A Personal Journey of Family Closure
by
ROBIN SMITH
Robin Smith kneels at her father's headstone in the "Missing in Action"
section of Arlington Cemetery.
We were asleep when the telegram arrived. My mother, in her
bathrobe and slippers, opened the door. Two marines in uniform,
feeling out of place in Athens, Ohio, stood nervously on our front
porch. Mom's face must have betrayed her deepest fear. The colonel,
my father's friend,
rushed in.
"Jane, he's only missing!"
Words filled with hope, to comfort a wife too young to be a widow.
"I remember going out into the kitchen and falling down on
my knees," mom told me years later. "And praying. Please,
God, let him be alive!"
It has been almost twenty-seven years since my father became one
of America's Missing In Action in Southeast Asia. I was a freshman
in college when daddy - Lt. Colonel Robert Norman Smith, Annapolis
grad, fearless fighter pilot - left for a thirteen month tour
in Vietnam. He volunteered to go. Combat duty was mandatory for
a gung-ho career officer determined to be the first aviator selected
Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps.
Sometime around noon on August 19, 1969, a lifetime of dreams
was put on hold.
The telegram didn't tell us much about what happened that day.
It said he took off from Danang on a "routine" flight,
escorting a photo reconnaissance mission north of the DMZ. Our
best guess was that his F-4 jet was shot down by enemy fire, but
there were no concrete facts or information to support this assumption.
All we knew is that my dad had disappeared - vanished without
a trace.
We also knew that if anyone could survive, he could. For four
years we hoped, and prayed, and looked for clues that yes, our
invincible hero had somehow got out alive. One day, I opened the
Athens Messenger and saw the answer I was looking for - a photograph
from the infamous "Hanoi Hilton." American prisoners
of war were shown playing basketball in the courtyard. In the
lower left corner there was a tiny face, hardly noticeable at
first. When I saw it, I gasped. In the blur of ink dots, I could
see an unmistakable profile. I was certain my father was alive!
It was only later that I learned twenty-five other families also
claimed that tiny face to be their missing man.
The American POWs were released in 1973, and daddy was not among
them. No one in captivity knew anything about Colonel Smith. There
were no stories to be shared. But the absence of information allowed
the possibility of hope to linger.
In 1978, I produced a film called "He's Only Missing"
and tried to explain what it feels like to live in this state
of limbo, never really knowing the circumstances of a loss. No
one in my family felt daddy was alive or being held prisoner -
but at the same time, none of us could say with conviction he
was dead.
My mother, a reluctant participant in my documentary project,
tearfully defined the place that has no answers. "Somewhere
along the line I had to make my own deep personal decision as
to what I was going to accept as the closest thing to reality,"
she revealed to the microphone. "What was
going to be best for my family? That's when I had to accept the
possibility that no, Bob was not alive. Actually it's a facade.
A protective something that I have put around myself. A shield.
And that's how I have chosen to feel and to live. But I will never,
I will never ever feel positively that Bob is dead until I know,
until there is some positive proof."
Proof. That's all we needed.
Twenty years later, pieces of that proof began to appear. A skull
and a bit of bone from an arm were handed over by the Vietnamese
to American officials in Hanoi. Attached was a tag identifying
the remains as those of Capt. John Flanagan - my father's co-pilot
that fateful day. The remains showed signs of being stored. How
many years had the Vietnamese known what we longed to hear?
Those bits of bone were the first clue that broke open our case
and led a joint team of American and Vietnamese investigators
to Phu Thuy, a remote village in central Vietnam.
Joint teams have visited Phu Thuy three times since, and the story
has begun to unfold. Villagers told the officials the plane had
been shot down, that only one pilot was seen ejecting. The local
militia found Capt. Flanagan unconscious in his parachute dangling
from a tree. He died, they said, several hours later from his
wounds and was hastily buried along the Ho Chi Minh trail.
Local woodcutters and militiamen said they followed the trail
of smoke from the burning jet, and the next day found the wreckage
in dense jungle. They searched for the other pilot, but no pilot
was found. They said they smelled an "unusual odor"
- a strong scorched smell they associated with burning flesh.
The villagers concluded my father had been "torn apart"
and perished in the crash.
Since my family first learned of these discoveries in 1992, I
have wanted to go to Phu Thuy and talk to the same eye witnesses
who shared their stories with the investigators. As an MIA daughter,
I am acutely aware that I carry heavy baggage. My family's quest
for information is tangled up in an emotional national debate
that has linked "progress" on resolving the fates of
missing Americans with normalization of relations with Vietnam.
I resolved to go not only as a family member, but as a producer,
I would document the journey - and whatever the outcome, share
it with a national audience.
On April 2, 1995, my husband, Bill Plante, a CBS News crew and
I landed in Hanoi and for two weeks relived the story that was
in the official reports. We visited Hoa Lao prison, the "Hanoi
Hilton," which held hundreds of American POWs and is for
many a symbol of torture and pain. For me, it was always a vessel
of hope - the place my father could have been had he survived
the
crash.
I was surprised at how difficult it was to simply walk into
the one corner of the decaying building that is being preserved
for history. I had to face the fact it was only in my imagination
that my father was here. Talking into a tape recorder, I confronted
the painful reality of my own dashed hopes, admitting out loud
that, no, daddy had never been here. It was the first step in
"letting go."
"This is where I wanted you to be. This is where I was convinced
you were. This is the place of life and hope and possibility.
Oh daddy! I know there was so much pain here for other people,
I know they were tortured and they were hurt, but they came home,
back to their families." "You were never here, never
ever."
Before we left Hanoi for Phu Thuy, there was another discovery.
The official reports had disclosed that one day after they buried
Captain Flanagan, Vietnamese officials exhumed him so that they
could take photographs. Those pictures were in the Vietnam News
Agency archives.
There were two photos of Captain Flanagan's body, his identity
unmistakable, personal effects and pieces of the aircraft neatly
arranged on the ground around him - a grisly war trophy. The third
photograph in the sequence - unseen previously - was a piece of
tangled metal which
appeared to be part of the downed American plane. Concrete proof.
With it, a caption that read, "Thanks to the heroic efforts
of the people's militia, one pirate F-4 was shot down on the spot.
Both pilots are dead."
There it was, in black and white, the flat assertion leaving no
room for doubt. "Both pilots are dead."
"Now I want to meet the photographer," I exclaimed,
believing he would have the definitive answer. Somehow he would
remember what happened that day. Finding the photographer was
difficult, but the Vietnamese, eager to demonstrate their cooperation,
found Mr. Hoang Chung on
assignment in Ho Chi Minh City, and two days later in Hanoi, produced
him for a meeting.
It was less than satisfying. "I remember," he said.
"I took three pictures. Bombs were falling and I was scared.
I hurried to get back into my shelter." The man I thought
would know knew nothing. Now, as then, he was a bureaucrat, doing
his job. "I only saw one pilot who was dead.
I do not know what happened to the other one."
For the first time since I arrived in Vietnam, I began to fear
I would not find what I was seeking.
The trip to Phu Thuy was arduous. We traveled for nearly 15 hours
on bumpy roads from Hanoi down the coast of Vietnam, dodging bicycles,
cows and chickens through glorious rural landscapes, heads bouncing
against the rooftops of our vans and four-wheel drives. It was
dark
when we reached Dong Hoi, a seaport about fifty miles north of
the old DMZ which divided North and South Vietnam.
The next morning we travelled two more hours to the tiny village
next to jungle-covered foothills, 400 people who live by farming
and cutting wood. We were received with warmth and curiosity.
I was on a mission, full of questions, determined to interrogate
anyone who might have any knowledge of what happened that day
twenty-six years ago. But I was quickly disarmed by a throng of
smiling villagers.
"How old are you? How many children do you have?" I
borrowed my husband's sons, and answered, "six." "Are
you going to have more?" "No," I explained with
a smile, touched by their openness and by the complete absence
of any feeling that we had once been enemies.
I wanted to visit the place where my father's co-pilot had been
buried. We were escorted to a desolate spot, still readily identifiable
as a grave because the joint U.S. - Vietnam team had dug it up
just two years ago, searching for evidence.
As I knelt next to the open hole, filled with the memories I had
brought there on behalf of Captain Flanagan's family, something
quite extraordinary took place nearby. A Vietnamese - now American
- friend who had accompanied us on the trip was chatting with
an old man who happened by tending cattle. When he learned why
all these people were out in the middle of nowhere, he told her
that he had been a member of the militia squad which found Captain
Flanagan, still alive, dangling from the tree.
He later told me how the American pilot he and his fellow militia
members had hoped to capture died in his arms. This old herdsman,
tears in his eye, no longer America's enemy, reached out to me
in friendship. "That was then, and things are different now,"
he said before walking over to
the hole where I had been praying. He stood silently at attention
for several minutes, then nodded his head in a salute of respect
and farewell.
Images began to fill the void, and I was struck with the profound
difference between knowing and not knowing. It seemed very clear
that some of the answers that thousand of Americans and Vietnamese
are still seeking can be found when we are able to communicate,
people to people,
open and honest with each other.
I know, because I found answers in the chiseled face of Mr. Nguyen
Thuc, a simple peasant willing to share what he remembered - once
a soldier who wanted nothing more than to capture my dad and his
co-pilot.
But my quest was not yet over. I had to see the place where my
father died.
The next day we marched into the jungle, led by another former
North Vietnamese soldier who had made the same journey in 1969,
looking for the pilot who went down with the plane. "I'm
older now," said Mr. Doan Kim Vinh as we began our trek.
"My memory is not what it used to be."
I heard him, but the willful part of me refused to listen.
We walked for nearly three hours. The sun beat down, but I paid
little attention to the 90 degree heat and steep slope. Then suddenly,
the slow trudge forward stopped. Our guide had disappeared. I
was stunned. "We're in the middle of the jungle and we don't
know where we are?" For thirty minutes we stayed suspended
in time. My heart raced, as I wondered if the crash site I desperately
longed to see would remain out of my reach.
Finally, in the distance, we heard the soft sound of machetes
clearing a path. Our guides called us. The old man had come through.
At 12:20 PM, the approximate time my father disappeared, I descended
along a fresh trail through dense foliage, and stumbled upon minute
remnants of a plane crash. Over the years, the large pieces of
the aircraft had been carted away, made into something useful
or sold for scrap.
Somehow, the sun made its way through the thick cover of leaves,
and bounced off small fragments of metal, bits fabric from a flight
suit, pieces of leather, the torn corner of an orange life vest.
The sun had been a messenger before. Twenty-seven years earlier,
my mother was cleaning windows at grandpa's house when the sun
caught her eye. "That's my mother in heaven," she said.
"She's pleased I'm taking care of her home." The next
day we received the telegram, and mom, deep in her heart thought
maybe that beam of light blinding her was my dad, sending a sign.
And there, in the middle of the jungle, the sun found me. There
was no huge crater that screamed "this is where your father
died." But I knew I was there. I felt his presence all around
me, and was filled with a peace that has eluded me since the day
he disappeared.
"I'm not going to tell you how hard it was to get here,"
I whispered in the lush green. "I know you know. But I'm
here. I woke up this morning and said no more tears, because all
the tears have been shed. I know you said don't come and get you.
I didn't come to get you. I came to say goodbye."
Three months later, in July, a team of Americans and Vietnamese
went to the crash site. This was the official dig, in which they
sifted the soil, looking for bone or other evidence that would
allow the forensic scientists to conclude beyond doubt that yes,
Colonel Robert Norman Smith perished here in a fiery crash.
One week into the project, I received a call from Hanoi. "We
think we've found something significant," said the American
at the other end of the line. "I'm going to ask for permission
to tell you."
Two days later, he called back. "We found your father's class
ring," he told me. "Annapolis, class of '48. His name
is engraved inside. Robert Norman Smith." My heart leapt.
This was it - not officially of course - but now, I knew what
happened that day.
Weeks later, the ring was returned to me. Crushed into an oval,
the heavy gold glinted brightly - they had cleaned and polished
it, the better to read the inscriptions. I wore it around my neck,
close to my heart.
I remembered what had happened months earlier, in the jungle.
Before I left that day, the man who led me there said something
that made me fall to my knees. It was only after I returned home,
and shared the videotapes with my family that I grasped what Mr.
Vinh had said.
"Your father is sacred," he told me through a translator.
"His soul led you to this place. You may not find everything
you are looking for, but you will find what you need to know."
Another poet among peasants. A man who understood why I came halfway
around the world.
I came to say goodbye.
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