Applause for those who kept looking
For more than a half-century, the family of U.S. Air Force Col. Peter Stewart could only speculate what happened to him over in Vietnam.
A native of Scotland who lived in Winter Haven, Stewart was a fighter pilot who flew dozens of combat missions during World War II, Korea and Vietnam. According to the Defense Department, Stewart's last mission occurred on a fateful spring day 52 years ago when his F-4 Phantom erupted in a ball of fire while engaging enemy trucks. The military could not conduct any search or recovery operations in the immediate wake of the incident because conditions on the ground were too risky. Thus, the Pentagon initially declared Stewart missing in action, and a few years later updated that to killed in action.
It appeared he was lost forever to his widow, Marnie, and the couple's six children. "It's a terrible feeling, and I wouldn't wish that on anybody," Marnie Stewart, who met her husband in 1944 when he was stationed at the Bartow Air Base, told the Alabama NewsCenter last month. "We always hoped that we would hear something."
The family finally received that long-awaited word this past spring, when the Air Force notified the Stewarts that Col. Stewart would be coming home after all.
The Defense Department says that in 2014 a joint U.S.-Vietnamese search team found an F-4 crash site in the Dien Bien Province. Further investigation and subsequent testing revealed last June that some remains belonged to Col. Martin Scott of Oklahoma. But the team kept digging and uncovered more. Based on dental records and a St. Christopher medal recovered at the scene, the military eventually identified them as Col. Stewart. His remains were returned to Winter Haven earlier this month, and Stewart was given a funeral with full military honors last week.
Despite the decades-long wait to put their loved one to rest, and their minds at ease, Marnie Stewart, now 94, and her children are among the lucky ones.
When the Paris Peace Accords, which ended America's involvement in Vietnam, were inked in 1973, the Pentagon determined 2,646 American troops were unaccounted for in Southeast Asia. That meant they had either been killed and no remains found or were considered missing in action. The accords contained a stipulation authorizing efforts to find American MIAs. While a few dozen were found shortly after the agreement was reached, the searches ended following the Communist takeover of Vietnam in 1975, the Pentagon notes. It wasn't until 1992 that joint, large-scale search efforts were organized. Those continue today.
Stewart is among 1,049 Americans located and recovered from Vietnam during those hunts. That leaves 1,597 Americans still unaccounted for from Vietnam. That list includes 54 Floridians, and among them is Air Force Capt. Gerald Olson of Winter Haven, who has been declared presumed dead from an incident in Laos.
While the quest to find those unaccounted for in Vietnam has absorbed most of the attention on this issue, the government reports that number is just the tip of the iceberg. More than 82,000 U.S. troops are considered unaccounted for from wars dating back to World War II.
Unfortunately we will never know what happened to half of them. The Pentagon estimates 41,000 were lost at sea.
Yet what impresses us is that the government, as it did with Col. Stewart, has not stopped looking for answers. Just this month, for instance, the Defense Department's Accounting Agency reports it verified the remains of four sailors from the USS Oklahoma, which was sunk at Pearl Harbor, as well as a trio of Army and Marine infantrymen who were lost, respectively, in the Tarawa Atoll in 1943, Germany in 1944 and North Korea in 1950. The recovery procedure also goes both ways. Six months ago, for example, Pentagon officials in Hawaii welcomed a contingent from Japan to turn over the remains of 13 Japanese soldiers found in Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Tarawa.
We appreciate and applaud the diligence of American officials and the cooperation of governments in Vietnam and elsewhere, some that were once our enemies on the battlefield, in helping U.S. families like the Stewarts find closure. Their work truly gives meaning to the phrase coined by legendary American Lt. Gen. Hal Moore: "Leave no one behind. Dead or alive, we will all come home together."
For some, that just takes a little longer.
A version of this editorial first appeared in The Ledger, a News Herald sister paper with GateHouse Media.