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July 04, 2006
Pentagon's MIA claim doesn't end daughter's search
By AUDREY PARENTE
Staff Writer
HOLLY HILL -- During the fury of the Vietnam War, three American special
forces soldiers on a covert mission were left behind in the jungle to face
enemy fire.
Ronda Brown-Pitts photo
Master Sgt. George R. Brown was last seen March 28, 1968.
The rope escape ladder to their rescue helicopter had broken. The helicopter
veered away from enemy flack as Viet Cong closed in around the men on the
ground.
Declassified military records from the Vietnam War show that March 28, 1968,
was the last time anyone saw Master Sgt. George Ronald Brown, Sgt. 1st Class
Alan Boyer and Sgt. 1st Class Charles G. Huston alive.
Military officials have identified a tooth belonging to Brown, but questions
linger regarding whether it is truly his.
One Holly Hill man who still wonders about Brown's fate has worn an MIA/POW
bracelet bearing his name for more than 10 years. Mark Barker, a police
commander with the Holly Hill Police Department, became fascinated with the
incident after receiving the bracelet in return for a donation to a family
support organization. He began studying military records and even contacted
the missing soldier's oldest daughter, Ronda Brown-Pitts.
Recently, Barker learned from the Pentagon that the military's plan was to
inter remains identified as Browns' this month at Arlington National
Cemetery in Virginia. Instead, the remains will be delivered to the daughter
in Dayton, Texas.
Brown-Pitts, who was 6 when her father went missing, believes her father
deserves every honor, but declined the Arlington burial. She wants to know
what really happened to her father in the jungles of Laos and questions the
validity of his "remains."
The military gave her $4,800 to buy a burial vault, and she will receive a
full-sized casket containing the tooth.
Retired Col. Larry Greer, spokesman for the Pentagon's POW/MIA office, says
the tooth "compares to a radiograph of his -- that is a dental X-ray," and
"that is as close as a fingerprint."
But Brown-Pitts says dental records provided to her don't match because her
father's tooth had a filling, and the tooth recovered did not.
"When I questioned them further on this, they claimed that many of his
dental records were lost," she says. "Although I demanded a DNA test it was
refused on the basis that it would desecrate the body."
The military official says testing the tooth would violate military policy
of "not doing destructive testing on the remains if that would destroy all
the remains." And a spokesman from a DNA lab testing facility backs the
military's policy, saying a test would require breaking the tooth, with
"only a small chance" of obtaining conclusive evidence. The test's cost
would be about $1,000, says Steve Smith from Gene Tree, based in Salt Lake
City.
Barker says military research suggests a rescue team sent in three days
after the incident may have been dropped in the wrong place. But no search
for Brown and the others -- who were ordered to plant wiretaps along the Ho
Chi Minh Trail several miles from Tchepone, Laos -- began until years later.
Nearly a decade after the battle, Brown was officially declared "presumed
dead."
A memorial for Brown then took place in Holly Hill, because that's where his
mother -- Mamie Nell Brasier -- lived. She has since died. Brown's daughter,
then a teenager, attended the service but never returned to the Daytona
Beach area. An empty grave for Brown still exists at Daytona Memorial Park
on Beville Road.
Official searches for the missing men did not come until 1992, when a joint
U.S.-Laos team began interviewing villagers, Barker says.
"In May 1993, another joint team went out and excavated the site but no
human remains or material evidence was found," Barker says. Additional
inquiries and excavations were conducted in other locations in 1996, turning
up nothing.
But in 1999 a metal insert from a soldier's combat boot was discovered at
one location, believed to be near the area the three men were last seen.
"In January 2000, another team excavated," he says. "They did find a tooth
and several artifacts." In March 2000, more artifacts were uncovered, but no
human remains. None of the artifacts was related to Brown.
Then in December 2001, the tooth was identified as Brown's, and in May 2003
the Army notified Brown-Pitts about finding her father's remains.
She says aerial photos of the scene from the time of the battle, provided
her by the military, offered no evidence of recently dug graves, bodies or
blood.
"It was as if they were marched off the scene," she says.
A special operations soldier -- Curtis Marcum of Oneida, Tenn., a retired
first sergeant and 23-year Army veteran who served with Brown -- also doubts
the tooth belonged to Brown.
"It's pretty well known that they weren't killed on the spot, but taken away
from there, because if they had been there, there would have been more than
a tooth," Marcum says. "The feeling of most of us is that they are using
this tooth to clear the books."
The Pentagon, meanwhile, maintains open cases on the other two men, believed
to have perished that day in 1968 in the Laos jungle.
audrey.parente@news-jrnl.com
