The search for Vietnam's war dead: Largest ever DNA identification project is underway to name those who perished 40 years ago

Over forty years after the end of the Vietnam War, the remains of nameless civilians and fighters are still being unearthed.

Now efforts have begun to identify the bones of half a million Vietnamese people who went missing during the conflict between 1955 and 1975.

Experts are using DNA technologies to test the remains found around the country in the largest identification effort ever attempted.

Vietnam veteran and genomics pioneer Craig Venter told Nature: 'When I was a 21-year-old in the medical corps there, I never imagined that such a project could ever become possible.

'We thought of body counts as statistics — now, decades later, it may be possible to put names to them.'

Vietnam has only been able to identify a few hundred of its war dead so far using old technologies, leaving thousands of families still desperate to give their long-lost relatives a proper funeral.

In 2014, the Vietnamese government promised to invest 500 billion dong ($25 million or £17 million) in upgrading three existing DNA testing centres so they would be up to the morbid task.

And last month it signed a training contract with Hamburg-based medical diagnostics firm Bioglobe to get Vietnamese DNA experts up to speed with the new technology.

Bioglobe's CEO, Wolfgang Höppner, has said the project still faces considerable challenges.

These include the country's humid conditions, which can degrade the DNA of bodies that were buried in shallow graves decades ago.

The sheer numbers of bones involved is also a hurdle to overcome, meaning a systematic approach is vital, as well as the production of a vast bank of DNA collected from the current population.

An outreach programme is planned to collect saliva samples from volunteers, but since the war was decades ago, samples may have to come from distant relatives whose DNA is less similar, making the task more difficult.

Experts will use kits made by another German-based company called Qiagen, which are designed to reveal as much DNA as possible from tricky sources such as old bones.

They will use these to extract DNA from powdered bone samples before comparing multiple sequences against a set of genomic markers. This will produce a unique DNA profile. The team will also use techniques developed by the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP).

Finished genetic profiles will be checked against the database of the modern population to try and find living relatives of the dead.

The Sarajevo-based ICMP helped to identify nearly all the people who were killed in the Srebrenica massacre of 1995 as well as others slain during the conflict.

They will now help to train Vietnamese scientists taking on the new momentous identification project.

It will rely on people to come forward with knowledge about where bodies may be buried, as well as military intelligence, unlike in Bosnia where satellite imagery could be used to find mass graves.

Truong Nam Hai, head of the Institute of Biotechnology at the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology – the site of the first upgraded lab – hopes that by next year when the labs are up and running, the remains of between 8,000 and 10,000 people will be able to be identified per year.

Friday 15 January 2015

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3399184/The-search-Vietnam-s-war-dead-Largest-DNA-identification-project-underway-perished-40-years-ago.html

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American Legion raises money to assist recovery of MIAs

Past District Commander Philip Baker the POW/MIA Chairman for the Department of Missouri and Post Vice Commander, along with members of Post 281 raised awareness of the 37 Missouri MIA's still remaining in Vietnam. “They all deserve to be brought home and the Piedmont American Legion will continue to work towards that goal,” concluded Cmdr.

Baker at a recent helmet drive conducted on Saturday, to help in the recovery efforts of MIA's in the Viet Nam theatre. With the Republic of Vietnam improvement of efforts in the recovery of bodies of U.S. soldiers missing in action they wanted to assure that U.S. teams be funded. The downside to this is the U.S. Government had yet to come up with resources to properly fund the repatriation of those remains still remaining in the Vietnam theater of operations.

The official POW/MIA recognition day is always the third Friday in September. Legion members worked in shifts to participate in the helmet drive that was held at the stop light in the center of town. Thanks to the generous community that was receptive to their impassioned plea they raised in one day over $2,222 which will be forwarded on to assist in recovering remains of MIA's in Vietnam. Last year they raised in two days over $4,600.00 and their efforts led to the recovery of one of our 38 Missouri MIA's earlier this year by the returning of the remains of a Missouri soldier killed more than four decades ago when his Army helicopter crashed in Cambodia during the Vietnam war. The remains of Rodney Griffin arrived April 23rd at St. Louis Lambert International Airport. Patriot Guard motorcyclists led the hearse to Griffin's native mid-Missouri home in Centralia, Mo.

Thursday 24 September 2015

http://www.waynecojournalbanner.com/news/city/article_65223b3c-6203-11e5-a650-d3fb0e9255ff.html

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Service men killed in crash en route to Vietnam remembered

Fifty years ago, 84 U.S. service men boarded an Air Force jet near Irvine bound for war-torn Vietnam, prepared to defend their country.

But the men never received their marching orders.

Shortly after the C-135 aircraft took off at El Toro Marine Air Station on June 25, 1965, it slammed into nearby Loma Ridge. The downed jet erupted in flames, spewing bodies and parts of bodies over the grassy hilltop across a mile-wide radius. All 72 Marines aboard and the 12-man Air Force crew died in the crash. The cause of the accident was never determined.

Five decades later, the crash remains the deadliest air disaster in Orange County history. But the servicemen's sacrifice was not remembered on any monument. Their names are not etched on the Vietnam Memorial walls in Washington because they died in the U.S., before receiving their official orders, the organizers of a new tribute say.

So 15-year-old Jordan Fourcher created an interactive memorial kiosk at the Aviation and Heritage Museum at Orange County Great Park, formerly the El Toro Marine base, to honor the men who lost their lives in that fatal flight. The kiosk will feature a metal base, engraved with the names of the men, and a touch-screen interactive kiosk with biographical information about each of the men, he said.

Fourcher spent a year working on a lasting monument as part of his Eagle Scout project.

"I was going to do a metal plaque in a park," said the Corona Del Mar resident. "But it turned into something so much more. Everything aligned and worked out perfectly."

On Saturday, more than 50 family members of the deceased are expected to gather at the Great Park for the unveiling of the memorial inside the Great Park hangar. Irvine Mayor Steven Choi, Reps. Dana Rohrabacher and Mimi Walters are expected to attend the event, which will feature a Marine Corps color guard and a missing man flyover with World War II-era aircrafts, Pat Macha, one of the event's organizer, said.

"Jordan has done a wonderful job on this," Macha said. "It is just amazing."

Tuesday 30 June 2015

http://www.military.com/daily-news/2015/06/29/service-men-killed-in-crash-en-route-to-vietnam-remembered.html

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Opportunities to identify war dead abound as DOD overhauls troubled recovery efforts

On Tarawa, bodies of fallen Marines, still wrapped in ponchos or wearing helmets, were just below the island’s trash-ridden top soil.

About 10,000 bones, hundreds of pounds of gear and dozens of dog tags were recovered over the past two years on the densely developed Pacific island, generations after a bloody World War II battle there, said Mark Noah, whose private group, History Flight, initiated the search effort.

The remains were so numerous and buried in such shallow ground that in one servicemember’s grave site “a local trash pit had been dug right into his chest,” Noah said.

Tarawa is not an isolated instance. Opportunities to finally identify America’s war dead — including some who have been missing for more than 70 years — and return them to family members abound as the Department of Defense prepares to overhaul its troubled national recovery efforts, according to advocates for missing servicemembers who gathered for a conference in Washington, D.C. Friday.

More than 83,000 servicemembers are still listed as missing from War World II, the Korean War, Vietnam, Iraq and other conflicts, according to the Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office.

Advances in DNA analysis, the use of global positioning software and aerial drones, and clues gleaned over decades from historical records are already pointing the way toward closure for scores of those servicemembers, speakers at the POW-MIA Awareness Conference said.

“Many hundreds or thousands of cases remain unknown and could easily be solved with today’s technology,” Noah said.

Noah used a drone to snap photos of Tarawa and GPS programs to match up archive photos and maps to find remains. He and colleagues pored over the history of the battle and documents connected to the burial area.

Meanwhile, nuclear DNA tests, pioneered 20 years ago during the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, now allow researchers to identify U.S. servicemembers from bone fragments, increasing the ease and likelihood that those who perished decades ago will be found, said Ed Huffine, vice president of humanitarian projects for Bode Technology, a leading forensic testing company.

Huffine said a “quantum leap” is underway in DNA testing, providing “a very powerful tool that will be able to assist in the identification of loved ones.”

So, it should be a good time to find the missing. Instead, government efforts to close those cases have sputtered and drawn intense criticism over the past year.

Stars and Stripes found that the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, a DOD agency that conducts global operations to recover tens of thousands of missing remains, and DPMO officials ignored those leads, prematurely declared missing servicemembers deceased, and argued against examining remains in government custody that appeared to be identifiable.

JPAC was so incompetent and mismanaged that it risked descending from “dysfunction to total failure,” according to an Associated Press report last summer.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has ordered the Pentagon to restructure the effort to recover missing servicemembers and consolidate JPAC and DPMO into a single agency that handles all accounting, research and field operations.

On Thursday, the Senate Armed Services Committee backed the changes and approved an amendment sponsored by Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., to create a new accounting command with one federal official in charge. McCaskill’s office called it a “first step” in overcoming the deep problems uncovered in JPAC and DPMO over the past year.

The overhaul may mean more attention for the cases that have been delayed or overlooked.

JPAC has said it is trying to press ahead and meet a congressionally mandated 200 identifications per year. The agency is now focusing on the exhumation of 400 World War II sailors buried in Hawaii as unknowns after dying aboard the USS Oklahoma, though the Navy has opposed disturbing the graves.

Hundreds might still be unidentified on Tarawa — Noah said his group’s examination of National Archive records puts the death toll at 1,260 instead of the official count of 1,009.

The remains of hundreds more Korean War missing in action might be even closer to home, said John Zimmerlee, historic researcher with the Korea and Cold War POW-MIA Network.

After working several weeks per year for about 20 years, Zimmerlee said his amateur research discovered that remains of 355 unidentified servicemembers buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii, which is known as the Punchbowl, had included enough evidence to make tentative identifications when they were recovered. But the clues were never followed up and family members were never notified, he said.

Furthermore, seven had been fully identified and were mistakenly buried without names or notifications, Zimmerlee said.

The recovery and identification should be easy to correct, he said. “But here’s the obstacle — and this is a big one — the bodies are in the National Cemetery 8.6 miles from JPAC, and somebody has to go get them.”

Monday 26 May 2014

http://www.stripes.com/news/opportunities-to-identify-war-dead-abound-as-dod-overhauls-troubled-recovery-efforts-1.285323

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Soldiers lead Korean War remains excavation

Nearly 40 Soldiers from units across Camp Carroll, participated in an excavation in support of the Republic of Korea Army 50th Infantry Division in Chilgok May 14.

It was the first time the ROKA conducted excavation operations in Hill 487. One of the citizens living near the hill, who engaged in the battle the Nakdong River defense line, witnessed that he buried a lot of dead Soldiers on this hill.

The excavation was conducted from May 12-16. For five days, 174 unnamed dead bodies and several remains, including bullets, badges and other equipments were found. Near this site, it has been estimated that a U.S. Soldier was found.

The heart of the Nakdong River defense line, Hill 487, was a fierce battle field during the Korean War. The U.S. Army 23rd Regiment and ROKA 1st Infantry Division fought together against North Korea Military to protect the line.

“It’s a rare case to find so many dead bodies and remains during five days.” said Lt. Col. Kwon Seung, Ho, Commander of the Chilgok Brigade, ROKA 50th Infantry Division.

The Commander of Materiel Support Center – Korea, Col. Johnny K. Matthews emphasized the meaning of the today’s participation with ROKA.

“64 years ago, U.S. Soldiers and the people from this country fought together against North Korea.” said Matthews. “They walked up this mountain together as we did today and sacrificed their lives for freedom for this country. I’m much honored to be here side-by-side.”

From the entrance of the Hill to the excavation sites, it took over one hour to walk. Soldiers carried equipment, like a shovel, pickax and water. Fort Soldiers and 120 ROKA Soldiers worked together and detected remains and dead bodies for five hours.

Maj. Justin E. Day, field service chief of the 19th ESC SPO, found bullets and bones by himself.

“I was first shocked that both the bone and bullet casing was only inches down in the soil.” said Day. “As I looked at the bone I was honored to have had the opportunity to help search for remains and objects on such a special piece of ground where Soldiers fought and died over 60 years ago.”

Although the operation was tough and required a lot of effort, both ROKA and the U.S. Soldiers sincerely contributed themselves to find more remains, sharing same experience and collaborating for excavation that made the relationship between the U.S. Army and ROKA be stronger.

Cpl. Park, Gyu Hwan, a senior KATUSA of the ROKA Staff Office, 6th Ordnance Battalion, said ,“I could really appreciate the unnamed Soldiers who fought for the freedom and our country as I volunteered for the excavation operation. By working together with the U.S and ROKA Soldiers, it gave us unforgotten memories.

The Military of Defense Agency for KIA Recovery and Identification (MAKRI) has conducted the Korean War remains excavation since 2000. Until last year, 8,756 fallen Soldiers were found and 10 U.S. Soldiers returned to their home. In Area IV, over 2,000 fallen Soldiers were excavated.

“This site and every attendant reveal the strong alliance between South Korea and the U.S.” said Col. Yoo Cha-young, commander of the MAKRI.

He wished to find every fallen Soldier, who might be buried in DMZ and North Korea including over 8,000 U.S missing Soldiers.

The effort to find missing Soldiers will not stop no matter how huge obstacles disturb, like the Soldier’s creed. “I will never leave a fallen comrade.”

Friday 23 May 2014

http://www.dvidshub.net/news/130902/soldiers-lead-korean-war-remains-excavation

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Four ways to repair the Pentagon’s effort to ID the missing

Last week, we wrote about the Pentagon’s efforts to find and identify the 83,000 service members missing from past conflicts – of which the military ID’d just 60 last year. As our story laid out, the mission has been hampered by outdated scientific methods, a lack of public outreach and cumbersome bureaucracy.

Lawmakers and Pentagon leadership have zeroed on the overlapping agencies and lack of clear chain of command in the mission. Last month, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel ordered a review of how the military manages the effort.

But streamlining the structure won’t be enough, many outside experts say. Here are four ideas to really fix the effort.

Overhaul use of DNA

The main agency involved is the Joint Prisoner of War/Missing in Action Accounting Command, which runs the forensics laboratory used to identify the remains of the missing. J-PAC starts with historical and medical records first and leaves DNA last.

That’s backwards from all other modern day efforts to identify the missing, which begin the process with DNA and let that powerful tool lead the process. Using DNA as the primary identification method was used in Argentina after the dirty war, in the Balkans after the genocide there, and here in the United States after 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina.

If changes don’t bring the methods up to date with the latest forensics techniques, Ed Huffine, a DNA expert, said, “The system will still fail.”

Another issue is the type of DNA J-PAC uses. It relies on mitochondrial DNA, which is passed down from the mother and is consistent along the maternal line for generations. A grandmother shares the same mitochondrial DNA with her daughter and her daughter’s children, for example.

But other scientists involved in identifying the missing stopped using maternal DNA almost 20 years ago. Instead, in places like Argentina and Bosnia, scientists use nuclear DNA, which can be compared to the mother, father, children and siblings of the person to make a positive ID. It’s also faster and cheaper to process than mitochondrial DNA.

In Bosnia, they would extract DNA from a bone on a Monday, sequence the DNA on a Tuesday and do any necessary troubleshooting by the end of the week, said Huffine, who helped designed the effort in Bosnia. For the Pentagon, similar DNA processing often takes months.

Since J-PAC works decades-old cases, scientists would face times when nuclear DNA samples from immediate family might not be available. In those cases J-PAC must rely on maternal DNA, using, for example, the DNA from a missing soldier’s niece. But here too, experts say, J-PAC could make better use of DNA.

J-PAC won’t rely on maternal DNA to make an ID, because it can be shared across different families. However, even the most common mitochondrial DNA is only shared by 5 percent of the population – meaning J-PAC could be 95 percent sure of the person’s identity when using it, according to Joshua Hyman of the University of Wisconsin. He and others argue that DNA is the strongest and fastest place to start an ID, regardless of the type, rather than leaving it last in the equation.

Family samples of maternal DNA could also be combined with samples of paternal DNA to make a match. J-PAC should request all the different types of DNA to be sequenced at once.

Do a national, high-profile outreach campaign to collect needed DNA samples for WWII – before it’s too late.

Siblings are among the best DNA matches for WWII missing service members, especially if the MIAs had no children. That generation is dying. The Pentagon could enlist the help of Hollywood – Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg have been suggested – to publicize a massive effort to collect as many DNA reference samples from family of the missing. TV ads, social media, radio and YouTube videos and more could all be used to solicit participation. The U.S. government has actually given Argentina millions of dollars in grants to do just that.

The more samples for a missing service member are on hand the easier it is to make a match.

“Given that close relatives of WWII soldiers are older, how long are we going to wait to collect their DNA? They represent the best opportunity to find a match,” Hyman said. “Are we just waiting for the issue to go away, assuming that when they die there will be no one left that cares enough to cause a fuss?”

Do massive disinterments of 9,400 unknown service members to try to identify with DNA

More than 9,400 service members from WWII and the Korean War are buried as “unknowns” in American cemeteries around the world because of the limitations of science at the time. But many of them could now likely be identified if the Pentagon exhumed the remains for DNA testing.

“Seems to me like the logical approach,” Clyde Snow, a world-renowned forensic anthropologist said.

With the copious records the U.S. military has, the unknowns could be broken down into like groups from theater, battle or event, and dug up accordingly to keep it manageable.

In order to be both efficient and respectful of the remains, scientists say the bodies could be left in place and tested using a mobile DNA unit and then housed in a mausoleum while DNA cross referencing is done.

Embrace outside help

Experts say about 45,000 MIAs are recoverable, likely an overwhelming task for any one organization or agency. So some people formerly involved in the effort have suggested enlisting universities, historical organizations, military unit associations, veterans and other interested groups.

At J-PAC’s sister agency, the Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office, there was an idea floated of building regional centers that could be responsible for researching and building cases on the missing from their area. That would tap into a pool of people who care deeply about those who are missing, building “a cadre of people who are focused towards the mission in manageable chunks,” said Navy Commander Renee Richardson, formerly of DPMO.

“We’d be leveraging all the things universities already do,” said Richardson. “If you go to a university, let’s say Harvard, and tell them, ‘from your class of ‘37, you still have three people missing from WWII.’”

This would require much more openness with records and findings than the Pentagon has been willing to share in the past, Richardson said.

In the search for remains – the hardest task of the mission – locals can often help. There are Belgians, for example, who live near the Battle of the Bulge and have long worked to find missing American soldiers. They have the a dvantage of speaking the native language and being a part of the community, but are often shunned by the Pentagon.

Anthropologists have also suggested outsourcing overseas archaeological operations for continuity and efficiency. Rather than flying scientists from Hawaii to spend a few weeks looking for remains in, say, Papua New Guinea, there could be a team stationed there. Their work would be continuous rather than filled with the time lags of sometimes years between digs that hinders J-PAC’s efforts.

Tuesday 18 March 2014

http://newpittsburghcourieronline.com/2014/03/18/four-ways-to-really-fix-the-pentagons-effort-to-id-the-missing/

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Families of MIA soldiers hope for excavation at Vietnam war site in Koh Tang

Potential evidence related to Americans still missing after the final battle of the Vietnam War may lead to extensive excavation efforts on an island off the coast of Cambodia, giving renewed hope to the families of the missing.

A seven-member team of investigators from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting command spent a week investigating two sites on Koh Tang island, where the heaviest fighting took place during the May 15, 1975, battle, Stars and Stripes reports.

JPAC officials last month did not provide specifics about the sites or exactly what was found, but were able to provide enough evidence to bring one of the sites before a JPAC body that decides whether to allocate funding for an excavation.

Only solid cases with evidence of Americans' remains are brought before the board, and family members of the missing soldiers say this may be the chance for their loved ones' remains to come home.

Daphne Loney, whose brother Marine Lance Cpl. Ashton Loney was killed in an ambush during the battle, said she hopes it's a possibility his remains will be found.

"My brother was very dear to my heart," she told Stars and Stripes. "I thought no one really cared about Ashton . . . I want his bones to come back to American soil. It was the country he fought for."

While investigating the island in September, the JPAC team inspected a site on its east beach and another on its west beach, said Army Maj. Jamie Dobson. In addition, the officials interviewed witnesses from the battle.

The JPAC excavation decision board will get the information and use it to determine if an excavation is warranted.

But even if the excavation is approved, it may take some time before digging begins. Such sites can stay on the approved list for years, families of the missing have complained, and Dobson did not say when the board would convene to hear the case or start the excavation.

There may not be much time, though. Developers plan to turn the island into a resort, although it's not clear now how the construction plans could affect JPAC's decision.

The battle, referred to as the "Mayaguez Incident," killed 15 service members. Another 23 Air Force personnel died in a support force crash in Thailand, and three Marines were left behind on the island and killed by their captors. The bodies of Loney, Air Force Staff Sgt. Elwood Rumbaugh, who was lost at sea; and the three Marines left behind — Pfc. Gary Hall, Lance Cpl. Joseph Hargrove, and Pvt. Danny Marshall — are the only remains that have not been found.

In 2012, Em Son, the Khmer Rouge commander of the island during the battle, told Stars and Stripes that he discovered Loney's body wrapped in a poncho and left on the beach, and he had him buried nearby.

But there are some who doubt Son, because he was arrested by a Cambodian tribunal looking into Khmer Rouge atrocities.

Son told Stars and Stripes he executed Hargrove and saw him, Hall, Marshall, and Loney be buried. However, Son has not disclosed their potential burial sites, said JPAC, although he insists that he has shown investigators the sites and American remains were found.

There remain questions about JPAC's investigations, as well. Stars and Stripes reported receiving documents that include accusations that JPAC did not fully record their work on the island.

But remains were found on the island during another investigation, held in 2008, and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for POW/Missing Personnel Affairs Charles Ray said last month the remains were "probably Caucasian."

Monday 24 February 2014

http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Vietnam-Cambodia-MIA-war/2014/02/24/id/554412

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Veterans revisiting battlegrounds of the Vietnam War to help reunite the families of fallen Viet Cong with personal effects

Ben Roberts-Smith knows how it feels to go to war.

But a trip to Vietnam with a group of veterans showed him a side of war he had never experienced.

"It was amazing to see these guys who were shooting at each other 40 years ago and are now able to sit down and have a beer together," he said.

"I can't imagine being able to do that."

Cpl Roberts-Smith, who was awarded the Victoria Cross for bravery in Afghanistan, spent four days revisiting battlegrounds of the Vietnam War and helping reunite the families of fallen Viet Cong with items taken from soldiers' bodies at the time.

Of all the items that were returned, some of which have spent decades tucked away in small military museums, one stuck in Cpl Roberts-Smith's mind.

"It was a picture a Vietnamese soldier had drawn of his wife and on the back of the picture he had written the names of his children," he said.

"When we went back his wife was still alive.

"To be able to give that back to her and see what it meant to her . . . she was overcome with emotion. You can only imagine what that's like.

"It was extremely emotional for them (the Australian veterans) at the point of handing back items to the families." "

The trip, dubbed Operation Wandering Souls, was the work of military researchers at the University of NSW, including Vietnam War veterans.

As well as collecting personal effects to return to the families of lost Viet Cong soldiers, the team has compiled a database of burial sites to help find those Vietnamese still deemed missing in action.

The project was deemed particularly important in part because Vietnamese culture considers those who die in unrecorded graves to be "wandering souls". The personal belongings of someone who has died also have significance.

Vietnam has previously helped Australia find and repatriate its dead soldiers.

Cpl Roberts-Smith said he jumped at the chance to visit.

"To be able to go and see the battlefields was fantastic," he said. "To be able to go with those Vietnamese veterans was a once in a lifetime experience.

"It was a humbling experience to see what it meant to them. I know that feeling, I know why they did what they did.

"From an Aussie point-of-view or a soldier point-of-view I think it was important to go back and pay my respects to the men who lost their lives there."

Sunday 15 September 2013

http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/wa/18937807/vietnam-visit-humbles-hero/

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Vietnam war victims missing for 40 years found alive in jungle, central Vietnam

An 82-year-old man and his 41-year-old son have been found living in a forest in central Vietnam after they went missing during the country's war with the US, an official says.

The older man could communicate a little in the Cor ethnic minority language, but his son only knew a few words, an official at Tay Tra commune in Quang Ngai province said on Thursday on condition of anonymity.

Ho Van Thanh was last seen running into the woods with his then-infant son Ho Van Lang after a bomb exploded in his home, killing his wife and two other children in 1973, newspaper Dan Tri reported.

They were discovered when two people from a nearby village ventured 40 kilometres into the forest looking for firewood and spotted the two men's tree house. The villagers reported the find to local authorities who recovered the pair on Wednesday.


The two men survived by cultivating forest vegetables and hunting animals. They had no contact with the outside world, the report said.

Photographs in local media showed the younger man with dishevelled hair wearing a loin cloth made from tree bark.

Thanh, who was fighting for North Vietnam when the bomb exploded, left behind another son, Ho Van Tri.

"My father is very weak and the doctors are taking care of him, but my brother's health is fine even though he looks very thin," said Tri, who was six months old when his father fled into the jungle.

Thanh is being treated at a medical centre while his son is being looked after by his nephew, Ho Ven Bien.

"My uncle doesn't understand much of what is said to him, and he doesn't want to eat or even drink water," Bien said.

"He's very sad. He doesn't say anything now," he said. "We know he wants to escape my house to go back to the forest so we have to keep an eye on him now."

Hoang Anh Ngoc, chairman of the district, said local authorities had visited Thanh at the medical centre and given him food.

"I asked officials to keep a close eye on the two men to make sure they don't escape back into the forest," he said.

The discovery has shaken the small community, which thought the two men dead.

"No one could imagine Thanh and his son could live 40 years in isolation in the hard conditions of the jungle," said villager Ho Van Xanh.

Thursday 8 August 2013

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/breaking-news/vietnam-war-victims-found-in-jungle/story-fn3dxix6-1226693737409

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U.S. soldier missing in Vietnam since 1970 laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery

An American soldier, who died while serving his country in the Vietnam War, was finally laid to rest Tuesday at Arlington National Cemetery. The remains of Army Spc. John L. Burgess were buried along with the remains representing two members of his crew, 1st Lt. Richard Dyer and Sgt. 1st Class Juan Colon-Diaz.

They were part of a crew of five men who were in a helicopter June 30, 1970 near the Cambodian border when they were hit by enemy fire, bringing the aircraft to the ground. The crash resulted in a fiery inferno, claiming the lives of four of the men. Their bodies were taken to a morgue to be identified, but it wasn’t until then that it was discovered that the remains of Spc. John Burgess were missing. Due to enemy presence in the area, the area could not be searched for his remains either.

Although he was presumed dead, his remains were never recovered until years later. More than 40 years after the helicopter crash and after 10 year of investigations and dozens of teams searching the crash site area, Burgess was accounted for using forensics and circumstantial evidence.

Burgess’ family was finally able to conduct a proper burial for him, which included full military honors, at Arlington National Cemetery.

Up until last week, when it was announced that his remains had been recovered, Burgess, who gave the ultimate sacrifice for his country, was one of 807 American soldiers who are unaccounted for in South Vietnam.

Thursday 4 July 2013

http://www.guns.com/2013/07/04/u-s-soldier-missing-in-vietnam-since-1970-laid-to-rest-at-arlington-national-cemetery-video/

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DNA may help military end era of unknown soldiers

More than 83,000 service members lost since the beginning of World War II remain missing, according to the Defense Department. Many lie in forgotten battlefield graves and beneath memorials of solemn anonymity.

But advancing techniques and DNA technology mean the United States might have buried its last unknown soldier. In offices and laboratories across the country and archaeological sites scattered across continents, teams of investigators and scientists comb the past for the country's lost defenders.

Half a world away from her father's final battlefield, Barbara Ann Broyles grew up, married and had three children. She was 41⁄2 years old when Faith died east of the Chosin Reservoir in Korea in 1950. The scattered, retreating remnants of his troops left behind his body.

She made a home in Baton Rouge. She watched America's relationship with North Korea deteriorate, and her hope for her father's recovery faded.

Then in late September, the phone rang. Retired Air Force Maj. Michael Mee wanted to meet with her.

They'd found him, he said.

Two military agencies — the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, based in Honolulu, and the Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office, based in Arlington, Va. — keep a case file on every missing soldier, sailor, airman and Marine, said retired Lt. Col. William Woodier, 66, a DPMO researcher.

“We don't ever quit,” Woodier said. He covers the Chosin Reservoir area, where hundreds of soldiers and Marines went missing during 10 days of fighting.

Among veterans Woodier interviewed were men who carried Faith, mortally wounded, to his jeep after he led an assault on Chinese blocking his battalion's retreat.

Woodier retired in May 2006, but the memory of a missing friend from another war binds him to the task at DPMO. Corpsman Mike Laporte, a fellow reconnaissance Marine, disappeared during a parachute drop into South Vietnam on Sept. 5, 1967.

Woodier said he intends to stay at DPMO until Laporte comes home or “somebody finds me face-down at my desk, I guess.”

“There are way too many people still waiting for their loved ones to come home,” Woodier said. “My corpsman is still missing.”

The Korean War was Faith's second. He parachuted into Normandy, Sicily and the Ardennes during World War II, and played poker with Russian soldiers at the Brandenburg Gate. Gen. Omar Bradley gave his wife and daughter the Medal of Honor he earned for leadership along the banks of Chosin Reservoir, where a surprise Chinese attack cut down hundreds of soldiers.

Broyles, 66, recalls difficult conversations with survivors who wanted to tell her how her father died.

One remembered lying among battered, exhausted troops in a medical tent when Faith walked in. Using a rifle as a crutch, he asked them to push a little farther.

“I need you,” he told them.

The veteran said they would have followed her father “to hell and back.”

“But, of course, they had,” Broyles said, “except not back.”

Low on ammunition, with hundreds wounded, Faith tried to lead a retreat through entrenched Chinese troops, according to an Army history. Of 3,500 men who pushed north with Faith days earlier, about 385 remained fit for combat, said JPAC historian Michael Dolski.

A U.S. airstrike meant to aid them dropped napalm on the convoy's lead element.

“All he could do was yell, and say, ‘Follow me.' And he led, and they followed him,” Broyles said.

Researchers at JPAC and DPMO identify likely sites of remains. An archaeological team visited North Korea in 2004 and found skeletal remains of 30 people jumbled in a mass grave near Chosin Reservoir.

They shipped the bones to Honolulu, where JPAC operates the largest accredited skeletal forensics laboratory in the world, said Debra Prince Zinni, a forensic anthropologist who helped identify Faith's remains.

She uses bones to determine gender, age and ancestry, and to look for identifying marks. That takes about two weeks, but a backlog of requests at the DNA lab delays test results by as much as a year. The difficulty of piecing together DNA from decades-old remains can add more time. Sometimes, the first sample isn't enough and the process starts anew.

Then researchers try to match analyzed samples with DNA samples taken from thousands of family members. They identified 80 people last year.

A few days after Mee called in September, Broyles' family gathered at her house. Mee arrived with two military officers and a thick briefing book containing hundreds of pages of peer-reviewed forensic studies, DNA analysis, witness accounts of the battle, and other evidence collected during decades of searching — even a letter Broyles' mother wrote to the Army in the 1950s about her husband's death.

Their meeting lasted for six hours, Broyles said.

“The object, as I look back on it, was to present to us all the information in such a way that we could be comfortable in saying that, despite all odds, that's my father. They've found him,” Broyles said.

In April, Broyles and her family stood on the tarmac at Ronald Reagan International Airport when the jet from Hawaii landed. Nearly 800 aircraft take off and land from the airport each day, but as the honor guard carried Faith's flag-draped casket from the plane, “you couldn't see anyone moving,” Broyles said.

“They all stopped.”

She asked officers at Arlington National Cemetery, where Faith's parents are buried, for an open-casket service, a rare request for partial remains.

“It just seems like a box is just a box,” she told them. “He's here. I want it clear that he's here.”

The undertakers wrapped his bones in a white shroud and wrapped the shroud in an Army blanket. Atop the blanket they laid his folded uniform. The casket remained open.

The U.S. Army Band and honor guard led the procession to his hilltop grave, marching beneath trees frosted green with the early blooms. Seven horses drew the black caisson carrying Faith's coffin. Broyles led the family and friends who followed.

“They actually did it. ... They found him,” she said. “None of his brothers are alive. None of his parents are alive. His wife died a long time ago. (But) they didn't forget. They found him and brought him back.”

Sunday 26 May 2013

http://triblive.com/news/allegheny/3807977-74/faith-broyles-army

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Vietnam: Mass grave found in Tay Ninh province

A mass grave of 164 martyrs, members of Regiment 165 who died during the Can Le Battle on August 7th, 1967, has been found in Tan Hoa commune, Tan Chau district, Tay Ninh Province.

The grave was revealed after five fact-finding trips by the Information Centre of Searching Remains of Martyrs under the Vietnam Association of Supporting Martyrs’ Families, and excavated by the centre and Army Corps 4, Division 7, some veterans of Regiment 165 and Tay Ninh Provincial Military Headquarters.

47 years ago, Regiment 165 under Division 7 opened a battle at a military post of Saigon puppet troops at Tong Le Chan (also called Can Le) in Tan Chau district, Tay Ninh province.

Unfortunately, the battle plan was exposed when the regiment’s troops were approaching the target. As a result, the enemy troops counter-attacked with aircraft and mortars, killing the regiment’s 164 troops. The enemy put all bodies into a trench as a mass grave.

Over the past years, relevant organs at all levels, veterans and the martyrs’ families have conducted hundreds of studies to seek the remains of those martyrs.

At present, almost all 164 martyrs have been buried at Ho Chi Minh City Martyrs’ Cemetery.

Saturday 4 May 2013

http://www.qdnd.vn/qdndsite/en-us/75/72/182/155/188/240414/Default.aspx

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Vietnam-era sailors' remains to be buried at Arlington

Human remains from the Vietnam War have been identified as four U.S. Navy sailors who were reported missing in 1967, officials said.

The bodies of the men are to be buried together Thursday in Arlington National Cemetery, Stars and Stripes reported.

Lt. Dennis Peterson, Ensign Donald Frye and Aviation Antisubmarine Warfare Technicians William Jackson and Donald McGrane had been missing since July 1967 after their helicopter was shot down over North Vietnam, a U.S. Defense Department official said Tuesday.

The sailors were attempting to find a downed pilot when they were fired at, Stars and Stripes said, and the aircraft caught fire and crashed.

In 1982, five boxes of remains were given to U.S. officials and a subsequent investigation by U.S. and Vietnamese officials involved excavation of the crash site, where more human remains as well as aircraft wreckage were recovered.

Last year, Defense Department scientists used forensic tools and circumstantial evidence to identify the remains, Stars and Stripes reported.

Thursday 2 May 2013

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2013/05/01/Vietnam-era-sailors-remains-to-be-buried-at-Arlington/UPI-17811367411820/

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Team seeks to return Vietnam artifacts

During the Vietnam conflict, Australian soldiers souvenired personal items from the bodies of slain Viet Cong and North Vietnamese soldiers.

There's nothing especially unusual about this - soldiers have done the same in every war.

The veterans - plus various museums, military history rooms and even RSL clubs - hold letters, certificates, diaries, photos and more that belonged to the dead.

Now a team of University of NSW researchers at the Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA) wants to find these items and return them.

The group wants federal government help to repatriate the materials to families and present unclaimed documents to appropriate institutions in Vietnam.

But appeals to the Department of Defence were rejected, as was a request to the Department of Foreign Affairs, while the Department of Veterans Affairs said it wasn't its area of responsibility.

"We are a couple of retired folks who are doing this on the smell of an oily rag," team leader Dr Bob Hall, a Vietnam war veteran said.

"We reckon the government has an obligation, moral and legal, under the Geneva Convention to do this and it ought to bloody well chip in some support."

The Geneva Convention specifies that at the end of hostilities, opposing sides must notify locations of war dead and return artifacts.

But Australia has officially done neither, even though Vietnam helped in the search for the six Australians missing in action in Vietnam - all of whom were found and their remains returned to family.

Hall and his team's mission grew out of a long-running project analysing operations of the Australian task force in Vietnam in 1966-71.

"The intellectual gold to be found out of Vietnam is much greater than you can currently find out of Afghanistan because all the records are available," Hall said.

"All the records of the Australian embassy in Saigon are now publicly available.

"You can go into the archives and look through all the discussions inside the embassy."

The records include more than 4500 combat after-action reports filed by Australian soldiers.

Using the raw information, a detailed database has been created that's still useful today.

For example, it shows when, where and in what circumstances firefights started and even how many shots were needed to inflict a casualty.

It also includes details of enemy dead, who - under the practice of the time - were buried at the battle site.

"We realised we had the location of where the Australians buried all the Vietnamese we killed," said fellow researcher Derril De Heer, also a Vietnam veteran.

It appears some 3796 bodies were hastily interred in unmarked graves.

The discovery coincided with the finding of the remains of Australia's last two servicemen missing in action from the Vietnam war - Flying Officer Michael Herbert and Pilot Officer Robert Carver - who died when their Canberra bomber crashed in November 1970.

"There's a belief in Vietnam that if you die violently or die where you are not known, your spirit will wander," De Heer said.

And so Operation Wandering Souls was conceived as a private humanitarian venture to help find some of Vietnam's estimated 300,000-600,000 missing dead of the Vietnam conflict.

Hall's team transposed all the burial site grid references onto Vietnam-era topographical maps, converting them to latitude and longitude locations on Google earth images.

Then in 2010, then-defence minister John Faulkner presented the database to Vietnam's deputy defence minister.

But there was more.

Some Australian intelligence reports, based on documents found on the bodies, gave actual names.

So the team realised they could put names to some of the Vietnamese dead by matching People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) casualty records against dates and locations in the Australian records.

From this discovery came another significant development.

Victorian Vietnam veteran Laurens Wildeboer contacted the team to reveal he had a scarf, notebook and book of poetry from his time in Vietnam and asked if they could help give back the artifacts.

In a widely reported ceremony in Vietnam last year, the scarf and notebook were handed over to the dead soldier's mother.

"As a result, people have been giving us artifacts that have been taken from bodies - letters, photographs and other stuff," De Heer said.

"We now have about 120 letters. We have certificates, photographs. We know there is more around Australia either in private museums or people have held onto it. Some is in defence museums or history rooms."

Among the cache is a collection of 40 pencil and charcoal sketches taken from the body of a soldier killed at the 1966 Battle of Long Tan. Other material is likely being held at the Australian War Memorial and RSL clubs. One military museum is believed to hold a gold ring taken from a dead soldier.

So Operation Wandering Souls is now appealing to anyone with such material to pass it over.

"We will try and find the families. If not, we will hand it to the Vietnamese government," De Heer said.

But without federal help, the mission will have to be funded out of the team's own pockets.

Last year's visit required De Heer to hire a 30-seater bus to transport a Vietnamese media contingent and feed them, all out of his own funds.

The team reckons about $130,000 would be enough, considering the goodwill their efforts have produced in Vietnam, and would cover travel within Australia to collect items and travel to Vietnam to present them.

"We believe the costs should be met by the Australian government, since we are fulfilling the government's legal responsibilities under the Geneva Convention," De Heer said.

Thursday 18 April 2013

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/breaking-news/team-seeks-to-return-vietnam-artifacts/story-fn3dxiwe-1226623455153

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Whose bones made it home from the Vietnam War?

A mass grave was dug up this month dedicated to the crew of an EC-47Q reconnaissance plane at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in Missouri.

The electronic surveillance plane left Pleiku Airbase in the Republic of Vietnam Feb. 5, 1969. About 20 miles northwest of Chavanne, Laos, the crew made its last radio contact at 8:10 a.m. It missed a scheduled stop at noon, and a search began that's continued by family today.

The crash site in the Laotian jungle was first found that fall and analyses of the bones concluded they came from just five to seven men. Convinced the whole crew died in the crash, the military engraved 10 names in the granite headstone at Jefferson Barracks.

The U.S. military still cannot account for 1,654 Americans lost in the Vietnam conflict, and the remains of thousands more never have been recovered.

One Houston family is among those hoping the disinterred grave and DNA exemplars they provided to the military finally will let them know whose bones made it home.

"I would hope that I would find out definitely that my husband was indeed dead," said Cindy Burke, widow of Capt. Walter Burke. "I'm sure that after all this time he is, but I would like a final closure."

Although Jefferson Barracks has more than 500 mass graves, disinterments are rare. Only a handful have been dug up in the last few decades.

Paul Clever holds what he believes may be part of his father's flight vest. He recovered that along with other artifacts from the Laos crash site of his father's spy plane.

Military records show an officer closed the case in 1969 although a report submitted to him said the whole crew was not accounted for in the recovered remains.

In 1995, a recovery team searching for a different crash site found Walter's dog tag, promising Cindy in a 1996 letter that they would return it once a full dig was completed at the site. It's not clear why, but that never happened.

When the son of Sgt. Louis Clever, Paul, received a copy of the dog tag letter from Cindy's daughter, he contacted the Air Force Mortuary Affairs office. The chief of the Past Conflicts Branch found the dog tag in Hawaii, helped return it to the Burke family in November, and now is organizing the disinterment and DNA testing.

"A lot of years ago my mom felt dismissed, that they didn't value the situation and just wanted to be done with it," said Lauren Branch, Burke's daughter. "I think just telling her that he's not forgotten about, I think that meant a lot to her."

Without certainty about whose bones made it home - only one unmarried man was identified - none of the wives knew who might have survived the crash and who might one day come home. Uncertain, none remarried.

The families stitched together a semblance of sanity. The wives tried not to let questions about the crash consume them as they confronted the sudden challenge of being single mothers in an era when that wasn't a term.

Some of the crew's children have few memories of their fathers.

Lauren was just 4 years old when her father's plane was hit and a wing torn from its fuselage.

The return of her father's dog tag last year led to details about the crash she'd never known and which gave perspective to a sadness once without boundaries.

Her mother said she hopes the tests bring her additional closure, but remains upset about how the case was handled initially.

"A lot of things happened that should never have happened," she said.

Cyanide capsules

One crewman's family agreed to the disinterment even though they already know three teeth from Sgt. Clarence "Boone" McNeill are among the bones in the grave.

Using dental records, Boone was the only person identified in 1969. His brother, Walker McNeill of North Carolina, didn't learn about the identification until November.

"We were told that some of the remains had been identified but their policy was to notify only the family involved, so when we didn't hear anything we assumed that Boone was one of the crew members whose remains weren't identified," Walker said.

His mother died in 2006 believing her son was trapped in a Chinese prisoner camp. Walker and his brother Dan, now a four-star general in the Army, never told her they did not share her hope.

The last time Walker saw his brother, Clarence showed him a pill box with two cyanide capsules he had been directed to use if his plane crashed.

"My brother and I weren't surprised that the remains were Boone's because we had already accepted the fact he probably didn't make it," Walker said. "The funeral ceremony at Jefferson Barracks was closure for us."

DNA to be tested

Protesters cursed the families as they drove through the gates of Jefferson National Barracks for a funeral months after the crash.

Paul remembers clouds strangled the sun as Missouri dirt rained onto two off-white caskets.

He was 7 years old when the men in uniform came to the door and told his mother that his father was missing in action, lost.

Lost. That was a word young Paul understood. He lost a He-Man action figure once then found him. He wanted to tell the men and this mother, "I can find him!" They told him to go out and play.

In December, Paul and his wife searched the Laotian jungle for answers obscured by inaccurate GPS coordinates and four decades of growth. In a rocky river bed, they found a few small bones, shirt snap buttons, a ⅜ drive socket, mesh from a vest, a twisted sheet of the fuselage and other small remnants.

Paul revisited the Missouri grave site on a sunny day this month to watch 10,000 pounds of dirt lifted from atop the caskets.

The rotting wood shells held body bags filled with 30 pounds of bone, just one-tenth of the crew's full skeletal weight but more than enough for DNA tests. The testing could take up to a year, but family hopes for answers sometime this summer.

Paul wants to know whose bones made it home, but even if his DNA sample shows a familial match with those raised out of the ground, he said he won't feel closure.

"They say severe trauma changes you on the cellular level and I tend to believe that," Paul said. He plans to continue seeking answers about the military missteps that halted a full recovery and left families without answers for so long.

Cindy hopes the tests will bring closure, although it's tough to know what that will feel like after 44 years of waiting.

"It hurts to have all these old wounds opened up again," Cindy said. "After a while, you get to the point where you go on living. I had children to raise. I have grandchildren now. I'm going to be a great-grandmother for the first time.

"You know, right now we're on hold."

Monday 25 February 2013

Read more: http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Whose-bones-made-it-home-from-the-Vietnam-War-4304680.php#ixzz2LuDo1jcG

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Family presented with Vietnam veteran's dog tags after 4 decades

The family of an airman who was killed in action is getting some closure after more than four decades.

On Saturday, the wife and children of Cpt. Walter Burke were presented with his dog tags at a Katy Veterans of Foreign Wars post. Burke's plane was shot down in Vietnam.

Several bodies were recovered from the crash site, but only one was identified leaving family members wondering what really happened to Burke.

Now with the dog tags, the family can find some closure.

"We had such a long period of time where we kind of tucked it away and this happened really fast so it's been kind of overwhelming and I don't think we've really had a chance to process,” Lauren Branch, Burke’s daughter, said Saturday.

The aircraft Burke was in was shot down on Feb. 5, 1969; the dog tag was subsequently found in Laos.

According to Air Force records, Burke was the third pilot on an EC-47 communications aircraft that departed Pleiku on a radio direction finding mission over Laos and failed to arrive at its destination.

Search and rescue efforts were begun when the aircraft failed to land at Hue-Phu Bai as scheduled and continued for six days without result. The ten crewmen aboard the aircraft were initially classified as Missing in Action.

In December of 1969, the plane’s wreckage was found near Ban Phan Laos. The remains of the crewmen were recovered and subsequently interred in a communal grave at Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis.

Monday 19 November 2012

http://www.khou.com/news/local/Family-presented-with-Vietnam-veterans-dog-tags-after-4-decades-179862791.html

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Vietnam finds mass grave of communist soldiers

HANOI, Vietnam — Farmers have found a grave containing the remains of at least 20 communist soldiers killed during the Vietnam War.

Military officer Nguyen Van Phat said Tuesday that the bodies were recovered from a rubber plantation in the southern province of Dong Nai. Farmers hunting for scrap metal there found the bodies last week.

The remains have not been identified. Phat says authorities also found 17 pairs of rubber sandals and 23 hammocks among the remains.

He says the soldiers were believed to have been killed while attacking an airport in 1969.

Some 3 million Vietnamese and 58,000 Americans died during the war, which ended in 1975 when communists overran Saigon, then capital of South Vietnam.

The remains of around 300,000 North Vietnamese soldiers have yet to be recovered.

Tuesday 25 September 2012

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501712_162-57519536/vietnam-finds-mass-grave-of-communist-soldiers/

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Philadelphia Soldier Missing from Vietnam War Identified

The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office announced today that the remains of a serviceman, missing in action from the Vietnam War, have been identified and will be returned to his family for burial with full military honors. Army Capt. Charles R. Barnes of Philadelphia, Pa., will be buried May 2, in Arlington National Cemetery. On March 16, 1969, Barnes and four other service members departed Qui Nhon Airfields bound for Da Nang and Phu Bai, in a U-21A Ute aircraft. As they approached Da Nang, they encountered low clouds and poor visibility. Communications with the aircraft were lost, and they did not land as scheduled. Immediate search efforts were limited due to hazardous weather conditions, and all five men were list as missing in action. From 1986-1989, unidentified human remains were turned over to the United States from the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (S.R.V.) in several different instances. None of the remains were identified given the limits of the technology of the time. In 1993, a joint U.S.-S.R.V. team, led by the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC), conducted investigations in Quang Nam-Da Nang, and Thua Thien-Hue Provinces. They interviewed a local Vietnamese citizen who supplied remains and an identification tag bearing Barnes' name, which he claimed to have recovered from an aircraft crash site. In 1999, another joint U.S.-S.R.V. team interviewed additional Vietnamese citizens about the crash and they were led to the crash site. In 2000, a joint U.S.-S.R.V. team excavated the site and recovered human remains and material evidence. Scientists from the JPAC and the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory used circumstantial evidence, and forensic identification tools such as mitochondrial DNA -- which matched that of Barnes' sister -- in the identification of the remains. For additional information on the Defense Department's mission to account for missing Americans, call 703-699-1420 or visit the DPMO website at http://www.dtic.mil/dpmo 1 May 2012 Read more: http://www.gloucestercitynews.net/clearysnotebook/2012/05/soldier-missing-from-vietnam-war-identified.html#ixzz1tj0ckliD

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Vietnam finds mass grave of communist soldiers

HANOI, Vietnam — A mass grave has been found containing the remains of 23 communist soldiers believed to have been killed during the Tet Offensive, seen by many as the turning point of the Vietnam War.

Col. Nguyen Minh Hung of provincial military command in central Khanh Hoa province said Tuesday that construction workers who were expanding a highway found the site last week. He says it took 30 soldiers and militiamen six days to recover the remains, none of which were identified.

The soldiers were believed to have been killed while withdrawing after attacking an airport and the local military headquarters of the Saigon government, he said.

Thousands of Viet Cong guerrillas attacked major towns across southern Vietnam during the Tet Offensive in January 1968.

Monday, 2 April 2012

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/apr/02/vietnam-finds-mass-grave-of-communist-soldiers/?ap

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Argentina helps search for missing in Viet Nam

Buenos Aires – The Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF) has helped Viet Nam confirm identification of people missing after wartime battles, said EAAF President Louis Fondebrider.
The cooperative plan was established in October, 2010 following the Vietnamese Government's request for technical assistance on the issue, Argentinean press cited the EAAF president as saying.

Last year, two EAAF experts came to Vietnam to provide training in forensic anthropology and identification of remains in Ha Noi and HCM City .
The group also welcomed two officials from the Vietnam National Institute of Forensic Anthropology to gain experience at its headquarters in Cordoba province last December.
According to Fondebrider, the two sides will cooperate in the search for the remains of missing soldiers and also confirm identification of natural disaster victims.

Maria Mercedes Salado , who came to Vietnam to provide training , said Argentinean experts will return to Viet Nam in the coming months for further specific assistance. The EAAF will invite Vietnamese officials, including those from the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of National Defence, to Argentina for training.

More than one million people were reported missing during the war that ended almost four decades ago.

The EAAF is a non-governmental scientific organisation with experience in forensic anthropology and genetics. - VNA

Updated January, 24 2012

http://vietnamnews.vnagency.com.vn/Miscellany/220042/argentina-helps-search-for-missing-in-viet-nam.html

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