News-Info-Alerts

Re: From Vietnam to Iraq - Memories

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: March 24, 2003

"Vietnam POW's brother recalls the ordeal 

BURNSVILLE, MINNESOTA -- The U.S. military has begun to notify the families of those soldiers taken hostage in Iraq.  Traditionally, it's a dreaded knock at the door by men in uniform.

John Fellows is a man who’s very familiar with that knock.  He had just returned from a tour in Vietnam, when the knock came about his brother.

Fellows has spent the better part of 40 years searching.  There’s a POW/MIA bracelet bearing his brother's name, Air Force Colonel Allen Fellows, missing since 1968.

Fellows said, “I took my bracelet off back in 79.  I put it on again in 1986.   Basically as a gesture that I was going to do whatever I could to determine what happened to my brother.”

Allen disappeared during the Vietnam War over Laos, serving as a "forward air control pilot."

We always hoped he was a prisoner, but we never saw him on TV, he was never on any list, and of course when the prisoners came home, literally we didn't know until they got off the plane and he was not one of those men.

The military declared Allen dead 6 years later.

Fellows said, “How can you personally declare that he's dead when you don't know, how do you walk away from him when he might be a prisoner.”

How do you keep searching... after 40 years?

Fellows said, “I'm letting go and accepting that he's not going to come home and more importantly that I'm never going to know what happened to him.”

John took his bracelet off a year ago.  A symbolic end to a life-long quest, he now reluctantly calls fantasy.

©2003 Hubbard Broadcasting Inc."