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.

  After daybreak the next morning, Danny, Dale, and I rode back to the same location so Danny could take a second look around to orient himself. The two men climbed the hill while I watched the bikes, and the Bru watched me. For over an hour, a dozen young children and teenagers gathered to gawk at the American woman. Unlike Jerry, my pale hair had turned dishwater blonde by grade school, although sunlight brings out the auburn tones thanks to Mama’s Scotch-Irish side of the family. The Vietnamese frequently stared at my wavy mane, and I was used to the occasional woman who asked to touch, but amusingly concluded these young Bru with dark tresses had never seen anyone with humidity-puffed hair billowing beneath a boonie hat.

  They were friendly and high-spirited. I was pleasantly entertained watching them play. The older girls, sent by their mothers to gather herbs, scaled the high dirt banks with ease. One of the little boys must have called out “snake” in Bru, because all the children scattered in a panic. When they realized it was a prank, the kids laughed at each other. From a break in the foliage, I could see two men far below the roadway walking alongside a creek. They twisted and turned through the tall elephant grass until they disappeared from sight. I couldn’t imagine trying to fight an enemy that could become invisible by standing still or squatting down. An older boy walked slowly behind a small herd of water buffalo until a mischievous little fellow ran up and popped a calf on the tail with a switch. A stampede headed right for me as I leaned over Dale’s bike to protect it. Thankfully, the boys steered the buffalo away at the last minute. This same little prankster stood behind the girls who sat peacefully on the ground and showered them with handfuls of green leaves. They didn’t seem to mind; it was all in good fun.

  High up on the hill, Dale and Danny weren’t having an amusing time. I wouldn’t hear the details until over a year later when Dale wrote, “Danny and I had a strange experience that we didn’t talk with each other about, but maybe we should have.” From their position, Dale found the guard tower at the Old French Fort through the binoculars and pointed it out to Danny. Dale sensed that Danny seemed to change a little, although he didn’t say anything. After a few minutes of checking the area thoroughly, Danny determined it was time to go back down.

  It had been quiet and still on top of the hill. Suddenly the wind picked up and the vibe changed when they both clearly heard Vietnamese voices nearby. The voices were loud, and sounded like young males communicating amongst each other. Dale thought Danny was probably traveling the same terrain he had years earlier when he escaped the NVA, and now these strange voices added to the memories. Danny began to move faster and faster down the hill. Suddenly, Danny stopped dead in his tracks, turned and looked at Dale. Before he could say anything Dale told him “Don’t flashback on me now, Danny, those voices are real.” The voices were close, so numerous they should have been able to see people, but there was only the wind, Danny and Dale. In escape and evade mode, they double-timed the rest of the way down the hill.

  Back on the bikes, we rode up on several metal scavengers a few miles down the road. Danny stopped, quickly drew a cat on a scrap of paper, and meowed loudly to get the point across. The drawing was supposed to be the unit emblem for the Black Cats, which might have been recognizable on the crashed Black Cat #027, but the Bru men obviously didn’t have a clue. Dale finally said, “Danny, that possum you drew ain’t gonna get it,” and called out, “May by, may by,” Vietnamese for “flying machine.” One or two of the men offered to lead us to places they claimed to have seen crashed choppers, but Dale didn’t trust their stories, so we moved on.

  Passing a cluster of Bru huts, sandals all neatly lined up outside each doorway, we saw a group of men gathered at one home. They waved at us, total strangers, to stop and come inside. One man in particular stood out; dressed in opulent purple complete with round silk hat, he had a long, finely-groomed silver beard. The reason for the gathering was a Bru wedding feast, and like most receptions, the rice wine flowed. When they saw the camera around my neck, they were eager to toast again and again as I took pictures. They were so nice I hated to leave, but we still had miles of “hang on” road to ride before we hit pavement, and the sun was going down fast.

  The next day Danny, Dale, and I again ventured down the old dirt road. When Danny stopped his motorbike Dale asked, “Got any good feelings?” Danny didn’t say anything; he just walked down the road a bit and searched the horizon with his binoculars. We rode north to the Old French Fort, where we found Geof exploring with Kieu and Hung. Danny and Dale joined them on the plateau. I wandered over to the Vietnamese civilian cemetery to check the dates on the headstones in an attempt to find the age of the graveyard. As I walked back to the Fort, I could see Kieu sitting in the shade of the guard shack where the Vietnamese soldiers lived. I invited myself to join the men. Hot, sweaty, tired, thirsty, and badly in need of a leech check and a shower, it felt good to sit down and get out of the sun. I didn’t mind that I couldn’t understand the conversation going on around me. Shortly thereafter, when Kieu suddenly jumped up and hastily began to climb the hill, I kept my seat.

  Geof strolled off the hill and sat down on the bench beside me. “Hey, how you doin’?” he asked casually, his voice tight and anxious. Something was going on, I could sense it. Not entirely sure I wanted to know; I decided to let him tell things in his own time. “We found something,” Geof finally blurted, “I’ll let Danny tell you.” His simple statement drew my immediate attention. Few things would fluster Geof so much; they had found chopper wreckage—or remains. Bracing myself, I climbed the hill with the notion whatever discovery waited, it might not hurt if I could make my pounding heart cold as a frozen pond.

  On top of the hill, Danny showed me a rectangular chunk of concrete. He believed the slab was once a part of the NVA bunker that fired the B40 rocket that downed Chopper #027. Danny seemed certain the location was correct. He led me to the bunker on the east side of the hill, and pointed out the ravine where the chopper had rolled. “Should I tell her now?” Dale asked Danny, who nodded and walked a few steps away. I reminded myself to breathe so I didn’t pass out.

  “Donna, we don’t want to get your hopes up,” Dale began, “There are two possibilities in this situation. See that mound of dirt over there with the burnt incense sticks?” Dale pointed and moved towards the mound at the same time. I followed in a daze, his words distant, almost dreamlike. Everything in me was somehow aware Dale was going to tell me the pile of red dirt was a grave. Rather than try to comprehend Jerry might actually be in the grave, my brain chose to focus on how many times I’d walked past this spot in the last few days. I had noticed the burnt joss sticks, but never imagined they topped off a recent grave. Grim faces alerted me to my friends concern, but I’d disassociated emotionally and lacked the ability to reassure them. All I could manage as Dale went on to explain what led up to this discovery, was to keep upright and stare vacantly at the mound of red dirt.

  While Kieu and I rested on the bench, the Vietnamese soldiers had asked him what the Americans were doing there. Kieu told them I searched for the bones of my brother who was missing from the war. In a humanitarian gesture, the Vietnamese soldiers revealed to Kieu the remains of an American G.I. were uncovered at this location back in the spring as a bulldozer scraped the hillside for road fill. One of the men perched in the tower happened to see a hammock in the bucket of the dozer. He called down to the operator to stop so he could retrieve the item. When Phung Xuan Lam pulled the green hammock out of the dirt, the lower torso of a human skeleton rolled out. The men wrapped the bones back up in the hammock and re-buried them not far from the original spot where the dozer dug them up. The Vietnamese, afraid the deceased soldier’s spirit would be angry at being disturbed, regularly prayed and burnt joss sticks on the reburial site.

  Kieu immediately found Geof and told him what he had learned. Geof in turn informed Dale and Danny. All three of them carefully questioned the Vietnamese soldiers with Kieu’s help. They asked why the soldiers were so sur
e that it was an American they buried and not a Vietnamese. The soldiers adamantly insisted that both feet were still jammed inside muddy U.S. combat boots, and held intact by the red clay packed around them. “Okay,” my friends resisted, “but many Vietnamese ARVN soldiers wore U.S. combat boots during the war.”

  “No, no, legs too long, feet too big for Vietnamese,” the Vietnamese soldiers countered, and insisted the man was an, “American G.I.”

  “What do you want to do, Donna?” Dale asked.

  “Dale,” I enquired, “do you have Gary Flanagan’s phone number programmed into your cell phone?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Do you mind if I call him right now?” I thought it important to follow the chain-of-command and immediately notify the JTF. Dale made the call and handed the phone to me as Gary answered the ring.

  “Gary, this is Donna. We’re at the Old French Fort and the Vietnamese soldiers here have directed us to a gravesite and claim that it contains an American soldier.”

  “What are you going to do?” he asked.

  What am I going to do? His question threw me for a loop. I stood there speechless. I expected Gary to explain JTFs procedure in a situation like this, not ask what I was going to do. Without the JTF, what could I do? Dale brought over a Vietnamese man who had arrived, an official from Hue. I handed the phone to the stranger since I knew Gary was fluent in Vietnamese. There was a lengthy conversation. Although I understood none of the exchange, the official was clearly disturbed when he handed the phone back to me. “I told him who I was,” Gary said, “that I worked with the U.S. Joint Task Force, and we were informed that the site may contain the remains of an American MIA. He understands the seriousness of the situation.” Again, Gary asked, “What are you going to do?” It seemed obvious to me, “I’m going to wait until you get here.”

  “Okay, I’ll see you soon,” Gary responded, and hung up. I gave Dale his cell phone back and told the guys what Gary had said. “When did Gary say the JTF would be here?” Dale asked. I didn’t know exactly, I had failed to get a definite arrival date. I assumed Gary meant that as soon as someone from Detachment 2 Headquarters in Hanoi could get to Khe Sanh. Without the support of the JTF, I was powerless. I was eager for the U.S. accounting command to arrive, investigate our report, and insure security. It might take a day or so, but I knew they would come as soon as possible to investigate. That is the sole mission of the accounting command: “to achieve the fullest possible accounting of Americans who did not return from the war in Southeast Asia.”

  Donna places the American flag on the grave at the Old French Fort. Photo by Geof Stiner.

  Geof pulled a small American flag from his pack back and I planted it in the dirt alongside the burnt incense. I had two bundles of blessed desert sage from my shaman friend, “Whitehawk,” in my camera bag. My friend, and Cathi’s dad, had passed on and I carried the sage to Vietnam as a sentimental gesture. I lit one, Danny lit the other, and we placed them on the grave together. My sage quickly went up in flames, while Danny’s sage burnt halfway down, and went out. “Oh, this same thing happen when Vietnamese soldiers burn incense,” Kieu told us. “They tell me incense not burn right on this grave. They are afraid, maybe spirit restless.”

  Steve, Donna, and Dale display a POW/MIA flag over the grave of an American G.I. at the Old French Fort. Photo by Geof Steiner.

  We had to pull up the American flag before the soldiers saw it; Communists tend to frown on displaying “Old Glory” on Vietnamese soil. I carefully rolled the little flag up and placed it in my camera bag, as Geof pulled out a big POW/MIA flag. We proudly held the black and white flag over the grave as a symbol of American’s commitment to the POW/MIAs unaccounted for in Southeast Asia. Before we left the Old French Fort that day, September 23, 2003, I stood alone over the grave of a man I believed to be an American soldier, maybe my own brother. I felt connected to this man. The need arose in me to lay claim to, and somehow protect this unknown American. I tried to think of something profound or ceremonial to say to mark the occasion. My mind blank, I searched my memory for familiar words of comfort, bowed my head, and recited the Lord’s Prayer over the soldier’s lonely grave.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Goodbye, Vietnam!

  Jo say that we were excited would be an understatement. Even if the soldier in the makeshift grave wasn’t Jerry, we hoped our efforts helped account for one more American MIA. Although the sadness of death surrounded the makeshift grave, it was rewarding to know that perhaps another family would soon have answers.

  Gathered in the hotel lobby, our combined energy crackled. Conversation turned from excitement surrounding the discovery, to concern about possible grave robbers. Although the American government doesn’t pay for remains, many Vietnamese still believed a reward system exists. As the others discussed what measures we should take, I quietly slipped away. I needed to be alone.

  I leaned against the headboard in my tiny, narrow room, and stared through the window at the neighboring rooftop. This was unbelievable; could we have possibly have found Jerry after all these years? Was this the reason I’d felt such a strong pull to return to the Old French Fort? If the American in the grave wasn’t Jerry, who could it be? Why did the Vietnamese soldiers tell us anything at all? What would happen when the JTF team arrived? Would the Vietnamese let us open the grave? Suddenly, I felt a little strange, as if I weren’t alone. Although there was no place for anyone to hide, I was uncomfortable enough that I wanted out of the room. As I attempted to get up, I found I couldn’t move. A powerful, unseen force pushed me back against the headboard. Never having experienced this sensation before, I became frightened.

  From out of nowhere, a sparkly haze appeared and began to swirl about the room. This presence somehow calmed my fears. Not so afraid anymore, I relaxed a little. That’s when I heard the voice. It was the most jubilant male voice I’ve ever heard. The disembodied voice repeated loudly, “Going home, going home, going home!” I wondered at first if the voice belonged to Jerry, if he tried to reach out to me from the grave, but this joyous spirit voice didn’t sound like my brother. As soon as I could move freely again, I ran out the door, and lost no time getting downstairs. I intended to tell the guys that either I’d heard a ghost, or I was losing my damn mind.

  I didn’t get a chance to say anything. Kieu had managed to find a rare and dusty bottle of Jack Daniel’s black label whiskey somewhere in Khe Sanh. In keeping with Vietnamese custom, a toast of remembrance was in order. We honored the American soldier in the grave first. Then we drank a toast to the Vietnamese soldiers who helped us find him. I could’ve used another shot of whiskey and coke to settle my nerves, but the bottle was empty, so it was back to the serious matter at hand. The more we talked about the situation, the more concerned about the security of the grave we became. We knew the soldiers slept in the guard shack, but they didn’t man the tower at night. It would be easy for someone to slip past them to steal the remains out of the shallow grave.

  We decided it would be a good idea to pull random security checks until the JTF team arrived. Dale volunteered to pull first duty and left immediately. He would ride over to the Fort, check the grave, and return. Steve felt uneasy about his going alone, but Dale had a determined look in his eyes. A short ride on paved roads, the journey should have taken twenty minutes there and back. When Dale didn’t return in more than half-an-hour, Steve and Huong rode their motorbike to the Old French Fort to check on him.

  Two Vietnamese men who lived along the road to the Fort had seen Dale drive-up. They had followed him to the grave, and asked if he would like to honor the soldier in the grave. The three men burned joss sticks, said prayers, and started down the hill together just as Steve and Huong arrived. Dale drove off ahead of them. Suddenly, his bike swerved erratically, left the roadway, and crashed hard into a ditch. Steve and Huong stopped and quickly appraising Dale’s condition, Steve sent Huong back to the hotel for help. Huong almost slid the bike into the parking
lot she was in such a rush. Between sobs, she tried to tell us Dale had been in an accident, but I was the only one who understood her jumbled English. I jumped on the back of her bike, and we sped back to the Fort.

  Arriving at the scene, Dale’s bike lay in a ditch, the front fender crushed from the accident. The two Vietnamese men carried Dale across the road to a small house. They threw him onto a wooden bed with only a rice mat for padding. He moaned loudly, so I knew he was still alive. Dale was in terrible shape, a gash over his eye spurted blood, and he was barely conscious. Since Khe Sanh had no medical clinic, someone called for a taxi. The men grabbed Dale again, and none to gently pushed him into the backseat of the van. Steve told Huong to go back to the hotel and alert the others we were taking Dale to the hospital in Dong Ha. Highway 9 was bad enough in daylight, but in the dark with rain and fog, it was the ride from hell.

  Dale sustained two black eyes, a gash over one eye, and a few cracked ribs, but he would recover. He fell into a restless sleep after a pain shot. Hung, Kieu’s young sidekick, volunteered to stay at the hospital and care for Dale. We reluctantly left them behind the glass doors of the crowded infirmary. The locked doors kept the mammoth rats that roamed the old hospital from gnawing on sleeping patients. Because the hospital provided nothing except the most basic medical care, Steve purchased drinking water, soap, towels, toilet paper, and left Hung cash for food.