH-1 helicopter and a CH-47 helicopter.

  Hundreds of war artifacts, large relief maps of the area, as well as documents and photographs lined the walls as part of the collection. Quite a few U.S. military ID cards were also on display. When I returned home, I checked ID card names on the POW Network. One of the IDs belonged to Douglas Seeley. He was MIA over Laos on March 16, 1971, when his aircraft crashed. It would be interesting to learn how Seeley’s undamaged ID card had survived the fiery crash and made its way to the Khe Sanh War Museum. The museum director brought out several letters he considered his personal property, and asked me to read them to him. They were letters from home to a U.S. soldier stationed in Quang Tri during 1968. We assumed the director found them tucked safely away in some hiding place, because they were still in good shape. I tried to buy the letters, thinking I might be able to find the owner back in the U.S., but they weren’t for sale at any price.

  Daylight had turned to dusk as Danny, Dale and I pulled away from the base. Halfway back to the main road we met a group of kids and Dale spotted an old military issue plastic canteen one of the girls carried. He stopped to see if she would sell the canteen. Danny pulled up behind us as the haggling ensued. I was intent on listening to Dale try to talk the young girl into selling the canteen since she said it wasn’t hers to sell, yet she looked very tempted. “Hey! Hey, Donna isn’t this yours?” Danny called out. I turned around, and sure enough, a tiny dark-haired boy stood next to Danny trying to sell him my insulated water container, which had been hanging by the strap on the front of Dale’s bike.

  At this point, Dale decided we needed to head for our hotel in Dong Ha. On the way back, a steady drizzle made the blacktop slick, and the occasional dog or water buffalo in the road slowed us down considerably. I glanced over my shoulder and realized the headlight on Danny’s bike was barely noticeable in the thick fog. Dale stopped to let him catch up. Dan
ny told us the bike was running bad, and the dim headlight barely kept him on the road. Danny stayed on Dale’s bumper all the way back to Dong Ha. Safe and dry back at the hotel, we decided it would be best to find lodging in Khe Sanh the next day.

  left to right: Kieu, Geof and Hung conduct a “Ceremony of Remberance” prior to planting a POW/MIA tree for Jerry in the corner of Kieu’s yard, Hue, 2008. Photo courtesy Geof steiner.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  American G.I. at the Old French Fort

  The next morning we once again set out for Khe Sanh. Geof went ahead in a taxi with Danny, Kieu, and Hung. He wanted to spend time at a Bru village along Highway 9 to meet with friends from previous visits. By the time Steve, Huong, Dale, and I arrived, the reunion had spilled out onto the highway as all the villagers came out to say hello, or satisfy curiosity.

  Geof introduced me to a man seated in a wheelchair and proudly told me, “This man fought with us.” The elderly Bru wore an even older gray felt hat, and although a little thin, he sported a wide smile as he clung to Geof’s large, white hand. Similar to Nam vets anywhere, old wartime friendships never fade. I hoped to see Anha this trip, but I was fearful of returning to his home without invitation. I was afraid my last visit might have caused trouble for him with the police. Other Vietnamese friends had informed me the authorities came to their homes, or accosted them in public for months following our Dong Ha house arrest in 2000.

  We rode into Khe Sanh as a group and found a suitable hotel. Typical Vietnamese accommodations, the hotel was nothing fancy, although it at least provided air conditioning. As I stepped into the bathroom, I noticed a wide gap between the cinderblock walls and the thin sheet metal roof. I made a mental note not to leave the light on in the bathroom at night; the bare bulb would draw in jungle creatures.

  Huong left and returned with the Vietnamese version of carryout food, plastic bags of chicken with vegetables in a broth. Our bellies full, Geof and Danny rented bikes and everyone set out on Highway 9 so Danny could take more GPS readings in his attempt to verify the location of the Old French Fort. We pulled to the side of the road somewhere east of Khe Sanh. While the guys were busy looking through binoculars and comparing GPS readings, I took the time to appreciate the view. From the shoulder of the highway, a steep decline dropped down to a deep, canopied gully with fast moving water I could hear, but not see. As the sun dropped in the west and the warm air cooled, a steamy mist began to rise. I stood entranced with the beauty and sounds of the jungle. As I listened to wildlife calls, I made a mental note to answer former Marine corpsman Jim Armbrust’s question, “Yeah doc, the, whilebirds returned to Khe Sanh after the war was over.”

  Upon our return to the hotel, everyone drifted to the porch to sit and talk. The rooms had no televisions, but it didn’t matter, everyone was too wound up to rest anyway. Steve rode Huong around the parking lot in circles as she sat on the motorbike sidesaddle. Dale explained Vietnamese women like to ride in this manner because it indicates high status. Many women wear hats and long gloves in the sun for the same reason. They find it inconceivable Western women pay money to tan fair skin. After dark, the mosquitoes drove us inside without much grumbling because everyone was tired. Tomorrow we would again explore the area south of the Old French Fort. Dale and Danny told me to expect the unexpected while beating around in the bush, more specifically poisonous snakes such as cobras and vipers. They tried to pull the old Drill Instructor’s Snake Gag: “Vietnam has a hundred species of snakes: ninety-nine are poisonous and can kill you with a bite; the other one ain’t poisonous, but will crush you to death!” Actually, only thirty of Vietnam’s one hundred forty snake species are poisonous, but any snake in my immediate vicinity was one too many.

  Before exploring the old road that ran south of Highway 9, everyone wanted breakfast. Danny and Steve decided what Khe Sanh needed at the bare minimum was a McDonald’s and a Kentucky Fried Chicken. We settled for a Vietnamese restaurant with concrete floors, plastic kiddy chairs, and dogs that eagerly ate scraps off the floor. One of the funniest things I’ve ever seen in Vietnam was Steve attempting to order omelets for breakfast. He did a perfect imitation of a big chicken squawking and laying an egg. We didn’t get eggs for breakfast, but the roasted hen was excellent.

  A few us decided to ride behind the Khe Sanh market building to check for any roads that might lead us on a different route to the Old French Fort. Unfortunately, the road stopped and turned into a rugged trail that a four-wheeler would have trouble navigating. I got off Dale’s bike so he could ride a little further to check things out. By the time he returned, we had a circle of new acquaintances. Danny took pictures of a cute little Vietnamese girl. He showed the images to her on his digital camera display. He took a few more shots of the kids as old and young alike gathered around him to see the pictures, giggle, and laugh. I wasn’t sure who was having more fun, Danny or the locals.

  We followed the street that ran by the Old French Fort until the pavement ended, then continued down a rough, uneven dirt road past a metal sign which marked the southern boundary of Khe Sanh village. There were many Bru hut’s alongside this desolate road. Intricate bamboo fences covered in vines marked yard boundaries. Chickens and dogs scampered about, water buffalo ranged free, and kids ran from their homes to yell, “You American! Hello! Hello!” We rode until we came to a crossing where a low-water dam flooded the roadbed. A Bru man in a raincoat was busy doing his laundry in the middle of the stream. Huong and I got off the bikes to wade through knee-deep water with the cameras, as the men tried to drive through the water without killing the bike engines. Steve’s sparkplug got wet and his bike stalled out. Immediately, all the Bru men nearby came to help push the bike. I noticed when the locals approached the crossing on a bike they stopped to stick a lily pod in their tailpipes. The spongy pod kept the water out, and once on the other side they simply removed the plug. Steve eventually fired his bike and our journey continued.

  Two barefoot Bru women in traditional dress walked alongside the road. One woman had on a deep purple blouse; a bright blue headdress, and carried a big round metal bread pan. The other woman, dark hair in braids, wore a spotless white cotton shirt and carried a woven bamboo basket strapped to her back. A little boy ran past playing with his wooden stick and an old bicycle wheel. I was captivated with this place, the Vietnam I’d only seen in movies. Dale and I bumped along for quite a ways, tailing Danny, who would stop occasionally to survey the countryside through binoculars. At one spot, he got off his bike without a word and walked around with his GPS. Dale whispered to me, “Let’s just give Danny some time here.” Danny spent about fifteen or twenty minutes at this spot looking around through his binoculars and taking GPS readings before returning to his bike and moving on.

  We passed a hut where the mama-san squatted down on the porch to slice a round white melon with huge black seeds for two children. Farther down the road, we waited while a small herd of water buffalo crossed a shallow stream. The guys exchanged greetings with two men in muddy clothes who carried shovels; obviously they had been in the hills digging for scrap metal. Scavenging for metal around Khe Sanh is risky business because of all the live ammo still scattered about, but like most people everywhere, the locals do what they can to provide for their families. Maybe one hut in every community had a satellite on the roof, but dozens of wires strung long distances along bamboo poles provided television to all the neighbors. Studying a bamboo water line that operated by means of drop gravity, I had to admire the ingenuity of these third-world people.

  As usual, Danny picked the highest spot around to get a visual. Huong stayed with the bikes while the rest of us skirted old bomb craters to climb the hill. The view from the top was calm and peaceful. Down in the valley, bright green rice stalks grew next to dark green coffee plants. Water buffalo grazed calmly on fertile hillsides as silver linings of thick gray clouds reflected in the afternoon sun. Steve glanced at the dark clouds quickly moving in from the east, and called out, “It�
��s coming this way, we’re going to get wet in about five minutes.”

  A drenching, pouring rain blew in. At first, it was refreshing, a welcome relief from the heat, but as the storm system passed directly over us it came down in heavy sheets. The men crowded for cover under the one big tree with low hanging branches, while I crouched in a clump of thick bushes, leaning over my camera to protect it from the saturating downpour. I watched the steam rise off the sun-baked rocks like white smoke. Trying to see anything over a few feet away was like looking through a frosted window. I thought about how spooky these hills must be at night.

  After the rain stopped, we started down the muddy path. We made it to the bikes, pulled out ponchos, and huddled until the sun popped back out. The rain was gone as fast as it came, but soaking wet clothes and big appetites turned us back towards the village. A white-haired old man dressed in black, his expression unreadable, stood quietly off to one side. He scrutinized each of the men as they approached the creek and never moved from his post while we were within sight. Three little Bru boys watched as Steve walked his motorcycle through the creek, Danny wobbled his bike across, and Dale blasted straight through. A small child wore a hairy animal hide poultice of some type around his neck on a piece of leather. Dale pulled a bag of candy out and all the children came running for a treat, a good way to end our day’s explorations.