Missing in Action (February/March 2005 | Volume: 56, Issue: 1)

Missing in Action

AH article image

Authors: Rachel Louise Snyder

Historic Era: Era 10: Contemporary United States (1968 to the present)

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February/March 2005 | Volume 56, Issue 1

Atop a half-mile-high mountain deep in the heart of the A Shau Valley in central Vietnam, a poisonous worm snake winds itself onto the edge of a spade. After a fleeting glance, the U.S. sergeant holding the spade, Tammi Reeder, 34, flicks her wrist and flings the vermilion serpent into the double-canopy jungle surrounding this mountaintop enclave. It is the fourth such snake in an hour ,and about the millionth over the past several weeks, so this group of 10 U.S. military personnel, two civilian anthropologists, and more than 70 Vietnamese workers have developed a resigned tolerance for reptiles.

We are in a cloud forest, three miles from the Laotian border in the A Luoi District, an hour’s helicopter ride from anything. Verdant trees—banana, banyan, traveler’s palm, and cassia—are rooted in curried mud. A wet layer of humidity wilts the jungle. The group’s mission is to find and repatriate a warrant officer whose Huey helicopter went down in May of 1967 with three other crew members. Those three were rescued within 48 hours. In the days afterward, several attempts were made to retrieve him, too, but heavy enemy fire made it impossible.

This search is one of more than 15 that take place annually under the charge of the Department of Defense’s Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) in Hawaii—400 military personnel and civilian anthropologists and archeologists who, so far, have conducted more than 80 Prisoners of War/Missing in Action operations in the Philippines, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, North Korea, Burma, and many other places. On average, JPAC identifies two soldiers a week in its forensic laboratory, which is the largest in the world. There remain today more than 78,000 missing soldiers from World War II (of which 35,000 are deemed recoverable), more than 1800 from Vietnam, 8100 from Korea, 126 from the Cold War, and one from the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Clara Barton answered 44,000 inquiries about the missing, and located 22,000 soldiers.

To decide which of this multitude to try to locate, JPAC’s Casualty Data section analyzes each case, assessing such factors as the political stability of the country, the available weather windows, safety, and accessibility. Once adequate information has been collected and analyzed, the intelligence, operations, and laboratory sections decide whether or not to pursue a recovery. Basically, they go for the easiest to reach—an approach that gets more difficult with every passing year.

All the cases involve the dead. The wistful, angry conviction that grew up in America after Vietnam that prisoners were still being held has spurred JPAC to pursue thousands of reports of “live sightings” throughout Southeast Asia. Not a single case was found to be credible. While they continue to follow up any such leads, investigators do not believe that any living soldiers are being held from past wars.

Augustus Goodman, the 30-year-old anthropologist in charge of this mission, has the regal stance of a nineteenth-century explorer and the quiet manner of a philosopher. “It’s an amazing endeavor. Not many other cultures go