Status of soldier sought by mother> Pentagon offers conflicting reports

JAY — Like flashbacks of the Tet offensive, Joan Dunham’s telephone call came to Tim Getz two weeks ago without warning.

Her anxiety was more discernible than her blitz of words that tumbled into an incoherent ramble over the phone. Something about her son, a Marine presumed dead in Vietnam in 1969. Something about a lie and letters from the government that offered no proof.

Getz, a machine tender who works the swing shift at Otis Specialty Papers in Jay, told Dunham to wait until he got off work when he would have time to look at her letters personally. A few hours later, he had seen everything she had received from the Pentagon. His only reaction was a profound sadness.

“My heart was breaking,” said Getz, who is also a past commander at the Jay VFW post. “It took me back, just flashbacks of those times like Tet. It changes your life after you’ve been in Vietnam. I refuse to let it get to me. But then things like this happen and it pulls the rug out from under you.”

Gone, but never forgotten, the Vietnam War continues to churn out little horror stories that prompt people in places like Jay to refamiliarize themselves with far-off places like the Quang Tri Province.

For 23 years, Dunham believed that was where her son, U.S. Marine Cpl. Bruce Edward Kane, was killed when his helicopter gunship was shot down by the Viet Cong. There were witnesses according to the Navy’s letter, soldiers who had watched Kane swim from the chopper that had crashed in a river.

Getz looked at another letter received by Dunham in 1992. That one said that, in fact, Kane hadn’t died in Vietnam. Instead, his helicopter had been shot down over Laos — 200 miles from Quang Tri Province and in a country where the United States was not authorized to conduct military excursions. He died there at the hands of hostile forces, according to the Navy.

Dunham and her family had uneasily put Kane’s memory to rest two years ago, then they received a third communication from the Department of Defense this month. It was a two-page letter, stating that Kane’s status had been changed from “killed in action” to “last seen alive.”

It was too much for the Marine’s mother, whose mind became dizzied by images of a son she had not seen for a generation, working in some forced labor camp in southeast Asia or enduring some other living nightmare. Pentagon officials later apologized as they tried to explain that Kane’s name was included on a “discrepancy list” of war casualties about whom more information is being sought on the strength of a request under the Freedom of Information Act.

Responding to Dunham’s request for help, Getz, and other members of the Frank L. Mitchell Post 3335 of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Jay, tried to find some answers. They located Bob Jones of Meredith, N.H., chairman of the Northeast MIA-POW Network. He said Kane’s initial casualty report may have substituted Vietnam for Laos to conceal the presence of U.S. combat operations in that country.

But no one — including officials at the Pentagon — has been able to explain how Kane’s name could have appeared in a file that listed him “last seen alive.” It was, according to Pentagon spokeswoman Beverly Baker, never intended for anyone to presume that Kane was still alive. The Department of Defense has been unable to develop valid evidence indicating that any U.S. soldiers remain in Indochina and has not altered Kane’s official “killed in action” status.

“What they did was inappropriate and very traumatic to me,” Dunham said Tuesday. “Now they say he’s a priority. But I thought the priority was in 1969 when I got that letter and they said he was dead. It’s a lie. How could they do that? Why did they say they were looking for him in South Vietnam when he was in Laos?”

The Dunhams and members of the post had called a press conference Tuesday at the Jay VFW hall. It was, the Marine’s mother said, her way of “making waves.” How her son’s name wound up on the “last seen alive” list was one of the things she wanted to know from the Pentagon. An apology was certainly another demand she had for the Navy.

There were references to other soldiers whose names were on the “discrepancy list” and she wanted to know who they were and if their families also had been contacted. More than anything else, she wanted to know how the Pentagon could be so sure that her son is dead, if it placed his name on a list that had him “last seen alive.”

“I am not going to let it go,” she said to the small gathering of reporters. “They opened up that grave and I’m going to keep it open. I’m not going to allow them to get away. I want to find out how many other people were lied to.”

While Getz and Dunham attempt to generate public interest through letter-writing campaigns and press conferences, a Perry Vietnam veteran is trying to use some old contacts to find out more about the Kane case. Mike Williams, the state chairman of the VFW’s committee to investigate prisoner-of-war and missing combatant complaints, is more than a little suspicious about the evolving chain of events in the Kane case.

He knows of no others like it.

“We want to help this family get to the truth and when the truth comes out, obtain an apology from the United States — not only to them, but to the whole country for the lies they have told us about Vietnam,” Williams said. “I hate to say it, but when it comes to POW-MIAs, the government would like to whitewash this and get it out of the way. But they have to come clean.”