Citizen Staff

Vietnam war has no place in campaign

Leave it to U.S. Sen. John McCain to push through the political rhetoric and take the right path.

The Arizona Republican last week took to the Senate floor to criticize colleagues in both political parties for dwelling on the military service records of President Bush and Sen. John Kerry.

“Can’t we all agree that the Vietnam War is over?” McCain asked. “Can’t we all agree that both Sen. Kerry and President Bush served honorably?”

Good questions and good point. McCain is saying that the nation’s political focus should be on what’s happening today, not what happened 35 or so years ago.

Republican Bush, running for re-election, and Democrat Kerry, his party’s presumed nominee for the presidential race, have traded accusations about their relative military records and the aftermath. Their supporters have entered the fray, including last week’s foray by Vice President Dick Cheney, whose record includes no military service while he was of age during the Vietnam War.

It’s time to follow McCain’s admonition and put this discussion to rest. What these men did in that era is history. Kerry served with the Navy in Vietnam. Bush served in the Air National Guard. Questions have been raised about the records of both, even questions of patriotism.

Questioning the patriotism of someone is treachery, because everyone’s actions can then be measured by the same device. In the instances of two men who have served in political offices as part of a democracy, patriotism is not in question.

What the American people need to know about them, then, is how they will handle themselves as president, not what they did as young men caught in a national maelstrom that even to this day we can’t fully comprehend.

We have said it before, and it bears repeating: The American people need to hear a thorough discussion of the issues.

So, following McCain’s advice, the candidates should drop the military-service rhetoric and tell the American people how they will lead in the current time of war, how they will protect the nation’s security, how they will shape or reshape a foreign policy, how they will make the United States a role model for world leadership and for democracy.

Courage in combat is an admirable thing, but describing it and explaining its origins in an individual are elusive.

Let’s see if either of these men is courageous enough of a leader to leave behind petty political bickering and nitpicking and move on to what is important.

Stabilizing TUSD

Tucson Unified School District Interim Superintendent Roger Pfeuffer got off on the right foot by negotiating a salary for himself that keeps the best interests of students in mind.

Pfeuffer will be paid $70,000 less than Stan Paz, who resigned last month when it became apparent his contract was unlikely to be renewed.

The $70,000 difference “is enough to hire two teachers,” Pfeuffer said.

He also announced he plans no major reorganizations while the school board searches for a permanent replacement. That should help to quell the low staff morale that has hindered the district for more than a year.

Pfeuffer clearly has his priorities in the right place.

Citizen Staff

Vietnam vets stage Nam Jam

XAVIER GALLEGOS/Tucson Citizen

Members of Steel Ribbon perform during Nam Jam at Reid Park’s DeMeester Outdoor Performance Center yesterday. About 1,000 people attended the concert, sponsored by Vietnam Veterans of America, Tucson Chapter 106, which featured performances by several bands. The concert was promoted as the 16th annual although the event was not held last year.

Citizen Staff

Tucsonan Leo Thorsness, a Vietnam veteran and winner of the Medal of Honor, will make a Veterans Day appearance on NBC’s “Today Show” tomorrow morning.

Thorsness, 71, is featured in a new book titled “Medal of Honor: Portraits of Valor Beyond the Call of Duty,” and his wartime exploits also will be part of a PBS documentary, “Beyond Valor,” airing tomorrow night at 10.

Thorsness, who moved to Tucson two years ago, received the Medal of Honor from President Nixon for his heroic efforts to save downed American airmen from MiG attacks in 1967.

He was later shot down over North Vietnam and spent six years in the infamous “Hanoi Hilton” prison camp.

See tomorrow’s Tucson Citizen for a story about Thorsness’ military exploits and his efforts to bring focus on fellow combat veterans on this Veterans Day.

Citizen Staff

Vets’ wall re-created

Casino exhibit honors Vietnam War dead

Photos by VAL CAÑEZ/Tucson Citizen

ABOVE: Richard Ruiz and his wife, Kathleen, (behind him) examine the Vietnam Veterans Moving Wall Exhibit yesterday at Casino Del Sol. Ruiz said several friends of his died in the war. Casino Del Sol, 5655 W. Valencia Road, is hosting the exhibit through Saturday from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. each day. The touring exhibit is a re-creation of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., and bears the names of Americans killed in the Vietnam War.

RIGHT: Members of the Pascua Yaqui color guard and others lower flags during a ceremony at sundown yesterday. The color guard will conduct ceremonies each day throughout the week at the casino.

Citizen Staff

Vietnam vet bikers seek accountability

Photos by FRANCISCO MEDINA/Tucson Citizen

LEFT: Tucsonan Frenchy Torres (left) hugs his former sergeant, Don Morris of Peoria. The two veterans served in the 7th Cavalry during the Vietnam War and were reunited yesterday after 33 years when the Run for the Wall ride passed through Tucson.

ABOVE: Cookie Shadowsky, ride coordinator, said the event is to demand accountability for prisoners of war and those missing in action. The ride started in Los Angeles and will end Memorial Day in Washington, D.C., at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

BIKERS: Harley enthusiasts ride to D.C. to raise Vietnam War POW, MIA awareness. Page 6E (This photo on 1E)

Citizen Staff

An article Saturday about former prisoners of war in Vietnam incorrectly attributed comments accompanying a photograph of Myron Donald. The comments were made by former POW Jack Van Loan.

Citizen Staff

PRISONERS OF WAR

Vietnam War POWs relate to Lynch, others

By PAUL L. ALLEN

pallen@tucsoncitizen.com

Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch, the prisoner of war rescued by Special Forces from an Iraqi hospital, “probably used up all the luck in the theater for the rest of the year,” said Jack Van Loan, who spent six years as a POW during the Vietnam War.

“I am absolutely thrilled that she was picked up,” said Van Loan, 71, a former Tucsonan now living in Columbia, S.C. “She’s a lucky young lady.”

He and another Vietnam POW, Myron Donald, 59, of Tucson, said they recall the thrill of hearing American helicopters and a firefight at Son Tay prison in North Vietnam as Army Special Forces troops tried to free them in November 1969. The raid failed because the POWs had been moved to another camp two miles distant.

“From one standpoint, it’s silly to risk 100 guys to get one POW back, but that’s how we do it,” Donald said. “You have to keep believing that they’ll come and get you.”

Both men noted that families of the American prisoners of war being shown on Iraqi television should be thankful they can see their loved ones.

“If the prisoners have appeared on TV, the families can take comfort in knowing they are alive, that we know they have them, and that we will hold the Iraqis responsible,” Van Loan said. But he cautioned families of POWs not to be filmed or photographed grieving, saying the Iraqis would be sure the captives see the footage, which would demoralize them.

“That is not in those kids’ best interest,” he said. “The Iraqis will consider them `blue chips,’ thinking they may be able to get something for them or want to bargain with them.”

Donald is especially concerned about captured women soldiers.

“We as Americans tend to think others treat people like we do,” he said.

“I can’t imagine what the women are going through. I would think they might be brutalized and sexually assaulted.”

Such was the fate of at least one American woman captured during the Gulf war.

U.S. Army Maj. Rhonda Cornum was sexually assaulted after she was captured by Iraqis.

She already had a broken arm when an Iraqi soldier forced himself on her in the back of a truck while she was being taken at night to Basra.

Cornum was a flight surgeon flying a helicopter, searching for a downed F-16 pilot on the last day of the war when she was captured. She described the incident in a documentary about the war broadcast on PBS and told her story in a book, “She Went to War.”

Details on the condition of ex-POW Lynch, who was rescued Tuesday night, are incomplete. She reportedly suffered broken legs and other injuries either during a firefight before her capture, or during the raid that rescued her.

A 19-year-old Army supply clerk from West Virginia, Lynch was held nine days by the Iraqis after her maintenance unit was ambushed in Nasiriyah.

Twelve other members of her unit, including an Arizonan, Pfc. Lori Piestewa, 22, of Tuba City, are believed to be captured or perhaps killed.

Five are listed as POWs. The others are missing.

Van Loan became a Vietnam POW after his F-4C “Phantom II” fighter was shot down May 20, 1967, by North Vietnamese MiG fighter jets 30 miles north of Hanoi.

Donald, an F-4D pilot, was held captive for more than five years after he was shot down Feb. 23, 1968.

The North Vietnamese did not acknowledge either man’s capture for more than two years.

Donald said watching the POW footage on TV now evokes many emotions.

“In Vietnam, most of us were officers and college graduates.

“These people captured in Iraq seem to be high school age, maybe a little older, and not quite so educated,” he said. “Whether that’s good or bad, I’m not sure, but I would think they’re somewhat less prepared to deal with it.”

The televised reports of anti-war demonstrations can be demoralizing for prisoners of war, Van Loan said.

“I will defend to the death their right to demonstrate, but I will tell them: Demonstrations will be seen by our prisoners of war, no question about it,” he said. “And that is really going to hurt their morale.

“North Vietnam used the antiwar movement in America to prolong that war for God knows how long.”

The former POWs said prisoners experience terror when first captured, but begin to feel more in control as they become familiar with their surroundings. Donald said his POW experience gave him a new appreciation for the American way of life.

“We are truly unique in ways we view the world – the notion that if you work hard, you can get ahead, that tomorrow will be better,” he said.

“It’s an optimism you don’t see much anywhere else, other than, maybe, Australia.”

Americans, Donald said, don’t have a cultural basis for vengeance. “When we rebuilt Japan and Germany after World War II, it was a unique thing,” he said.

Code of Conduct demanding

All branches of the U.S. military instruct their personnel on the Code of Conduct, a document that describes their responsibilities in combat.

The code for the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines requires service personnel to give their lives when necessary and surrender only if there is no means to resist.

It also requires them to escape if possible, refuse parole or favors from the enemy and withhold information.

The code also demands they refuse actions harmful to comrades, and refuse to make oral or written statements harmful to the United States or its allies.

Most branches of the military provide classroom instruction on how to deal with the possibility of becoming a prisoner of war.

In addition, “high-risk” individuals, including pilots, aircrew members and special operations troops, undergo intensive training on the ground in conditions simulating an actual POW camp.

In this training, “enemy” interrogators wear appropriate dress and speak with the accent of the enemy.

Troops involved in this training may be deprived of sleep and food and exposed to incessant loud music, recordings of babies crying, dripping water, temperature extremes and physical stress.

In this training, they also learn escape and evasion techniques.

- Paul L. Allen

The Arizona Republic

Families of MIAs endure trials of ‘not knowing’

By JUDD SLIVKA

The Arizona Republic

Jerry Evert died a captain and was buried a lieutenant colonel.

It was only the 35 years between the two events that was awful for his family.

“I’m hit hard,” Evert called out through his radio over Tien Chau, North Vietnam, on Nov. 8, 1967. It was the last time anyone heard from the Air Force pilot.

He was listed as “missing in action,” a phrase back in currency as U.S. troops are captured in the current war with Iraq.

He was listed that way from the day he was shot down – just hours before he was supposed to fly home to be at his daughter’s birth – until 1978, when the Defense Department changed him to “killed in action.”

“We were grateful that he was declared missing instead of dead,” said his wife, Wanda Evert Allen of Chandler. “It gave us some hope.”

And so Allen prayed and prayed, and found peace.

“I knew he was with God and that God would take care of him,” Evert said.

But there were no answers.

It’s that way for many loved ones. When Marine Cpl. Mike Williams of Phoenix was declared missing Wednesday, the Marine officers who came to his mother’s home to notify her knew nothing more than that the 31-year-old was missing during fighting near the Iraqi town of Nasiriyah.

“I’m in daily contact with them,” said Williams’ mother, Sandra Watson of Peoria. “But they don’t have any more news than I do.”

The parents of Army Pfc. Lori Piestewa of Moenkopi, Ariz., know about as much as Watson, though they’ve had the added horror of seeing video of the aftermath of their daughter’s unit being ambushed.

It raises a question: Is not knowing better than knowing?

Dave Allwine isn’t sure.

Allwine was a U.S. Army adviser to the South Vietnamese army around the Vietnam-Cambodia-Laos border in 1971. During a battle, Allwine was shot in the chest, knee and shoulder and left on the battlefield.

He was captured after almost two days of evading the North Vietnamese.

His wife knew none of what happened, just that he was missing.

“She went through hell,” Allwine said of his wife, who died several years ago. “Her worries were a lot worse than mine. I knew where she was, but she didn’t know where I was. I had no worries. I was a soldier. I just had to worry about staying alive. She had to put up with the worries every day: Is he alive? Is he dead?”

Allwine was taken to a prison camp in Cambodia. After about six weeks there, a South Vietnamese soldier managed to escape and reported who was in the camp.

That message then made it to Allwine’s wife, a German who had been in America only two weeks before her husband was sent to Vietnam.

“She did some real fast growing up when she came over here,” he said.

Wanda Allen never knew what happened to her husband after the “I’m hit hard” broadcast.

She raised her youngest child, Elizabeth, on her own.

“We use her to date my husband’s death,” Allen said. “She’s 35, so it’s been 35 years.”

Allen didn’t remarry until 1983.

Even after her husband was declared dead in 1978, it took a long time for her to get used to the idea that the father of her children wasn’t around to raise them.

“My husband was a loving father,” she said. “He loved his kids so much. I’m sorry he couldn’t see them grow up.”

In 2000, the family was told a plane crash site near Hanoi was going to be excavated.

And in that patch of rice paddy where Evert’s F-105 crashed, Allen and her children found answers: Jerry Evert’s dog tags. His military identification card. His wallet. His identification card from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

They found Evert’s body, too, and that was the ultimate answer.

“Knowing he wasn’t a prisoner of war for that many years, it was very satisfying to all of us,” Allen said. “We found out that what I felt was right. He died instantly. If he was not coming home, that was the best way to go.”

Citizen Staff

Tucsonan James Gallagher has a rare form of leukemia recently linked to Agent Orange.

By C.T. REVERE

ctrevere@tucsoncitizen.com

James Gallagher can’t say for certain that exposure to Agent Orange caused the disease that has elevated his white blood cell count to five times the normal level.

But the recent discovery of a link between the chemical used to defoliate the lush Vietnamese countryside and chronic lymphocytic leukemia has brought the 69-year-old Air Force veteran hope for increased benefits to deal with his illness.

“I didn’t know what caused it. I didn’t find out about this until January when I read it in the newspaper. That’s when I found out it might have something to do with Agent Orange,” said Gallagher, an aircraft maintenance worker in Vietnam in 1966-67.

“My wife thought it had something to do with Agent Orange, but I didn’t know.”

Gallagher, a retired Department of Corrections worker, is the first Tucsonan to sign up for expanded benefits since the Veterans Affairs Department included chronic lymphocytic leukemia on the list of Agent Orange-related illnesses in January.

Veterans Affairs officials expect to find about 500 new CLL patients among the Vietnam veteran community each year.

Those former soldiers will be eligible for improved benefits such as disability compensation and priority health-care services within the next year.

Gallagher, who said he feels no ill effects of the disease despite a steadily climbing white cell count, said his first goal is to increase his disability rating with the Veterans Affairs office.

“I’m making a claim to try and increase my disability and that would mean that less of my retirement income will be taxed,” he said. “Right now I’m 20 percent disabled because of blindness in my left eye.”

Dr. Deborah Lindsly, director of the VA medical center’s Agent Orange Program, said CLL is the latest in a litany of illnesses linked to the chemical, joining chloracne, Hodgkin’s disease, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and soft-tissue sarcomas.

She expects no more than 10 people each year to come into the program because of this form of leukemia.

“CLL is fairly rare,” she said. “It’s seen most often in people 50 and older. Of course, the Vietnam veterans are all getting to that age.”

Gallagher suspects he might have come into contact with Agent Orange when he was stationed at a U.S. air base in Nha Trang, South Vietnam.

“The C-123 aircraft that sprayed the stuff used to come into our base and we’d work on them. And they sprayed in the area and the wind could have blown it in,” he said.

Gallagher’s CLL was diagnosed after a routine physical examination he received upon retirement from his corrections job.

“I never felt sick,” he said. “I don’t feel sick now.”

Gallagher’s doctor told him he’d feel no serious effects of his leukemia until his white cell count grew to about 20,000, at which point his body would no longer be able to ward off infections.

Leukemia is a disease marked by uncontrolled production of white blood cells, which collect in the circulatory system and crowd out red blood cells and platelets.

Chronic lymphocytic leukemia affects a type of lymphocyte called the B lymphocyte and causes suppression of the immune system, failure of the bone marrow, and infiltration of malignant cells into organs.

PHOTO CAPTION: FRANCISCO MEDINA/Tucson Citizen

James Gallagher, with wife Agnes behind him, has a rare form of leukemia that may have been caused by Agent Orange during his stint in Vietnam.

Citizen Staff and Wire Reports

Disability compensation and priority health-care services will be available to vets in a year.

Staff and Wire Report

WASHINGTON – Researchers have found a link between a type of leukemia and Vietnam soldiers exposed to such herbicides as Agent Orange, prompting the Veterans Affairs Department to announce it will extend benefits to vets with the illness.

Veterans with chronic lymphocytic leukemia would start receiving improved benefits, such as disability compensation and priority health-care services in about a year, Secretary Anthony Principi said yesterday.

”It’s sad that we have to presume service connection because we know that (veterans) have cancer that may have been caused by their battlefield service. But it’s the right thing to do,” he said.

Veterans Affairs expects to find about 500 new cases of CLL a year among Vietnam veterans, said spokesman Phil Budahn. About 2.6 million people served in Vietnam during the war and most still are alive.

There are 10,000 Vietnam veterans receiving disability pay for other illnesses related to exposure to Agent Orange and other herbicides used during the war, VA officials said.

The Arizona Department of Veterans Services in Tucson expects to hear from leukemia patients who might now qualify for the benefits.

”Once they put that into place and the law is effective, we’ll start getting calls from people,” said Rose Swanson, a benefits counselor. ”After that, once we get word the VA will accept the claims, we will take that claim to them.

The Institute of Medicine, which re-examined research on cancer rates in agricultural workers and farm communnity residents, announced yesterday it had found the link between the chronic lymphocytic form of leukemia and Vietnam herbicides.

”It’s just one more indication that services on the battlefield exposes men and women to dangers beyond bullets, shrapnel and missiles,” said Principi, who requested the review. ”Environmental hazards are as worrisome and deadly as some of the more common forms of battlefield injury.”

U.S. troops sprayed 20 million gallons of Agent Orange and other herbicides over parts of South Vietnam and Cambodia in the 1960s and ’70s to clear dense jungle. Some veterans reported a variety of health problems shortly after returning from the war.

Some forms of cancer, Type 2 diabetes and birth defects in veterans’ children already are associated with herbicide exposures during the war. But it has been difficult to research the problem because no one knows how much chemicals troops were exposed to, the Institute of Medicine said.

”For more than two decades, we’ve had many complaints from Vietnam veterans about serious problems from Agent Orange exposure, and it’s taken a long time to have sufficient proof to satisfy the VA and now we have it,” said Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa, Senate Veterans Affairs Committee chairman.

By connecting the defoliant and CLL, the Institute of Medicine altered its previous finding that not enough scientific evidence existed to determine whether the two were associated. The institute is part of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers had lumped CLL with other forms of leukemia when looking at cancer rates among Vietnam veterans. But this time, the scientists examined rates of CLL separately, said Dr. Paul Engstrom, a member of the review committee and a vice president with Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia.

The scientists said although CLL is a form of leukemia, it shares some similarities with Hodgkin’s disease and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, two diseases long known to be associated with exposures to the types of chemicals used in Agent Orange and other defoliants.

Although health care is available to nearly all veterans, Principi’s decision means that veterans with CLL who were in Vietnam during the war will get disability compensation of about $2,300 a month, they won’t have to pay copayments for health care to treat CLL and will have better access to the agencies’ health services. Principi must draft rules and publish them in the Federal Register before the benefits can take effect.

Principi’s decision to extend benefits pleased veterans groups that have continued to fight for research on the illnesses suffered by veterans exposed to the defoliants.

But Rick Wiedman, Vietnam Veterans of America government relations director, said the findings are incremental and large-scale research should be funded to study veterans’ problems.

”At the rate we are going, little by little bit, we are all going to be dead,” Wiedman said.

In December 2001, Principi extended benefits to Gulf War veterans with Lou Gehrig’s disease after preliminary studies showed they were nearly twice as likely to develop amyotrophic lateral sclerosis as other military personnel are.

The Associated Press

The 8-day trip is his longest to Vietnam since he was released from the POW camp in 1973.

The Associated Press

WASHINGTON – Sen. John McCain and his family welcomed the new year while revisiting a chapter of the senator’s past, touring Vietnam, including the remnants of the notorious Hanoi Hilton, the prison where McCain suffered through much of his 5 1/2 years of captivity.

The eight-day tour was the Arizona Republican’s longest visit to the country since he was released from prison in 1973. Three of McCain’s children were visiting for the first time.

“I thought it might be nice to have my children see the country and the place where I spent so much of my time but also enjoy the attractions of a very beautiful country,” McCain said.

McCain, his wife, Cindy, and his children Meghan, 18; Jack, 16; Jimmy, 14; and Bridget, 11, mixed typical tourist fare – touring the scenic central highlands and Halong Bay and visiting Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi – with visits to the Hoa Lo prison, China Beach and Truc Bach Lake, where a seriously injured McCain was captured after his plane was shot down in 1967.

Today, just a few stark rooms remain at the Hoa Lo prison, the “Hanoi Hilton” where McCain spent three years as a prisoner of war, much of it in solitary confinement. One room contains a half-dozen photographs of servicemen who were captives there, including then-Lt. Cmdr. McCain.

“It tells about how well they lived and how much they were fed,” said Jack McCain. “It’s a little unsettling just to walk through that, just because I can’t imagine the suffering he must have gone through.”

At Truc Bach Lake there is a crude concrete statue depicting McCain being dragged from the water. An inscription notes his capture but misidentifies him as an Air Force pilot.

“It is a great insult. I was in the Navy,” said McCain, who was a third-generation naval officer.

McCain has returned to Vietnam in official capacities several times since his release. During a trip in 2000 commemorating the 25th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, the outspoken senator nearly caused an international incident by declaring the “wrong guys” had won the war. This time, he had only one official meeting, with Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung.

The bulk of the trip was for the family, and both McCain and his son, Jack, who accompanied his father and mother on the 2000 trip, were struck by Vietnam’s transformation.

“He was amazed at how much it had grown,” said Jack McCain. “He said every time he came back it just got bigger and bigger and there were more and more people. . . . I don’t think the country has a grasp of how much Vietnam has changed.”

McCain said the trip gave his family a greater understanding of Vietnam and the U.S. involvement there.

Before the trip, he said his children would ask questions about the food and conditions when he was there.

At the end of the trip, they were talking in more depth about what caused the war, why the United States was there and why it lost.

“Sometimes it seems a little like reading about ancient history,” McCain said. “I think being there they appreciated it more.”

The Associated Press

Fallout from a comment he made in 2000 seems to have been forgotten by his hosts, who hail him for his help to their nation.

The Associated Press

HANOI, Vietnam – Sen. John McCain, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam, received a warm welcome from Hanoi leaders who praised his efforts to promote reconciliation between the former enemies, officials said yesterday.

McCain, R-Ariz., is in Vietnam on a personal trip, his first since he caused a stir in 2000 during the 25th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War by declaring the “wrong guys” had won.

McCain and his family were in Vietnam for a private vacation, a U.S. Embassy official said. McCain arrived in Hanoi on Friday and was scheduled to travel to Danang and Ho Chi Minh City before leaving Thursday.

The state-run English-language Vietnam News reported that McCain met with Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, who praised the senator’s efforts to promote implementation of a trade agreement last year that lowered tariffs and opened Vietnam wider to foreign investment.

McCain, held for nearly six years as a prisoner of war, has been an outspoken supporter of normalizing diplomatic ties and helped push through the trade pact.

But he caused a fuss with comments during his visit two years ago.

“I think that they lost millions of their best people who left by boat, thousands by execution and hundreds of thousands who went to re-education camps,” McCain told reporters during the 2000 trip as he toured Ho Chi Minh City, which was known as Saigon when it was the capital of U.S.-backed South Vietnam.

His remarks irritated the Hanoi government.

But McCain has since redeemed himself in Vietnam’s eyes by backing the country’s efforts to fight a move by the American catfish industry to levy tariffs on imported Vietnamese catfish.

Catfish farmers in the Mississippi Delta have claimed Vietnam is dumping fish at below-market prices. The farmers’ lobby successfully fought to prohibit Vietnam’s use of the “catfish” label.

PHOTO CAPTION: AP file photo

This is not Sen. John McCain’s first visit to Vietnam. In this photo, taken April 25, 2000, McCain shakes hands with a Vietnamese man along the shore of Lake Truc, from which the Arizona senator and former POW was rescued after his jet was shot down over Hanoi, North Vietnam, in October 1967.

Citizen Staff

Ex-Tucsonan Capt. James A. Wheeler was shot down in ’65

By GARRY DUFFY

gduffy@tucsoncitizen.com

Thirty-seven years after he died when his aircraft was shot down over South Vietnam, Air Force Capt. James A. Wheeler has been laid to rest at home.

Wheeler was buried with military honors Saturday morning at South Lawn Cemetery, near the neighborhood where he grew up. As more than 100 people watched under a hot late-morning sun, A-10 aircraft from Davis-Monthan Air Force Base staged a flyover of the grave site in honor of the fallen warrior.

For Capt. Wheeler’s widow, Demeris; his three sons, Ray, James Jr., and Stewart; and five grandchildren he never met, the memorial service marked the end of a quest that began almost four decades ago when enemy ground fire downed Wheeler’s A-1E Skyraider aircraft on April 18, 1965, in a fiery crash thousands of miles from the desert he called home.

“He grew up here,” Demeris Wheeler, now a Dallas resident, said after the memorial service. “This was his home.”

Capt. Wheeler almost never came back to the hometown where he was born Feb. 10, 1933, where he graduated from Tucson High School in 1950, and where he briefly attended the University of Arizona before enlisting in the Air Force.

He had been in South Vietnam for about two months before his final flight and had flown 40 combat missions.

His aircraft went down after being hit over An Giang Province in South Vietnam. Demeris Wheeler was told by her husband’s wingman that the aircraft seemingly blew up in the air after its ordnance was hit and exploded again on impact.

Capt. Wheeler’s remains were in the wreckage of his aircraft for more than three decades. By the time an initial search of the crash site was conducted in 1994, little remained and nothing conclusive was found. Follow-up investigations in 1997 and 1998 turned up bone fragments and possible remains of aircraft life-support equipment.

That’s all.

But it’s enough for the Wheeler family. They’re convinced the Air Force’s investigation had indeed recovered remains of their loved one.

The family had moved to Dallas, however, and it took the Air Force until this year to locate and tell them of the recovery of the remains.

Capt. Wheeler’s sons went to Hawaii to accept and bring home his remains. At Saturday’s memorial service, they watched the Davis-Monthan honor guard carry a casket containing their father’s remains from a white hearse to a grave site in a quiet, tree-shaded corner of the cemetery, next to his parents.

A 21-gun salute, fired in three volleys by a D-M rifle unit, pierced the still air. Four A-10 aircraft flew over low from the north, one pulling out of formation to commemorate a fallen comrade. An American flag, tightly folded by a member of the honor guard, was presented to the family.

An Air Force bugler, emotionally shaken or unused to the desert heat, struggled in the playing of taps.

After the service, Demeris Wheeler said a long and trying chapter in the family’s history could be closed.

“I can’t thank them enough for what they’re done,” she said about Air Force authorities who look for her husband’s remains.

“It’s terrible to not have any remains,” she said, her voice breaking slightly. “Now I can feel a sense of closure.”

The family wasn’t alone in welcoming Capt. Wheeler home. Among those at the memorial service were U.S. Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., himself a Vietnam War veteran.

Kolbe called Capt. Wheeler “a true hero” who should serve as a model for Americans facing the troubles of today.

Blue Air Force uniforms identified personnel assigned to Davis-Monthan who were paying their respects.

About a dozen veterans of past wars also attended, to remember a brother warrior they never knew.

“I’m here to honor a veteran,” said Bill Aumock, a 79-year-old veteran of the Marine Corps and World War II. “I’m here to say, ‘Thank you for the sacrifice.’ ”

PHOTO CAPTIONS: FRANCISCO MEDINA/Tucson Citizen

ABOVE: The Wheeler family watches from the front row as airmen carry Capt. James Wheeler’s casket.

LEFT: Airmen salute during the ceremony.

Members of the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base honor guard fire a 21-gun salute at a graveside service yesterday for Capt. James Wheeler.

Readers

The Tucson Citizen invited Mike Brewer, a Vietnam War veteran who served in the Marine Corps from 1967 to 1969, to write about how a combat veteran readjusts to society after war.

If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we would find in each person’s life, sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

On July 2, 1968, one day before my 20th birthday, I was assigned to Hill 10 in the Rocket Belt, Republic of South Vietnam, not far from the Laotian border and the first strong line of defense between the Ho Chi Minh Trail and Da Nang Air Base.

My first assignment was to stand watch over a North Vietnamese prisoner – the most alluring and gorgeous woman I had ever seen. “The French Vietnamese,” our gunny sergeant told us, “are hands down the prettiest women in the world. It’s too bad she’s booby-trapped, corporal.”

For the next 15 months my Catholic education and sense of agape were submerged. My appreciation for truth and beauty was numbed and placed in cold storage for the next 394 days of raw uncertainty.

The very moment I was caught in this woman’s trance-like aura, I turned my gaze and knew I had to implement all combat training and instantly hate. Hostility was now the order of the day. Survival was the end game. We were never informed of the end prize.

No mistake here, I never lost my sense of duty to God and country. In fact, both became more intense, and I was rapidly promoted and given more responsibility. Privately I thought, “Do they all look like her? What is their end game?”

Numerous combat operations followed. As a forward observer, I witnessed the most awesome firepower ever mustered together by a unified fighting force. B-52s, napalm, Hueys and chemical warfare known as Agent Orange.

The lean, mean killing machine of the United States Marine Corps was at this point as finely tuned as an Indy 500 race car and operating at maximum rpms. The only difference between the car and my internal killing machine is that the car had an OFF switch and my brain did not.

Thirty-three years later, after bouts of insomnia, hypervigilance and rage, a few good men, including Dr. Ben Jennings and Dr. Ken Mroczek in the VA Health Care System, gave me some tools to turn OFF my switch.

That switch is now commonly known as post-traumatic stress disorder. Thanks to a new, three-week program at our local VA hospital, I now know how my killing machine works. Prior to this treatment, I was just the driver – the engine operated on its own.

Many war veterans are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. This “disorder” is, in fact, a “normal reaction to aberrant situations.” Disorder is somewhat misleading. PTSD is a new name for an old story. After the Civil War, it was called nostalgia; for WWI, it was shell shock; in WWII and Korea, it was called combat fatigue.

The core characteristics have not been altered by 300 years of poets, musicians and psychologists. While our facility to express it may be refined, the human experience is no different from what Homer emphasized in his epic, “The Iliad.”

The two common events of heavy, continuous combat are the betrayal of what’s right and the onset of the berserk state. Nothing has changed in the human heart in 27 centuries. Patriotism helps. It provides structure for our public rituals memorializing the past. Our sense of honor and commitment – two waning virtues in our time – are given a framework for identity. The common thread of combat veterans is one of the few experiences that cross all boundaries of politics and personality.

Monumentalism and memorialization of the combat experience is a good thing. Without memorials for historical decisions, we would simply have despair. We need to hold in high esteem in every memorial fashion those who chose to offer up their lives to protect our liberties.

But do not be misled. The private war that goes on in the soul of a combat veteran is not abated by ceremonial patriotism. It is as real as baldness. To salve over such a state of being with comments such as “just shed it” is akin to sending a pregnant woman to Weight Watchers.

The reason that Grampa often stared into space and had a few extra martinis is because it is no more possible to “shed it” than to shed Grampa’s baldness.

No matter what terms we use, the symptoms are the same for those who suffer, and most of these men find it easier to identify with another veteran who has had like experiences. Man was created as a physical and spiritual being. We know that physical wounds that go unattended may have debilitating consequences to the body. When a physical wound is cleansed and treated, only a scar remains.

A wounded spirit left untreated can have debilitating consequences, too. Whether from abuse, rape or war, the symptoms are the same. We need to clean the wound with fellowship and understanding until the victim is whole again and the memory is like a scar, no longer controlling the daily life and actions of the wounded.

I was blessed with a wife who knows how to clean wounds. Without her, I would have been dragged through life by the “intruder,” her name for the killing machine that was never switched off when I came home.

In “Vietnam Wives,” by Aphrodite Matsakis, my dear wife was afforded an understanding that was heretofore seldom discussed in polite and patriotic company.

“There are biological changes which occur in men when their lives are on the line. These changes minimize the warrior’s awareness of danger and of physical and psychological pain and discomfort and help him to move rapidly and powerfully . . . .

“Most (veterans) learned how to react quickly and violently to any danger, real or perceived. This quick response, however, while appropriate to the combat situation in Vietnam, was no longer useful (or condoned) upon return to the United States. Vets had to quickly unlearn the violent tendencies that had been expected of them and served them so well during the war.

“Yet, after the glow of coming home alive had passed, many veterans found themselves angrier than ever.

“First, at having been asked to fight in an unofficial war where political considerations often undercut military objectives and, second, at the U.S. public in general and at those in their immediate families who they felt failed to acknowledge, much less appreciate, their sacrifices in Vietnam.”

Armed with the understanding of how nations and a people are forged and sculpted by war, my heart turns nostalgic for the women in our lives. On this very American of all holidays, in the midst of all the memorialization and memorabilia, let us remember the Army/Navy Nurses, the USO and Red Cross volunteers of any war effort who also sacrificed their lives for the virtues of the free world.

From the Doughboys in the trenches of France to the heat of Desert Storm, wives have thrown their entire heart and soul into the “war effort” and without the counteraction of their love against our hate machines, what sort of humans would we be today?

The 19th century military theorist Karl von Clausewitz said the combat solder is “everywhere in contact with chance.”

Battle creates inexplicable events that soldiers experience as luck.

The gamut runs from amazingly good luck to devastatingly bad luck – both stain our souls.

Chance walks among us in dark fury to pause, choose and move on, with the chosen lying as found.

“The Chosen”

W.T. Edmonds

Vietnam combat veteran

Luck knows no reason, nor what’s right.

Palladas of Alexandria

Maybe one day we will be lucky enough to have a memorial for the death of hate and the advent of peace. I pray. I remember.

PHOTO CREDIT: FRANCISCO MEDINA/Tucson Citizen

CUTLINE: Delbert Daniels, 86, a Navy World War II veteran, smiles at a poster in honor of Memorial Day from a student of Mrs. Jacobs third-grade class at Holaway Elementary School. Daniels said he was going home that day and he really enjoyed being remembered by the students.

CUTLINE: Flowers stand over veterans’ graves at South Lawn Cemetery as a reminder of Memorial Day.

CUTLINE: The armed forces veterans memorial at South Lawn Cemetery.

Citizen Staff

A warrior comes home

For the family of a Tucson Air Force pilot who died 37 years ago, news that his remains have been found brings closure and a chance to give him a proper final resting place.

By PAUL L. ALLEN

pallen@tucsoncitizen.com

Ray Wheeler remembers being 8 years old and hoping that his father had not died in an Air Force crash in South Vietnam, that one day his father would come home.

“I figured, well, maybe they made a mistake, maybe he’s a prisoner,” Wheeler said. “There was another pilot with him, and he said he died. But you never give up hope.”

Wheeler, now 45, and other members of the family received information recently that the remains of his father, Air Force Capt. James A. Wheeler, have been located in South Vietnam, nearly four decades after the April 18, 1965, crash – 37 years ago tomorrow – that claimed his father’s life.

“When this (Air Force) gentleman called and said they had found the crash site and found the remains, it just floored us,” said Wheeler, who lives in the Dallas area.

Capt. Wheeler’s widow, Demeris Wheeler, also lives in Dallas. She said the crash site remains were discovered in 1998, but that she and her sons had moved, and the Air Force was unable to find them until this year.

With a catch in her voice, Demeris Wheeler recalled what her husband’s wingman told her about the crash. “He told me the plane blew up in the air, and then blew up again when it hit the ground.”

She said she was told that ground fire apparently hit ordnance on Capt. Wheeler’s aircraft, causing some of it to explode. The explosion caused the A-1E Skyraider to crash, and the impact then caused the remaining ordnance to explode.

“I was impressed (at the wreckage discovery), because all these years, they’ve kept records, knew where it was and went back to find them,” Demeris Wheeler said.

“I have three sons, and they want to bring him home.”

“Home” will be Capt. Wheeler’s final resting place in Tucson’s South Lawn Cemetery, next to his parents. His father worked out of Tucson for 40 years as a railroad engineer, piloting freight trains between Tucson and Gila Bend.

Capt. Wheeler, believed to be the first Arizonan to die in an Air Force crash in the Vietnam War, was born in Tucson on Feb. 10, 1933. He graduated from Tucson High School in 1950 and attended the University of Arizona for one semester before joining the Air Force.

He trained in Georgia and was assigned to South Vietnam as a Skyraider pilot just 60 days before his fatal crash. He had flown 40 combat missions during the two-month period.

Capt. Wheeler, who was awarded three Air Medals, was memorialized in his home town in 1982 when a Veterans of Foreign Wars post at 1541 W. Prince Road was named for him. The VFW post survived only a couple of years before financial and organizational difficulties shut it down.

A park and fountain in Lake Havasu City also are named for Capt. Wheeler.

According to Air Force reports, an initial investigation at the supposed crash site in March 1994 failed to reveal any sign of the crash. A return visit in March 1997 turned up glass shards and small pieces of fiberglass, and a subsequent examination the following spring provided bone fragments and possible remains of aircraft life-support equipment.

An Air Force report indicated that the final crash site examination began Feb. 20, 1998, and lasted two weeks. A U.S.-Vietnam team conducted an excavation near the Ong Chin Pagoda at Ba Chuc Village, Tri Ton District, An Giang Province.

The team noted evidence of recent scavenging at the site, and three witnesses told them the site had been “worked” continuously for the past 33 years. Each told investigators he had seen burned flesh immediately after the crash, but none had information about what happened to the remains.

The crash team found bone fragments, but no teeth or personal effects, according to the report. It found possible life-support equipment and recorded selected part numbers from aircraft wreckage.

“I hope for the family’s sake that this is their loved one, that hopefully they can now put it all to rest,” said Eleanor Apodaca, a Tucsonan active in the local POW-MIA organization for may years.

However, she said the lack of DNA evidence (Capt. Wheeler’s remains were not sufficient to provide DNA proof) could be cause for concern. Apodaca said there have been instances of alleged crash sites being “salted” with bogus evidence.

“Witnesses are paid for this sort of material. The Vietnamese government receives a payment. There can be payoffs involved,” said Apodaca, whose brother, Air Force Maj. Victor Apodaca, is still unaccounted for after his F-4C Phantom jet crashed in North Vietnam on June 8, 1967.

However, Capt. Wheeler’s brother, Claude Wheeler of Phoenix, said there is no doubt in his mind that the remains are those of his brother.

“The report is very, very complete. You would be amazed. I just don’t believe our government would put out something like this, send it to family members, unless they were 100 percent sure.”

He noted that the next nearest crash site, according to the Air Force, was some 70 miles distant.

Ray Wheeler and brothers James A. Wheeler Jr. and Stewart Wheeler, along with other family members, will accompany Capt. Wheeler’s remains back to Tucson for a June 8 memorial service at South Lawn. The service will include full military honors and a flyby with military aircraft.

“He was a great individual, a hell of a human being, someone we could all be proud of,” Ray Wheeler said. “I wish we could be like him. We’re going to bring closure . . . and bring him home.”

The war’s toll

U.S. troops involved

8.75 million

Killed

58,193

Wounded

153,363

Missing/unaccounted for

1,932

N. Vietnam/Viet Cong casualties

1.1 million killed

600,000 wounded

Source: Department of Defense; Agence France Presse

PHOTO CREDIT: The Associated Press

CUTLINE: Ground fire apparently hit ordnance on Capt. James A. Wheeler’s A-1E Skyraider, similar to the one pictured above, causing it to crash and explode in South Vietnam.

PHOTO CREDIT: Family photo

CUTLINE: This picture of Air Force Capt. James A. Wheeler was taken before his final flight, 37 years ago tomorrow.

MUG

CUTLINE: Capt. James A. Wheeler graduated from Tucson High School in 1950.