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Marking the Holiday in Their Hearts Only

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Shirley Brown has an indelible image of the last time she saw her son, before he left 28 years ago for Vietnam. Special Forces Staff Sgt. William T. Brown was standing by the front door of their home being grilled by his angry and crying father, who was demanding to know why he had volunteered for a third combat tour.

He responded by telling them he felt it was his duty to return.

Less than six months later, on Nov. 3, 1969, Brown and two other U.S. paratroopers were overrun by North Vietnamese soldiers in Laos. He and the others were never seen again and are listed among the 2,124 U.S. servicemen, including 208 from California, missing in action.

On Monday, families will visit cemeteries to honor their loved ones who died in America’s wars. But the Browns, like other relatives of those classified as MIAs in Vietnam, will observe Memorial Day in their hearts. There are no flag-decorated cemeteries where they can visit their sons, brothers or husbands.

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This is the story of three families who have to find their own meaning for Memorial Day.

The Browns say they lost hope long ago that they would ever see their son alive again. Now, all they want is to find out what happened to him that Nov. 3.

“We’re not the only ones who are still asking questions,” William Brown, 80, said in an interview at the couple’s La Habra home. “There are a lot of parents like us who are still demanding answers about their sons.”

Defense Department officials declined to comment on any case. All inquiries were referred to the Library of Congress. One official said he was sorry to hear that families criticized the government but declined to offer explanations.

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Staff Sgt. Brown was 20 when he enlisted in the Army after attending Cerritos College, where he competed in swimming and golf. He was the youngest of three sons and graduated from La Mirada High School.

On Nov. 3, 1969, he was 30 miles inside Laos when his patrol of three Green Berets and six Montagnard mercenaries was overwhelmed by North Vietnamese troops. According to reports of the Montagnards, Brown was shot below the rib cage, and the other two U.S. soldiers were wounded in grenade explosions.

Pentagon officials said that of 455 Americans known to have been captured in Laos, only 12 were freed after the war.

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Brown was assigned to a reconnaissance team, usually consisting of three enlisted Green Berets. The teams performed some of the most dangerous commando missions of the war in Laos, Cambodia and North Vietnam.

They and a handful of local mercenaries patrolled deep behind enemy lines to assassinate high-ranking officers, kidnap North Vietnamese soldiers, tap communication lines, sabotage munitions, locate troops and free allied prisoners.

In the last letter the Browns received from their son, he told them he would be going on a mission for a few days. Their last letter to him was returned unopened.

The Browns said they are proud their son was in one of the U.S. military’s most elite units.

“I don’t think he is alive, but I still visualize him walking through the front door one day telling us that he is home,” William Brown said.

Offered his mother: “I hope he is not alive, because I would not want him living over there in those conditions for this long.”

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Like the Browns, the family of Army Pfc. Brian Kent McGar still has questions about his death in a firefight described in Army reports as “brief but intense.”

McGar, who grew up in the San Joaquin Valley farming town of Ceres, near Modesto, was on the MIA list for nearly 30 years until his remains were identified this January and buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

“Our case had an ending. . . . Other families are still waiting for an answer,” said his sister, Kathy Plummer, who lives in Winnemucca, Nev. “But my family is very bitter with the government and the Army. We’ve lost faith in both. Getting a straight story from them was near impossible.”

Plummer said her brother joined the Army “to straighten out his life.” He had dropped out of high school and enlisted in December 1964 after he turned 17.

His five-man Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol was wiped out in an ambush May 31, 1967. He had completed one tour with the 25th Infantry Division and was ending a voluntary six-month extension when he was killed.

The bodies of two patrol members were recovered from a shallow grave the day after the firefight. But the searchers missed another grave about 100 yards away. That one contained the bodies of McGar and the other two soldiers.

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The remains of McGar and the other soldiers were excavated from a potato field in 1994. A U.S. search team recovered 89 teeth, skull fragments, bone fragments, part of a jungle boot and a shredded belt.

Army scientists in Hawaii were able to identify McGar and the other two men in January through DNA testing.

The family’s heartache was compounded by mistakes made by the Pentagon in investigating her brother’s case after the remains were recovered, said Plummer, 50. The Army lost her brother’s dental records, and Plummer had to provide investigators with a copy. But, in her view, the worst was yet to come.

“When it came time for Mama to sign off on my brother’s remains, the Defense Department sent her a form that had the name of another of the soldiers [who was killed and buried with McGar],” she said.

Plummer said the family had known disappointment before. In 1973, a man who lived in nearby Keyes, Calif., told them he had seen their son in a prisoner of war camp in 1967. Army investigators determined that the man was never a POW and had received a bad conduct discharge.

“It was terrible, because for a time that gave my father a little bit of hope that Kent was still alive,” Plummer said. “The saddest thing about this is that Daddy died without knowing about Kent.”

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For Charles and Jean Ray of Port Angeles, Wash., their hope that their son, Army Pfc. Jimmy M. Ray, is still alive has not faded. Jimmy Ray was 18 and had been in Vietnam four months when he was taken prisoner March 18, 1968.

Their son’s case is cited repeatedly by MIA activists who believe that American soldiers are still being held in Indochina.

Jimmy Ray was assigned to Military Assistance Command, Vietnam Advisory Team 38, when he was wounded and captured by Viet Cong troops after a firefight. 1st Lt. John G. Dunn was captured along with Ray.

Dunn and Ray were sent to the same POW camp in Cambodia, but later were separated. Dunn was freed in the general prisoner release in 1973. Ray was not.

According to Army records, Ray died June 11, 1969, while in captivity.

Another report by the Pentagon’s Joint Casualty Resolution Center said Ray died Nov. 6, 1969. Documents given the family include “witness statements” from three former POWs who said they either saw Ray die or knew about his death sometime between October and November 1969.

But one of the witnesses wrote in a 1983 statement sought by the family that “I never know [sic] or saw” Ray. Another of the witnesses named by the Pentagon wrote in a similar statement in 1984 that the information about Ray’s death attributed to him was “not facts and not things I said or know.” The third witness wrote in July 1986 that he may have been the last American to see Ray alive, but that he never saw him die.

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“How would you want your son to be declared dead on evidence like this?” asked Charles Ray, 73.

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