The flight back to Saigon was short and uneventful. The eye-catching countryside below was vivid with lush hues of deep green vegetation. Long, trailing ribbons of brown water crisscrossed the vast, open spaces to meander through small villages dotting the flat landscape. Fortunately, this landing went smoothly. After we made our way through customs for the third time in two days, we saw Hai, our Saigon tour guide. We had exactly one hour to rush to the hotel, collect our belongings, travel to the station, and board the train for our trip to Hue. Luckily, the airline had located Mike’s lost luggage. Unbelievably, we caught the train only minutes before it pulled out of the station.
A female attendant showed us to our “soft berths.” Two Vietnamese nationals, an elderly woman and a young businessman in a tailored suit, occupied the lower compartments. We had scarcely climbed into the top berths when the conductor appeared in doorway to collect our travel vouchers. Mike couldn’t find our tickets. Unable to explain our situation to the impatient conductor, there was a moment of panic when we thought she might throw us off the train. Mike checked all his pockets and dug through his backpack before he discovered the tickets had slipped out of sight behind the mattress pad. Relieved, we settled into our berths for the long train ride to Hue.
The air-conditioning blasted through a rusted old ceiling vent. A powerful little circulating fan, with no on or off switch, moved the ice-cold air. The tiny room was uncomfortably cold, but I was so tired I could have slept on a bed of nails. I ducked under the thick cover to change from my thin dress into a tee shirt and jeans. I closed my eyes and tried to relax. The MIA repatriation ceremony had really rattled me. I wondered if anyone had noticed how my hands shook as I tried to focus the camera. So many intense, unexpected emotions had washed over me at once, to stop myself from breaking into miserable sobs I had to lock my knees in an uncomfortable position. The ceremony had not only brought up thoughts of Jerry, but fresh emotions from Cindy’s funeral only ten days earlier.
Eventually the rhythm of the train rocked me to sleep. When I awoke, daylight poked through the dirty, fogged-up window. I looked around the compartment; the Vietnamese man must have slipped out at one of the many stops during the night. From my perch on the top berth, I watched quietly as our bunkmate brushed her waist-length grey hair, expertly sweeping a handful of thick hair into a “sister’s knot” at the back of her head. When this kind woman noticed Mike and I were awake, she dug around in her travel bag and silently laid out breakfast. With a gracious sweep of her hand, she offered us small bottles of water, a strange fruit, and some form of white pastry. Not wishing to insult her, I shared the fruit with Mike, but appreciatively refused the pastry. In exchange for her hospitality, I offered her a Granola bar. She politely thanked me, and put the unfamiliar food away in her bag.
The long, slow trip from Saigon to Hue took twenty hours and we eagerly disembarked when the train finally pulled into the station. I spotted the tour guide for our journey to Khe Sanh, holding a sign with our names on it. Tra greeted us warmly and introduced himself and our driver, Nam. We would spend the night in Hue. Although only about seventy miles from Khe Sanh, it would take half a day to first travel forty-six miles north to the town of Dong Ha. From there Khe Sanh appeared to be only a short ride to the west. It was hard to know exact mileage because we could find no road maps of Vietnam to purchase.
We arrived in Hue around two in the afternoon, and checked into a plain, but clean hotel. After showers and a short rest, we ate a nice seafood meal at a nearby restaurant that brandished white tablecloths and quaint French decor. When we walked through the gates of the restaurant courtyard, three legless men waited in the shadows on the sidewalk. They claimed to be war veterans in need of food. With our bellies full, we couldn’t say no to them.
Mike and I walked back to the hotel. With a heart still heavy with grief, I needed to turn away from my thoughts in order to clear my head, and prepare for the task ahead. I turned on the television, but the noise box was no help. Every station, except MSNBC and MTV, broadcast in Vietnamese. The news got old and there was only rap playing on MTV. Something moved behind the florescent light mounted on the wall next to my bed. I jumped to my feet, moving several feet away to wait for a snake to wiggle out and drop on the bed. A shy gecko poked his head out to snatch a mosquito on the fly. Amused, I laughed and crawled back in bed, eventually drifting off into a restless slumber.
Mike and I were more than ready to get on with our journey to Quang Tri Province the next morning. We hoped to meet up with the JTF team somewhere along the route to Khe Sanh. In the tour companies small four-door sedan, we headed north on Highway 1. National Route 1 had been a main artery running south to north along the coast during the war. Originally well constructed to carry immense amounts of military supplies, this road was once open to countless ambushes. Many American G.I.s had given their lives on the newly paved highway we now rode down in air-conditioned comfort.
Vietnam is host to many small war museums. Among them is the Quang Tri Citadel, where workers were in the process of detonating still-active landmines within shouting distance of the monument itself. The museum left no lasting impression, but the graphic exhibits inside did have an impact on me. There were many black and white photographs of the war, all pro-Communist, along with an assortment of captured artifacts such as weapons, steel helmets, and other U.S. military gear. The most compelling item on display was the guestbook. Mike and I took the time to read all the entries. We were surprised to discover that a mini-war of sorts continued in these books. Some of the Europeans who visited Quang Tri were still judgmental of American involvement in Vietnam. A few American veterans expressed resentment in their postings, but many more spoke of peace, or recalled incidents of loss they wanted remembered.
As I read the visitor comments, I couldn’t help but think of all the schoolchildren who visited these memorials. For my entry, I wrote a proverb I hoped would be familiar to the Vietnamese who might happen to read it: “The young bamboo bends easily.” We returned to the car, and traveled for a good distance before Tra, sitting in the front seat, turned around to ask me, “The young bamboo bends easily, what this means?” I explained to him, “It means that what young people see and hear influences them, and the children of the world are the responsibility of everyone.” Satisfied with my explanation, Tra smiled thoughtfully, and turned his eyes back to the traffic. Down the road, I had a question for Tra. After having suffered life-threatening wounds, hunger and hardship, not to mention losing most of his family to the war, I was curious. Why wasn’t he bitter? Tra’s wise philosophy was, “If you live in the bitterness of yesterday, how will you survive in today?”
We were all road-weary by the time we arrived in Dong Ha that evening. We checked into the Phuong Hoang Hotel. My room wasn’t fancy, but it was surface clean, and I had the luxury of a big bathtub in my room. Mike’s accommodations came with only a big red plastic washbasin and a shower nozzle hanging on the wall. To our amusement, both bathrooms shared the amenity of a glass full of old, well-used toothbrushes.
Abandoned U.S tank, Dong Ha, 1999.
Mike had just come into my room to tell me he had seen an American in the hallway, when a heavy-handed knock surprised us. Mike opened the door; I heard an American voice ask if it was my room. One of the last people I expected to see in my doorway was MAJ Ken Royalty, commander of the 55th Joint Task Force team. I had thought we might have to chase the JTF team all over Quang Tri, and here we were staying in the same hotel.
Major Royalty invited us to meet with the team that evening to discuss site information and action plans. “We will show you everything we have on the case,” he told us.
I found myself a little in awe of the JTF team. They appeared to be highly trained professionals, willing and more than able to do whatever was necessary to recover American MIAs. Unsure of what to expect, I hoped they would open up their file on Case 1000 and share any new information. I also hoped they would give me some idea of how they plann
ed to pinpoint the exact location of the Old French Fort, and how they intended to conduct the search.
That evening, we convened with the JTF team in a small, stuffy hotel meeting room. They were easy people to be around, cheerful despite their exceptional mission, earnestly dedicated to recovery and resolution. Once the briefing on Case 1000 was complete, a plan of action was determined. The JTF team would leave Dong Ha early the next morning; travel Highway 9 to Khe Sanh, then on to the Old French Fort.
I was glad Mike was with me. My overloaded, injured brain was unable to process information at top speed while reeling from a riptide of emotions, not to mention fatigue. I knew Mike would remember the details better than I would, especially since he was keeping a journal. I’d planned to keep a record of our journey, but suffered from writer’s block, unable to find needed release with pen and paper.
Prior to the trip, Black Cat Gary McClendon had sent me photos of the Old French Fort from the early ‘60’s, and explained the French originally built the post with concrete bunker foundations in 1952. In 1962, the U.S. Special Forces had sent an A-Team to Khe Sanh to claim the strategic site as “The Alamo.” Special Forces troops used this border surveillance camp to train the Bru Civilian Defense Indigenous Group (CDIG). MACVSOG had used the Old French Fort as a patrol base to prevent enemy use of the legendary Ho Chi Minh Trail, which extended from North Vietnam into South Vietnam. The Trail wasn’t a single road, but a complex web of different jungle paths, truck routes, and river transportation systems. Khe Sanh was the western boundary for the defensive line along the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and “The Alamo” a formidable obstacle that hindered Communist efforts to carry the fighting into the populated coastal regions of South Vietnam. The U.S. military abandoned the post in 1966, when the Green Berets relocated to join up with the Marines at the Khe Sanh Combat Base.
The main problem the team had with the Case 1000 location was their Vietnamese counterparts claimed to know nothing of an Old French Fort in the Khe Sanh area. It wasn’t marked as such on the topographical map the team was using. Mike to the rescue. He had brought along the hand-drawn map of the Khe Sanh area posted on the C-2/5 Cavalry website. The map clearly depicted the Old French Fort. The major, able to correlate the old map with Highway 9, thanked Mike for making his job easier. He also regretfully informed us that the Vietnamese officials were not comfortable with our being at the loss site while they and the JTF team explored the area. Not there to hinder the mission, we agreed to follow later. We were confident we could find the loss site ourselves with a topographical map and Mike’s GPS locator, already programmed with grid coordinates according to Army casualty reports.
There was no rest for me that long night. Each time I closed my eyes and tried to relax, a nightmare about Mama, Daddy, or Cindy crawled across my subconscious to worry me awake. Finally accepting sleep would not come; I showered, brushed my hair into a ponytail, dressed in sleeveless shirt and jeans, and pulled my camera from its bag. I moved quietly down the stairs, and slipped through the lobby past a sleeping desk clerk. Still dark outside, I sat down on the hotel steps to wait impatiently for my first sunrise “in ‘Nam.”
A kaleidoscope of old blended with new, Vietnam is a place of ghosts and lost causes. Influenced by Buddhist theology and Confucian philosophy, Westerners seldom truly understand the subtle Asian cultural undercurrents that drive even daily negotiations. Vietnam is one of those few places in the world that tries to steal your soul, and never wants to give it back. I was in this challenging, spellbinding country to ask that she release her secrets and reveal to me what fate had befallen Jerry.
January 1968 NVA Map. Note that the Old French Fort is noted as “Ku Boc” and the Khe Sanh Combat Base as “Ta Con.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Khe Sanh
I here was little movement on the street in predawn Dong Ha until a motorbike pulled up. The driver jumped off, threw two blocks of dripping ice on the grimy hotel stoop, and raced to his next stop. A half-hour passed, and except for the JTFs return from their morning run, all was quiet and still. I sat on the steps and watched as the locals began to stir in preparation for a new day. Gradually, as the sun came up, the dusty street came alive.
Pedestrians, bicycles, motorbikes, and the occasional wood cart pulled by a water buffalo moved past me. Motorbikes and bicycles carried everything from fresh-picked bundles of leafy greens to ducks or squealing pigs. It was common to see a family of three crowded together on a motorbike, with baby asleep in the middle. An old, blue bus with standing room only labored past. Like bees to honey, people clustered around the open door for fresh air. Less fortunate passengers sat on top surrounded by mysterious bundles precariously tied down with plastic rope. For Dong Ha villagers, this was just another day.
For me, however, this day was surreal. Sometimes you can think about something so often that when it is actually happens, you wonder if it’s only a dream. I pinched myself twice to see if I was truly in Vietnam on a search for Jerry.
The loss site for Case 1000 is fourteen miles below the DMZ and six miles from the Laotian border. The military demarcation line (MDL) established in 1954 by the Geneva Accords, did not actually coincide with the 17th parallel, but ran south of it along the Ben Hai River, which enters the South China Sea, to the village of Bo Ho Su, and from there due west to the border of Laos. The DMZ, also required under the Geneva agreement, prohibited troops from both North and South Vietnamese governments from entering an area that extended for three miles on either side of the MDL.
The JTF and their Vietnamese counterparts pulled out about 7 a.m. I wished them a good day, hopeful they would find new evidence at the loss site. Mike and I dawdled over breakfast to give the team a good head start. A few hours later, we piled into the tour sedan with Nam and Tra to follow the JTFs route down Highway 9 to Khe Sanh. Once there, we would attempt to locate the Old French Fort on our own, and with a little luck find the team still at work. I assumed they would use the grid coordinates from the Case 1000 records, but I would have to imagine how they actually carried out the search.
An isolated sector of Vietnam, Khe Sanh is located in Quang Tri Province, about fifteen miles from the former DMZ and ten miles from the border of Laos. For miles, deep muddy ruts riddled the roadbed, making travel on the infamous Highway 9 an adventure within itself. Heavy construction equipment and big trucks caused traffic to move sluggishly. The sedan’s oil pan bottomed out several times from the massive potholes. I worried the road conditions would force our driver, Nam, to turn the car around. He understood little English and rarely spoke, driving with total concentration through yawning mud puddles, around massive rocks, expertly dodging pedestrians, bicycles, and the ever-present motorbikes without a single episode of road rage.
A great deal of fighting and a staggering loss of life took place along the only road into Khe Sanh. The Cam Lo town marker was a reminder to American tourists that Highway 9 was a historical route during the war. Cam Lo was the southwest corner of an area known as Leatherneck Square, which included the villages of Con Tien (NW), Gio Linh (NE), and Dong Ha (SE). North of Cam Lo we passed Camp Carroll, previous hilltop habitat for the big guns of the 3rd Marines. We continued north on Highway 1 a few miles, topping a hill to gape at a stone protrusion in the distance that shot seven hundred fifty feet straight up. This area, called “The Rockpile” by the Marines, was a natural fortress. The steep, treacherous slopes protected the helicopter LZ and artillery base located on the flat summit from invasion. Down the road, we passed the 4,900-foot hilltop known “Razorback Ridge.” Trails up the steep hillsides led to overgrown observation posts once manned by courageous American troops.
We stopped to watch work crews and vehicles cross the muddy and swift Da Krong River. The Vietnamese were hard at work building a suspension bridge that would access a new road system hyped as the Ho Chi Minh Highway. Actually, the new highway through the Troung Son Mountains is miles from the original Ho Chi Minh Trail. Thousands of enemy Vie
tnamese had traveled the treacherous jungle trails during the war, which served as a supply line for the NVA. Along the dense and rugged trail, advance teams established commo/liaison stations (intermediate stopping place) so well hidden trained guides were necessary to navigate troops from one point to the next. Many of the POWs captured in South Vietnam marked time in caves, bamboo cages, or holes in the ground while being moved north along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
Continuing north on Highway 9, parallel to the Da Krong River, we topped a rise to see a broad expanse of hauntingly beautiful landscape with gorgeous, emerald-and-jade hillsides with dancing waterfalls that slid majestically down solid granite mountains. The scenery tempted me to explore, only I knew better. The jungles of Southeast Asia can swallow people whole, and never spit them out.
A four-foot tall concrete highway marker, painted white and tipped in red, signified our arrival in bold black letters—Khe Sanh, land of a thousand war stories. The arcane village I fantasized since a teen was real. At last, I would see the Old French Fort. It had been a long, rough road over the years to get here; nevertheless, this day I would mentally visualize the surprise attack that took my brother from us and determine for myself what avenues of escape might have existed. I was on the edge of my seat, face glued to the window. The landscape struck me as very similar to my own backyard, a span of wooded hills and red clay dirt, minus the fascination of the Bru Montagnards. Different in culture and language from the Vietnamese, indigenous tribes were called “Montagnards” by the French, meaning “mountain people.” American G.I.s abbreviated this to “Yards.”
Keeping the Promise: The Story of MIA Jerry Elliott, a Family Shattered by His Disappearance, and a Sister's 40-Year Search for the Truth Page 22