Tim Brown can't forget the buddies his Marine unit left behind on a forsaken Vietnam hilltop 30 years ago. Dovie Huffman's brother and LaVerne Ransbottom's son both disappeared when the nearby Kham Due Special Forces Camp also was lost to the North Vietnamese. For decades, family members whose loved ones are unaccounted for, and veterans who fought with them, have demanded answers.

And the search continues.

Defense Department teams are scouring remote locations in South east Asia, hoping to bring home the remains of those still missing from the Vietnam War. With the help of anthro pologists and explosives es experts, and sometimes accompanied by veterans, the Pentagon's Joint Task Force-Full Accounting has helped recover more than 45O sets of remains believed to be Americans since 1992

"This is important work," said Ar my Lt. Col. Franklin Childress, a spokesman for the task force. "It's im portant to our nation, and it answers questions for loved ones."

The government also is actively seeking to account for missing Americans from the Korean War and those who disappeared during the Cold War, often while on clandestine missions. With sophisticated DNA matching and other modem methods, scientists today are able to identify remains from long-ago battles.

Veterans and relatives of missing service members have spent years pressuring the government to do more.

The story is continued on page 20A, with another half page of article dealing with this story and the story of a daughter's search for a father from WWII whom she never met. In all, it was a positive article portraying everyone (for a change) in a positive light.

 

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