News-Info-Alerts

Re: Soldier Missing in South Korea

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: August 03, 2002

Before folks jumpt to conclusions about AWOL, Desertion and whatever else let's not forget the case of PFC Allen Lee Adams -
http://www.aiipowmia.com/inter/in090999.html

"Missing GI's mother sees trip to S. Korea as only way to expedite search

By Jim Lea, Stars and StripesPacific edition

When Scottie Robinson joined the U.S. Army nine years ago, his mother says, an Army recruiter visited her at home and her office frequently.

“I don’t know why he came so often,” Geraldine Bromell, of Bolivia, N.C., said in a telephone interview Sunday. “Maybe he thought I was going to try to talk my son out of enlisting. I wouldn’t have done that. He wanted to join and I told him it was a good thing and that I was proud of him.”

Now, she’s not so sure. Perhaps, she said, “I should have told him not to join.”

Robinson, 31, a cook at Camp Castle north of Seoul, has been missing from his unit for more than a month. He was first listed as absent without leave on June 19. On Thursday — Bromell’s 53rd birthday — she received a letter from the Army saying Robinson’s name has been dropped from his unit’s records, his pay has been stopped and he has been declared a deserter.

Maj. Brian Maka, 2nd Infantry Division public affairs officer, said late Monday that Robinson is believed to have left his post of his own accord. “There is no indication of foul play,” Maka said.

Because of that, he said, “there is no major search effort by the military police or [Criminal Investigation Command].” In AWOL cases when foul play is not suspected, he said, “the soldier’s unit conducts a local search. The unit calls the soldier’s family and friends to tell them to convince the AWOL soldier to return to his unit.”

Maka also said Robinson, who was assigned to Headquarters and Headquarters Company of the division’s 2nd Engineer Battalion, Engineer Brigade, was not under investigation for anything at the time of his disappearance.

Robinson last was seen the night of June 17 with another soldier in a bar in Tongduchon, outside Camp Castle.

Now Bromell is planning to come to South Korea to look for her son. “I have to,” she said. “He’s my only son. I need to go to Korea and look people in the eye and say, ‘Find my son. He was in your care, now find him.’”

The trip will be financially difficult for Bromwell, a communications specialist with the Brunswick County Department of Social Services food stamps program. Co-workers and friends have launched a donation drive to raise money for her travel expenses.

“But I have to go,” she said. “I have to do everything I can to find him.”

Bromell said she doesn’t know why her son would have deserted. “He was assigned to Kuwait until last December and I was glad when he left there. He re-enlisted in February and made sergeant in April.

“The last time I talked to him on the telephone was in May and he seemed happy,” she said. “It was his second time in Korea.”

“He never mentioned having any problems over there and seemed to like his job. He never had any problems in the Army that I know of.”

In their last phone call, she said, “We talked about him coming home in December. He was going to help buy his younger sister a car to go to college in. He also wanted to be here for his son’s ninth birthday. The boy loves his father very much … always before when my son would come home, then leave, the boy would cry a lot.

“We haven’t told him yet that his father is missing.”

Bromell said her son was “never a problem when he was growing up. He was always respectful and was so good that people said I must have ordered him from Sears.”

She said Rep. Mike McIntyre, D-N.C., a member of the House Armed Services Committee, is helping to expedite issuance of a passport. She plans to travel to South Korea in the next few weeks and will stay one to two weeks.

“I don’t think he’s dead,” she said. “I just can’t think that. One Army officer told me he didn’t think I could do much in Korea. But I have to go. I have to put my feet on that soil and look people in the eye and ask ‘Where is my son?’”

© 2002 Stars and Stripes"