By ANTHONY McCARTNEY
TAMPA - The men walked into an office in Hanoi in 1991 and claimed to know where dead U.S. servicemen were buried. As proof, they handed over dog tags and teeth.
Eight fact-finding missions, two excavations and nearly 13 years later, investigators finally found what the three men were talking about: the remains of three U.S. Marines and a Navy corpsman killed during a firefight in 1967.
Malcolm ``Mac'' Miller, a redheaded Navy petty officer 3rd class who had lived in Tampa in the years before he enlisted, was among those recovered.
On May 10, exactly 38 years after he was killed, Miller and two of the men he died fighting alongside will be laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery.
The outcome is one that a team of about 600 military and civilian personnel around the world try to repeat: the return of more than 88,000 fallen soldiers left on foreign battlefields.
The searchers include a group of scientists and anthropologists - who meticulously protect any human remains found - and weapons experts and medics who protect the searchers from live ammo, land mines and poisonous snakes, said Larry Greer, spokesman for the Defense Department's Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office.
In Miller's case, investigators matched details provided by the Vietnamese men with what was known about the May 10, 1967, firefight, Greer said.
In April and May 2003, a team was dispatched to the A Shauh Valley to search for the men's remains. They found fragments of human teeth and bones and some personal gear, but they weren't convinced they found enough, Greer said.
A year later, they returned. They focused on Hill No. 665, and finally found enough for investigators to analyze dental records of the four men thought to have been killed in the area.
About eight months later, a group visited Miller's niece in Madison, Ga. They came with a folder more than an inch thick of photos, X-rays and reports to prove to Dana Fisher and her mother, Sandy Keheley, that they'd found Mac Miller.
``I cried. I cried a lot,'' said Fisher, 32, about learning her uncle, whom she knew only from photos and stories, had been found.
Greer said the reaction is common. ``It's one thing to lose a loved one and go through that pain during war,'' he said. ``It's doubly awful if you don't have the body back.''
From Tampa To Vietnam
A night joyriding in what turned out to be a stolen car resulted in a judge's ultimatum to Miller: enlist or go to jail.
He signed up for the Navy, becoming a corpsman, or medic. It transformed him, his sister, Sandy Keheley, said. He dropped ``Malcolm'' and became ``Mac.''
He spent his first tour helping the wounded on the hospital ship USS Repose. ``He found what he wanted to do with the rest of his life,'' Keheley said.
She said she was surprised when her brother signed up for a second tour, this time being assigned to a reconnaissance battalion of the 3rd Marine Division.
It was dangerous duty. The corpsman often was the second person in a platoon Viet Cong soldiers targeted, he told his brother, Wes Miller, who now is a lawyer in Clearwater.
Although her brother was scared, ``he became quite proud of of that Marine uniform,'' Keheley said.
When Miller is buried in two weeks, the casket will contain Navy and Marine Corps uniforms.
`He's At Home'
There are 60 Florida families waiting for final word about relatives who fought in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Thirteen are from the Tampa Bay area.
On April 11, 1970, Marine Lt. Jan H. Nelson was shot down while flying a mission in Vietnam.
To this day, his wife, Patrician Wynn, of Bradenton, who since remarried, would like to know what happened to her high school sweetheart. She said she doesn't have a lot of hope that he'll be found because years ago a team that searched near his crash site found a pilot's helmet that wasn't his and nothing else.
``It would be wonderful to have some permanent closure,'' she said. ``Words can't describe how really horrendous it has been over all these year.''
Keheley said she thinks of her brother daily. Usually she pictures him the way he looked in a picture taken while he was aboard the USS Repose: ``leaning against the rail with that floppy grin of his.''
She said she hopes the memorial service at Arlington next month will relieve some of the pain of her brother's death nearly 40 years ago.
``I'm hoping that it will just give me peace,'' Keheley said. ``I know that he's at home. He's not somewhere. He's at home. There's a place that I can go to; not just `The Wall,' not just a name on a beautiful black wall.
``A place where he can really be honored for his sacrifice.''