Re: Burying a Buddy Twice

Date: May 25, 2004

"Friend makes point to be at comrade’s second burial
By CHRISTOPHER FERRELL Eagle Staff Writer

BREMOND — Jim Pfister buried his friend Dennis Hammond more than 30 years ago just outside a prison camp in Vietnam. He was overcome with emotion Saturday when Hammond’s recently identified remains finally were laid to rest near his boyhood home in Texas.

“ He’s out of foreign soil — he’s back home,” said Pfister, who made the 15-hour drive from Illinois to Bremond after learning Hammond would be buried there. “It’s just overwhelming. It’s slowly starting to catch up with me that he’s resting here now. I just absorbed 34 years in an hour and a half.”

Following the funeral, Pfister shared his memories of their days in captivity and the difficult task of coping with that part of his life.

Hammond and Pfister met in a prisoner-of-war camp in the Quang Nam province in Vietnam. Pfister, who served in the U.S. Army, was captured and sent there Jan. 8, 1968. Exactly a month later, Hammond, a Marine, was captured while trying to save others who were ambushed during the Tet Offensive.

They lived together at the prison camp — along with nearly two dozen other soldiers — for two years before Hammond died in 1970. His body was weakened by severe beatings following an escape attempt, according to reports from men who were held captive with him.

Pfister remained there until he and the other surviving prisoners finally were released in March 1973. Only 12 of the original 22 captured soldiers kept at the camp survived.

Conditions in the camp were rough, Pfister said. POWs lived in small bamboo huts with thatched roofs. They survived almost exclusively on a diet of rice and sometimes ate boiled weeds. Occasionally, Pfister said, he caught rats to eat their meat.

The rain-soaked region of Vietnam was a breeding ground for malaria, jungle rot and other illnesses, Pfister recalled.

Three decades have done little to ease the pain Pfister feels about the five years of his life that were taken away. The passage of time has not tempered the anger he still experiences when thinking of the men he watched die when medical attention was available.

He still holds a grudge against the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong captors who he said simply let the ailing soldiers die.

“ All they had to do was raise a white flag and establish a rendezvous point with the U.S. soldiers so they could take the sick soldier to them. Nobody would have picked up a gun and shot at them,” he said. “[The sick soldiers] would have been taken to a hospital in Japan or Germany and then they could have gone home.

“ They let eight guys die. I carry that around with me. It’s very difficult to let it go.”

Shortly after Hammond’s death, Pfister buried him near a tree where other POWs had been laid to rest, including one who was executed when he and Hammond made an escape attempt. Pfister carved Hammond’s name in the tree, along with a downward-pointing arrow. He said he hoped it would allow American servicemen to one day find the remains so they could be sent home.

Hammond’s body remained in that jungle for 19 years.

Pfister said he had no desire to return to Vietnam when a special unit called the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command sent teams to Vietnam in the 1980s to try and recover bodies. But he did sketch out a map of the area where he had buried bodies, including Hammond’s.

That information helped lead to the recovery of Hammond’s bones in 1989. But they were not identified as his remains until this past January, when scientists were able to match Hammond’s DNA to a sample submitted several years ago by his older sister.

Pfister said he was hopeful Saturday’s funeral would help provide him with some closure. He smiled while remembering his fallen friend — a man Pfister said enjoyed sports and the outdoors and told the scariest ghost stories he ever heard. Those tales, Pfister said, would make the hairs on his arm stand up in the middle of the pitch-black jungle.

He also cried as “Taps” was played and a 21-gun salute was fired for the man he already had buried once before.

“ He was a good-hearted soul,” Pfister said. “He was a Marine.”

Christopher Ferrell’s e-mail address is cferrell[at]theeagle[dot]com
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