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Where the Search for MIAs, and How They Died in the Last Action of the Vietnam War, Continues
"They're all safe. We got them alL Thank God"
-President Gerald R. Ford's reaction to the news that the Mayaguez crew had been recovered. As he spoke, airmen, sailors and Marines were bleeding and dying on Koh Tang.
On Oct. 10, 2000, four Marine veterans disembarked on an obscure but familiar island 30 miles off the coast of Cambodia. These American veterans of what was the last official battle of the Vietnam War were the first of their number to return to Koh (island) Tang, the scene of a bloody, 14-hour battle that took place on May 15, 1975.
Retired Marine First Sergeant Clark H. Hale informally led the group, which included former Lance Corporal Larry Barnett and former Privates First Class Curtis D. Myrick and Alfred G. "Gale" Rogers. All had been members of a Marine force sent to Koh Tang in an effort to rescue the crew of a hijacked American container ship, SS Mayaguez.
Setting foot on Koh Tang more than 25 years later, the Marines felt as though time had been suspended. Ringing both beaches were fortifications, machine-gun pits, bunkers and trenches-overgrown with vegetation but easily recognized. Palm trees pocked with bullet holes surrounded a clearing where the Cambodian camp had been. One trunk had bullet holes running up its length from a machine gun and larger holes that went clear through. It had not survived.
The veteran Marines walked the beaches, located their fighting positions and collected brass from the ammunition they had expended in close combat that fateful day so long ago. At times, each stood alone with his thoughts, remembering.
On that May morning in 1975 an orange sun boiled up out of the sea as a pair of U.S. Air Force helicopters roared in toward the eastern beach. In the lead was a CH-53C flown by Air Force officers Major Howard Corson and Second Lieutenant Richard Vandegeer, call sign Knife-31. To their right was Knife-23, piloted by Air Force First Lieutenants John H. Shramm and John P. Lucas. In the cargo bay, LCpI Larry Barnett sat among other Marines on the floor, an M 16 clutched between...