For a Few Hours, One Day a Year

Every year, on the last Monday of May, America pulls out all the stops and pays tribute to its sons and daughters felled by war. Some do it because the dead are family members; some remember friends; some do it "just because". The graves in countless cemeteries across the nation are bedecked with small American flags. There are parades... speeches... ceremonies....

Then it's off to the nearest sale on air conditioners! Fire up the grill! Head to the beach! Forget the solemnity of earlier in the day; forget the millions of reasons, all lying beneath small American flags, that this day is set aside every year!

Sadly, there are dedicated men and women, American servicemembers, who have been forgotten - almost betrayed - by their fellow Americans, just because they served or died in a war that no one wants to talk about: Vietnam.

photograph by Michael Calo, May 1997

WHAT is GOING ON!?

There are still a large number of American servicemen and servicewomen who served in Vietnam who are listed as Missing In Action or Killed In Action/Body Not Recovered. There is strong evidence to support the belief that North Vietnam has many of these Americans still held as prisoners of war - though the war has been over for more than 20 years - or either posesses, or has information about, the remains of those killed in action. These courageous Americans fought simultaneously in two wars: one was in far-off Vietnam, where they went - some perhaps with reservation - to do their duty; the other was here, in the United States, where these servicepeople were continually attacked figuratively and literally by those who opposed the war.

So what did these loyal Americans get in return for serving their country amid such hostility? When the "lucky" ones returned home they were scorned, spat upon, called "baby killers" by total strangers. The other "lucky" ones, though that is hard to say with any conviction, came home in body bags - but at least they came home. The most haunting casualties of the Vietnam War are those who never returned - and whose fates are still unknown to their families, their friends, their neighbors.

It is my belief that more can and must be done to account for those Americans who have all but disapperaed from the American memory. To that end I have adopted a missing American servicemember and am making his name known among our elected representatives in Washington as I seek information as to his ultimate fate. Please say a quiet thank you to, and meet, my adopted American Hero:

Major
David Irvin Wright
United States Air Force

Name:Wright, David Irvin
Rank/branch:Major, United States Air Force
Unit:14th Tactical Reconnaisance Squadron
Udorn AFB, Thailand
DOB:30 January 1930
DOL:13 November 1970
Status:KIA, body not recovered

What we know

On November 13, 1970, Maj. David I. Wright, pilot, and 1Lt. William W. Bancroft, Jr., navigator, departed their base at Udorn, Thailand on an aerial reconnaissance mission over North Vietnam. During the mission, while just east of Tan Ap in Ha Tinh Province, their RF4C Phantom jet was seen to explode and crash while making a low level pass over the objective target.

On November 18th U.S. intelligence received information indicating that Wright and Bancroft were dead, and they were officially listed as Killed in Action/Body Not Recovered.

What they're doing

In 1980, a Vietnamese defector testified before Congress that Vietnam was stockpiling hundreds of sets of American remains; Congress believed him. (Since the war ended, some 200 sets of remains said to be those of missing Americans have been returned by the Vietnamese - at politically advantageous moments).

Many of those known to have died as captives have not returned. Scores of men like Wright and Bancroft, on whom it is felt that information is available to the Vietnamese, have not returned. More troubling than the fact that we may have information available as to Major Wright's fate and the location of his body is the fact that the same defector also testified that Vietnam holds live American prisoners and that he had seen them. Congress says he is lying, although nearly 10,000 reports have been received regarding missing Americans in Southeast Asia.

I have written a letter to my Congressman, Wayne T. Gilchrest - a former Vietnam POW himself - voicing strong oppositoin to normalizing relations with Vietnam and requesting information on Major Wright's status. When and if I get a response I will post it here; I'll keep writing letters until I get an answer that I, as an American citizen who remembers, can accept. In the meantime, I urge each of YOU to write to your on elected official sin Washington and express opposition to normalized relations with Vietnam. Need a reason? Here's what crumbled my cookies:

Know who said those things? Le Van Bang, Vietnam ambassador to the United States. The discussion, reported in the Baltimore Sun of June 10, 1997, was relating to "American" businesses who were dcrying the lack of progress in opening up an Asian "economic tiger" and complaining about the poor conditions under which they have to operate in Vietnam - high costs, corruption, lack of patent protection, and rampant piracy of copyrighted goods!

Perhaps these poor, put-upon American businesses (such as Coca-cola, which does a $125-million-a-year business in Vietnam at 13 cents a bottle, and Nike, which pays their Vietnamese factory workers $450 a year) would prefer to trade places with Major Wright and Lieutenant Bancroft?

Le Van Bang was correct about us not looking much into the future. Until the past is resolved and every American servicemember missing in Vietnam is acounted for, there is no future!

YOU
can make a difference!

The Vietnam war permeated the consciousness of every American citizen who read a newspaper, watched a television set, or listened to a transistor radio in the 1960s and early 1970s. Every one of us had, or knows someone who had, a family member who served - and possibly died - in the armed forces during the Vietnam war; I know three. I was only 10 at the time so I didn't pay attention to the spirits of the store owner before his son left for the war. But when I saw him in the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas 1967 - head drooping, feet shuffling across the worn tiled floor of his small corner shop, and a voice barely audible above the soft hum of the flourescent lights in the store - I saw what the war did to the people left behind. It is that memory of the store owner, still haunting me thrity years later, which stirred me to adopt Major Wright (which in itself is an eerie coincidence: I just asked for a name - I didn't ask for a hometown or a branch of service, but Major Wright, like that store owner's son, was in the Air force and from Annapolis - my home town).

The Vietnam war is not over...not by a long shot; not until every possible serious effort has been made to account for those American service people who are still numbered among the missing. If you, too, know someone who served or who had family who served in Vietnam and came home, adopt a POW or MIA servicemember; help get answers for those whose loved ones have yet to return. It's easy: just

click on the MIA bracelet

We owe it to them!

Thank you for taking the time to read about a fallen American Hero

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Last updated Tuesday, September 30, 1997