Vietnam II: A War Novel Episode 1 (V2) (4 page)

Lieutenant Colonel William Carter

Air Force Intelligence Officer

The Pentagon

I interviewed Lieutenant Colonel Frank Kirby at his office at the Pentagon.  He was doing a staff tour with combat plans working on a new concept called Air Land Battle.

“It was 1982 I think.  Yeah it must have been.”  He told me still looking unsure.  “Who won the Superbowl that year?  Anyway I flew MIA families to this annual convention in Washington.  It was in the summer.  I remember it was hot as hell, especially when we touched down in Tampa.  We did it again, though I can’t remember if that was the next year or if there was a couple of years in between.  They did it again when the year after I left the unit so I don’t know much about that one.  It was all President Reagan.  He thought the families didn’t get a good shake.  That was 1984.  The same year that the National POW/MIA Recognition Day started.”

“1984?”

“I think so.”

“You spent time with the families.  Do you think that any of them could be in touch with any POWs?”

He did not answer.

“What in general is their attitude to the possibility their loved ones are still alive.”

He stared at me like I slapped him in the face.

“Check this out.”  He said at last pointing to a flag that adorned the wall beside his desk.  It was the POW/MIA Flag.  The flag features a POW in a prison camp and bears the words "You Are Not Forgotten" on the bottom. 

“Al Pacino was used as the model.”  He told me.  “Things went crazy on that forehead though so it doesn’t show.”

“When is he going to do another movie?”

“I know.  He’s great.  Anyway it has flown beneath the American flag at the White House, the Capitol, and the Pentagon every year on National POW/MIA Recognition Day.  President Reagan’s gesture was touching; unfortunately it has an unintended dark side.”

“What is that?”

“It has led some families to believe they do not have to accept the loss of their loved ones.  They don’t let go and neither does America.  That gave birth to a lot of drama.”

“Hence the public outcry and the investigations.”

“The movies?”

“Yes the movies”

“President Reagan said he was holding out hope that ‘some may still be saved.’  Does this mean that our men have been tortured daily in a distant jungle for decades?  Nobody wants to think of that.”

It was as close to a straight answer as I was going to get.

“Do you believe that Vietnam still has living POWs?”

“I don’t know, but I will tell you something: if they do we better tread lightly.  I mean if the cavalry starts heading their way wouldn’t the easiest thing to do with twenty year old POWs is just kill them?” 

Major Brad Johnson

Air Force Intelligence Officer

Thailand

In the days after the Thailand Box were found we were running down every lead no matter how inconsequential.  Military and civilian national security agencies were interviewing former POWs, refugees, defectors and missionaries who had been into Vietnam since the war.  When I flew to Thailand there were Army intelligence guys on the plane, a couple of State Department guys and one man who went by Smith that I swear was CIA.  All of them were aimed at pinpointing if POWs were still alive and if so where.

I arrived in Songkhla, Thailand.  I split a cab with the four Army intelligence officers and proceeded to get a few drinks at the hotel bar to fight the jet lag.

After a couple of rounds they showed me their interview questions.  They were not that much different than ours.  The next morning we went to the harbor together.  There we were there to meet former United States Army Special Forces member Nick Quinlan. 

The guy turned out to be a scam artist.  He wanted money to talk to us.  When we refused he warmed up a little.  He handed us grainy photos and signed statements of dubious origin.  He wanted money to tell us more.  He wanted money to talk to his contacts.  He wanted money to take us up river.

We bid him farewell and pressed on to meet two more of these characters.  It was the same with all of them. 

The thought of family members coming here and shilling out their hard earned money to guys like them made me sick.

I reported our findings over a secure phone to Carol the next day at the embassy.  She was not surprised by my findings at all which in turn surprised me.  Before my meeting I had no idea POWs were a cottage industry in Indochina.  A number of former military and other slimy entrepreneurs had made a living fleecing families, friends and concerned citizens of their hard earned money.  The slime balls all promised that their loved ones were still alive and they could provide evidence.  Like any other scheme once you paid money they hit them up for more.  Eventually the poor families were dumping more and more money into the scheme all the while the con men said they were just on the edge of a breakthrough.  If the families got anything at all it was a grainy photograph that could have been anyone.

It was sad.

An army officer stopped me in the hallway.  He started chatting me up.  I was in civilian clothes and he probably thought I was one of his guys.

“These guys are a bunch of snake oil salesmen.”  I told him when he asked.

“A dead end then?”

“No.  I think there is something here.  Something I can’t get at.”

“What are you suggesting?”  He said with a raised eyebrow.

“I think we need our own people in the jungle.  Someone who can hunt these clues down.”

“I know just the men for the job.”

My commander figured this was a wild goose chase.  I had taken a long plane ride for nothing.  Well I hope I helped this army guy out. 

I put the grainy photos and the statements the Quinlan guy gave me in an evidence bag.  It was the only thing close to proof right now.  The forensic guys back home could at least take a look at it.

Technical Sergeant Tony Luciano

Air Force Operations Intelligence Specialist

Guthrie, Oklahoma

When I arrived at the Pham family house I was received by Captain Kien Pham, his wife and three daughters.  His wife and eldest daughter spoke broken English in a thick Vietnamese accent.  His two youngest daughters spoke perfect English with deep Oklahoma accents.

“I am RVN.  I will always be RVN.”  Pham explained to me over coffee.  “Every Veteran's Day I drive down to Oklahoma City with three other Viet Kieu.  There is a mass color guard there with honor guards from all over the state participating.  The army, navy and air force are there.  Others too dressed in old clothing from the revolutionary war.  Then there is us.  The RVN.”

He points to an old flight suit in the closet.

“I flew F-5s in the war.  Shot down a Mig once.  Splashed that mother fucker.”  He pointed to a grainy picture on the wall that looked like a smudge in a snow storm.  It was the wreckage of the fighter.

“I honestly do not know anything about your countrymen.  After the communist came they captured me along with the rest of my squadron.  They put us in prison.  I thought we were brothers.  I thought we were strong.  They turned on me.  It is hard to be strong when there is no hope.  I did not turn.  They beat me.”

“You escaped?”  I asked.

“No.”  Pham shook his head.  “I went to many prisons.  I never saw any of your brothers there.  Only my brothers and they were not my brothers anymore.”

“When they released me from prison I was put into a forced labor camp.”  He continued.  “We would travel by truck, train and sometimes by foot from place to place around the country.  We filled in holes from your B-52 strikes.  You were lucky to get a shovel.  Most of us moved dirt with our hands, carrying it against our stomachs from before dawn until after dusk filling the bomb craters.”

“I will never go back to Vietnam.  I am an American and this is my home now.  We send money back to family there, but that is all.  You should not go there either.  It is a bad place.”

“I may not have a choice.”  I admitted.

“If they say go you say hell no.”  He smiled.

“I can’t do that.”

He nodded.

“I was a soldier once.”  He pointed at the flight suit.  “I know.”

Major Brad Johnson

Air Force Intelligence Officer

Site Two Refugee Camp, Thailand

These refugee camps were full of hunger and desperation.  They provided a fertile ground for phony MIA stories.  US government interviewers from other agencies were there collecting information from refugees regarding the missing American servicemen. 

The refugee claims were varied. 

“A lot of the mythology was born in the Thai camps.”  A missionary named Bobby Campaign explained to me.  “You see in east and northeast Thailand there are thousands of refugees from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia locked into these refugee camps.  These poor people don’t have much of a future.  In fact the majority have no hope of being moved to another country so they wait sometimes for years to be sent back to the countries they escaped from.”

Bobby gave me the best stuff he had collected for the two and a half years he was in the camp.  I mailed it all via embassy to Carol.  That way it would get home before I did.

It consisted of:

Possible locations of crash sites or gravesites

Possible hidden POWs at Yen Bai re-education camp system in northern Vietnam, a place called Kilo Site, a rumored prison surrounded by a lake.

Others were letters from former Communist soldiers who shared the policies and procedures for the handling of captured Americans.

Some were made up stories from refugees hoping that they would get a ticket to the US.  They concocted every phony story you could imagine from POWs being shipped to China and Russia to some underground prison in Hanoi.

Some might have been for real.

I could not see how we were going to run them all down without having a presence in the country of Vietnam.

That was my last contribution to the investigation.  I got on a plane and headed home the next day.

Major Benjamin James

Air Force Intelligence Officer

Albany, New York

I met Colonel Drummond, or Bulldog as he preferred to be called, at a McDonalds in Eagle Hill, a suburb of Albany, New York.  He was a skinny elderly man who had leathery skin like he had spent too many years in the sun.  The old Marine still looked like he could still break me in two if he wanted to.  We sat down in the children’s area after introductions.  He drank coffee.  I had nothing.

“Air Force you say?”

“That’s right.”

“I’ll try not to hold that against you.”  He nodded at two little boys running around playing Ninja Turtles.  “My grandsons always want to come here.  The Hardees across the street is cheaper, but they want to play.  That’s how big business gets to you.  Through the kids who don’t know any better.”

I nodded in agreement.

“We’re attempting now to find any information we can on live POWs in Vietnam.”  I began.

“You won’t find any.”  He said without hesitation.

“We know you looked.”  I said trying to get the conversation going again.  “Any information you might have would be helpful.  If we were to start, should we be looking in Laos or Cambodia?”

“Not there.”  He jabbed his finger on the plastic table as if it were a map of North Vietnam.  “And before you ask not in China or the USSR either.  I spent ten years over there after the war with contractors that worked with the South Vietnamese and then later in Thailand with another company there.  I spent a hundred grand of my own money running down leads.  Nothing moves over there without dirty paper despite all their claims at being communist.  I did not even get a whiff.  Not one decent piece of evidence that anyone was still alive.”

“Is there any other leads you didn’t follow that we could follow now given the new interest.”

“No son.  It’s a waste of time.  I lost five men while I was there.  You crash into a jungle or the Gulf of Tonkin and no one finds your body you become MIA even when you are KIA.”

Technical Sergeant Tony Luciano

Air Force Operations Intelligence Specialist

Fresno, California

I interviewed retired Colonel John Buchanan formerly of the Staff of the Defense Attaché to South Vietnam at a VFW in Fresno.  Bingo was going on while we spoke.  Even though it was ten o’clock in the morning he drank a beer. 

Retirement is looking better all the time.

I drank a soda.

After introductions he told me about the fall of Saigon.

“We were some of the last ones in the country.”  Buchanan was a big man sporting some extra pounds.  He seemed to be enjoying retirement.  “I was on the second to last helicopter in fact.  Never liked to fly, especially a helicopter, but I was damn glad when that thing took to the air.”

“Did you know of anyone we might have left behind, sir?”  I asked.

“For certain?  No.  I will tell you this though, in the days before Saigon fell we got the word out that we were evacuating.  Through different Vietnamese and Embassy channels we contacted everyone who might be interested in leaving and living.  Especially Americans.  You will not believe who came out of the woodwork.  Long haired hippies.  Guys that looked like they had gone native.”

“Deserters?”

“I thought so at the time, but there were no deserters that were unaccounted for.  Some of them were civvies that came there to work and decided to stay.”

“Do you think we left anyone behind?”

“Sure.  Whether or not they were military I don’t know.  Maybe some GIs came back after their tour was over.  That’s what I always believed anyway.  We were just interested in getting everyone out of there so we did not ask a lot of questions.  Does any of this help?”

“Not really, but thank you.”  Normally you acted like the information was valuable to keep the witness talking, but I was too tired to blow smoke up his ass.

“Something I’ve always wanted to run down was an area of Saigon that GIs supposedly ran.  There were rumors of deserters there, but I was never able to confirm much.  It had a funny name.”

“What was it called?”  I asked hoping this might lead me somewhere.

“Soul City.  Check out Soul City if you get a chance.  You find someone who lived there and they might know more.”