News-Info-Alerts

Re: Gone But Nor Forgotten

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: September 20, 2003

"GIs gone but not forgotten
 
By Sig Christenson
Express-News Military Writer
   
Donald Summerfield stepped into a bomber in England one morning early in World War II, went to the tail gun he manned and never was seen again.

His brother Leslie was told only that the plane was shot down. But through the years, a nagging, lingering thought tugged at the back of his mind.

"He always wondered if his brother was going to turn up," said retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Karen S. Rankin, Leslie Summerfield's daughter. "And I can remember as a kid him saying that it wouldn't surprise him if Don came out of somewhere where he'd been all these years."

Summerfield eventually learned his brother's fate. The bomber was badly shot up and crashed in the English Channel. The tail gunner was one of the crew who didn't survive.

A onetime vice commander of Lackland AFB, Rankin paused Friday to remember 88,000-plus Americans still missing in action from conflicts dating from World War II through Gulf War I. At Brooks City-Base, Rankin, 60, of San Antonio, joined several dozen others to mark National POW/MIA Recognition Day, staring somberly as a candle flickered atop a white tablecloth.

Service caps from the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines surrounded the candle, four empty wineglasses and a red rose anchored in a slim vase inside historic Hangar 9, where aviation pioneer Charles A. Lindbergh spent time as he learned to fly. The rose is a reminder of the families and loved ones who await the return of the missing, an unlikely scenario.

It's a better bet that the Defense Department, armed with the latest DNA technology, will find the remains of some of the 78,000 missing in World War II, 8,000 from Korea, 2,000 from Vietnam, 130 during the Cold War and one from Gulf War I.

Some veterans, Reed M. Pace, 72, of San Antonio, among them, wonder if Americans remain captive in the hands of old enemies. He had one other thought.

"I think, there (but) for the grace of God go I," said Reed, a Dallas native who served as an airman in Korea and Vietnam.

One of Adrian Cronauer's vivid memories of Air Force service came in his first weeks in uniform in 1962.

"When I went through basic training, they told me, 'Look, you're now a member of the United States military,'" he said before speaking at Brooks. "'We try to take care of our own.

"'If you are captured, we will move heaven and earth to get you released and returned. And if, God forbid, you perish in enemy hands, we will do everything humanly possible to retrieve your remains, return them to your loved ones for an honorable burial on U.S. soil.'"

Portrayed by Robin Williams in the movie, "Good Morning Vietnam," Cronauer, 65, of Arlington, Va., is a special aide to Jerry Jennings, deputy assistant secretary of defense for POW/MIA affairs in the Pentagon.

The Defense Department's Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office oversees efforts to find the missing and dead in such locales as North Korea, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. In the past year, the United States has recovered remains from an atoll in the Pacific as well as from Tibet.

Brooks and Randolph AFB play a role in that search. At Randolph, the Air Force Personnel Center's Personnel Accountability Directorate tracks 1,604 airmen lost in the Korean War, Vietnam War and Cold War.

The resolution of cases is slow. The Randolph directorate has seen 47 MIA cases resolved since May 2000. So far this year three cases have been resolved, with 10 others pending, said Staff Sgt. Matt Miller of the personnel center.

"My hope is that we never get to a stage where we forget them," said retired Marine Col. F. Phil Torres, 54, of Helotes, a veteran of the Tet Offensive. "Whatever the circumstances may be, we still have people who are fighting the war."

sigc@express-news.net

© 2003 KENS 5 and the San Antonio Express-News. "