Hites handed me the brief, two-paragraph CIL interim analysis. The report stated, “...the remains recovered may be Mongoloid.” Although not encouraging, it was also not a conclusive determination. Until the final analysis, ethnic origin was only speculation. Back to the seemingly never-ending wait for answers.
I returned to pondering the Discrepancy Last Known Alive list (LKA list). Because Jerry’s loss circumstances met DoD criteria, I couldn’t understand why he was not on the LKA list. Important because DIA maintains a team in Hawaii known as Stony Beach, which is dedicated solely to conducting investigations of the forty-three remaining LKA cases throughout Southeast Asia. After persistent questioning, Paul G. Werring, DMPO Defense Casualty Liaison Officer, very clearly explained the state of affairs to me in a September 2006 letter, “In short, the LKA list was prepared for a specific purpose nearly 20 years ago, and we do not add names to it.” It all boils down to the 1980s LKA list having been based on opinions or feelings rather than on facts or evidence. To add a name to the list would bring the entire process into question. Concern has shifted from proving a soldier was possibly alive, to protecting DIA’s questionable method of compiling the list.
Two more years passed without a word on Case 1000. In search of answers, I traveled to Washington, D.C. for the annual government meeting in 2007. Patty Hopper, Director of Task Force Omega, my niece, Janet, and I met with Stephen E. Thompson, JPAC Family and Veteran Liaison. Thompson informed us the grave we vets had discovered in September 2003, had indeed contained an U.S. soldier. CIL had been able to extract enough Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from his big toe for identification. My family reference sample, already on file, did not match. The soldier in the grave at the Old French Fort was not Jerry.
Thompson rambled on as my brain tried to wrap around this new information. JPAC/CIL had already placed the other Case 1000 MIA, Billy D. Hill, on their “Urgent List” because they had lost touch with the family. Names on this list are active cases where recovered remains could possibly be identified, but the laboratory lacks a family DNA reference sample. Thompson asked if I could help DPMO locate the Hill’s. I agreed to search for the Hill family; I would do it for Billy. Maybe he would come home to them because of efforts by those who still care.
Inwardly, however, I seethed. Apparently, almost forty years of mindbending uncertainty, which led to even more loss of family, meant nothing to the government bureaucracy. It was clear to me the accounting command had completed the analysis and quietly filed the results away, while I waited and wondered for three years if it was my brother we had found in the grave at the Old French Fort. I had no recourse, DoD policy did not require notification of our family unless mtDNA confirmed Jerry’s identity, but under the circumstances, a brief phone call or email would have been a welcome courtesy.
A fullest possible accounting, as defined by the U.S.G, begins with an assumption that the individual is alive, “The return of a living person or his or her remains or credible reason why neither is possible.” A review of all the facts available on Case 1000 leads me to believe the North Vietnamese captured my brother. Conceivably, the truth looms in the restricted Archives of the Central Military Museum of Hanoi, buried in the well-documented records of the 304th NVA. JPAC continues, albeit unsuccessfully, to pursue access to the Vietnamese collection of war records. Nevertheless, as authors Garnet “Bill” Bell and George J. Veith pointed out in POWs and Politics: How Much does Hanoi Really Know, “Ironically, although circumstantial evidence is considered adequate to determine that an American serviceman is dead, it is not considered sufficient to conclude that a man is still alive.”
POW/MIA families are realistic by experience. We do not ask for the impossible; we understand each case is unique, and not everyone can be accounted for in war. Nonetheless, regardless of heartache and obstacle, we deserve to know why the Vietnamese government cannot resolve specific cases. For instance, those POWs who reportedly died in captivity (DIC), but their remains were never returned. Moreover, we want to know why, out of hundreds of POWs held under Vietnamese control in Laos in 1973, not even one came home alive.
The government of the United States promises the military soldier that when called to war, our country will do everything possible to account for them if they are captured or missing. A promise makes people expect something. A person is only as good as their word, a government as honorable as those who empower it. We can change the future by remembering past mistakes and correcting them.
President Barack Obama acknowledged our warriors in his 2009 inaugural speech, “For us, they fought and died, in places like Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sanh.” Acclaim is not enough for the POW/MIAs. These men are not just names on a list or a black granite wall. Behind the name of every POW/MIA is a family that wonders and worries. We know all too well, the only thing harder than being a soldier is loving one.
Black Sunday survivors attend the Black Cat reunion in Savannah, Georgia, May 2009. Front Row (left to right): Richard Crosby, David Howington, Bob McQueen, Lennis Lee. Back Row (left to right): Danny Williams, Heidi Atanian, Bob Ford, Jerry Staggs, and Ken Riley.
The Black Cat 2009 reunion was held in Savannah, Georgia, and it was there that I met Lennis Lee. His wife, Judy, was kind enough to remove a memento from their Vietnam scrapbook and offer the letter to me. The keepsake was a letter Mama had written to Lennis in July 1968. My hands dropped slowly into my lap as I stared at the letter, unable to comprehend my surroundings for a few moments. Visions of Mama, curled up in her favorite chair writing poetry in her beautiful cursive handwriting, flickered across my mind.
These words had no rhyme, but came straight from the heart. Hands trembled and vision blurred as I read the imploring, unanswerable questions asked of a pilot by a missing soldier’s tormented mother. “Did they bomb that place before our boys were able to get back in there? What about the South Vietnamese troops? Did they find any of their bodies? Is it really so, you saw Jerry’s body in the tall grass?”
I dared not speak for fear of losing the tiny bit of self-control I struggled to maintain. Seated between husband and wife, I suddenly realized the toll such letters must have taken on this steadfast soldier. I had no idea how many such letters Mama might have written over the years. I stole a glance at Lennis; he had the infamous thousand-yard stare. I knew through official records Jerry’s pilot flew back into a hot LZ to search for him. I was very familiar with the slide he had returned to the enemy occupied Fort only days after the ambush to photograph. I remembered how Lee had taken it upon himself to visit our family when he returned from Vietnam in 1968. I was also aware he had contacted DPMO to follow-up on Case 1000 long after the war was over. What I hadn’t known, until this moment, was Mama had poured her heart out to Lennis Lee.
Jerry’s pilot, Lennis Lee, and his wife, Judy, 2009.
Leaning close, I touched his shoulder lightly and tried to keep my voice steady, “Lennis, you do know you did all that you possibly could?” He did not answer me, nor did he move, although his eyes turned suddenly bright. Respectfully, I shifted my focus back to the letter.
Clutching Mama’s forty-one-year-old correspondence, written on her personal stationery by her own hand, made me feel connected again, and offered fortitude to continue the search. Her valiant words, written only months after Jerry went missing, bent time to clarify why America must keep the promise to our POW/MIAs and their families.
“We would like to know,” Mama proclaimed. “I don’t think we should be allowed to believe anything but the truth.”
Appendix
POW/MIA Information Resources
Advocacy & Intelligence Index For POWs-MIAs Archives
www.aiipowmia.com
Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO)
www.dtic.mil/dpmo
Joint Prisoners of War, Missing in Action Accounting Command (JPAC)
www.jpac.pacom.mil
Library of Congress POW/MIA Database and Documents
/> lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/powquery.html
National Alliance of Families
www.nationalalliance.org
National Archives Combat Area Casualties File (CACF)
http://aad.archives.gov/aad/fielded-search.jsp?dt=197&tf = F&cat=GP24&bc=sl
National League of Families
www.pow-miafamilies.org
Personnel Missing Southeast Asia (PMSEA)
www.dtic.mil/dpmo/pmsea/files.htm
POW/MIA FOIA Litigation Account
www.powfoia.org/missionstatement.htm
POW Network (SEA POW/MIA biographies)
www.pownetwork.org/bios.htm
Task Force Omega
www.taskforceomegainc.org
Texas Tech University Virtual Vietnam Archives
www.Vietnam.ttu.edu/virtualarchive
The Virtual Wall
www.virtualwall.org
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 35
