Woman wears POW/MIA bracelet for nearly 40 years

(CBS News) 

WALNUT CREEK, Calif. - While the war raged in Vietnam, POW/MIA bracelets were all the rage. The metal bracelets, sold by the millions, each bore the name of a soldier who was either still a prisoner in Vietnam, or missing in action.

CBS News correspondent Steve Hartman reports the idea was to wear the bracelet and only take it off your wrist when your Veteran came home.

They were very popular with kids. In 1972, when she was 12-years-old, Kathy Strong got a bracelet in her Christmas stocking.

"I was really excited," Strong said. "I read the paper that came with it. And I just thought. I'm going to keep it on until he comes home."

Strong, now 50, still remembers the name: James Moreland. Moreland was a Green Beret who'd been stationed in Lang Vei.

Moreland went missing in the winter of 1968 after the enemy over took his position. At the time, no one knew much more than that - so Kathy remained optimistic.

"They showed footage of the soldiers coming off the planes, and I always thought wherever he's flying into I'm going to be there and I'm going to give him my bracelet and I'm going to put it on his arm. That's how I always pictured it," Strong said. "But that wasn't meant to be."

After so many years, it became obvious to even the most hopeful, that everyone who could come home alive, had come home alive. Eventually, the bracelets went the way of the pet rock.

However, Strong wore her bracelet much longer than most. In fact, James Moreland's name has been on her wrist every day, without exception, for the past 38 years.

"I just wanted to keep the promise," Strong said.

At this point, Strong says keeping the promise means wearing the bracelet until Moreland's remains are found and returned.

"I knew there was family out there who was waiting for word, and I was just going to wait along with them," Strong said.

Anita and Linda are Moreland's sisters and closest surviving relatives. When they heard about Kathy a few years ago they asked to meet.

"To have worn his bracelet for so long," Anita said, "we just love her to death."

"She did care," her sister Linda added. "And she still does care."

Strong said she thinks about Moreland everyday. "It's usually when I have my hands out in front of me - you know, maybe driving a car or typing on the keyboard and I just think I wonder when he's coming home."

She's been wondering almost 4 decades -- but no more. In January, James Moreland's sisters got word that their brother's remains had been found and identified. In May he'll be buried, between his mother and father, in a full military funeral.

Strong said she's "going to remove the bracelet and have it buried with him."

National League of POW/MIA Families

The Origin of the POW/MIA Bracelets

Defense Prisoner of War Missing Personnel Office

[danny67n20]

It really rubs me the wrong way for people to go around telling war stories about serving in Vietnam , when in fact they were not there, it really taints the memories of the friends I lost.

[queenieb187]

my father also wore one of these bracelets, somehow lost it and had his tatooed on his wrist. He passed in 2004 and i have been wondering ever since if there was a way to find out what his soldiers name was..i would like to get it tatooed onmy wrist. does anyone know how i would find this info??

[bilk24]

My post # 4 finishing the info from the DAD:
As with much of the Vietnam War, the news media misreported and misinterpreted the 1968 Tet Offensive. It was reported as an overwhelming success for the Communist forces and a decided defeat for the U.S. forces. Nothing could be further from the truth. Despite initial victories by the Communists forces, the Tet Offensive resulted in a major defeat of those forces. General Vo Nguyen Giap, the designer of the Tet Offensive, is considered by some as ranking with Wellington, Grant, Lee and MacArthur as a great commander. Still, militarily, the Tet Offensive was a total defeat of the Communist forces on all fronts. It resulted in the death of some 45,000 NVA troops and the complete, if not total destruction of the Viet Cong elements in South Vietnam. The Organization of the Viet Cong Units in the South never recovered. The Tet Offensive succeeded on only one front and that was the News front and the political arena. This was another example in the Vietnam War of an inaccuracy becoming the perceived truth. However inaccurately reported, the News Media made the Tet Offensive famous.

"Vietnam History" http://4dw.net/jqueen/history.html

VIETNAM REMEMBERED http://remembervietnam.homestead.com/

Top 100 Vietnam Veterans WebSites http://www.topsitelists.com/start/vietnamvet/topsites.html

"18th Engineers" http://4dw.net/jqueen/truth.html

Movie Review: We Were Soldiers (Once.....and Young) http://remembervietnam.homestead.com/idrrang.html

[bilk24]

My post # 3:
Fact: The average infantryman in the South Pacific during World War II saw about 40 days of combat in four years. The average infantryman in Vietnam saw about 240 days of combat in one year thanks to the mobility of the helicopter. One out of every 10 Americans who served in Vietnam was a casualty. 58,148 were killed and 304,000 wounded out of 2.7 million who served. Although the percent that died is similar to other wars, amputations or crippling wounds were 300 percent higher than in World War II ....75,000 Vietnam veterans are severely disabled. MEDEVAC helicopters flew nearly 500,000 missions. Over 900,000 patients were airlifted (nearly half were American). The average time lapse between wounding to hospitalization was less than one hour. As a result, less than one percent of all Americans wounded, who survived the first 24 hours, died. The helicopter provided unprecedented mobility. Without the helicopter it would have taken three times as many troops to secure the 800 mile border with Cambodia and Laos (the politicians thought the Geneva Conventions of 1954 and the Geneva Accords or 1962 would secure the border).

Myth: Kim ****, the little nine year old Vietnamese girl running naked from the napalm strike near Trang Bang on 8 June 1972.....shown a million times on American television....was burned by Americans bombing Trang Bang.

Fact: No American had involvement in this incident near Trang Bang that burned Phan Thi Kim ****. The planes doing the bombing near the village were VNAF (Vietnam Air Force) and were being flown by Vietnamese pilots in support of South Vietnamese troops on the ground. The Vietnamese pilot who dropped the napalm in error is currently living in the United States. Even the AP photographer, Nick Ut, who took the picture, was Vietnamese. The incident in the photo took place on the second day of a three day battle between the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) who occupied the village of Trang Bang and the ARVN (Army of the Republic ofVietnam) who were trying to force the NVA out of the village. Recent reports in the news media that an American commander ordered the air strike that burned Kim **** are incorrect. There were no Americans involved in any capacity. "We (Americans) had nothing to do with controlling VNAF," according to Lieutenant General (Ret) James F. Hollingsworth, the Commanding General of TRAC at that time. Also, it has been incorrectly reported that two of Kim ****'s brothers were killed in this incident. They were Kim's cousins not her brothers.

Myth: The United States lost the war in Vietnam.

Fact: The American military was not defeated in Vietnam. The American military did not lose a battle of any consequence. >From a military standpoint, it was almost an unprecedented performance. General Westmoreland quoting Douglas Pike, a professor at the University of California, Berkley a renowned expert on the Vietnam War). This included Tet 68, which was a major military defeat for the VC and NVA.

THE UNITED STATES DID NOT LOSE THE WAR IN VIETNAM, THE SOUTH VIETNAMESE DID. Read on........

The fall of Saigon happened 30 April 1975, two years AFTER the American military left Vietnam. The last American troops departed in their entirety 29 March 1973.

How could we lose a war we had already stopped fighting? We fought to an agreed stalemate. The peace settlement was signed in Paris on 27 January 1973. It called for release of all U.S. prisoners, withdrawal of U.S. forces, limitation of both sides' forces inside South Vietnam and a commitment to peaceful reunification. The 140,000 evacuees in April 1975 during the fall of Saigon consisted almost entirely of civilians and Vietnamese military, NOT American military running for their lives. There were almost twice as many casualties in Southeast Asia (primarily Cambodia) the first two years after the fall of Saigon in 1975 then there were during the ten years the U.S. was involved in Vietnam. Thanks for the perceived loss and the countless assassinations and torture visited upon Vietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians goes mainly to the American media and their undying support-by-misrepresentation of the anti-War movement in the United States.

[bilk24]

My post # 2:
The Department of Defense Vietnam War Service Index officially provided by The War Library originally reported with errors that 2,709,918U.S. military personnel as having served in-country. Corrections and confirmations to this errored index resulted in the addition of 358 U.S. military personnel confirmed to have served in Vietnam but not originally listed by the Department of Defense.
(All names are currently on file and accessible 24/7/365).

Isolated atrocities committed by American Soldiers produced torrents of outrage from anti-war critics and the news media while Communist atrocities were so common that they received hardly any media mention at all. The United States sought to minimize and prevent attacks on civilians while North Vietnam made attacks on civilians a centerpiece of its strategy. Americans who deliberately killed civilians received prison sentences while Communists who did so received commendations. From 1957 to 1973, the National Liberation Front assassinated 36,725 Vietnamese and abducted another 58,499. The death squads focused on leaders at the village level and on anyone who improved the lives of the peasants such as medical personnel, social workers, and school teachers. - Nixon Presidential Papers

Common Myths Dispelled:

Myth: Common Belief is that most Vietnam veterans were drafted.

Fact: 2/3 of the men who served in Vietnam were volunteers. 2/3 of the men who served in World War II were drafted. Approximately 70% of those killed in Vietnam were volunteers.

Myth: The media have reported that suicides among Vietnam veterans range from 50,000 to 100,000 - 6 to 11 times the non-Vietnam veteran population.

Fact: Mortality studies show that 9,000 is a better estimate. "The CDC Vietnam Experience Study Mortality Assessment showed that during the first 5 years after discharge, deaths from suicide were 1.7 times more likely among Vietnam veterans than non-Vietnam veterans. After that initial post-service period, Vietnam veterans were no more likely to die from suicide than non-Vietnam veterans. In fact, after the 5-year post-service period, the rate of suicides is less in the Vietnam veterans' group.

Myth: Common belief is that a disproportionate number of blacks were killed in the Vietnam War.

Fact: 86% of the men who died in Vietnam were Caucasians, 12.5% were black, 1.2% were other races. Sociologists Charles C. Moskos and John Sibley Butler, in their recently published book "All That We Can Be," said they analyzed the claim that blacks were used like cannon fodder during Vietnam "and can report definitely that this charge is untrue. Black fatalities amounted to 12 percent of all Americans killed in Southeast Asia - a figure proportional to the number of blacks in the U.S. population at the time and slightly lower than the proportion of blacks in the Army at the close of the war."

Myth: Common belief is that the war was fought largely by the poor and uneducated.

Fact: Servicemen who went toVietnam from well-to-do areas had a slightly elevated risk of dying because they were more likely to be pilots or infantry officers. Vietnam Veterans were the best educated forces our nation had ever sent into combat. 79% had a high school education or better. (Emphasis by Mo.)

Here are statistics from the Combat Area Casualty File (CACF) as of November 1993. The CACF is the basis for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (The Wall): Average age of 58,148 killed in Vietnam was 23.11 years.
(Although 58,169 names are in the Nov. 93 database, only 58,148 have both event date and birth date. Event date is used instead of declared dead date for some of those who were listed as missing in action)

Myth: The common belief is the average age of an infantryman fighting in Vietnam was 19.

Fact: Assuming KIAs accurately represented age groups serving in Vietnam, the average age of an infantryman (MOS 11B) serving in Vietnam to be 19 years old is a myth, it is actually 22. None of the enlisted grades have an average age of less than 20. The average man who fought in World War II was 26 years of age.

Myth: The Common belief is that the domino theory was proved false.

Fact: The domino theory was accurate. The ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) countries, Philippines,Indonesia, Malaysia,Singapore and Thailand stayed free of Communism because of the U.S. commitment to Vietnam. The Indonesians threw the Soviets out in 1966 because of America's commitment in Vietnam. Without that commitment, Communism would have swept all the way to the Malacca Straits that is south of Singapore and of great strategic importance to the free world. If you ask people who live in these countries that won the war in Vietnam, they have a different opinion from the American news media. The Vietnam War was the turning point for Communism.

Myth: The common belief is that the fighting in Vietnam was not as intense as in World War II.

[bilk24]

Re the post above by houda51 and Molly-Pchr here is some info from the DAD to correct your errors on this and the next two of my posts(had to break it up as it was too big for one post)

Vietnam War Facts: Facts, Statistics, Fake Warrior Numbers, and Myths Dispelled

9,087,000 military personnel served on active duty during the official Vietnam era from August 5, 1964 to May 7, 1975.

2,709,918 Americans served in uniform in Vietnam

Vietnam Veterans represented 9.7% of their generation.

240 men were awarded the Medal of Honor during the Vietnam War

The first man to die in Vietnam was James Davis, in 1958. He was with the 509th Radio Research Station.
Davis Station in Saigon was named for him.

58,148 were killed in Vietnam

75,000 were severely disabled

23,214 were 100% disabled

5,283 lost limbs

1,081 sustained multiple amputations

Of those killed, 61% were younger than 21

11,465 of those killed were younger than 20 years old

Of those killed, 17,539 were married

Average age of men killed: 23.1 years

Five men killed in Vietnam were only 16 years old.

The oldest man killed was 62 years old.

As of January 15, 2 004, there are 1,875 Americans still unaccounted for from the Vietnam War

97% of Vietnam Veterans were honorably discharged

91% of Vietnam Veterans say they are glad they served

74% say they would serve again, even knowing the outcome

Vietnam veterans have a lower unemployment rate than the same non-vet age groups.

Vietnam veterans' personal income exceeds that of our non-veteran age group by more than 18 percent.

87% of Americans hold Vietnam Veterans in high esteem.

There is no difference in drug usage between Vietnam Veterans and non-Vietnam Veterans of the same age group (Source: Veterans Administration Study) (The organization is correctly referred to as the Department of Veterans Affairs. - Mo)

Vietnam Veterans are less likely to be in prison - only one-half of one percent of Vietnam Veterans have been jailed for crimes.

85% of Vietnam Veterans made successful transitions to civilian life.

Interesting Census Stats and "Been There" Wanabees:

1,713,823 of those who served in Vietnam were still alive as of August, 1995 (census figures).

~ During that same Census count, the number of Americans falsely claiming to have served in-country was: 9,492,958.

~ As of the current Census taken during August, 2000, the surviving U.S. Vietnam Veteran population estimate is: 1,002,511. This is hard to believe, losing nearly 711,000 between '95 and '00. That's 390 per day. During this Census count, the number of Americans falsely claiming to have served in-country is: 13,853,027. By this census, FOUR OUT OF FIVE WHO CLAIM TO BE Vietnam vets are not.

[greco99-2009]

She should be very angry at the people who planed and profited from the Vietnam war - most of whom were never anywhere near the front lines.

History shows clearly that this war was unnecessary and unwinnable.

[citizenusa-2009]

You are absolutely correct.

[johnbuller]

It's sad that so many families had to wait so long to know for sure what happened to their loved ones. The Vietnam war was a sad chapter in Americas history. Thousands were drafted and sent to the other side of the world to fight a war and noone really understood why we were there. My belief is that it was about thinning out the baby-boomers to try to save the social security system. When they reached a point where they were going to have to start drafting the next generation, suddenly Vietnam wasn't that important to America anymore.

[Molly-Pchr]

Oh, pullleeeeeze! The men were still primarily the workers, before women's lib changed all that, and who would have paid into the SS system? Some way to save it. And the draft changed to a lottery. You need to brush up on your history.

[jwallenqa]

My guy was Sgt. Bobby G. Harris. I have found his name on the wall. I cried like a baby when I found it. I held out hope for years upon years. I still have that bracelet, broken in two pieces. I have another bracelet with yet another name on it.

I care deeply for all veterans and I applaud when I see the good things that Vietnam Vets are doing and I cry when I think about the return they received. I give you all a standing ovation, Sirs. Thank you for going above and beyond the call of duty for me, my children, my family, and the thousands and millions of other U.S. citizens.

[COLONEL77]

Staff Sergeant BOBBY GLENN HARRIS was lost on 17 March 1971 in the crash of a UH-1H helicopter in which it was observed he had been thrown from the helicopter upon impact and appeared to be deceased at that time but was not able to be rescued due to heavy enemy action in the region.

He was then declared as being Missing in Action.

On 18 April 2002, over thirty years after Army Staff Sergeant Bobby Glenn Harris was killed in Vietnam, his remains were found, identified and returned to his family, at which he was buried at Fort Gibson National Cemetery in Oklahoma.