31 January 2009
A Dusting of Snow
(H.Ross Perot exchanges views with President George H.W. Bush with candidate Bill Clinton of Arkansas. AP Photo)
The clouds have blown over, now beyond the Chesapeake to the wide ocean. The “dusting of snow” they predicted is six inches deep on the balcony.
Dusting, my sorry butt.
The moon is closer than usual to the earth this cycle, and the chill silver glow brought a clarity to the morning that was nothing like I felt.
I sighed as I fired up the computer. I did not mean to drag everyone down the rabbit hole of John Kerry’s service and dis-service. It always amazes me how much heat can still be generated from a war that is now so long ago.
I certainly expect it from those who were there, like Rex, but even more so from those whose youth was tempered by fear and annealed in fire.
Anyway, the point of bringing up the rabbit hole that is John Kerry and the winter soldiers of Dewey Canyon III so long ago is only to frame what came later. The snow of amnesia can cover it all now, just as many who lived it choose to forget.
There are demons back there that may be best left sleeping.
Retired, with some time and energy on his hands, he threw himself into good works with the associations that celebrated his interests and his life. At first he moved north and south, with strong connections in Rector, Pennsylvania, and his winter place in Fort Myers Beach, Florida.
He shaped and was shaped by his associations. Those included the Navy League and the Naval Institute, or course, as well as the usual litany of former intelligence groups, including the one to which I belong.
In addition, he stayed very close to the veterans who has executed SEALORDS so long ago on the brown waters of the Mekong Delta. Those were the Patrol Craft Sailors Association, and the PBR Forces Veterans Association. They viewed with alarm the nutroll that was the POW-MIA scuffle in the early 1990s, which they viewed as nothing less than the march toward normalization of relations with the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
Which was quite true. Their issue was over the number of Americans who were being held in Laos and Cambodia when Operation Homecoming was completed in 1973. At the time, there were estimates that nearly two hundred POWS would come from the Khmer Rouge and the Pathet Lao.
Despite those hopes, none ever appeared, and the failure of Dr. Kissinger to act decisively on the matter at the time left a horrendous feeling of betrayal with the families of those who were still missing.
The fire was fanned over the next few years, and Congress responded with the establishment the Select Committee on POW-MIA Affairs, a loser of an assignment that John Kerry, John McCain and took on, but which was lashed by hostility that was astonishing in its virulence.
Factor in Ross Perot. We have largely forgotten him now, but his whacky campaign with running mate retired Vice Admiral James Stockdale, the most legitimate hero of them all, was another bit of astonishment. Perot actually led the polls at one point with 39% against the elder Bush and Bill Clinton. He was widely considered to have own at least one of the Presidential debates.
Whether he was responsible for the Clinton victory is debatable, of course, but his out-and-in candidacy galvanized sectors of both the liberal and conservative bases for a time. It certainly highlighted the MIA debate in a way that lingered through the rest fo the decade, even after on-the-ground reporting indicated that no Americans were actually left alive.
After his wife Derlie passed away in 1998, Rex was lost. As a pal told me later, he was the sort of man who needed the company of a good woman, and Jinny was an eligible widow. The struck up a friendship that blossomed into a winter romance, split between Rex’s place in Florida and her fantasy castle in Rancho Sante Fe in the north county of San Diego.
Their time out west made it convenient for Rex to plug in with the Brown Water Alumni. The association with the well-organized operational veterans naturally brought the memory of those who had sacrificed so much to the fore. There were so few Naval Intelligence Liaison Officers that no equivalent organization devoted to them existed. In fact, no consolidated list of who they were had ever been compiled, since they came from every walk of Navy life, and most left the service at the first opportunity when their war was done.
The candidacy of John Kerry for President in 2004 provided a lightning rod for the Swifties and the POW-MIA community. For all the reasons we have examined over the last painful month, it galvanized every emotion. It was shortly after Kerry’s defeat- first things first, as Rex preferred- that he and I became co-conspirators.
Not for a political cause, but for the memory of Jack Graf.
It would have been in 2005 or so that we first talked, and the first time I cast about for information about Jack. I had heard his name before, but knew nothing about him.
The story, circa 2005, was what follows, compiled from US Liaison teams and the recollections of the enemy, Colonel General Tran Van Tra, on the matter of John G. Graf (Missing Case: 1523)
(Col-Gen Tran Van Tra, DRV Liaison to Operation Homecoming)
With regard to the exchange of prisoners in accordance with the agreement, we succeeded in securing the release of our people who had been captured during the war. Maj Nguyen Thi Dung, a member of our military delegation, was responsible for the POW exchange. She was very active and aggressive, visiting all of the puppet prisons, from Bien Hoa to Con Dao and Phu Quoc. She was the only female member of the four military delegations, spoke French and English fluently, was attractive and polite, and struggled resolutely, which won the respect of the Americans and puppets. We were proud of her….We returned all American and puppet POW's we were detaining….
From the U.S. Archives:
On November 15, 1969, Commander Jack Graf, a U.S. Navy intelligence officer, was accompanying U.S. Army Captain Robert White on a flight south of Saigon. Their aircraft was hit by hostile small arms fire and crashed along the coast in Vinh Binh Province. Both crewmen parachuted to safety, were captured by local guerilla forces, and held in a provincial level prison. Both crewmen were initially reported as missing and then reclassified as POWs.
Commander Graf escaped from the prison circa February 1971 and was never seen again by Captain White. Captain White survived in the Vinh Binh prison. In 1972, a captured People's Army of Vietnam document from Military Region 3 in the southern Vietnam delta identified him as the only American POW in captivity in the delta who had not been evacuated to the Region 3 Headquarters controlled prison in the U-Minh mangrove swamp in Kien Giang Province.
Captain White's name did not appear on the Provisional Revolutionary Government's list of Americans to be repatriated during Operation Homecoming. Then, at the end of March 1973, People's Army of Vietnam General Tran Van Tra advised U.S. officers with the Joint Military Commission that Captain White had been omitted from the list and was to be repatriated. He was released to U.S. officials on April 1, 1973, the last American POW released during Operation Homecoming. Upon repatriation, he stated he was led to believe during the war that Commander Graf was still alive but had been told prior to his release that Commander Graf had died.
Wartime records recovered from the Vinh Binh area included the interrogation reports of Captain White and Commander Graf. After Operation Homecoming, Commander Graf was declared killed in action, body not recovered, based on a presumptive finding of death.
U.S. investigators in Vietnam recently interviewed former staff of the provincial prison who described Commander Graf's escape. His body was recovered later and it was evident he had drowned. His body was buried in a river bank which later eroded in flooding, washing away the area where his body had been buried.”
So, twenty-two years after that fact, that is where I came into the movie. We will round out the details of Rex’s last mission this week, in time for his interment under the dusting of snow that covers Arlington National Cemetery.
Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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