Re: USG Reverses AWOL Status For MIA Buried in Wrong Grave

Date: March 07, 2004

"HE'S 'AWOL' NO LONGER
Army now admits decades-old error Hudson GI will get burial with honors
By Ken Thorbourne Journal staff writer

It's been nearly four decades since Army Spc. 4th Class Carl Wadleigh of Jersey City went missing during the war in Vietnam.

Unlike other soldiers in his company, judged to have fought bravely and died for their country, the former student of Jefferson Elementary School in North Bergen - his twin sister, Margaret, likens him to Matt Dillon, the handsome sheriff on TV's "Gunsmoke" - was branded a deserter.

After 36 years of living with this cloud hanging over their brother's reputation and military career and their family's name, Wadleigh's six surviving siblings were told last month that the Army had it wrong all along. Military brass now believe that in 1968 Wadleigh, then 21, died fighting on behalf of his country in Vietnam's Ben Tre province.

DNA tests have definitively proved, Army officials now say, that Wadleigh's remains had been confused with those of another soldier, Master Sgt. Frank Parrish, and were buried in Texas in 1973.
In a stark reversal, the Army now says Wadleigh is entitled to a full military funeral, and family members are planning for a burial in May at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

Just beginning to digest the Army's revised determination on their brother's disappearance, Wadleigh's siblings say they feel a sense of closure and vindication, but also anger and bewilderment that the government could get things so wrong for so long.

"I was shocked. I was glad it ended," said older brother Clifford Wadleigh Jr. of Jersey City, an ex-Navy medic who enlisted shortly before Carl was drafted in 1964. "It just felt like part of you was missing."

Carl's parents - Clifford Sr. and Mary - died in the 1980s without that closure. All they knew of their son's last days was what they had heard from FBI agents who visited them inquiring about their youngest son's whereabouts. They said that Carl had gone AWOL - Absent Without Leave.
"We all thought he was AWOL," said Michelle Wadleigh, another of Carl's sisters, a religious science teacher who lives in Florham Park. "That was the hard part. There was an absolute stigma."

Mistaken identity

The Army's reappraisal of Carl Wadleigh's status as a soldier began in 1989 when the Vietnamese government shipped boxes containing the remains of 21 U.S. soldiers to the United States, according to Lt. Col. Jerry O'Hara, a spokesman for the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command in Hawaii.
With the emergence of mitochondrial DNA as an unassailable tool for identifying remains, military forensic experts were able to definitively identify one set of these remains as Master Sgt. Frank Parrish. The discovery was shocking because military officials were convinced they had already recovered and buried Parrish's remains.

Parrish, who worked as an adviser to a South Vietnamese strike force, was believed to have been the soldier found in 1972 alongside the body of Master Sgt. Earl Briggs, according to an account compiled in 1990 by the Homecoming II Project, an advocacy group for families of missing soldiers. Both men were killed in an ambush on Jan. 16, 1968.

Military officials had based their identification of the remains on a comparison done with Parrish's picture and a toothless and jawbone-less skull.

There also was circumstantial evidence, said 1st Lt. Ken Hall, who works with O'Hara. Parrish was a medic, and a set of forceps had been found near the remains, he said.

Parrish's brother Johnnie had long rejected the forensic evidence the government had used to identify his brother, the Homecoming II report stated.

"The Pentagon informed Johnnie Parrish that he could accept it or reject it, but the identification was final," the account states, noting that Parrish's parents accepted the determination and eventually a reluctant Johnnie Parrish did, too.

As it turns out, Johnnie Parrish was right; the government was wrong. In Parrish's grave

The definitive identification of Parrish in 1989 set in motion a series of events, beginning with the exhumation of the remains in the Texas grave. Then came the time-consuming process of figuring out who that man was.

"We went back to Ben Tre," the province where the remains initially believed to be Parrish had been found, O'Hara said.

"We also deduced who the person could be by process of elimination. Who was in the area? . It takes an awfully long time."

It was November 2001 before military officials contacted two of Carl Wadleigh's six siblings in New Jersey, asking for blood samples that could be used to compare DNA patterns with the remains unearthed in Texas.

Just last month, Army officials contacted family members and confirmed that the remains that had been buried in Texas were those of their brother Carl.

In a Feb. 18 meeting with family members in the Branchville home of eldest sibling Maryjane, Army officials said they still believe Carl went AWOL, but not for as long as originally thought. Rather, they think he went AWOL for 13 days, having run off with a Vietnamese girlfriend.
Sent to a hospital near Saigon to undergo a procedure in 1968, Carl never showed up, Army officials said, according to Carl's siblings.

Army officials failed to return dozens of calls seeking verification of this account, which four siblings said they took away from the meeting.

Family members acknowledge that Carl had sent pictures home of a French Vietnamese woman he claimed to have married. Once, they said, he asked family members to raise $1,000 so he could send her to the United States.

Army officials told the family they now believe Carl returned to active duty sometime after his unexcused absence. He died fighting for his country, they said, and is entitled to a full military funeral, according to family members.

"He died a hero," Michelle Wadleigh said. Family memories

Mary and Clifford Wadleigh Sr. began their family in Jersey City in the early 1930s, with the birth of Maryjane. In 1945, the family moved to North Bergen, where Carl and Margaret were born on Dec. 20, 1946.

Without elaborating, Margaret, who now lives in Black Hawk, S.D., said family life was not happy, recalling that as kids she and Carl ran away from home. Carrying two bananas for sustenance, they got as far as a carnival park in Bayonne before tossing in the towel, Margaret remembered.
"We called home and my mom said we could take the rest of the day off" from school, Margaret recalled.

Clifford Jr. remembers swinging on trees in the hills of North Bergen with his younger brother.
Once, when a branch snapped, Clifford Jr. remembers shoving Carl out of harm's way, sparing him a steep fall.

"We were very close," Clifford said. "I saved his life once or twice as kids."
Carl never attended high school, family members said, and was living with relatives in Jersey City when he was drafted in 1964. He was shipped out to Vietnam in 1965.
The last family member to see Carl alive was first cousin Kenneth Wadleigh, a lifelong Jersey City resident who served with Carl in the Army's Ninth Infantry Division. Kenneth, now a supermarket manager in Fort Lee who remembers Carl as outgoing and interested in wrestling, said he never believed Carl went AWOL.

One reason for Kenneth's staunch belief is that he visited Carl in 1967 at a hospital near Saigon where Carl underwent treatment for a hernia he developed from carrying heavy artillery.
It not clear whether this is same hospital visit Army officials were referring to when they said Carl never showed up for an appointment in 1968. Kenneth is sure of the year, because it was the same year he finished his tour of duty and it was shortly after the visit that he heard family members mention that his cousin had gone AWOL.

"I would never believe it," Kenneth said. "I sat and talked to him for three hours, and that was the furthest thing from his mind. He wanted to do his job and go home."
Kenneth's theory on what happened to his cousin: "After he was discharged (from the hospital), I think he hitched a ride on a truck and (I believe) the truck was ambushed. . He was found right outside of base camp."

A soldier's reputation
Carl's service was also remembered positively by his fellow soldiers, according to Michelle Wadleigh, who attended a reunion of her brother's platoon five years ago. "My brother had quite a reputation for being an incredible soldier," she said. "He carried heavy artillery rifles. . I know he didn't like it. I remember the letters, but I know he did what he had to do."
In the years since the Army classified Wadleigh as AWOL, the family's trials were more than emotional, they said.

Clifford Jr., who works as a security officer at City Hall, lost several jobs because of suspicions raised by federal agents visiting his workplace, mistaking him for his younger brother, he said.
And while Margaret is grateful for the sense of closure the identification of her brother's remains has brought, she isn't prepared to forgive the military its errors.

"I'm totally disappointed in the government," Margaret said. "Not knowing if he was dead or alive and finding him in someone else's grave. . It does give it some closure, but I am totally disappointed by the whole thing."

Clifford Jr., who spent his Navy years stateside, said he's come to peace with the Army's performance concerning his brother.

"They put us through a lot of hell saying this and that," he said. "But after 30 years they found my brother. They did their job."

Overdue honor
With the history of their brother's service now officially rewritten, the kind of personal praise Michelle received about her brother from his fellow soldiers can now be bestowed publicly.

This Memorial Day, Jaime Vazquez, Jersey City's director of Veteran Affairs, plans to attach Carl Wadleigh's name to the Vietnam memorial rock in Pershing Field that honors city residents killed in action.

Wadleigh's will be the 68th name affixed to the rock, Vazquez said.
Michelle Wadleigh also wants her brother's name placed on the Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C.
"He served with dignity," she said. "He deserves to be there."
2004 The Jersey Journal"