by Bryan Bender
Fifteen minutes after George’s team took off from the base camp, the pair of helicopters set down a few miles southeast of the village of Ban Phanop. Dozens of villagers were waiting nearby, most of them chain-smoking young men wearing traditional baggy pants, shirts with large sleeves, and sandals, jostling to get a look at the American visitors. George, his linguist Sammy Vilaysane, and their Laotian escort went out to greet them as the rest of the team unloaded their personal gear and the helicopters got airborne again for the return trip to their base camp.
The site selected for the search was a patch of jungle on the western perimeter of the valley, where JPAC investigators concluded it was most likely the small shard of bone and dog tag matching Ben Danielson had turned up. George and his coterie were led to the area, where he directed the team to begin preparing the site for Dr. Benedix. The immediate task was to clear the area of foliage and expose the bare earth. As a soldier carefully scanned the area with a metal detector for any aircraft wreckage or explosives, others hacked away trees, ripped up shrubs, and cut down bamboo. A separate group set up a screening station, a medical tent, and a communications post and constructed a rest area out of bamboo. Dr. Benedix, clutching a pen and notebook, took detailed notes about the terrain and inspected and tested the dirt, which he could see was hard and claylike, typical of Southeast Asia, and contained a high level of acidity—not ideal when looking for bones that have been out in the elements for almost forty years. He also began organizing his scientific equipment and plotting a three-dimensional map of the area on his laptop. Everyone—Americans and Laotians—shared in the backbreaking labor in the stifling tropical heat. Water breaks were ordered every sixty minutes to prevent dehydration, and insect repellent was applied to ward off bugs. The Americans all wore gloves. George, who had spent his share of hot summer days in the wilds of northern Georgia on a forestry crew, was no stranger to hard work and did his part, while Brian Danielson lived up to his end of the bargain, following orders as if he were the lowest-ranked soldier on the team.
Before the team left Hawaii, Captain Jeremy Taylor, another new arrival to JPAC who was attached as George’s assistant team leader, inquired of the bomb-disposal specialists whether they should all turn off their radios at the recovery site. He knew all too well from his tour in Iraq that radio signals could set off bombs with a magnetic trigger. These leftover bombs were much different, they told him, and that wouldn’t be necessary. But soon after the team arrived in Laos, one of its bomb techs, after removing a rocket found on the recovery site and placing it in a special bunker a safe distance away, returned ashen-faced. The weapon had a magnetic trigger on it, he was surprised to learn. From then on they maintained radio silence to ensure a transmission signal didn’t blow the mission to bits.
Later, Benedix and a team member were digging in one of the depressions alongside an embankment taking soil samples when the young soldier noticed a few small deep holes in the dirt. “Hey, doc, what’s with the holes?” he asked. “I got a bad feeling.”
Just then a bamboo viper slithered out, sending them scrambling. The team members then watched in awe as a Lao boy, no older than eight, jumped in the ditch, grabbed the poisonous snake, and snapped its neck, all in one swift motion. About an hour later they all smelled the enticing aroma of a barbecue and were told the locals had cooked the snake for an afternoon snack.
It took several days to prepare the recovery site for the scientific excavation. Dr. Benedix plotted an area of a hundred square meters and then ordered it roped off in grids of four meters square. Then the painstaking work began. Each Lao worker was closely supervised as the Americans and locals dug in the hard clay from morning until late afternoon, grid by grid, sifting every ounce of earth through the screens in a highly choreographed process designed to leave no stone—or, in this case, bone—unturned. Anything that did not appear to be naturally of the forest, even a cigarette butt, was set aside for inspection by Dr. Benedix, who closely monitored every aspect of the excavation, from the digging to the operation of the bucket lines delivering earth to the screening station that had been constructed nearby. They dug and sifted, methodically if slowly clearing each grid. Every part of George’s body ached. Every ligament was sore; every muscle throbbed. So far they weren’t finding any sign of Ben Danielson.
But even in the monotonous hours of backbreaking work, George was struck over and over again by the thought that here he was, with the kid who had been a year old when his father was shot down in the Vietnam War, standing on the very ground, looking for his remains.
“How lucky I am to be a witness to this,” he thought.
After each day in the field the team was ferried back to the concrete slab of a guesthouse with no electricity or running water in the village of Boualapha. The team members tried to make the best of their measly living conditions. They spent their few precious hours of rest listening to music, watching movies, or playing video games. On their few days off, they passed the time playing cards and competing to see who could cook up the most imaginative snacks with the canned goods and prepared dinners they had stuffed in their rucksacks. One day they got a visit from the American ambassador to Laos and for the special occasion slaughtered a pig and had a Lao-style barbecue. Some of the more experienced members also teased the unmarried augmentees about how the villagers were choosing a Lao wife for all of them. They ribbed George about the pretty young girl hired to work at the recovery site who wouldn’t let any other locals work at the screens with him. One night, with the help of a portable generator and an old TV set their hosts rustled up, the team was able to pick up a television broadcast of—of all things—Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Brian Danielson had them all in stitches with his off-color commentary, delivered in his best impression of the British host, Robin Leach.
Despite the primitive living conditions and the daily drudgery, George grew to admire the simple life of the locals, whose lack of medical care was heartbreaking. He was also drawn to their superstitions—especially those that revolved around the little girl with the liquid blue eyes whom they all treated so reverently. The story went that her mother died in childbirth and her father mysteriously died shortly later. She lived by herself for weeks deep in the jungle, the villagers told them, until they took her in. The Americans all wanted to have their picture taken with her. The entire team also took pride when the medic was able to extract a large piece of metal embedded in the ring finger of another local girl.
About midway through the mission, the recovery team was invited by their hosts to a dinner in their honor. They gorged themselves on water buffalo, pigs, and chickens at a candlelit feast beneath wide banyan trees. Before long, most of the team retired for the evening, and George, Brian Danielson, Dr. Benedix, and a few others remained behind with the locals. They soon lost count of the number of toasts over rice wine, known locally as Lao Lao, and the bottles of Johnnie Walker Black that Danielson had hidden in his trunk. Before long, they were all in a festive mood, and Dr. Benedix, who had packed along his guitar, provided some entertainment. It turned into a pretty raucous gathering. At one point, in their deepening stupor, George and Dr. Benedix had a fierce argument over the name of the Cambodian currency. Later, in an ill-advised effort to impress his hosts, Benedix smashed his guitar in a fit.
Soon the revelry died down, and as the rest of the team slept on their floor mats on the concrete slabs of the guesthouse, the conversation turned to more serious—and more personal—subjects. They spoke of the long odds that they would bring Brian’s father home after all these years. Even if they were digging in the right place, Dr. Benedix warned, making a positive ID of any remains would be more difficult here than in other countries. The high acid content of the soil in Laos caused bones to erode more quickly. The chances of extracting usable DNA were greater even in places where remains were sitting in the jungle far longer. George and Dr. Benedix also listened intently as Commander Danielson quietly answered their questions about his family.
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br /> Brian Danielson had grown up an only child on a farm in Kenyon, Minnesota, where his parents were high school sweethearts. He was a year old when his father was reported missing and had no memories of him. But he grew up surrounded by his father’s legend and those who knew and loved him. His father’s unknown fate cast a long shadow. Brian’s mother, Mary, had been instrumental in the creation of the National League of POW/MIA Families, an early advocacy group established during the Vietnam War to lobby the U.S. government for more answers about what happened to the Americans whose fate remained a mystery. Danielson recounted the ups and downs over the years, the deep frustration that more should be done to find out what happened to his father. The early years were especially difficult for his mother, when the American government did not even acknowledge that the U.S. military had been fighting in Laos. There were lingering doubts about whether the Danielson family was told the whole story. The early years of the POW/MIA movement were synonymous with a deep distrust toward the American government. After the war Mary Danielson’s hopes steadily faded when no evidence emerged that her husband was among the pilots taken prisoner by the Vietnamese Communists. Ben Danielson was officially declared dead in 1976.
As he grew up, Brian Danielson told them, he struggled with how to bring dignity to his father’s memory while not letting the unanswered questions control him. In the close-knit world of POW/MIA families, he had seen how other families were consumed by the lack of closure. He determined as a young man that he could best honor his father by living up to his example, which led him to be a military flier.
Danielson also told George and Benedix about how a string of new clues and other bits of information fueled the family’s hopes that they might someday bring his father home. When he was in college, in 1991, an intriguing piece of information reached the family. A pistol said to belong to his father was discovered on display in a war museum in Vietnam, along with a painting of the battle that ensued when American forces tried to rescue him after he was shot down. The clue suggested Ben Danielson might have been captured, and it only added to the family’s questions and desire to learn more. Then, in 2003, a bone fragment and his father’s dog tags were turned in to the MIA command. The bone matched the DNA of Brian’s grandmother. The case, which had lain dormant for years, was reopened. In 2005, a JPAC investigation team was taken to a location where a former North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gunner had reported seeing an American pilot on the ground that day.
But even as they were searching for his father’s remains at that very location, Brian Danielson told them he feared they were looking in the wrong place. Other sources, including a self-published book written by a retired American general based on interviews with locals and photographs from the attempted rescue of his father, suggested Ben Danielson had been killed nearly a mile and a half away, closer to the riverbank. JPAC’s own data also raised questions. The former North Vietnamese gunner had said the American jet had come in from the west, whereas the records suggested the bombing run had been on a north-south heading. The Vietnamese source also reported seeing an orange or red parachute when Ben Danielson’s was white.
As he heard Brian Danielson’s story under the brilliant starlight, George, too, found himself thinking about his family ties here. Perhaps it was the booze or having so unexpectedly found himself on the Ho Chi Minh Trail not far from where his grandfather was killed. He began to pour forth some of the powerful feelings that had been coursing through him since he was handed this mission. George told Danielson and Benedix about his family. He recounted Grandpa George’s death in neighboring Vietnam. Danielson and Benedix were mesmerized as he then recounted how he had watched footage of it as a kid. They could both sense what a burden it had been for George to carry the Eyster name. They could also see how earnestly he was trying to do it justice. By the time the three of them tried to sleep off the Lao Lao for a few hours, George was more determined than ever to find Brian’s father’s remains. It nagged at him that they might be missing their opportunity.
The recovery team worked ten days at a stretch in the valley where Brian Danielson’s father was last reported alive before taking a day of rest. The effort went on for nearly a month, and they didn’t find anything. That is, except for hundreds of unexploded bombs left over from the war that had to be carefully removed and destroyed in a special pit. All day they could hear the controlled detonations in the distance by the bomb-disposal techs. One day they learned that just a few miles to the south of where they were searching, two local kids had been killed when one of the leftover weapons exploded—apparently, George was informed by the Lao escort, not an uncommon occurrence in these parts.
As the long days blended together in a sweaty, muscle-aching blur, they were all growing more and more frustrated. Even Brian Danielson found it harder and harder to get up each morning and set out for another day in the grueling heat. The lack of success only deepened George’s feeling that this was a wild-goose chase. For starters, he knew they were making an educated guess about where Ben Danielson’s remains might have been buried. The information was based on the testimony from participants nearly four decades after the fact. Memories fade, and some of the new information they had was muddled and confusing. They could also never be sure that their hosts were being fully straight with them. The commander of JPAC’s detachment in Laos had warned George when he arrived: “Don’t believe the first thing the Laotians say.” The government of Laos had been known to take advantage of JPAC’s single-minded objective in order to reap the financial benefits that its work in the country bestowed on the local economy.
As the excavation neared its close, with no sign of the missing pilot, it only gnawed at George more that they might be blowing their big chance to give Brian Danielson and his mom some closure. They might be digging in the wrong place. George’s desire to order his team to the other location Brian had mentioned grew stronger. But when he broached the idea with higher-ups, he got in some hot water. He was told in no uncertain terms that he was to stick to the JPAC recovery plan. A lot of work had gone into planning the mission, and they were searching in the location that the command determined was most promising based on the information at its disposal.
But near the end of the dig George let one of the hired choppers ferry Danielson up to the location where he suspected his father had been buried so he could lay a memorial wreath. It was March 31, 2006—what would have been Benjamin Franklin Danielson’s sixty-third birthday.
George returned to Hawaii in early April deeply disappointed that they had not succeeded in bringing Brian Danielson’s father home. But he was also emboldened by the experience and eager to hear what might be in store for his next mission.
“That was an amazing experience,” he told his mother, describing Laos and the new connection to the MIA community he felt after getting to know firsthand the need for closure that hung over families like the Danielsons. One recurring thought he had was that their experience was even worse than that of Grandma Harriet and his own father, who at least knew what had happened to Grandpa George.
As Brian Danielson prepared to return from Hawaii to his Navy unit in California, George and Dr. Benedix got together with him one last time at the oceanfront Sea Breeze restaurant on Hickam to bid him good-bye. Danielson expressed deep appreciation to both of them—and to JPAC. Knowing that his father had not been forgotten—and seeing firsthand the military’s efforts to locate the missing—brought some measure of closure for him and his mother, he told them.
George found some solace in those words, along with the fact that JPAC wasn’t giving up hope, either. The Danielson case would remain open. If nothing else, George reflected, his team’s painstaking excavation ruled out at least one place where Ben Danielson might have been buried. It was just like in the intelligence business, he thought, where knowing where the enemy isn’t can be just as important as knowing where he is. If they were ever going to find Brian’s father, JPAC needed to confirm or deny the information it
had about his possible fate. One day, he liked to believe, Brian and his mother, Mary, might know the answers to those questions that had burned for forty years: What had been Ben Danielson’s ultimate fate? Did the government tell them everything it knew? Perhaps they might have a chance to bury Brian’s father in Kenyon, Minnesota.
The promise to never leave a man behind wasn’t simply a slogan, George was learning. JPAC’s motto, scrawled on official documents and attached to the signature block of many of the command’s e-mail addresses, in both Hawaiian and English, made a lot more sense now: “E Huli Ho’i Lakou Ika Home!” “Until They Are Home!”
Despite his intentions, George did not end up living on a boat in Hawaii. It proved too expensive to buy one large enough on the mainland and have it shipped out, while purchasing one on Oahu didn’t seem to make much sense, either, considering he’d have to sell it in a couple of years. Instead, he had his small fishing boat shipped from Florida and on weekends set out from Grover Harms’s extra bedroom to hunt for an apartment.
After a few months he settled on a gated community in Ewa Beach, to the west along the island’s south coast, not too far from JPAC but distant enough that he could get away from most of the hustle and bustle. There, on Iroquois Avenue, a quiet palm tree–lined street that ran along the beach past a park and a coffee shop, his patio opened up directly onto the surf, just the bucolic setting he had looked forward to during his Iraq tour.
But the job of MIA recovery team leader meant precious little time for rest and relaxation, let alone opportunities to find what he wanted most: a nice girl to settle down with. By the end of April, after only a few weeks back on the island, George and Dr. Benedix boarded another military cargo plane with a new recovery team bound for Laos—this time with Sergeant Kili Baldeagle as his top NCO.