The major, along with his friend and professional partner Buzz Parish, had traveled from Bangkok, Thailand, to participate in the Rolling Thunder Memorial Day Event with William Lundy, son of recovered MIA Air Force MAJ Albro Lundy, Jr. The motorcycle ride from California to Washington, D.C. completed, the men were in Indiana to help Buzz pack belongings following the sale of his home. Ron and I met the three men in a crowded restaurant on the outskirts of Indianapolis. After brief introductions, I scooted into a booth next to the major. Over dinner, I briefed him about Case 1000. He listened carefully, but offered no information. Finally, I took a deep breath, looked him straight in the eyes, and asked the question foremost on my mind, “Mark, are there any live POWs left in Southease Asia?”
He didn’t bat an eyelash. “Five hundred and seventy-two.”
“What?” I said loudly enough to spark interest from other patrons. I was shocked. I didn’t think I’d heard him correctly. A tired sorrow played across Mark Smith’s face when he repeated the number. According to the major, in 1979, the Vietnamese military dumped five hundred seventy-two Americans into Laos under the supervision of three former Generals. He explained a rift developed between the Hanoi Politburo and military leaders when, out of fear of being held responsible for war crimes, they refused to carry out government execution orders. In the midst of shared misery, a natural affinity developed between the relocated Montagnard Hill Tribes and the American POWs who lived among them. The Yard’s longed for their Vietnamese ancestral burial grounds, and the American’s yearned to return to their homeland. Eventually, some of the American prisoners married within the village inhabitants and had children. Held in check geographically by real and imaginary landmines, the POWs might manage to escape and cross international borders, but responsibility for the lives of others ethically binds them. Any escape attempt would induce retaliatory measures for not only the POW, but his family and the village at large. The major was able to obtain names of many of these men through his network of agents in Laos, especially members of the Laotian resistance.
Mark excused himself. I turned to William; he had spent four years in Southeast Asia searching for his father, MIA in Laos since 1970. His family had never shied from confrontations with DIA over photos and live sighting reports of his father. “William, what’s your take on Mark Smith?”
“Only real deal in town,” quickly summed up his opinion.
Buzz Parrish, who served in Vietnam with the USAF “Redhorse” squadron, and postwar as the Indiana Chapter 1 Rolling Thunder President, was “eaten up by the fate of the MIAs.” Later, after years of exchanging emails, Buzz confided to me the major had shown him “something” while on a trip to Southeast Asia, which convinced him to sacrifice a loving marriage, family, and financial security to pursue POW information. He assured me he was happy to follow the latest lead, wherever this might take him. I understood; far better to do something to expose the truth, even if it didn’t work out as expected, than to know the truth and do nothing.
When Mark returned to the table I had one more question for him, “Will our POWs ever come home?” Mark Smith, a man who will not forget, nor allow the POW issue to die, answered, “Yes, with the help of a third country.” I only hope I live long enough to greet the planes.
Although I felt pulled to return to the Old French Fort, I didn’t intend to return to Vietnam after the second trip. Previous visits had been remarkable, but financially and physically draining. There was no justification to go back again...until I found Danny Williams when he posted a message on the Black Cats message board in 2002. Danny had been on the ground with Jerry at the Old French Fort and managed to survive the ambush. If he would return to Khe Sanh with me, then I could at least resolve the nagging question of whether or not we were looking for Jerry in the right place. Unable to correlate the written accounts of Black Cat movements to the yellow X the 55th JTF spray-painted on the utility pole at the loss site in 1999, I hoped his presence would resolve my confusion.
Danny and Tommy Stiner were the two Black Cat survivors left on the ground at the Old French Fort who made it through the jungle at night to the Khe Sanh Combat Base. I’d read CPT Stiner’s accounts of events in various documents and news articles, but due to his wounds, Williams had never been debriefed to provide his account of that perilous day.
We corresponded by email for a few months, and discussed Case 1000 in detail. I asked Danny if he ever thought about going back to Vietnam; he replied by email on Christmas Day that, yes, he would like to go back, and might “cook up a trip sometime.” Thinking verification of the loss site would be very useful; I seized the moment and asked him if I paid expenses would he go back to Khe Sanh to show me exactly where everything had happened at the Old French Fort. Danny said yes, and we planned a trip for the following April. When the bird flu struck Vietnam, we had to postpone our journey until September 2003.
Headed back to Vietnam for my third trip, I chuckled as I watched the big fellow with the fisherman’s tan from a discreet distance. He sat on a bench outside the Los Angeles International Flight Terminal, tapping his foot and rocking his head to the music that played through his headset. Recalling the photo he had sent by email, and his mention of a love for music, I thought this had to be Danny Williams. As I walked towards him, he looked up, and greeted me with a slow and easy smile.
Danny would try to take me back to the exact location in Khe Sanh where the ambush on the Black Cats took place on January 21, 1968. The plan was simple enough: in Da Nang we would rendezvous with Dale Lewis and Steve Jones, both U.S. Army vets who lived in Vietnam. The following day we would meet with the JTF for Danny’s long overdue debriefing. Afterwards, we would catch up with Geof Steiner, a Marine vet, who had arrived in Hue from Minnesota a few days earlier. With Geof’s Vietnamese friends in Hue-Kieu and Hung-as our translators, the group would travel to Khe Sanh to find the exact location where Danny and Jerry had fought together so many years ago.
Upon our arrival at the Da Nang airport, I introduced Danny to Steve and his wife, Huong (Hung). I’d never met Steve Jones in person, although our friendship went back a few years. Steve was a history buff, and our correspondence had started over a 304th NVA map I had given George Neville to post on his 3rd Recon website. In turn, Steve introduced me to Dale Lewis and Geof Steiner through emails. Initially, Steve was a helicopter pilot with the 17th Cavalry Regiment “Silverspurs,” and later transferred to the “Banshees.” He was aero scouting in an OH-6A helicopter in the A Shau Valley on May 13, 1969, in support of Operation Apache Snow, when his “Cayuse” was shot down, ending his tour. He had come from Minnesota to Vietnam in 2000 with a veteran’s group, decided to stay for a while, met and married Huong in Da Nang, and they now lived in Nha Trang.
Dale’s baptism in fire was as an FNG with the 2nd Battalion, 501st Infantry attached to the 101st Airborne Division at Fire Support Base (FSB) Henderson on May 6, 1970. When the NVA and VC overran the firebase, a brutal firefight ensued, but the Americans fought back-to-back and held the hill. The next day, a recovery detail discovered five wounded soldiers, and thirty-three KIAs. The men had lost track of each other during the fighting and two PFCs were missing; no one knew what had happened to Larry G. Kier and Refugio T. Teran. After several weeks in the hospital, Dale was awarded the Purple Heart, and returned to duty in the A Shau Valley. It was commitment to MIAs Kier and Teran that originally brought Dale back to Vietnam, and although their remains had been recovered and positively identified in 2002, he continued to assist MIA families and friends whenever possible.
I explained to Dale and Steve that six-months prior, Danny had agreed to an interview with the JTF, and we would meet with them in Da Nang before taking off for Khe Sanh. I was pleased that Det-2, Senior Casualty Resolution Supervisor and linguist, Gary Flanagan would personally conduct Danny’s long overdue debrief.
Gary, and MAJ Tom Dicken, USMC, Deputy Commander, JTF-FA Detachment 2, Hanoi, warmly greeted our small group the next day. We met for mo
rning coffee in the lobby of the popular beachside Furama Resort. Caught off guard, Gary laughed when I handed him a bag of dried black eyed peas. I hadn’t forgotten it was one of his favorite foods and unavailable in Vietnam. The next four or five hours, over the constant interruptions of a busy hotel lobby, Danny, with a lot of effort and personal restraint, shared his nightmarish ordeal with the JTF.
The city of Da Nang as seen from Marble Mountain, 2003.
A helicopter crew chief stranded without a ride, Danny Williams was hanging out in Marble Mountain’s NCO Club on January 21, 1968, when the Black Cats came through looking for a gunner they couldn’t locate, so he volunteered to take his place. He hopped into the gunners seat with pilots James Evans and Mike Meir at the controls of Chalk #3. When they came around on approach to the Old French Fort, they were to the right and rear of Black Cat #027. As usual, the choppers came down in the same order as they had flown in formation. Slicks seldom touched down during operations; it took too long to move from a dead stop. Danny waited for the UH-1 “bounce” before he started pushing the ARVN troops out of the chopper.
He saw a puff of smoke to the right, followed by a smoke trail that crossed in front of the bow of his bird into the gunner compartment of Black Cat #027. The NVA, discretely hidden in spider holes dug under cover of darkness, stood up and began to fire. Black Cat #027 spun one hundred eighty degrees in the air, rolled down the embankment, and settled on her right side. Danny bailed out of Chalk #3 and ran towards the crashed chopper. Halfway down the slope, he ran into David Howington, crew chief of Black Cat #027, and helped him up the hill. Danny pushed Howington onto the skid of his chopper, Wally Cox reached out to pull Howington onboard, and the ship took off. Danny returned to Black Cat #027 where he saw “Mac,” WO Gerald McKinsey, trying to pull LTC Joseph Seymoe from under the wreckage. They took some machine gun fire, and both of them fell to the ground. Their backs to the hilltop as they tried to help Seymoe, the men were dependent on the choppers to lay as much suppressive fire as possible before liftoff.
Danny Williams (left) is debriefed in Da Nang by Gary Flanagan (center) and MAJ Tom Dicken. September 2003.
McKinsey stood and tried to lift up on the cabin while Danny pulled on Seymoe’s armpits, but he was pinned under the skid. Machine-gun fire came down the tail boom of #027 from Danny’s right moving left. The hair on his neck stood up as he heard the pop, pop, pop of bullets hitting sheet metal. McKinsey fell back, and ducked for cover in a prone firing position with his head pointing uphill. Danny realized LTC Seymoe was gone. He probably died on impact, if not from the wounds on his right side, or possibly shrapnel from the rocket that annihilated the gunner compartment.
Danny flattened out on the ground and hollered to McKinsey that Seymoe was dead and they needed to move out. There was no reply. He crawled about three or four feet over to McKinsey and shook him. He was lying face down, with no visible wounds. Danny felt around for any sign of response, but he was lifeless. He started to pull McKinsey’s helmet off to see what was wrong and possibly revive him. As he raised his helmet, he could see a bullet hole at the base of the skull.
Captain Tommy Stiner had taken a position to Danny’s right in a clump of bushes. Stiner yelled at Danny to ask how Seymoe and McKinsey were doing. Danny shouted back that they were both dead. Stiner screamed at him to get over to where he was. Danny went back to the destroyed Black Cat #027 to look for a weapon. He took Seymoe’s .45 out of his holster and started towards Stiner. Spotting an ARVN with two broken arms lying in the grass, he disarmed the wounded soldier and took six grenades from him. Danny’s left leg wasn’t acting right. Although aware of his wounds, he was too scared to feel the pain.
The NVA began to throw grenades over the hillside. Danny received more wounds, this time in the buttocks and left knee. When he reached Stiner, he told him they had better get out of there. The captain and Danny halted long enough to pray. It seemed like all the action around them stopped completely until they finished, then the three men made a run for it. Danny pushed the frightened ARVN with broken arms forward as they ran down the hill in a hail of bullets. The gunfire lightened up a bit when the men put some distance between them and the NVA. Danny said if not for CPT Stiner, he probably would have died that day. Stiner had urged him on and “led like the leader he is.”
When they came to Highway 9, Danny pulled off his flight jacket to flash the orange liner at a Cessna L-19 Birddog overhead. The NVA were moving fast, they fired a .50 at the Birddog in an attempt to bring it down. Danny believed the Birddog pilot spotted them, and credited him with holding off the approaching bombers until the three of them were clear of the strike area.
Danny, CPT Stiner, and the wounded ARVN soldier began their journey through the jungle to safety following flare artillery coming from the combat base. As they hid in the bush during the night, someone came up a trail they had just crossed. Too close for comfort, they moved on to slip covertly through a deserted Bru village north of the combat base, and darted beneath the stilted bamboo huts for cover. They continued onto the Khe Sanh Combat Base. Captain Stiner and Danny lay outside the perimeter fence in the dark for two or three hours as they answered questions yelled at them by nervous Marines. Every time they moved, the Marines shot at them, further wounding both men. They started to crawl up a little ditch when the Marines cut loose with shoe-level fire, but the ditch was just deep enough that their “bacon wasn’t sticking up.”
Captain Stiner and Danny finally convinced the Marines to allow them entry. Once inside the gates, Danny took one sip of coffee and began to go into shock. The chills gripped him, and he thought he was about to bleed to death. He lay down; Stiner put a blanket over him and lay close to warm him. He shook until his teeth rattled, and finally passed out. When he wokeup, six or seven hours later in Charlie Med, Danny looked around and wondered if he was about to be embalmed along with the dead soldiers around him. A tired, worn out Doc greeted him, and told Danny he was from the motor pool and had “topped him off with oil,” meaning he had just given him a blood transfusion. Danny tried to get up, but the Doc said he had better not try that; he “still had a leak.”
The Marines hauled him from the dispensary to a spot near the flight line. He rested on a stack of sandbags, falling in and out of consciousness through several mortar and rocket attacks. Danny limped back to “Charlie Med” in-between shellings for fresh dressings, soon followed by a second blood transfusion. Stiner and Williams thought the Black Cats would never arrive to get them out of Khe Sanh. Danny believed they might all die as the NVA walked artillery rounds up and down the runway. He said the sky rained rockets, but pilots LT Bob Ford and WO Lennis Lee came after their fellow Black Cats despite the danger. Stiner jumped onto Lee’s ship, while Danny limped aboard Ford’s chopper. Both were flown to the hospital in Da Nang.
That was all Danny could remember, other than sketchy details while he was in the hospital. He did recall some of the Black Cats came by over the next few days to see him before he left for medical treatment in the Philippines. Like many other Vietnam vets, Danny has a diagnosis of Hepatitis C. His doctor told him the Hep C was likely a result of the blood transfusion given at the Combat Base. He concluded his story by telling us, “I suppose I was KIA back then, but too ornery to lay down.”
Gary and the major asked Danny many questions. They were very considerate of how difficult it was for him to remember all the details, and allowed him to take his time and set the pace. After a few hours, MAJ Dicken laid a map on the table and asked Danny about possible escape routes from the Old French Fort.
“Now, let’s go back a little,” Danny told Gary and the major, “Jerry never made it to #027, but he may have been right there in the grass doing his thing. He may well have bought the time we needed to work with Seymoe. I never looked in the direction that he came from. I never saw any helicopters come back; I just saw them leave.
“Do I think it was Jerry that was said to be dead on the ground? No, I think who they saw
was McKinsey, he was more in the open.
“Do I think Jerry got killed before he got to us? No, they didn’t carry McKinsey’s body off, so why would they carry Jerry?
“I think Jerry left the top of that hill alive, whether POW or under his own guidance, I don’t know. He may have gotten away from the hill and down in the elephant grass. It was thick and very tall and I had needles coming out of my skin for two years from wading through it.
“I think the JTF needs to comb that whole hillside, not just the crash site, and if there is no evidence out there anywhere, he may well have been captured. I wish I knew. I must say that I feel honored to have served with such a fine group of brave men.”
Gary tried to thank Danny for returning to Vietnam to provide information on Case 1000. Danny looked from Gary to the major, his voice heavy with fatigue, waved his big hand around in the air in a gesture of dismissal, and explained, “It’s about being a soldier, and honor among warriors.”
Danny Williams will always be my hero.
Gary decided he would stay one more night in Da Nang and meet with us again the next afternoon at the My Khe Hotel (formerly the US Army PX at China Beach). I was pleased to have another opportunity to talk with Gary. I had some documents I wanted to ask him about, and hoped he could advise me how to get Jerry’s name on the “Last Known Alive Discrepancy List.” The first document I showed Gary the next afternoon was a declassified report in 1968 of a mass movement of over seven hundred U.S. POWs from the Vietnam border deep into Laos. He scanned it for a moment and said, “No good, the numbers are too high.” He cast it aside to pick up the next document and quickly discredited it as well, along with several others.
The last DoD intelligence document contained only a few sentences of type on the entire page that hadn’t been redacted [blacked out]. It said, “Intelligence sources indicate that on 21 January 68 thirty Americans were captured at Khe Sanh (coordinates XD 848 417). There was no additional information.” I couldn’t trace the source, but the grid coordinates belonged to the FOB at the Khe Sanh Combat Base. Although none of the FOB-3 recon vets I talked with recalled anything about the report, they did seem to think it was possible some of the refugee Montagnards may have seen something and reported it. I knew from declassified military intelligence documents that in January 1968 the NVA 304th Regiment established a command post along the Se Pone River at Lang Troai, less than ten miles from Khe Sanh, and next to the border of Laos. I speculated that the Bru mistook the captured ARVN soldiers from the Old French Fort for American G.I.s as the NVA force-marched their uniformed South Vietnamese prisoners down Highway 9 after sunset. Except for the Case 1000 MIAs from the Old French Fort, there were no other Americans listed POW/MIA around Khe Sanh on January 21, 1968.
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 28