News-Info-Alerts

Re: DPMO News Postings for 15 AUG 02

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: August 15, 2002

"United States Department of Defense
NEWS RELEASE
IMMEDIATE RELEASE No. 398-02
August 1, 2002

VIETNAM MIAS IDENTIFIED

The remains of three U.S. Army servicemen previously unaccounted for from the war in Vietnam have been identified and are being returned to their families.

They are Lt. Col. Donald Eugene Parsons, of Sparta, Ill.; Chief Warrant Officer Charles I. Stanley, of Cleveland and Sgt. 1st Class Eugene F. Christiansen, of Barstow, Calif.

On Feb. 6, 1969, Stanley and Christiansen were members of a crew of a UH-1H Huey helicopter, flying Parsons and one other individual on an emergency resupply mission in South Vietnam. While enroute from a landing zone in the Quang Tri province, the crew radioed that the flight was returning due to poor weather conditions and reduced visibility. When the flight did not return, a search and rescue mission was initiated, but it proved unsuccessful in locating the missing aircraft.

In December 1993, a joint U.S. and Vietnam investigation team, led by the Joint Task Force-Full Accounting, interviewed several local informants in Quang Tri province. One claimed to possess the remains of a missing serviceman. Two months later, the remains were repatriated to U.S. officials and submitted to the U.S. Army Central Identification Laboratory Hawaii (CILHI), for analysis.

On July 16, 1995, another joint U.S. and Vietnam team interviewed a witness who gave information about a helicopter crash site in the Huong Hoa District. After investigating the site, the team recovered aircraft debris, personal artifacts, and human remains that corresponded to the missing aircraft and its crewmembers. This additional evidence was also transported to CILHI.

From July 1996 to October 1996, additional remains, personal artifacts, and aircraft debris were recovered from the crash site. Some of the remains were submitted by CILHI to the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory for mitochondrial DNA analysis. By analyzing dental records and comparing the DNA of skeletal fragments found at the crash site to that of maternal family members, CILHI scientists were able to make positive identifications of the missing servicemen. The remains of three others from the same incident have yet to be identified."

"Soldiers to search Himalayas of China for crash sites

WASHINGTON (Army News Service, July 31, 2002) -- A 14-man search and recovery team from the Army's Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii will venture into the eastern Tibetan Himalayas of China Aug. 9 to excavate two aircraft crash sites from World War II.
U.S. Army Central Identification Laboratory Hawaii team preps for the Himalayas by moving up the Gulkana Glacier by rope at the Northern Warfare Training Center near Black Rapids, Alaska, June 13. (photo by SGT Doug Stubblefield.)
(Click on the photo to view a higher resolution photo)

This mission is by far one of the most challenging missions the lab has tackled, CILHI officials said. They added that a special team has been formed for the mission with some of the most skilled personnel.

The team has been training extensively and will continue to do so until it leaves for China, officials said, so that all members will be prepared for the difficult terrain and high altitudes they will face.

The team is led by Capt. Daniel Rouse. Sgt. 1st Class Sean Bendele is the team NCOIC. Anthropologist James Pokines, Mortuary Affairs Specialists Staff Sgt. Thomas Woods and Sgt. Michael Harris, and Photographer Cpl. Ricardo Morales will be on the team. They will be joined by several augmentees from units around the world, including three mountaineering specialists, one medic, one doctor, two linguists, and one embassy representative.

Several additional CILHI personnel have been going through the extensive training as alternates in case any team members cannot deploy. Those alternates are Dr. Andy Tyrrell, Mortuary Affairs Specialist Staff Sgt. Joaquin Andujar, Medic Sgt. 1st Class Alvin Nielsen and Photographer Sgt. Douglas Stubblefield.

The team is expected to be deployed for about two months. The two sites are at about 15,500 feet and 16,200 feet above sea level.

The team will attempt to recover four personnel that were aboard a C-46. The aircraft was based at Sookerating, India, and was reported missing in flight enroute from Kunming, China, to its home base during March 1944. It is believed the aircraft became lost, ran out of gas and crashed. The aircraft wreckage fell into a ravine in front of a small cave half way up a mountain.

The other site the team will conduct a recovery operation at is also a crash site of a C-46. CILHI analysts are unsure how many were aboard that aircraft as it has yet to be correlated to a specific flight.

The terrain is going to provide an enormous challenge for the team, officials said. The team will spend time traveling on rugged roads in four-by-four vehicles, will cross rivers via ferries and foot, ride horseback for days at a time, all before they reach the base of the mountain where the first C-46 crash site is located. After all that, the team will still have to hike up and down the mountain two hours each way everyday to reach the crash site. Once recovery efforts are completed there, the team will move to the other crash site.

The other site will encompass the same type of logistics to get to, but the trek will end with a four-day hike across a glacier.

Throughout the entire deployment, each team member will be carrying his individual rucksack, which will weigh about 80 pounds. In addition, the team will be responsible for transporting and traveling with approximately 5,000 pounds of equipment necessary for the excavation of the two sites.

"The training has been difficult, but it has been worth it. I look forward to the challenge," Harris said. "Unity is one of our goals prior to leaving on mission and we have been coming together to really form a team."

In the five years that Bendele has spent at CILHI, and the 18 years he has spent in the Army, he said this is the most difficult training he has encountered physically to get ready for a mission.

"This is body by Rouse," he said referring to the physical training program Rouse has created for the team:

* Altitude training at Mauna Kea (14,000 feet) on the Island of Hawaii
* Glacier and mountaineering training at the Northern Warfare Training Center in Alaska.
* Strenuous physical training five days a week to include weight training and cardio exercises.
* Twice a week the team takes two- to three-hour road marches up the mountains of Oahu carrying a rucksack full of equipment.


Morales agrees the training has been difficult.

"The physical training we've been conducting can be tiring but it's necessary in order to be prepared for any challenges we might encounter in Tibet," he said.

Regardless of the grueling training, Morales said it is an "extraordinary privilege" to be part of a team that will be traveling to a part of the world few have seen and bring home service members who gave their lives.

"As a photographer, shooting the landscapes of the Himalayas from an elevation of 16,000 feet and documenting this difficult recovery mission is probably a once in a lifetime opportunity," he said.

(Editor's note: This article was written by CILHI and the U.S. Total Army Personnel Command public affairs team. CILHI is a component of PERSCOM.)"

"'Mr. Good Morning, Vietnam' Working to Recover Remains

By Rudi Williams
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, July 19, 2002 -- Adrian Cronauer, loosely portrayed by Robin Williams in the movie "Good Morning, Vietnam," recently returned where he made that greeting famous as a disc jockey on Armed Forces Radio during the Vietnam War.

Cronauer was again on official duty in the city he knew as Saigon – now called Ho Chi Minh City – more than 35 years later.

The former Air Force announcer, now an assistant to the director of the Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office, was part of a delegation visiting sites in Southeast Asia where Americans are searching for missing servicemen. He wanted to see first-hand what members of the Joint Task Force for Full Accounting do in their quest for remains.

(Click photo for screen-resolution image.)
Adrian Cronauer, who made the greeting, "Good Morning, Vietnam!" famous as a mid-1960s Air Force disc jockey on Armed Forces Radio is now doing his best to help locate and retrieve remains of missing servicemen in Southeast Asia and other parts of the world as a member of the Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office. Photo by Amy L. Vaughters. (Click photo for screen-resolution image; high-resolution image available.)

While he has read the reports and seen the briefings, Cronauer said it's different when you see it. "When I'm talking to veterans and families, I want to be able to say, 'I'm not just telling you what they told me, I've seen it for myself,'" he said.

"I learned that there are a lot of dedicated people over there trying to locate and retrieve the remains of missing service members," he said. "The military has promised that this is what will happen. And our motto at the office is, 'Keeping the Promise.'"

Cronauer had been offered his current job some time ago but was unsure about taking it. But during a post-Sept. 11 conversation with his wife, he said, "You know, Jean, if I was about 30 years younger, I might go back into the military."

Her response was: "Did it ever occur to you that if you took the job at the Pentagon, you might be able to make more of a contribution than you could in uniform?"

So Cronauer decided to put his Washington law practice on hold for a while and accept the job.

"The amount of resources we have to expend to keep the promise is significant," he noted. "You just don't walk out into the jungle and say, 'Oh, there's a plane, and we'll get those remains.' The soil in Vietnam is very acidic and remains deteriorate."

Cronauer explained the detailed work of anthropologists and forensic scientists in finding and identifying remains. For example, he said, researchers are in the Da Nang area of Vietnam trying to retrieve the remains of an American pilot whose plane hit the top of a mountain 30 some years ago. "We're digging up the site and all of the soil goes through a sifter that allows soil to go through and sift out anything the size of a human tooth," he said.

Cronauer's always looking for ways to work with families and veterans' groups to achieve the fullest possible accounting for missing Americans. This covers Americans missing in all conflicts from World War II to the present.

The department sends teams to North Korea to retrieve American remains. Operations there are conducted in the same manner as those in Southeast Asia.

Cronauer said North Korean cold, harsh winters and the government's lack of cooperation also thwarts investigator's efforts to repatriate remains.

He said that U.S. representatives are trying to get North Korean officials to agree to use oral histories. "They can tell us about the battles they were in and where they were," Cronauer said. "The prison guards can tell us where the bodies were buried. These people are getting older and slowly dying. We want to get as much information from them before they die."

Cronauer said he's slated to go to North Korea with a delegation in September, but there are no plans to return to Vietnam or Laos yet. He said a team went to the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands to search for World War II remains.

There's also a permanent research contingent in Moscow searching through archives for clues about Americans missing from the Vietnam, Korea, the Cold War and World War II periods.

On Americans still alive as prisoners of war, Cronauer said, "Over the years, we've gotten hundreds of reports about possible live Americans being held somewhere in the world, including Vietnam. If there's any possibility that a live American might be held somewhere, our top priority is to try and find that person. We follow every report we get as far as we can to see where it leads."

But he said, so far, none of the reports has proven to be of any value. But "as long as the possibility exists, we're going to go out there and follow up every single lead we can find," he said. "I believe it's possible that there are live American captives, but I'm not sure how likely it is."

Part of Cronauer's job is to visit families across the country to provide updated briefings about their particular case and the work being done by his office, the Joint Task Force for Full Accounting and the Army Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii.

"We have a whole division that does family updates about 10 or 12 times a year," he said. Within that about a 300-mile radius, any family member of someone who's still missing or unaccounted can come to a briefing, usually held on a Saturday.

Families are given an overview of POW/missing personnel operations around the world, which includes nearly 100 people in Washington and more than 500 people around the world.

"That's one of the most rewarding parts of this whole job," Cronauer said. "These are people who sometimes for years have known nothing about their missing person - husband, father, brother or whoever it is. Now, they're learning something. And the satisfaction we can bring to them sometimes gives them a sense of closure."

The next family update is scheduled in Kansas City, Mo., Aug. 17; New York City, on Sept. 21; Salt Lake City, Oct. 26; and Tampa, Fla., Nov. 16.

Cronauer deals with veterans' service organizations such as the American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars, Disabled American Veterans, AMVETS and smaller groups.

He has also been working closely with the National Alliance of Families, National League of Families and various groups of Korean War families.

"I try to give them a better idea of what our office is doing," Cronauer said. "When I came into the military, I was promised that my government would never abandon me. So we're trying to keep that promise.""

"FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

#R-02-043 July 9, 2002

Army Captain "Rocky" Versace
Inducted into Pentagon Hall of Heroes

Today, Secretary of the Army Thomas E. White and Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric K. Shinseki inducted Army Medal of Honor recipient Capt. Humbert R. Versace into the Pentagon's Hall of Heroes.

The official induction ceremony honoring Vietnam veteran Capt. Humbert R. Versace follows President George W. Bush's posthumous award to Versace of the Medal of Honor in a ceremony at the White House yesterday.

Speaking to a capacity crowd of family members, veterans and soldiers, Secretary White and Gen. Shinseki praised Versace, who was a West Point graduate, Army Ranger, recipient of the Purple Heart and the Combat Infantryman's Badge and an Army Special Forces intelligence advisor. Both commented on his extraordinary heroism while assigned to the Military Assistance Advisory Group, Detachment 52 in Ca Mau, Republic of Vietnam, and his indomitable willpower and courage while a prisoner of war, exemplifying the highest fulfillment of the tenets of the Code of Conduct while facing hardships, injury and merciless interrogations. He died in captivity.

Versace, known to many as "Rocky," was a military family member who was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on July 2, 1937 and grew up in Norfolk and Alexandria, Va.

The Hall of Heroes is the Defense Department's permanent display for all recipients of the Medal of Honor. The display area includes plaques with the name of every recipient since 1863, when the award was established. More than 3,400 names on the walls in the Hall of Heroes embody valor, courage and selfless service.

For more information about the Hall of Heroes induction ceremony for Capt. Versace, contact Army Public Affairs (703) 602-3938"

"Vietnam War POW gets Medal of Honor

by Joe Burlas

WASHINGTON (Army News Service, July 9, 2002) -- President George W. Bush honored the memory and valiant actions of an American prisoner of war from the Vietnam conflict with a posthumous Medal of Honor during a White House ceremony July 8.
Capt. Humbert Roque "Rocky" Versace (Click on the photo to view a higher resolution photo)

Secretary of the Army Thomas E. White and Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric K. Shinseki inducted the newest Medal of Honor winner, Capt. Humbert Roque "Rocky" Versace, into the Pentagon Hall of Heroes in a simple ceremony July 9.

Bush acknowledged that the award was the first time a Medal of Honor has been given to a Vietnam-era POW for actions that occurred while in captivity.

"In his too short life, he traveled to a distant land to bring the hope of freedom to people he never met," Bush said. "In his defiance and later death, he set an example of extraordinary dedication that changed the lives of his fellow soldiers who saw it firsthand. His story echoes across the years, reminding us of liberty's high price and of the noble passion that caused one good man to pay the price in full."

Wounded and captured by Viet Cong forces while accompanying a Republic of Vietnam Army operation in the Mekong Delta on Oct. 29, 1963, Versace made his first attempt to escape three weeks later. Due to wounds in the back and one knee, he could only crawl. The military intelligence officer and 1959 U.S. Military Academy graduate didn't make it far into the surrounding jungle before being recaptured.

The award citation credited Versace for scorning the enemy's exhaustive interrogation and indoctrination efforts despite isolation, privation, hardships and extremely reduced rations. "The enemy was unable to break his indomitable will, his faith in God and his trust in the United States of America," stated the citation.

"(Versace) was fluent in English, French and Vietnamese, and he would tell his guards to go to hell in all three," Bush said. "Eventually the Viet Cong stopped using French and Vietnamese in their indoctrination sessions because they didn't want the sentries or the villagers to listen to Rocky's effective rebuttals to their propaganda."

During interrogation sessions, Versace stuck to giving just his name, rank, social security number and date of birth as required by the Geneva Convention, according to fellow prisoners. Often he would divert the enemy's inhumane treatment of fellow prisoners onto himself, they recalled.

Versace made two other attempts to escape before his Viet Cong captors executed him on Sept. 26, 1965. The last time his fellow prisoners heard Versace, he was singing "God Bless America" at the top of his lungs just prior to his execution, Bush said.

"First and foremost, we are here today to recognize Rocky's example as the model of adherence to the Code of Conduct; as the model of physical and moral courage; as the model of complete selflessness; as the model of one who never broke faith with God and country -- regardless of the cost," White said at the Pentagon ceremony. "But our presence here today is also a tribute to the many in his family, and in our Army family, who never broke faith with Rocky."

Shinseki pointed out that Versace's heroism spanned almost two years, whereas most Medal of Honor recipients are honored for actions lasting just a moments, hours or days.

"His is a story of a remarkable, unyielding spirit and an uncompromising fierce defiance -- the courage never to submit or yield," Shinseki said. "It is the story of a soldier who, in the worst of circumstances, demonstrated all that is best about our profession and our values. It is a story about a man subjected to the most relentless atrocities who persevered -- and in doing so, revealed an unwavering strength of character that inspired all who witnessed his triumph over his tormentors."

First Lt. Nick Rowe, the only soldier to successfully escape from captivity during the Vietnam War, witnessed Versace's unyielding determination and horrific hardship from beatings and other forms of torture as a fellow prisoner. After his escape, Rowe submitted Versace for a Medal of Honor. It was downgraded to a Silver Star in the belief that Medal of Honor qualifications required recipients to have demonstrated uncommon valor as a part of an ongoing combat operation.

The Army Special Operations community resubmitted Versace's Medal of Honor recommendation several years ago, White said. Upon review by the White House last year, it was determined that Versace's actions as POW did in fact meet the medal's requirements for a service member "who distinguishes himself or herself conspicuously by gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his or her life above and beyond the call of duty while engaged in action against an enemy of the United States."

To date, 245 Medals of Honor have been awarded to service members for actions during the Vietnam War. Of that number, 159 have gone to Army recipients. Including Versace, eight Vietnam POWs received the nation's highest award for valor -- the others earned them for heroic actions that occurred before their captivity."