"Well God has come to guide us, to lend his might hand
So mount up brothers let's ride to the promised land
Where the roads are paved with honor and the streets are marked with signs
To guide our bothers who we'll never leave behind."
"Rolling Thunder" words and lyrics by Larry Kidwell & Carl Jones
What better way to describe the men and woman of Rolling Thunder and Run for The Wall than with the words from the song "Rolling Thunder" - "To guide our bothers who we'll never leave behind" and what better way to say:
Congratulations Once Again - to the Ladies and Gentlemen of Rolling Thunder, on the success of their 14th Annual "Ride For Freedom." We extend special thanks to Rolling Thunder's President Artie Muller, his Vice President, John Mendes and their Board of Directors.
Congratulations Once Again - to the Ladies and Gentlemen of Run for The Wall whose members rode cross country, to draw attention to the issue of Servicemen Prisoners and Missing as a result of America's wars. This was their 13th Run.
Once in D.C. Rolling Thunder and Run for The Wall united for the largest and in our opinion best ever "Ride For Freedom." C-Span covered the event and we hope you all got to see the run and hear the guest speakers.
It was a wonderful day and everyone there knew it was a day to remind the world about our POW/MIAs. Once again, Rolling Thunder and Run for The Wall got the job done!
On behalf of the families of our Prisoners of War and Missing in Action,
World War II, Korea, Cold War, Vietnam and the Gulf,
we say THANK YOU!
See How Former POW Mike Benge spent his Memorial Day Weekend drawing attention to the plight of America's POW/MIAs click here
If You Couldn't Be There - you missed the concert by Paul Revere and the Raiders and the chance to purchase their new CD titled; "Ride to The Wall." Net proceeds from the sale of this CD benefits the Ride to the Wall Foundation. Among the songs on the CD are classics such as Fortunate Son, Born to Be Wild, Satisfaction and We Gotta Get Out Of This Place, as well as Ride To The Wall, Rolling Thunder and Armed Forces Radio.
Ride to the Wall Foundation is a "non-profit organization making funds available to various approved veterans outreach programs" Among its Board members is former Miss American 2000, Heather French Henry. For more on this visit http://www.ridetothewall.org
Thank You Heart of Illinois - We saw some very interesting documents on our last trip to the Library of Congress, without your help, we wouldn't have been able to copy them all. You will be reading about one very interesting find in a future Bits.
A Must Read - is "The Last Battle - The Mayaguez Incident and the End of the Vietnam War" by Ralph Wetterhahn. The book tells of the bloody battle to rescue the crew of the SS Mayaguez, seized by Cambodia in May 1975. It also tells of the three Marines, Joseph Hargrove, Gary Hall and Danny Marshall abandoned on Koh Tang Island.
Of the Last Battle, noted author, reporter and friend to the POW/MIA issue, Sydney Schanberg wrote: "The author, "who spent years putting together the pieces of this hidden tale, grittily paints telling portraits of the three abandoned Marines by going back to their hometowns and even tracks down the Khmer Rouge commander. With the eye of an historian and the doggedness of the finest reporters, Wetterhahn tells what actually happened.... with a remarkably even hand."
At this time, we are pleased to confirm author Ralph Wetterhahn will be among the speakers at this years Alliance meeting. Mr. Wetterhahn will speak about the Mayaguez Incident as well as his involvement with a World War II recovery.
Copies of the "The Last Battle - The Mayaguez Incident and the End of the Vietnam War" will be available for purchase at the Alliance meeting. Mr. Wetterhahn will be autographing copies. For those unable to attend this years meeting books can be order through Amazon.com at http://www.amazon.com This is a MUST READ!
More On Jerry Degnan - In the last edition of "Bits" we wrote of Jerry Degnan, a civilian employee of Decca Navigator Systems, missing in Vietnam. We wrote how he was misidentified as a manifested passenger aboard a helicopter that crashed on August 9th 1967. From 1967 until 1982 Jerry Degnan rested under a soldiers headstone. During that time the remains of the soldier thought to be in that grave, were held at various military mortuaries from Tan Son Nhut to CIL-HI. Once returned to his family the search now began for the identity of the remains originally identified in 1967
During our recent trip to D.C., we spent time in the Library of Congress and found two documents referencing Jerry Degnan. Both shed light on the mishandling of this case.
The idea of Jerry Degnan being an un-manifested passenger on a downed helicopter was not new. It was immediately considered and investigated.
One undated document titled "US Personnel, Missing/Captured In Southeast Asia Biographical Data" states, in part, "...It was not known whether Degnan was a passenger on the aircraft that crashed on 24 August 1967, in Kontum Province, RVN, or if he disappeared in Saigon."
Another document, a "Memorandum For Record" dated 15 January 1988 states, in part, "...the speculation that he might have been out of Saigon a the time of his disappearance implies that he may have been an un-manifested passenger aboard an aircraft lost somewhere enroute between Saigon and An Khe, sometime between 22 and 28 August 1967. Several aircraft were lost during this time period; however, only on (REFNO 0811 had unaccounted-for passengers or crew-members associated with it. There were five survivors of the REFNO 0811 incident. All crew members and passengers were identified during the post-incident debriefings of the survivors. Degnan was not aboard this aircraft."
This report was prepared by a Senior Intelligence Officer, DIA/VO-PW, whose name is redacted.
Due to the confusion as to when Degnan went missing, investigators looked a the wrong helicopter crash. This mistake is understandable.
What is not understandable, is why when the remains of the true passenger on the August 9th crash were recovered, complete with dog tag and identification card, the misidentification was not corrected and why investigators did not look, once again, at the case of Jerry Degnan.
Was this incompetence or something else? Perhaps the military did not want the families of its fighting men and the public in general to know that they were capable of remains misidentifications.
Today, we know that during the period August 1967 - April 1968, the following remains were misidentified by the military mortuaries at Da Nang and Tan Son Nhut, - Jerry Degnan, Mark Judge, William Berry, and Ronald Ridgeway. These are the cases we know about. Only God knows how many more....
Remember this - the identification of the 5th passenger, aboard the August 9th helicopter crash, as Jerry Degnan was based on the "general agreement" - to age, race and hair color of the fifth passenger and an inconclusive dental match. In other words it was an identification based on process of elimination. Four crewmen were positively identified based on dog tags, ID card and records, therefore the passenger, the 5th man known to be on board, could be no one else.
This is not the first "process of elimination" identification. In a future "Bits" we will be asking the question...
Hint to the Government - When the Vietnamese admit to capturing someone, maybe you should pay attention.
Does Anyone Know Who John T. Berbrich Is - we have a May 1973 memo showing him as the sender. The memo is not on letterhead and we are wondering who he is. If you know, let us know...
Remains Repatriated From North Korea - From The Associated Press - Hawaii - "A four-service honor guard lifted three flag-wrapped coffins off a military cargo plane Wednesday. The ceremony marked the latest recovery effort of Americans lost in the Korean War."
"The three coffins were brought off a C-17 cargo plane by an honor guard that had flown with them from Pyongyang and placed on a blue military bus that took them to the nearby Army Central Identification Laboratory-Hawaii. The latest remains are believed to be those of Americans lost in fighting between communist forces and the Army's First Calvary Division and the 2nd and 25th Infantry divisions in November 1950.
They were removed from Unsan and Kujang counties in North Korea, along the Chong Chon River about 60 miles north of Pyongyang, by a joint U.S.-North Korean recovery team...."
"The remains do not necessarily include complete skeletons and identification, including DNA testing when the possibilities are narrowed down to the smallest number of candidates, could take months or years to complete...."
"...Ceremonies for arrival of the remains included no speeches or special observances. About 100 people, including a handful of Korean War veterans and other civilians, stood silently as the coffins were unloaded and placed aboard the bus."
World War II Remains Identified - from the Associated Press - May 25th - "Fifty-seven years after Robert Cahow died trying to rout Nazi troops from a bunker in the dense woods of Germany's snowy Huertgen Forest, he is to be laid to rest here Saturday."
"After lying for decades in a shallow, unmarked grave in an area near the Belgian border, his remains were discovered last year by Germans working on a logging road. A metal detector responded to grenades that Cahowwore on a bandolier. "After so many years, suddenly it was like he was calling out to be found," said Linda Cahow, his niece...."
".... On Dec. 13, 1944, in the third month of the assault on German fortifications over the Kall River Valley, Cahow's K Company was making an advance on the bunker when he and others volunteered to retrieve dead and wounded. During his effort, Cahow was killed when he set off one or two land mines. But military officials never found his body along Germany's western front, and he was officially listed as missing in action...."
"... Dog tags found with the remains were badly battered and barely legible, and officials originally thought they belonged to someone named Cahon....
Vietnam Remains Identified - Major Harry A. Amesbury, Jr. - from Associated Press Caldwell, Idaho May 28th - "Maj. Harry A. Amesbury Jr.'s ashes will be scattered by his family today, nearly 30 years after he died in Vietnam when his plane was shot down on a resupply mission. Amesbury, of Caldwell, was honored Monday during a Memorial Day ceremony at Mountain Home Air Force Base."
"...The family spent much of the 1990s trying to confirm his fate before Amesbury's remains were returned last weekend. "It's going to sink in as if he had just died," his son David said...."
"Maj. Amesbury commanded a C-130E cargo plane that was downed April 26, 1972,by heavy anti-aircraft fire near the besieged city of An Loc. The crew was flying low at night into what was described as a sky lit up with tracer fire from everywhere as the planes prepared to drop critical supplies for South Vietnamese
troops. But, it was not until the 1990s that remains, including several teeth, were recovered and identified as Amesbury's. In 1994 the U.S. military identified Maj. Amesbury's teeth, which had been turned over by the Vietnamese the previous year. Yet in 1995, family members were told that remains couldn't be associated with him...."
"... Finally, in 1998, the family was allowed to visit the remains at the government's Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii. DNA evidence provided further proof in 1999 that the remains were those of Maj. Amesbury...."
CWO Howard Comer - from the Florida Times-Union, May 28th - "Howard Comer was young, a gung-ho patriot bent on the idea of making the world a better place by doing his part to fell communism in Vietnam. For more than 30 years, this was the picture Wanda Babb painted for her son Brian when trying to explain the father he never knew. Brian Comer was only 4 months old that late fall day in 1969 when his father's helicopter crashed in South Vietnam during a routine mission."
"Three men were rescued. Two crew members were killed instantly. The sixth man, Howard Brisbane Comer Jr. of Jacksonville, was nowhere. The Robert E. Lee High School graduate would remain unaccounted for until this spring, when military scientists used DNA and other techniques to identify his skeletal remains..."
"The chief warrant officer, Babb said, will be buried in Arlington National Cemetery on July 2..."
"...By the early '90s, three different investigation teams had tackled the case of a fatal crash in the Van Co Dung River that happened as fighting in Vietnam reached its most ferocious stage, said Larry Greer, a spokesman for the Pentagon's POW/MIA office. Reports surfaced and villagers came forward about the skeletal remains in relatives' attics. Scores of interviews were done and Comer's military identification card was produced. Plates from a U.S. chopper were offered up and slivers of bone were handed over"
"Around Christmas 1993, remains later identified as Comer's were sent to an identification lab in Hawaii. It would take eight years of testing and retesting, including a dozen DNA samplings using blood drawn from Comer's mother to ensure the set's completeness, Greer said..."
Peterson Resigns Effective July 15th - From the Associated Press - May 23rd "... America's first postwar ambassador to Vietnam said he had submitted his resignation to President George W. Bush on Tuesday. "It has been an honor to serve two presidents in building a new relationship between the United States and Vietnam," he said."
"The announcement fuels speculation that Peterson is considering a run for governor in Florida, a post currently held by President Bush's brother, Republican Jeb Bush..."
Why does Johnie Webb Still Have A Job??
The History Channel - airs a four part series titled "Vietnam: On the Frontlines" starting Monday June 4th through Thursday June 7th, 9 - 10 P.M. Check local listings for channel.
Rapidly Approaching - The National Alliance of Families Twelfth Annual Forum is scheduled for June 21st - 23rd, 2001. Our Forum is conducted to coincide with the governments annual POW/MIA Family Briefings. We urge all family members to attend this years government briefings, for Vietnam family members. Remember the government will provide free airfare to two family members to attend the briefings. There is no charge or registration fee to attend the government briefings. It is important that family members attend these briefings.
Our meeting will be held at the Crown Plaza Hotel, 1489 Jefferson Davis Highway, Arlington Va. Room rates are $106.00 single or double, plus tax. To make reservations call 703- 416-1600 Remember to say you want the National Alliance of Families Group Rate. The deadline for reservations has been extended through June 4th, 2001 - MAKE YOUR RESERVATION, NOW!!!!! Transportation between our hotel and the government briefings will be provided and run every 15 minutes.
Confirmed speakers are former National Security Agency Analyst Jerry Mooney and author Ralph Wetterhahn (see above.)
Remember, the Alliance is an all volunteer organization. Our meetings are open to all, without charge. At this time of year, we actively seek contributions to finance our Forum. If you wish to contribute, donations may be mailed to:
