Defective Clothing

"GAS," someone yells. "Full MOPP," someone else screams. Everyone scrambles for their gas masks, Mission Oriented Protective Poster suits, booties and gloves. They are supposed to be fully protected from all known chemical and biological weaponry.

Well that was until at least five years ago!

The Associated Press reported on 28 February 2000 that the Pentagon has found out that the MOPP suits held in storage units are defective. Many had holes in them. Some were cut. Others had serious defects.

The Pentagon didn’t think it was a problem and didn’t do anything about it five years ago when the defects were first found. Two weeks ago the BRASS finally notified their field commanders not to use any of the suits—except for training purposes. There are over 700,000 chemical suits currently issued to our troops or in storage. We, the taxpayers, paid over $49 million for these suits. AND now many of them cannot be used.

I often wondered about the suits when I was in the USAR. I had to order two per person when I was working in supply. When I became the first sergeant I had to be sure everyone in the unit knew how to put the suits on and wear them for required periods of time. I was finding holes and cuts in the bags and suits back then. AND that was before the Gulf War.

Then we were told the suits inside cut bags could only be used for training. Well that’s what the military is now doing—using those cut bags as training items. BUT what about the suits that are found inside a whole bag? You really wouldn’t know it was cut or had holes in it until you were trying to put it on—during an emergency.

Did our troops during the Gulf War find defective suits but wear them anyway because they were better than nothing? Could this explain some of the Gulf War illnesses?

How do these charcoal-lines chemical suits get inspected when they are shipped to the government in sealed bags? I was always told the seal couldn’t be broken, unless absolutely necessary or the suit was declared unusable. No one could ever provide me with any answers.

The company that made most of these suits under contract to the US was based in New York City. Istratex has since gone belly-up. How could they? We paid them millions of dollars. They provided substandard material in return which no one in the public sector knew about until now.

One storage depot in Georgia has 334,000 "potentially deficient" suits on their shelves. Also due to poor recordkeeping the personnel at this depot really don’t know how many of these suits they actually have on hand. As a former supply sergeant I find this very hard to understand.

What is becoming of our feeling that we can trust our government to tell us the truth and to do it right away? How can we? When we see something like this report come out, we have to wonder what has been happening since the defective suits were first found five years a go. What is wrong with this picture?

Have our troops been in danger since the first shipment from this NYC company? Were troops in the Gulf wearing faulty MOPP suits? Did that lead to their illnesses? BUT of course our government says there were no chemical or biological weapons used over there? RIGHT! How many defective suits have already been used? The men and women serving our country deserve some answers. So do the taxpayers!

Families Wait

Fifty-five years ago (in March 1945) US Marines were on Iwo Jima fighting the Japanese. PFC Amer C. Jeffers had just joined B Company, 1st Battalion, 27th Marines, 5th Marine Division. On 8 March 1945 the US government claims he was Missing in Action. A year later he was officially declared Killed in Action.

For all these years Amer’s wife, Ruth, has searched for answers. Her husband’s remains never came home to her for burial. She kept writing the government and other organizations trying to learn more about her husband’s demise—if in fact he was deceased. She has had no closure.

In 1997 Ralph Belt recalled when he was a corporal on Iwo Jima in 1945. He claims his radioman’s name was Jeffers and that Jeffers had saved his life. BUT he remembered that there were two men by that name—the other being Ralph C. Jeffers. Belt says that Ralph Jeffers was killed earlier than Amer Jeffers. However there is no record of a Ralph Jeffers dying on Iwo Jima or anywhere else for that fact. So who really saved CPL Belt’s life in 1945? Is Ralph C. Jeffers really dead? Is Amer C. Jeffers really dead?

The Japanese government claims it returned all of our troop’s remains in 1968. The US was unable to identify all the remains. At least 46 individuals were interred on Hawaii and listed as unknowns. Ruth Jeffers still wonders where her husband is.

It wasn’t too long ago that a set of remains in the Tomb of the Unknown in Arlington National Cemetery was identified as belonging to an Air Force officer who died in Vietnam. With all our technology now, it’s a shame the personnel in Hawaii can’t exhume all those remains from World War II and test them once again. Perhaps they could identify some of our lost men. Perhaps one could be identified as PFC Amer C. Jeffers. Perhaps Ruth Jeffers could finally put her husband to rest where he belongs.

Many questions arise from this woman’s search for the truth. Was her husband killed on Iwo Jima on 8 March 1945? Or was he killed saving the life CPL Ralph Belt on 13 March of that same year? Where are his remains? Who was Ralph Jeffers and when did he die? Or is he really dead? Why can’t our government answer these questions? How much longer are we going to send our troops in harms way and not keep good records about them, where they are, if they are wounded or killed in action, or if listed as POW-MIA not stopping looking until we find him or her?

These questions come to the forefront today as I opened my newspaper and saw that Secretary of Defense William Cohen is visiting Hanoi, Vietnam. He is there renewing talks with the Vietnamese government and military officials to find, recover, and return our MIA’s from that war.

SECDEF Cohen spent some time at an excavation site watching Americans and Vietnamese searching for metal and bone fragments at a crash site of an American F-4 Phantom jet that went down in May 1967 with the Navy pilot Commander Richard Rich on board. Pieces of the metal and what might be bones, the size of thumbnails, were being found near DongPhu.

While our government hopes to identify either the plane or bone fragments as belonging to CDR Rich there is also a question as to if the plane belonged to another pilot also shot down in that area. SECDEF Cohen said, "We are making every conceivable effort" in hopes of determining the identity of the individual at this site.

Its already been shown that DNA tests on very minute pieces of bone have eventually been able to identify an individual from airplane crashes as well as other catastrophes. BUT it has also been shown that our government has asked military family members to accept that a tooth belonged to their child missing more than 25 years. It has also been found that the excavators in Vietnam have dug in places where there was no indication of an actual crash site, many miles away from verified crash sites, and claimed they found remains.

Can we believe our government? Can we trust them when they say this box of pieces if your son or daughter? Many family members say NO.

If the government can be trusted and if the tests can be conclusive why not go back to the unidentified remains of WW II, Korea and other wars and try again to identify them. Why should we spend money on space programs when we haven’t taken care of the people on earth?

Its time we help people like Ruth Jeffers put her husband to rest. If anyone knows more about PFC Amer Jeffers demise please contact me at NFortin@aol.com or Ross O’Donnell at k9Cochise@aol.com.

Its time we help other families lay their loved ones to rest. Its time our government did everything it can to help our people and not people in other countries.

Lost Captain

The story that went along with the photos was just as amazing. The white man pictured on the front page is an Emory University graduate student. He had been rummaging through a flea market one day about a month ago and came across a box of photo negatives. There was film of different types in the box; some color, some black and white, some 35-mm, some 126-mm.

The grad student collects old cameras and equipment. He was very interested in the negatives so he got the box full of them. The flea market owner simply said they had come from a house in southwest Atlanta.

Once the young man began to have the negatives processed, he knew he had something very special. There were pictures of American airmen and soldiers; photos of military vehicles, planes and helicopters; TanSonNhut Air Base and the USO Center in Saigon; and scenery of Vietnam. Although he thought he knew who the main photographer was, there was no real indication of who had really taken the pictures. Randy contacted the Atlanta History Center for assistance.

There were several photos of the same black man who became identified as a Captain Herren of the United States Air Force. The museum curators said that they searched for the captain. They determined that he wasn’t killed in Vietnam because there were no black Captain Herren’s listed on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. They thought that perhaps he was from Georgia since the photos were found within the state.

The museum decided to make a display of the photos and had them enlarged. The exhibit, called "Snapshots from the War: An Unknown Soldier’s Tour of Duty" opened on Monday—the same day the article appeared in the paper. BUT the museum still didn’t know whom the photos belonged to.

This is where the story gets complicated. I know enough about the copyright rules to know that the photos should not have been used in any format until all possible efforts had been made to locate the owner of them. I also know that there are ways to locate military personnel, alive or dead, it just takes a little research.

In less than a month, the Atlanta History Center enlarged these photos and put them on display. I wondered just how much they searched for Captain Herren. My question was answered the very next morning.

Captain George Ray Herren had served in Vietnam and survived his 1968-1969 tour there. From Vietnam CPT Herren was sent to California, North Dakota, and finally to the Philippines. In 1972 while in the Philippines he was killed in a motorcycle accident. He is buried in San Antonio’s Veterans Cemetery. His widow and two daughters live in Atlanta. His son, George Raymond Herren, is in Cincinnati.

Mayme Herren was shocked to see her late husband’s picture on the front page of the paper that Monday morning. Likewise Theresa Herren and Lisa Herren Blount were taken aback to see their father’s image smiling back at them from the paper. Mayme said the box of photo negatives were stolen from her home in 1995 along with her wedding ring and other items. She often wondered what became of all the items taken. Now she at least knows where the pictures are. My heart goes out to her and her family.

Just how hard had the Atlanta History Center searched for this family? I opened up my telephone book and found less than two dozen Herren’s listed. Did museum personnel bother to contact these people? It seems not, especially since both Mayme and Theresa are listed in the book. Did they attempt to contact the Veteran’s Affairs or National Archives personnel to locate information about CPT Herren? It appears not. Did they try everything imaginable to locate his family before publishing his pictures or setting up a display? Apparently not.

Those of us in the writing business and other forms of media know how important it is to get authorization to utilize photos. So why didn’t the Atlanta History Center do likewise? Yes it takes time to do the research. Yes it can be frustrating. BUT with their affiliations, it should not have been such a tough task.

So again—just how hard did the Atlanta History Center try to locate the captain or his family? Were they more interested in putting up another exhibit in connection with one they already had going on, in order to bring in more visitors and ultimately more money? The other exhibit is a group of enlarged photos from the book Requiem which is photos taken by military and civilian photographers who died while in Vietnam and Indochina.

While I am glad the Herren family has been located I am saddened with the way they were found. At least now the Center says they will include more information about CPT Herren in the exhibit. BUT I still think the Center’s personnel were remiss in their duties. The pictures should not have appeared in the paper or in their museum until all stops had been pulled out to locate family members.