Work continues to account for 88,000 servicemembers still missing from past wars

Nearly a year after her eldest son was killed in Vietnam, the Navy brought Dorothy Schafernocker a sealed bag of bones. She was told not to open it.

“I trusted the good Lord that this was what was left of my son,” Schafernocker said.

Her son, Michael, had joined the Navy in 1967 after graduating from high school. He didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life, and the Navy promised to pay for college.

After he arrived in Vietnam, he volunteered to become a UH-1 Huey door gunner in the Navy’s only land-based helicopter unit. He wrote to his mother about his first kill, compared it to Bonnie and Clyde, and told her he’d never talk about it again. Then she learned the average life expectancy for a door gunner in a fire fight was three minutes.

Not long after that, Michael Schafernocker was engaged again. He had ventured out onto the helicopter’s skids because he had better line of sight. The enemy saw him swing down underneath the helicopter and started shooting. The helicopter went down, landed on top of him and exploded.

Dorothy Schafernocker had just sat down to eat when a Navy chaplain knocked on her door. He hadn’t said a word before he had to tear open her screen door to catch her after she screamed and lost her strength.

The Navy wasn’t sure where her son was. Eight months after he died, the Navy told her he was buried in Cambodia. A couple of months after that, she received the bones. She also received a box of her son’s belongings, looked through it and packed it away in a closet where it remained for 20 years.

In the back of her mind, she wondered whether that really was her son in the bag the Navy gave to her.

The Families of more than 88,000 fallen troops continue to suppress the “what if” thoughts in the backs of their minds as they await news of what happened to their loved ones who were taken prisoner of war or were listed as missing in action since World War I. The vast majority are World War II veterans, but about 1,200 still are unaccounted for from the Vietnam War. Hundreds more, much like Michael Schafernocker, were known to be dead, but their remains have not yet been found.

The government promised to bring Schafernocker’s son home, and she could only assume they did until 20 years after he died.

She was told the person who had killed her son had surrendered and had told the U.S. government where to dig for the helicopter’s crew. She was given some photos of the dig site and was told teeth from three people were found. One was her son, confirming parts of him did come home in the late 1960s.

“At least I felt it wasn’t a bag of dog bones or monkey bones as I’ve learned some families have received,” said Schafernocker, who accompanies the Dignity Memorial Vietnam Wall Experience, a traveling replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

Schafernocker travels with the wall to protect and care for the 58,000 fallen warriors listed on it, and who better to do that job, she says, than a Gold Star mother. The wall was at the Central Texas State Veterans Cemetery over the weekend.

Just three years ago, Schafernocker was contacted again regarding the whereabouts of her son. His pilot had not been found, and the Navy could not find the correct spot to dig again. She provided the pictures she was given three years before, and the correct site was found. More remains were found, including some of the pilot, and eight teeth belonging to her son.

“DNA, that’s another God miracle,” Schafernocker said, referring to how the teeth were identified.

She buried the teeth in her front yard and has found peace in knowing God had orchestrated returning her son to her.

The people who work to find fallen warriors and return them to their families are part of the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command at Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii.

About 75 percent of the people who work there are in the military, and though the services are struggling to fill some job slots because of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon still is committed to staffing the command’s mission as best as it can, said Army Maj. Brian DeSantis, JPAC public affairs officer.

The command’s military personnel have a wide variety of jobs that are needed in-theater, including military intelligence specialists, engineers, quartermaster specialists, explosive ordnance disposal, infantrymen, medics, communications specialists and mortuary affairs specialists, DeSantis said.

Occasionally, recovery missions require medics or other personnel with jobs that are top priority in-theater to be brought in for a few months because they cannot be spared to join the command full-time, DeSantis said. But the command’s allotment of personnel has not changed since the wars began.

What possibly has changed is the personal commitment to bringing home their fallen comrades because most of the people who work there are combat veterans, DeSantis said.

“It definitely makes for the feeling that this very well could have been somebody I served with,” DeSantis said.

Each person who is recovered is brought home with full military honors and a military escort, DeSantis said. Then, remains that have been identified are returned to their families.

“It makes it very personal, what we do, when we interact with somebody who’s been waiting 20, 30, 60 years to get some kind of resolution as to what happened to their loved one,” DeSantis said.

Twenty years after her son died, Schafernocker decided to go to his unit’s reunion. She didn’t know anybody who would be there, but they knew her son. She got his belongings that had been hidden away in a closet and put them in a scrapbook. She found a poem her son had written she had not noticed when she first put his things away.

He had been writing poems since junior high school and wrote one about meeting God just before he died.

“You see God, they told me you did not exist,” part of his poem reads. “And, like a fool, I believed all of this. Last night from a shell hole, I saw your sky. I figured right then they had told me a lie… I wonder, God, if you would shake my hand. Somehow I feel that you will understand. Strange, I had to come to this hellish place before I had time to see your face. Well, I guess there isn’t much more to say. But I am glad, God, I met you today.

“I guess the zero hour will soon be here, but I am not afraid since I know you are near… Looks like this will be a horrible fight. Who knows, I may come to your house tonight. Though I wasn’t friendly with you before, I wonder, God, if You would wait at the door… Well, I will have to go now, God. Goodbye. Strange, since I met you, I am not afraid to die.”

This is the third of three articles honoring veterans in today's Fort Hood Sentinel.
It was written by my newspaper reporter daughter.

The traveling Wall visited a cemetery in western PA some 12 or so years ago and I read every name. It took hours and it was a hot, sunny day.

I knew I didn't have to do that, but once I started, I couldn't staop, and as the names started to melt together, I realized I couldn't stop.

I enlisted at 17 in 1965 and I had no idea how many of those names were kids like me .. full of piss and vinegar or pissed off because they were drafted.

The experience sort of screwed my up for a week or so, not crazy screwed up, but a patriotic anger that started the thought process that is now a more mature will to kill.

Welcome home, sailor.

SONOBUOY PING!

Navair Ping List, Attention!
Present, Arms
Welcome home, brother.
Order, Arms.

Post or FReepmail me if you wish to be enlisted in or discharged from the Navair Pinglist.
This is a medium volume pinglist.

I understand. My uncle Billy has been MIA since 1944. We are still awaiting his return and have his burial place ready - next to his parents. My father has been to the forest location in Germany to search three times, with no luck. We are sure Billy is there. I have promised my father that my generation will continue the search -It has been narrowed down to such a small area. I know that we will find him and bring Billy home.

I'm not sure you do. By brother, I meant brother in arms. Also, Navair sailors go missing, even in peacetime, but finding their remains after a long time like this is a rare thing.

My hopes and prayers that Uncle Billy is brought home.

You told me that you don’t think I understand. Why would you say that? Are you trying to insult me or impress me with your knowlege of the Navy? I thought this was a friendly ping list. As an MIA family member I merely added a bit of personal story about my Father’s brother. Since I’m on the NavAir ping list, it would be somewhat logical to assume that I might have even the faintest of clues about Navy MIAs and those big oceans. Was around the Navy for 22 years +. And I personally know how hard it is to ID flight crew after a crash on land.
As a former PAO employee I also have a clue that there is a difference between “brothers in arms” and a brother who is a sibling. I have spoken English all my life. So please - don’t tell me that I don’t understand what it is like to be a member of an MIA family. If this is the way that the NavAir ping list reacts to a friendly comment by a MIA family member, please remove me from the list.

My apologies. My only excuse is that I had been up way longer than I should have been and FReeping when I should have been sleeping. Friday was my only day off this week and I was online while waiting for a call back. I did not intend to be insulting.

I copy and paste the 20+ names on the list and I didn't recognize your name at the time. Of course you understand, that went without saying.

I may have been a little defensive. My family doesn't lack for veterans, but we have been very lucky, none have given "the last full measure".

I should have never responded the way I did and especially not to someone on the list. The blunder was entirely mine, and not related to the Navair Ping List. May I please retain your name on the list?

I was a bit too sensitive. The MIA situation is always a raw nerve for us on Memorial Day. We always make note of the day he disappeared also. To not have him here is hard on my Dad and other Uncle and his former girlfriend too. Not having a memorial service makes closure difficult for MIA families. We have a stone now, but we all know it is an empty grave. Please leave my name on the list. It is good to stay in touch with other Navy folks. Fair winds.

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