by Bryan Bender
Just as quickly, Baldeagle returned to the task at hand. They were almost ready. As the rain began to pelt the ridge and the daylight narrowed to a reddish-orange sliver in the western sky, Little Andy attempted to touch down on the small landing area they had cleared. Almost as soon as the skids touched down, the chopper began to tilt dangerously to one side on a patch of uneven ground. He lifted off and looped around as Baldeagle struggled to stabilize the earthworks and logs he had arranged. Finally, George and his small team had just enough time to load their gear and hop on. As they headed back to camp, George glowed with pride. It had been a harrowing but moving experience. They had completed their task and took a major step on the long road to returning their lost comrades.
When he got back to Hawaii, he recommended in his final report from the mission to Colonel Hanson that other recovery team leaders be included in similar investigative work, “to maximize their professional expertise.”
George reflected on how the work he was doing at JPAC was about as far removed from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as an Army officer could get. But as he told his mother when he was “on island,” meaning back in Hawaii, he was still living and working amid Honolulu’s cluster of military installations, where the current wars remained the focus of daily existence. Troops were constantly being deployed “down range.” Others were returning physically or psychologically bruised and broken to Tripler Army Medical Center, the massive hospital complex on the slopes of Moanalua Ridge overlooking Honolulu. George would just as soon forget about the wars, but their enduring impact on the men and women he served with and their families was impossible to ignore. As he was coming to learn, being keenly aware of the emotional state of his team was also part of his job as a recovery leader. Colonel Hanson made clear when he arrived that tending to soldiers and their families was his responsibility.
“Spouses and children are an important part of our unit,” Hanson counseled him, stressing that when it came to his team members, “you are on duty 24/7.”
Many soldiers in Detachment 4, George soon learned, were struggling with their own experiences in Iraq or Afghanistan. More than a few sought his counsel about family or financial troubles caused or exacerbated by combat stress and the long periods away from girlfriends, spouses, and children. George served in the married Army, far more than during his father’s generation, when most soldiers were single.
A steady stream of bad news also made it painfully clear the war in Iraq had gone from bad to worse since he’d left. In February, as George was planning his first mission to Laos, al-Qaeda terrorists blew up the golden-domed al-Askari Mosque, one of the holiest sites in Shia Islam, in the city of Samarra. It was a place where George had seen so much senseless violence. The brazen attack, by Sunni Muslim extremists, set in motion a cycle of violence that pulled the country into an all-out civil war. U.S. troop deaths spiked. Hundreds of Iraqi civilians were being found dead each month, many of them beheaded by death squads. By the fall of 2006, the unpopular war was cited as a main factor in the Democratic Party’s sweep of the November congressional elections. The new year, 2007, was heralded by a particularly gloomy milestone: the three thousandth American soldier had been killed in the four-year-old war. As for Afghanistan, where the United States had less than a quarter of the combat troops, the war seemed to be forgotten altogether, with very little media coverage.
George’s faith was further shaken by how apathetic the public appeared to be about the fighting overseas. The conflicts had cost trillions of dollars and had already ruined the lives of countless fellow soldiers. But the vast majority of average citizens were completely disconnected from the reality of military life and seemed to go about their business as if the country weren’t at war at all. George saw the gulf firsthand in some of his interactions with old college friends. When the topic of Iraq came up at all, on Facebook or during rare get-togethers when he was on leave, the discussion often made him angry, as when one friend demanded, “When are you guys going to get out of there, George?”
George wanted to grab him by the shirt collar and shake him; his friend simply didn’t get it. He should be answering that question. The military didn’t just pick up and invade Iraq on a whim.
“You sent us there!” George wanted to shout at the top of his lungs. “When we come home is your decision!”
Despite his commitment to his work, it was still hard not to be depressed about the demands the Army continued to place on his personal life. He found precious little opportunity in Hawaii to try to set down the kinds of roots he hoped he would find after Iraq. He frequented his share of bars and nightclubs on the weekends to try to meet women but quickly tired of the scene. He had a few dates, but Waikiki Beach didn’t seem like the place he was going to meet the type of girl he was looking for. As a single officer in his early thirties, he increasingly felt like the odd man out; most of his contemporaries were married and already had kids. With all the travel he was now doing, it seemed that for the next few years at least he would remain married to the Army.
On the rare occasions when he could get away from it all, George took advantage of the carefree existence that island life offered, slipping on a pair of flip-flops and board shorts and hitting the beach or going fishing on his boat—sometimes inviting other officers but often trolling alone. He also made several trips to the big island of Hawaii and to Maui to soak up the sun and relax by the surf. As he grew more familiar with his surroundings, he also became aware that in yet another way he hadn’t expected he was following the path that other Eysters tread.
His father, he knew, spent some of his formative years in Honolulu when his grandfather was stationed at nearby Fort Shafter, which George passed on the expressway on the way into downtown Honolulu. Walking amid the throngs of tourists in Waikiki Beach, he recalled his father telling him about the only time he skipped school to go surfing there, inviting the wrath of his own father. It was on postcards from the tourist shops in Waikiki that George’s grandfather sent updates to his son from the war in Vietnam; George still had a few of them in his collection of Eyster letters and heirlooms.
As he was learning in bits and pieces from Grandma Harriet and from the stash of family records, the Pacific region had been far more central to the Eysters’ careers than he had realized, going as far back as the years after World War I, when his great-grandfather served in China and later as a battalion commander in the Twenty-First Infantry Division stationed at Schofield Barracks, a half-hour drive up H-1 on the northern side of Oahu. In the late 1940s, after he graduated from West Point, Grandpa George’s first two assignments were in Manila, in the Philippines, and then in General MacArthur’s headquarters in postwar Japan, where George’s father was born. Among the faded black-and-white photographs in his collection of artifacts was one, taken in 1955, of his grandfather wearing shorts and a Hawaiian shirt relaxing with some fellow officers on Eniwetok Atoll in the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific, where they were observing an atomic bomb test. Retracing some of their steps now inevitably drew George to some of the historic military sites on Oahu.
George toured the monument at Pearl Harbor, where the sunken hulks of the USS Arizona, the USS Utah, and the USS West Virginia served as both memorials and tombs for the American sailors killed in the Japanese attack on December 7, 1941. He also made a special trip up to Puowaina Crater high above Honolulu, which James Michener had described in his novel Hawaii. It was now the 112-acre site of the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, more commonly called the Punch Bowl for its shape. As he looked out over the flat headstones lining the cemetery, many of them inscribed merely with the word “unknown,” he took special notice of the black-and-white POW/MIA flags on the far side of the cemetery. There, on a series of concrete slabs known as the Courts of the Missing, were inscribed the names of 28,778 of the missing from Vietnam, Korea, and World War II. Only a fraction, he thought. But as he read some of the names of the men lining the high stone walls, he wondered if he might be the
one to finally bring them home.
In late 2006, George received news that gave him even greater confidence that he just might. Local villagers in Laos, after hearing about the recent recovery operation he had led, turned over remains that were identified by the lab as belonging to Brian Danielson’s father. In January 2007, thirty-eight years after he was last heard from over the radio, Captain Benjamin Franklin Danielson was laid to rest in the cemetery of the First Lutheran Church in Kenyon, Minnesota.
“This is our miracle,” his widow, Mary, said at the funeral.
For his son, Brian, who had played such a major role in ensuring his father’s case wasn’t forgotten, the news of his father’s recovery wiped away in an instant all the years of hopeless despair.
“My life will never be the same after this,” he said.
The possibility that George might be sent to Vietnam had been a major inducement when he was first offered the Hawaii assignment. Just as he was beginning to feel he was getting a handle on his new job, he was granted his wish. In the late summer of 2006, Colonel Hanson assigned him to the first of what would be several missions to recover soldiers missing in Vietnam.
When he arrived in Hanoi, George swiftly struck up a genuine rapport with the Vietnamese Army officer who was assigned as his liaison by the Communist government. Approaching middle age, the bespectacled colonel had been too young to serve in the war but remembered it vividly from his childhood and the terrible price the Vietnamese people paid. His own family had suffered greatly. But if he felt any acrimony toward George and his soldiers, he didn’t show it. His benevolent manner made the American team feel welcome, and George found a partnership rooted in mutual respect—as well as a common goal: to find missing Americans. George found he often wanted to spend more time talking with him in his broken English than with his own soldiers. When George told him one evening over a plate of fish and noodles that his grandfather had served in the war, the Vietnamese colonel peppered him with questions. His curiosity about his new American friend was only amplified when George later confided that his grandfather had been one of the highest-ranking American officers killed in the war. Eventually, George found himself telling him about it all: the photographs of his grandfather’s final moments, the tunnels, and the book written about the battle. George’s new Vietnamese friend made him promise to get him a copy one day.
The first recovery they organized together involved one of the largest in JPAC’s recent experience. In the northwest province of Son La, deep inside what had been Communist North Vietnam, George’s team was searching for the remains of the two-man crew from another F-4 Phantom jet. This one went down on a large tea plantation where aircraft wreckage was strewn across hundreds of square yards. The search required clearing away many acres of crops, which meant that George had to handle the sensitive negotiations with the landowners over compensation for the damage. Nowhere else in the Army, or the other branches of the military for that matter, were officers so far out on their own and acting so independently on behalf of the U.S. government.
“I better get this right,” he thought. “Someone is going to have to cash this check.”
After weeks digging on the plantation, keeping track of every plant, tree, and shrub they disturbed, the team could find no evidence of the missing airmen. It was a demoralizing experience that George was getting to know all too well.
He did, however, pick up a nickname from some of the locals: Tuy Lai. He was less than thrilled when he learned that roughly translated, it meant “short, fat white guy.” His troops, of course, loved it and got their share of laughs at their commander’s expense. But it only endeared him to them more. George eventually took it in stride and even grew to embrace it when it became clear that in Vietnam the description was considered a compliment; it suggested that because he was eating well, he was quite well off. It also explained why many of the Vietnamese women flocked around him at the recovery site. If he played his cards right, his soldiers ribbed him, maybe he would bring home a bride.
George returned to Hawaii disappointed by the outcome of the recovery effort but invigorated by his introduction to Vietnam. He was eager to get back and see more of the country. Following a brief leave, he returned in early 2007 to oversee the excavation of three additional MIA sites—two believed to be where American soldiers had been buried and another where a helicopter crewman was reported to have fallen to his death.
The months in Vietnam gave him a chance to absorb what he came to consider an enchantingly beautiful, if deeply scarred, land, one that had been the source of so much pain to his own family but also, in no small measure, made him who he was. He was also charmed by the Vietnamese people. In the north he visited the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi, where JPAC’s Detachment 2 was headquartered. The museums there were filled with propaganda about the Communist victory over the American aggressors during the war. In the south he toured the vast citadel in the ancient city of Hue with its three towering ramparts, once the capital and so-called forbidden city of the Nguyen dynasty. Hue had also been a stronghold for the South Vietnamese Army fighting alongside the Americans. It had been a main target of the Tet Offensive of 1968, when the Communist North and its Vietcong guerrilla proxies struck a major psychological blow against the Americans. From Dong Nai Province in the south-central highlands to Khanh Hoa Province on the South China Sea coast, George took in as many of the sights and sounds and as much of the history of the country as he could. It was on one mission in Vietnam that his beloved camouflage Florida State Seminoles cap, and a bit of luck, helped him escape another potential disaster—and where, for the first time, his team found the remains of what were believed to be missing Americans.
They were living in a makeshift camp on a spur at the top of a nearly nine-thousand-foot mountain, which offered a breathtaking view of the countryside in all directions. But the perks abruptly stopped there. George and his team had to hike an hour each morning, snap on a harness, and rappel down to the recovery site and then hike back before dusk. The terrain where they were digging, adjacent to a waterfall and surrounded by rocky outcroppings, was so jagged and steep that a helicopter landing was out of the question. Baldeagle had to construct a rope bridge over a gully so they could bring in the proper equipment. Another constant danger was avalanches. Baldeagle fashioned a net with ropes and tarps to catch the massive rocks that rolled down the steep inclines into the recovery team’s work area.
One day, as Baldeagle was relieving some of the pressure in the makeshift boulder net, a large rock slipped out and headed straight toward George, who was hunched over one of the excavation grids removing earth. Baldeagle shouted a warning. Just as George looked up, the tumbling mass of stone grazed his head, knocking him off his feet. When he emerged from his daze, he realized that some of the impact of the rock had been deflected by the ball cap, possibly preventing it from splitting open his forehead. He had a nasty bruise but considered himself lucky. After that he rarely took off his lucky cap.
Their luck held out a little longer. They were reaching the outer edge of the excavation site, having found no sign of the missing soldiers, when they had to remove a massive boulder to begin digging beneath it. There, a few feet below the surface, they discovered human teeth. Even with the advent of DNA, the lab still considered teeth the gold standard and the best way to identify missing soldiers. The enamel, which held up better than bone out in the elements, could be compared with detailed dental records kept on all military personnel beginning in World War II. Small bits of bone, meanwhile, might not be enough to extract usable DNA. But before George’s team was finished, it appeared that the anthropologists back in Hawaii would have the luxury of both. Near where they found the teeth, they soon found numerous pieces of human bone; upon inspection, they appeared to be from a Caucasian.
Despite the somber nature of what they had found and the knowledge that the deceased probably died a violent death, George was ebullient at what they were on the cusp of achieving. The discovery w
as the culmination of the work of so many for so long: the diplomats whose frustrating negotiations with the Communist governments of Southeast Asia made the search possible; the military historians who painstakingly pieced together clues; the investigation teams that had come to Vietnam before him; the months and even years of planning back at JPAC; and the continual search for new scientific advances by the laboratory. But that wasn’t enough. Without the ingenuity of Baldeagle and the commitment of his young soldiers to brave the harsh conditions and physical danger, they would not be returning to the United States with the remains of what they believed was one of their lost comrades.
George was also burning with a new sense of purpose. When he first arrived at JPAC, he had been overwhelmed by the epic nature of the task. So many thousands were lost forever—sailors lost at sea, soldiers who disappeared without a trace on battlefields or in long-abandoned prisoner-of-war camps. JPAC’s task would never be complete. But George now understood that wasn’t the point. Each name that was crossed off the list, each soldier who was given a long-overdue homecoming, had a powerful significance. He was humbled that he had been given the chance to keep the promise and, in some small way, sustain a nation’s commitment to its defenders—at a time when the bonds between those who were serving in uniform and their fellow citizens seemed to be fraying. George believed his mission was ensuring that the nation’s commitment to its warriors was more than just words. Most Americans may have forgotten the fallen, but he was now the instrument through which the nation remembered.
The feeling of satisfaction was also deeply personal. George was writing a new chapter in the Eyster saga, one all his own.
In the middle of April 2007, at the end of a recovery mission, George settled his team into the Khach San De Nhat, a spacious tourist hotel with a cavernous glass-enclosed lobby in the Tan Binh district of Ho Chi Minh City, better known to Americans as Saigon. Before they returned to Hawaii, he hoped to experience some of the former capital of South Vietnam, where the American war effort had been centered. His soldiers would have a chance to go shopping and blow off some steam, but George also wanted to organize a “staff ride” so they could all learn a little more about the war. He was pleasantly surprised when his Vietnamese counterpart, the Army colonel, offered to set up a sightseeing tour for them. The day before their departure, the colonel arrived at the hotel early with a van and a driver. He didn’t say where he was taking George and his soldiers.