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We Were Not Forgotten

The American helicopters were flying low and fast under the cover of darkness. Captain Dick Meadows, a Green Beret officer, peered out into the inky night. Even for a seasoned Special Ops warrior, the tension was almost unbearable. The mission, code named “Ivory Coast,” had been months in planning and involved every branch of service—the CIA, the NSA, all the way up to the president. If successful it would be the most important operation of the war.

Earlier that year, spy planes had uncovered the location of a hidden POW camp at Son Tay, 23 miles west of Hanoi, where 70 to 80 GIs were believed held. A rescue attempt was ordered, and the Green Berets spent six months meticulously planning the extraction, even building a full-size mock-up of the camp in Florida.

Finally, on the night of November 20, 1970, more than 100 support aircraft and six operation helicopters got under way. The strike force approached Son Tay undetected at 0218 on 21 November 1970. Simultaneously, the US Navy began a massive diversion operation over Haiphong Harbor.

The first phase of the rescue plan called for an HH-53 helicopter to overfly the prison courtyard and destroy two guard towers with gunfire, a task executed perfectly. From his vantage point in the lead assault chopper, Dick Meadows watched as another Huey cut down the northwest tower with 4,000 rounds from its minigun. Next, an HH-3 was intentionally crashed inside the Son Tay compound. Raid planners believed the aircraft would fit, but six months of additional tree growth snared the helicopter as it arrived, causing a harder-than-expected landing and one of only two US injuries of the raid, a broken ankle.

Meadows leaped out, shouting through a bullhorn, “We’re Americans. Keep your heads down…We’ll be in your cells in a minute.” The 14 men in the crashed HH-3 were tasked to neutralize the compound guards and immediately begin freeing prisoners; the assault team’s automatic weapons cut the guards to pieces. Meadows’ men fought their way into the prison building, looking for the POWs. But there were none.

At this moment, the only miscue of the raid came into play: a navigation error landed the largest part of the strike force—22 men, including Colonel Simons—at the “Secondary School” 400 meters south of the main Son Tay compound. The raiders encountered minimal resistance at the Son Tay compound itself, but Simons and the men at the Secondary School found themselves engaged in a firefight with soldiers who were “much taller than Orientals and not wearing normal NVA [North Vietnamese Army] dress.”

Simons and his men had stumbled on a major force of Chinese or Russian advisors a mere 400 meters from the prison; the Americans decimated more than 100 occupants of the Secondary School before rejoining the main strike force and initiating a withdrawal. The raiding force flawlessly executied their well-rehearsed plan and successfully switching to a contingency plan after the unplanned landing at the Secondary School.

After 27 minutes on the ground, the team climbed into extraction choppers and bugged out. The Special Forces team killed more than 200 NVA and took no KIAs. But the army had spent so long planning the raid that the Vietnamese had long since moved the POWs. There was no one to rescue.

Although no prisoners were rescued, the raid focused world attention on the plight of the prisoners of war (POWs), raised their morale and resulted in improved living conditions for all U.S. prisoners of the North Vietnamese. The men of the Joint Task Force earned the admiration of their countrymen for risking their lives in an attempt to bring freedom to others.

By 1970, the US had secured the names of over 500 Americans held in North Vietnam prisons. Many more were missing and presumed captured. Reports of the cruelty suffered by these men at the hands of their barbarous captors were received along with reports of resultant deaths from various sources. Anxiety, concern and anger among the next of kin, friends of the captives, commanders and government officials were very much in evidence throughout this country. What was being done to alleviate the growing concern?

Negotiations were being conducted in Paris on a sporadic basis depending on the mood of the North Vietnamese representatives. An attempt was made to reach an agreement whereby an exchange of prisoners of war could be made. After over two years of such negotiations, the results were ZERO. The mood of the country demanded that something be done to help these suffering POWs.

Jay Jayroe, former Son Tay POW, recalls - "When the fireworks went off that clear night in November of 1970, we knew exactly what was happening - a raid on Son Tay was in progress! Some fifty-two of us had been moved from Hanoi to Son Tay in late 1968 and had immediately recognized it as a place for escape of rescue. During the following months we did what we could to indicate our presence there, hoping our efforts would result in success via US airborne surveillance. However, for reasons unknown to us, in July, 1980 our captors moved us a short distance to a newly opened complex, where we were aggregated with other POWs from outlying prison camps. I do not believe the Vietnamese suspected an impending rescue attempt, because the move was quite routine with no sense of urgency.

The raid, as we have learned, was perfectly executed and highly successful with the exception of one minor detail - no one was rescued. But, short of being there, one cannot imagine the positive effect it had on those of us who were destined to spend some two and a half years more as POWs. One should recall that it had been two years since the US had stopped bombing North Vietnam, and our faith was being severely tried. But the Son Tay rescue attempt dispelled all doubt: We Were Not Forgotten; Our Country Cared!! During the hard times ahead, our renewed faith in God and Country served us well."

As soon as she saw the pile of old U.S. military ID tags in a dusty, Ho Chi Minh City museum display case, Stacey Hansen knew that she had to bring them home. "They belonged to my American brothers who had fought and died in Vietnam," she says. "I wasn't going to leave them behind."

Born during the Vietnam War, the petite 35-year-old paramedic and firefighter had long been fascinated by the stories of the many veterans she worked with in San Jose, Calif. Upon discovering the military IDs — or "dog tags," as they're commonly called — during a solo backpacking trek in Southeast Asia in June 2000, Hansen vowed to recover as many as possible. "When I read the names, I realized that each of them had a mother, a family, maybe a wife. Even if I could return just one tag to a vet or a family member, that would be worth whatever it took to get it."

A taxi driver who spoke a little English wrote a note for Hansen, explaining her quest in Vietnamese. She carried it into shops, kiosks and restaurants. "In Vietnam, everything is for sale," Hansen explains. "The dog tags were meaningless trinkets there, but poor people hunted for them because they thought that Americans might pay for them."

In Da Nang, a waitress in a bar introduced Hansen to a mysterious woman named Lien. "I got onto the back of her moped not knowing who she was or where she would take me," she recalls. "I prayed that God would watch over me, because I was trying to do a good thing." In what seemed to be an old military complex off-limits to the general public, Lien badgered a gruff man in a Vietnamese uniform into showing Hansen a sack filled with dog tags. After tough haggling, Hansen bought them all for about $2 apiece.

She says, "I felt like I was freeing these guys. The tags belonged in the U.S., not in a foreign Communist country. That night I laid more than 300 dog tags on the white sheet of my hotel bed." Bent, rusted and smeared with red dirt that stained her hands, the tags filled Hansen with great sadness for what she calls "a forgotten generation of heroes who got a really raw deal during and after the war."

Hansen toted 563 tags back to the U.S. and took 10 to a local veterans' center, which verified their authenticity by matching the names and serial numbers with official records. In 2001, she created VietnamDogTags.com and began posting the names from her tags and about 300 more given to her by a Vietnam veteran. Hansen has since returned 223 of the tags, mostly after time-consuming online searches and phone calls.

Vernon Biossat, 57, of Las Vegas, a former Marine says, "It was incredible to get her call out of the blue last December. The last time I wore my dog tag was Veterans Day 1966, when a grenade tore into me while I was on a patrol. I died — my heart actually stopped beating — and came back. My dog tag still had 37 years of dried blood caked all over it. It is now my most prized possession."

So far Hansen has returned seven tags to relatives of soldiers killed in action. "Holding his dog tag was like touching Steven again," says Brad Zucroff of Palo Alto, Calif., who was 16 when his brother died in Vietnam in 1968. "What an incredible journey it made! You could tell it had been wet, stained, covered in mud. To me, the dog tag is a relic of Steven's past, of my past, of our nation's past. It's something to look at to try to get some perspective on why my brother died."

Just as meaningful to many recipients is Hansen's one-woman recovery mission. "Several vets have told me that what matters more than getting back their dog tags is the fact that somebody cares," she says. "It doesn't matter how you feel about a war. I mean, I'm against the war in Iraq. What's important to remember is that you can be against a war but not against the soldiers." "No one ever cared about us vets at the time or since," says Vernon Biossat, "but this wonderful young woman who wasn't even alive when I was wounded cares enough to do something for me and other vets. That's amazing."

Dr. Robert Ursano, the chairman of the department of psychiatry at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences and an expert on post-war stress in veterans says, "To be remembered is what makes a veteran feel valued, whether it's by a grateful nation or a young woman who brings home an important part of one's history."

As one veteran's son wrote in a thank-you note to Stacey Hansen for the tag she had returned to his father: "What you gave him was so much more than a dog tag. It was the homecoming that he never received."

Dianne Hales. May 23, 2004. She Brings Them Home. PARADE Magazine. May 31, 2004.

Vietnam: TV History 7 Volume Set A six-year project from conception to completion, this 13-hour video library carefully analyzes the costs and consequences of this controversial but intriguing war. From the first episode to the last, Vietnam provides a detailed visual and oral account of the war that changed a generation and continues to color American thinking on many military and foreign policy issues. Contents include: The First Vietnam War 1945-54; LBJ Goes to War 1964-65; Americas Enemy 1954-67; Vietnamizing the War 1968-73; Cambodia and Laos; Peace is at Hand 1968-73, and more. Recommended! BandW and color. Total running time: 13 hours.

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