Cambodians assist in the screening for possible human and plane remains during a search for a missing F-100D pilot who crashed during a combat mission in 1971. (Photo by Jeff Kass)Decades-long search for [US] troops killed or missing in Cambodia
BY JEFF KASS
SPECIAL TO NEWSDAY (USA)
KAMPONG THOM PROVINCE, Cambodia -- The U.S. Air Force jet was on its fifth pass that day in 1971, gunning for a storage area, when vapor started trailing from the left wing.
The F-100D "Super Sabre" flipped over and crashed, killing the pilot -- the only one on board. It was April 4, and villagers buried him shortly after. The military says the villagers moved the body several times over the decades, possibly because of decay, possibly to make way for farming.
Thirty-five years later, the United States is trying to excavate the crash site, locate the exact burial site and bring the pilot's remains home -- one of many such returns.
"I know if I die somewhere in the battlefield, somebody's coming to get me," said Marine Sgt. Thaddeus Land, alluding to the "leave no man behind" credo, from Kampong Thom earlier this year. "Any time is a good time."
Land is part of the military's Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, or JPAC, based at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii. The approximately $47 million the Defense Department funnels to it each year typically funds 25 missions around the world, with an emphasis on cases from World War II and later.
JPAC, which draws on personnel from every branch of the military, was founded in 2003 but continues work that began in 1973 under previous organizations. The remains of more than 1,250 individuals have been found in those three-plus decades, according to Air Force 1st Lt. Jim Ivie, a JPAC spokesman.
The 15 military members of the Kampong Thom team, led by civilian archaeologist Laura Miller, were in this central Cambodia province as a consequence of the Vietnam War spilling into its neighbor country. Approximately 58,000 Americans died in the war, and JPAC lists more than 1,800 still missing in action.
JPAC does not name the soldiers publicly while searches are going on, to maintain the privacy of family members, but it does release incident details. Families can request information about the digs and are informed about final results.
JPAC had tried to excavate Kampong Thom before but findings were inconclusive. Miller said investigators generally recover only small pieces of human remains -- usually teeth or bone fragments -- given disintegration and people disturbing the site. And she said 95 percent of the plane was gone, mostly scavenged.
On a typical day during the latest dig, team members left their hotel in a convoy of SUVs and minivans at 6:40 a.m. The drive to the site, part blacktop, part dirt road, wound past primitive wood houses and villages where livestock appeared to equal the number of humans.
On arrival, Army Sgt. Mark Landa set up communications equipment and Miller strung off more land into a grid. Others constructed screens the size of refrigerators to sift through large quantities of dirt. The team, along with 100 local workers, scrambled like that for a month.
Rice paddies had been drained and a backhoe operated by a local Cambodian scooped out a 13-foot square and dumped the contents onto a tarp. Under the division of labor set up by the Cambodians, men shoveled the dirt into plastic buckets and ferried it to one of three screening stations staffed by women. The stations, like other structures on site, were nothing more than poles supporting a roof of black netting to keep out a blazing sun magnified by high humidity.
Fourteen women, wearing standard-issue white plastic aprons and orange rubber gloves set off by gingham-print scarves wrapped around their heads, stood in front of 14 metal screens laid out like huge lunch trays. Trowels in hand, they sifted the dirt and broke up large clods, then used hoses hanging overhead to flush the dirt until nothing was left but a sliver of pebbles -- at least to the naked eye. But they nabbed precious items that might easily escape notice: a tiny silver coil, a dark metal fragment, maybe a piece of bone.
An American is required to check each screen, Miller explained, so JPAC members stood opposite the women.
A Cambodian police official on site would not allow interviews with local workers. But Sieng Lapresse, vice chairman of Cambodia's POW-MIA Committee, said his countrymen understand the need to return the remains of missing soldiers to their families because Cambodians are still trying to locate some of their own estimated 2 million people who died under the dictatorship of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge Communist regime from 1975 to 1979.
Lapresse said the current government sponsors public service announcements on television with photos of missing Cambodians. "It's not a finished job," he said in an interview at the site. "We know how the American friends and their family feel."
Despite decades spent investigating and digging, airplane parts sometimes have no evidentiary value and are reburied in the host country. The coordinates are duly recorded, but there is no marker, and no ceremony.
Yet Miller still sees a historical connection in her work -- whether remains are identified or not -- given America's current conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq and the casualties there.
"It brings home the reality of wartime," she said.
The F-100D "Super Sabre" flipped over and crashed, killing the pilot -- the only one on board. It was April 4, and villagers buried him shortly after. The military says the villagers moved the body several times over the decades, possibly because of decay, possibly to make way for farming.
Thirty-five years later, the United States is trying to excavate the crash site, locate the exact burial site and bring the pilot's remains home -- one of many such returns.
"I know if I die somewhere in the battlefield, somebody's coming to get me," said Marine Sgt. Thaddeus Land, alluding to the "leave no man behind" credo, from Kampong Thom earlier this year. "Any time is a good time."
Land is part of the military's Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, or JPAC, based at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii. The approximately $47 million the Defense Department funnels to it each year typically funds 25 missions around the world, with an emphasis on cases from World War II and later.
JPAC, which draws on personnel from every branch of the military, was founded in 2003 but continues work that began in 1973 under previous organizations. The remains of more than 1,250 individuals have been found in those three-plus decades, according to Air Force 1st Lt. Jim Ivie, a JPAC spokesman.
The 15 military members of the Kampong Thom team, led by civilian archaeologist Laura Miller, were in this central Cambodia province as a consequence of the Vietnam War spilling into its neighbor country. Approximately 58,000 Americans died in the war, and JPAC lists more than 1,800 still missing in action.
JPAC does not name the soldiers publicly while searches are going on, to maintain the privacy of family members, but it does release incident details. Families can request information about the digs and are informed about final results.
JPAC had tried to excavate Kampong Thom before but findings were inconclusive. Miller said investigators generally recover only small pieces of human remains -- usually teeth or bone fragments -- given disintegration and people disturbing the site. And she said 95 percent of the plane was gone, mostly scavenged.
On a typical day during the latest dig, team members left their hotel in a convoy of SUVs and minivans at 6:40 a.m. The drive to the site, part blacktop, part dirt road, wound past primitive wood houses and villages where livestock appeared to equal the number of humans.
On arrival, Army Sgt. Mark Landa set up communications equipment and Miller strung off more land into a grid. Others constructed screens the size of refrigerators to sift through large quantities of dirt. The team, along with 100 local workers, scrambled like that for a month.
Rice paddies had been drained and a backhoe operated by a local Cambodian scooped out a 13-foot square and dumped the contents onto a tarp. Under the division of labor set up by the Cambodians, men shoveled the dirt into plastic buckets and ferried it to one of three screening stations staffed by women. The stations, like other structures on site, were nothing more than poles supporting a roof of black netting to keep out a blazing sun magnified by high humidity.
Fourteen women, wearing standard-issue white plastic aprons and orange rubber gloves set off by gingham-print scarves wrapped around their heads, stood in front of 14 metal screens laid out like huge lunch trays. Trowels in hand, they sifted the dirt and broke up large clods, then used hoses hanging overhead to flush the dirt until nothing was left but a sliver of pebbles -- at least to the naked eye. But they nabbed precious items that might easily escape notice: a tiny silver coil, a dark metal fragment, maybe a piece of bone.
An American is required to check each screen, Miller explained, so JPAC members stood opposite the women.
A Cambodian police official on site would not allow interviews with local workers. But Sieng Lapresse, vice chairman of Cambodia's POW-MIA Committee, said his countrymen understand the need to return the remains of missing soldiers to their families because Cambodians are still trying to locate some of their own estimated 2 million people who died under the dictatorship of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge Communist regime from 1975 to 1979.
Lapresse said the current government sponsors public service announcements on television with photos of missing Cambodians. "It's not a finished job," he said in an interview at the site. "We know how the American friends and their family feel."
Despite decades spent investigating and digging, airplane parts sometimes have no evidentiary value and are reburied in the host country. The coordinates are duly recorded, but there is no marker, and no ceremony.
Yet Miller still sees a historical connection in her work -- whether remains are identified or not -- given America's current conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq and the casualties there.
"It brings home the reality of wartime," she said.
No comments:
Post a Comment