Re: Navy Physician Volunteers for JPAC Mission

Date: January 27, 2004

"The Source for Navy News

Navy Physician Volunteers for JPAC Mission to Vietnam
Story Number: NNS040126-02

By Andre B. Sobocinski, Bureau of Medicine and Surgery

WASHINGTON (NNS) -- By the end of the Vietnam War there were 2,585 Americans unaccounted for in Southeast Asia. The Department of Defense’s Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC), established in 1992, has recovered 500 sets of remains and identified 323 of them.

During the summer of 2003, JPAC sponsored the 73rd Joint Field Activity mission to Vietnam. A member of the team was Cmdr. Steven Galeski, a Navy physician assistant and the Navy liaison for the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, Healthcare Inter-Service Training Office.

“I was told the mission needed a physician assistant,” said Galeski. “The JPAC doesn’t have its own medics, so they recruit medical augmentees for each mission. I volunteered.”

He was required to learn the geo-political makeup of the area where they were going, and the potentially fatal diseases and other dangers they could encounter.

“Dengue fever, Japanese encephalitis, and, of course, malaria were risks,” explained Galeski. “There is a form of malaria native to the area so potent that people have been known to die within 24 hours of being bitten by an infected mosquito.”

Following a week of orientation in Hawaii where the topics of malaria, preventive medicine, emergency dental care and MEDEVAC procedures were addressed, the team flew to Da Nang to begin the mission.

“Besides mosquitoes, the biggest medical threats we were up against were heat-related conditions – heat stroke and fatigue,” said Galeski.

Galeski’s team traveled through the provinces where witnesses of wartime plane crashes were interviewed.

“On a hot day in the mountains, our team visited the People’s Army of Vietnam cemetery with two elderly witnesses who said an American serviceman was supposed to be buried there. According to one witness, the remains would have been exhumed and buried elsewhere. The other witness said he was not exhumed and is still buried there. Things were not always clear-cut, and memories change with time. In fact, one of the biggest problems JPAC is facing is that witnesses, so crucial to the missions, are not getting any younger.”

Thirty days later, the teams gathered in Da Nang with the somber yet important task of repatriating the remains of five American servicemen recovered from previous missions. Between missions, remains are housed at the Joint Forensic Board in Hanoi staffed by American and Vietnamese forensic experts.

“The legacy of JPAC will be having successfully fulfilled the mission and having brought closure to long-grieving families,” said Galeski. “Hopefully, even more of the honored war dead will be brought home. Then, JPAC will truly live up to and exceed its motto ‘You are not forgotten.’”"