News – The Fifth Field

When We Ran Out of Coffins

This past Memorial Day I was thinking about those who didn’t come home. We’re talking big numbers, really big. About 407,000 in World War II. For Korea, it was 36,574; but we also had some 7,500 Missing in Action. And I’ll bet my bottom dollar that a bunch of those missing actually died in North Korean and Chinese prisoner of war camps. Korea and Vietnam were called “conflicts” not wars, by that was no comfort for the 58,220 who died in Vietnam, which had its share of additional missing in action too. Both are the reason we fly the POW-MIA flag today.

Then we get to wars the kids have heard about. It would take too long to list deaths around the world during the Cold War, which certainly wasn’t “cold” for those who died. Lebanon, Gulf War, Mogadishu, Iraq War, Afghanistan. And they won’t be the last.

For every war, military staffs – Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines – make estimates on what will be needed for the fight. How many divisions? Fighter squadrons? How many tanks are we going to need? Fuel? Ammunition? Aircraft carriers? Heavy bombers? Food? These estimates are critical, because of the military axiom: “Losers fight the last war late. Winners fight the next war early.” Robert E. Lee fought the American Civil War the same way Napoleon would have fifty years before; he lost. Ulysses Grant fought it as the first Industrial Revolution War – trains, telegraphs, ironclad sail-less ships, huge armaments works, repeating firearms; he won.

Never, ever, ever, bet your bottom dollar that these estimates will turn out to actually be accurate projections. Because on Desert Storm, when the firing finally stopped, we were really, really low on chow. How low? Low enough to start wandering through abandoned Iraqi bunkers looking for canned goods, figuring if the can hadn’t been tampered, it was probably OK to open – and as I’m here writing today, it must have been fine (Although when I found two live cobras hissing at me in a bunker, I stopped searching!) But the craziest thing was that General Norm “Stormin’ Norman” Schwartzkopf put out an imperial edict that EVERY soldier in theater would get at least one hot meal per day. So the debate began; what constitutes a “hot meal”? Which ended up as a hard-boiled egg and a hot cup of coffee! You get that, and you’ve had your hot meal, so write your Congressman if you don’t like it.

But all of that pales in comparison to what happened with the US Army in Europe during World War II. It had to do with anticipating casualties, specifically deaths. In combat, outside of accidents or illness, there are two death categories, Killed in Action or Died of Wounds, although it doesn’t mean a hill of beans which one if it’s you. Killed in Action means you died before they got you to a medical facility; if you expire after docs have started working on you, you Died of Wounds. It’s a Purple Heart to your family either way.

But the estimates at the beginning of WWII of anticipated dead were low. How low? Well the War Department, at the beginning of the war, put out an imperial edict that you had to be at least nineteen years old to be deployed overseas in any service. Yes, there were young folks who fudged their age, or clerks who put an incorrect birth year on an enlistment form. But official policy to go overseas was 19. Until it wasn’t. Because actual losses were higher. That hit a breaking point in October 1944, and on November 1, the War Department authorized the shipment of infantry and armored replacements overseas who were younger than nineteen years old. That meant that “The Crusade in Europe” was about to become “The Boys Crusade.”

The low estimates on anticipated casualties also affected something else – coffins. In Europe, we didn’t have enough. Let me put it in perspective. In the last eleven months of World War II, in just little old Company B of the 39th Infantry Regiment in the 9th Infantry Division, there were five times as many soldiers killed as died in the entire 3rd Armored Division on Desert Storm. So what did we do? Well, we temporarily buried our fallen in Europe in interim military cemeteries in places like France, Belgium and the Netherlands. And since we didn’t have enough coffins, we buried the boys in mattress covers.

After the war, we fixed the situation, opening each grave and reburying the bodies in proper wooden coffins. Then, depending on the family’s wishes, those coffins were interred in permanent US military cemeteries in Europe, or returned to Hometown, USA. To keep a record of those transfers, graves registration personnel would cut a small section of each mattress cover, pencil in the soldiers name and service number, and forward those fragments up the chain of command.

Where did those little cloth squares end up? I found dozens in what are termed Individual Deceased Personnel Files (IDPF), in the National Personnel Records Center and National Archives at St. Louis. This is the one for Staff Sergeant John Gourlay in Company B. He was initially interred on October 16, 1944 at temporary cemetery Henri-Chapelle #1 in Plot: M, Row: 2, Grave: 39. After the war, his remains were transferred to the Henri-Chapelle American Cemetery in Plot: A, Row: 12, Grave: 36.

I saw these little pieces of cloth; I touched them; I held them. The dark reddish-brown dots on this one are blood stains from John eighty years ago. The swatches haven’t been washed, because you don’t wash something that when you hold it, your hands start to shake and what goes through your mind is that you just might be touching an American version of the Shroud of Turin.

One Last Chance

They are POWs and MIAs: Prisoners of War and Missing in Action. In the United States, Prisoners of War are our brothers and sisters, who were captured by the enemy – pretty straight forward. Missing in action, on the other hand, may be the most misunderstood casualty classification, as it can mean several different things. A soldier initially listed MIA, may have been killed, or captured by the enemy, or deserted. It can be transitory; a soldier may at first be declared MIA. but later the enemy announces that they have the soldier as a POW, and that could take a long time, or never come at all. It can even occur when a wounded, unconscious soldier, who has lost his dog tags, is evacuated to an American medical facility. His identity is temporarily unknown, and if his unit does not know what happened to him, they report him as MIA, even though he really isn’t.

At the end of World War II, 79,000 Americans remained unaccounted for; the bulk MIA. Many MIA had, in fact, been killed, but their remains never recovered. Knowing that each family must come to closure, after the war, the US military waited one year after the soldier was first declared missing in action, and, if remains still had not been found, the War Department declared that he was deceased, in part because both Germany and Japan were occupied and their POW camps no longer existed. Many families disagreed and spent decades hoping their loved one would someday walk through their door.

The War Department is now the Department of Defense. Within DoD, the Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) was established to manage prisoner of war/missing in action personnel affairs. In 2015, DPMO, and the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, merged into the new Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) to streamline accounting for missing US personnel from World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Cold War, Gulf Wars, to recent conflicts.

They do an outstanding job identifying remains of US military personnel around the world, using DNA and other cutting-edge forensic technology, so that many families can finally reach closure. Part of the reason for that great work is that concerning actual identification of remains, politics takes a back seat. However, coming to grips concerning US military personnel, captured by America’s enemies, but who have never returned home and may still be alive, is riddled with inertia and political roadblocks. In fact, the way that America has dealt with her recent POWs is enough to make George Patton, Omar Bradley, Hap Arnold, and Bull Halsey wanna puke.

We talk a good game – speeches on National POW/MIA Recognition Days – pontificating “former foes that have become friends,” but let’s get real; Germany and Japan do not have any American POWs and haven’t since 1945. The bad guys, Russia (formerly the USSR), North Korea, Vietnam, and the People’s Republic of China) have never been tight friends of America. How did they get our folks? In World War II, some US air crew flew “shuttle” missions into the USSR – then our ally against the Nazis – refueled, and flew back to England. But not all of them returned, so what happened to them? According to the Veterans’ Administration, we had 7,140 POW’s during the Korean War. Of these, 4,418 returned to the US, some 2,701 died in the camps, and 21 refused repatriation. How do we know 2,701 actually perished? We don’t.

DPAA lists that 684 POWs returned home alive from the Vietnam War. But a 1979 Defense Intelligence Agency account stated that a former North Vietnamese intelligence officer reported that about 700 Americans still remained in Vietnam as a “strategic asset.” That’s six years after the war ended. We can argue till the cows come home which of the thirteen US Presidents – Republican and Democrat – knew how many of our soldiers were clinging to life in hellholes in Russia (Vorkuta), North Korea (The Death Valley Camp), Vietnam (Briarpatch) and the PRC (Air Pirate Prison). Or didn’t want to know. Maybe they thought that the “greater good” for America was to say, “I know nothing; nothing personal – just wouldn’t be prudent.”

How many POWs are still alive? How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? People I trust, including physicians – who understand prolonged malnutrition, exposure to the elements, disease, etc. – offer that given their ages and situation, it is likely none are alive, unless they later assimilated into the area and made new lives. But I have seen an official report, that a repatriated American, “reported that, etched into the wall of Krasnaya Presnya Prison in Moscow, he saw the name of a Major Roberts or Robbins, with his American address and the inscription, “I am sick and don’t expect to live through this….”. To borrow a famous line: “So you’re telling me there’s a chance?” Yes, I am. It may just be one POW, but that’s not the point.

The way I figure it, we have one last chance to maybe set things right – even if only one American POW remains alive to come home. President Trump is the most unconventional President the US has ever had. Some folks like that; some folks don’t. Many of his ideas are not just out of the box – they are light-years outside. He’s a dealer. What better time for the “art of the deal” than for the President to privately meet with these leaders to return all living POWs to us right now. We aren’t interested in assigning blame, or reparations, or shown where they are buried with some cock-and-bull story of how they died. It’s really simple, those still alive and held against their will – we want them home, now! So here’s the deal…