Just an interim post before we leap like subservient Lemmings, off the ‘Fiscal Cliff. So our Government needs to raise the ‘debt ceiling’ again? This debt is never going to diminish. Why not just remove the Capitol Dome, For all intents and purposes, the debt is synonymous with the quote form the movie “Toy Story, “To Infinity and Beyond. This quick fix could be compared to a home owner up to his neck in debt, takes out a high interest loan to pay off low interest credit cards. All that does, is dig an abyss of debt instead of a whole. $14,000,000,000.00 is quite a large debt to pay back, especially at the rate of $13,000.00 per second in accumulating interest. With all the/ financial ‘wiz kids’ in this country, I’m sure some think tank could resolve this problem. I have many Ideas to save the economy, but who am I. Just one of the unheard little people, who happens to have an I.Q. between 158 and 161. How could someone like me ever be able to solve a problem that our Government cant? I Refer Back to my Article, A United States….Or a House Divided. Its time we took a moment and dwell on the fact: Are we a Republic? Or a Democracy? A dual sided Senate and Congress does not work. We need to Have a full house of Democrats in both senate and Congress. If we are a true democracy.

This is a story, very close to my heart. It is one of, likely thousands, however Major Henry Muir Serex and I have been close for 39 years. It began with sales of commerative bracelets, known in the early 70′s as POW or MIA bracelets. They were distinguished by color. Blue for POW, red for MIA. Henrys’ was classified as POW. I purchased the bracelet in 1973, receiving a stainless steel band, stamped with his name rank and date of POW status, that date being 4-2-1972. Back then I wore the bracelet, probably because it was the ‘in’ thing to do. At 14 years of age, you dont realize the profound meaning behind it….you just wear it. The bracelet became a part of me. I wore it every day and have continued to wear it through all these years. I came to the full realization of the meaning of it, as I watched neighborhood kids burried, due to the war in Viet Nam. I became passionate about Major Serex, however, without the internet, research was next to impossible. Henry was embedded in my mind for years. Finally, one morning I realized, Hey the internet can be a useful tool, so I typed in His name. Low and behold I was able to glean a multitude of informative articles relating to him. You see Major Serex was a special case. More so than the thousands of other missing or dead heroes. You see, as you will read from Government reports, It is believed that Major Serex was still alive, as recent as 1992. Yes, Reports of

reconnaissance missions over South Veit Nam showed photographs of, in the governments words, ” What seemed to be the name SEREX, written in the sand”. This was not made public, until his Daughter, Kythryn sadly learned of classified information in 1986. This was partially due to the movie “BAT21″ Major Serex Battalion code name. He was the C.O of the Battalion, yet, somehow, he is not even referred to in the film. Good Question…. WHY?. I assume, If a recon pilot reported a finding as important as this and nothing was done to follow up or begin a search and rescue mission, whatever agency responsible, would want to keep a lid on it. How heartbreaking to realize that your father may have survived at least 24 years after his being reported missing, and nothing was done about it. I know the pain I feel for the family and have for years. This story is a true tragedy as well as a travesty. My prayes continue to be with the Serex family and for Major Serex, who incidentally was promoted, posthumously to the rank of Colonel. Nice gesture. Below are the facts, as reported by various new agencies, culled from Government documents.

Name: Henry Muir Serex Rank/Branch: O4/US Air Force Unit: 42nd Tactical Electronic Warfare Squadron, Korat AB TH Date of Birth: 09 May 1931 Home City of Record: New Orleans LA (family in CA) Date of Loss: 02 April 1972 Country of Loss: South Vietnam Loss Coordinates: 165000N 1070100E (YD146612) Status (in 1973): Missing In Action Category: 2 Acft/Vehicle/Ground: EB66E ("Bat 21") Refno: 1811

Personnel in Incident: April 2: Robin F. Gatwood; Wayne L. Bolte; Anthony Giannangeli; Charles A. Levis; Henry M. Serex; (all missing from the EB66). LtCol. Iceal Hambleton (rescued after 12 days from EB66). Ronald P. Paschall; Byron K. Kulland; John W. Frink (all missing from UH1H rescue helicopter), Jose M. Astorga (captured and released in 1973 from UH1H). April 3: William J. Henderson (captured and released in 1973 from OV10A rescue craft); Mark Clark (rescued after 12 days from OV10A rescue craft). April 6: James H. Alley; Allen J. Avery; Peter H. Chapman; John H. Call; William R. Pearson; Roy D. Prater (all KIA/BNR from HH53C "Jolly 52" rescue chopper). Also in very close proximity to "Bat 21"on April 3: Allen D. Christensen; Douglas L. O'Neil; Edward W. Williams; Larry A. Zich (all missing from UH1H). April 7: Bruce Charles Walker (evaded 11 days); Larry F. Potts (captured & died in POW camp) (both missing from OV10A).

Source: Compiled by Homecoming II Project 31 April 1990 from one or more of the following: raw data from U.S. Government agency sources, correspondence with POW/MIA families, published sources, interviews. Updated by the P.O.W. NETWORK 1998.

REMARKS:

SYNOPSIS: On the afternoon of April 2, 1972, two Thailand-based EB66 aircraft (Bat 21 and Bat 22), from the 30th Air Division, were flying pathfinder escort for a cell of B52s bombing near the DMZ. Bat 21 took a direct SAM hit and the plane went down. The aircraft was observed by other flight members to break apart and crash. A single beeper signal was heard, that of navigator Col. Iceal Hambleton. At this time it was assumed the rest of the crew died in the crash. The crew included Maj. Wayne L. Bolte, pilot; 1Lt. Robin F. Gatwood, LtCol. Anthony R. Giannangeli, LtCol. Charles A. Levis, and Maj. Henry M. Serex, all crew members. It should be noted that the lowest ranking man aboard this plane was Gatwood, a First Lieutenant. This was not an ordinary crew, and its members, particularly Hambleton, would be a prize capture for the enemy because of military knowledge they possessed. 

It became critical, therefore, that the U.S. locate Hambleton, and any other surviving crew members before the Vietnamese did - and the Vietnamese were trying hard to find them first.

An Army search and rescue team was nearby and dispatched two UH1H "slicks" and two UH1B "Cobras". When they approached Hambleton's position just before dark, at about 50 feet off the ground, with one of the AH1G Cobra gunships flying at 300 feet for cover, two of the helicopters were shot down. One, the Cobra (Blue Ghost 28) reached safety and the crew was picked up, without having seen the other downed helicopter. The other, a UH1H from F Troop, 8th Cavalry, 196th Brigade, had just flown over some huts into a clearing when they encountered ground fire, and the helicopter exploded. Jose Astorga, the gunner, was injured in the chest and knee by the gunfire. Astorga became unconscious, and when he recovered, the helicopter was on the ground. He found the pilot, 1Lt. Byron K. Kulland, lying outside the helicopter. WO John W. Frink, the co-pilot, was strapped in his seat and conscious. The crew chief, SP5 Ronald P. Paschall, was pinned by his leg in the helicopter, but alive. WO Franks urged Astorga to leave them, and Astorga was captured. He soon observed the aircraft to be hit by automatic weapons fire, and to explode with the rest of the crew inside. He never saw the rest of the crew again. Astorga was released by the North Vietnamese in 1973.

The following day, Nail 38, an OV10A equipped with electronic rescue gear enabling its crew to get a rapid "fix" on its rescue target entered Hambleton's area and was shot down. The crew, William J. Henderson and Mark Clark, both parachuted out safely. Henderson was captured and released in 1973. Clark evaded for 12 days and was subsequently rescued.

On April 3, the day Nail 38 was shot down, a UH1H "slick" went down in the same area carrying a crew of four enlisted Army personnel. They had no direct connection to the rescue of Bat 21, but were very probably shot down by the same SAM installations that downed Bat 21. The helicopter, from H/HQ, 37th Signal Battalion, 1st Signal Brigade, had left Marble Mountain Airfield, Da Nang, on a standard resupply mission to signal units in and around Quang Tri City. The crew, consisting of WO Douglas L. O'Neil, pilot; CW2 Larry A. Zich, co-pilot; SP5 Allen D. Christensen, crew chief; and SP4 Edward W. Williams, gunner; remain missing in action.

On April 6, an attempt was made to pick up Clark and Hambleton which resulted in an HH53C helicopter being shot down. The chopper was badly hit. The helicopter landed on its side and continued to burn, consuming the entire craft, and presumably, all 6 men aboard. The crew of this aircraft consisted of James H. Alley; Allen J. Avery, John H. Call III, Peter H. Chapman, William R. Pearson, and Roy D. Prater. Search and rescue noted no signs of survivors, but it is felt that the Vietnamese probably know the fate of this crew because of the close proximity of the downed aircraft to enemy locations.

On April 7 another Air Force OV10A went down in the area with Larry Potts and Bruce Walker aboard. Walker, the Air Force pilot of the aircraft, evaded capture 11 days, while it is reported that Potts was captured and died in Quang Binh prison. Potts, the observer, was a Marine Corps officer. Walker's last radio transmission to search and rescue was for SAR not to make an attempt to rescue, the enemy was closing in. Both men remain unaccounted for.

Hambleton and Clark were rescued after 12 incredible days. Hambleton continually changed positions and reported on enemy activity as he went, even to the extent of calling in close air strikes near his position. He was tracked by a code he devised relating to the length and lie direction of various golf holes he knew well. Another 20 or so Americans were not so fortunate.

In July 1986, the daughter of Henry Serex learned that, one week after all search and rescue had been "called off" for Bat 21, another mission was mounted to recover "another downed crewmember" from Bat 21. She doesn't know whether the "other downed crewmember" is her father or another man on the EB66 aircraft. No additional information has been released. When the movie "Bat 21" was released, she was horrified to learn that virtually no mention of the rest of the crew was made in the film.

In Vietnam, to most fighting men, the man that fought beside them, whether in the air or on the ground, was worth dying for. Each understood that the other would die for him if necessary. Thus, also considering the critical knowledge possessed by Col. Hambleton and some of the others, the seemingly uncanny means taken to recover Clark and Hambleton are not so unusual at all.

What defies logic and explanation, however, is that the government that sent these men to battle can distort or withhold information from their families, and knowingly abandon hundreds of men known or strongly suspected to be in enemy hands.

Thousands of reports have been received by the U.S. Government indicating that Americans are still alive, in captivity in Southeast Asia. It has been 17 years for those who may have survived the 1972 Easter crashes and rescue attempts. How much longer must they wait for their country to bring "peace with honor" to them and bring them home? 

Henry M. Serex was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel during the period he was maintained missing. 

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U.S. News and World report January 1994

This week, the family of a Vietnam War flier with the unusual name of Henry Muir Serex will arrive in Washington, D.C., to view an unusual photograph. The photo, taken by an American satellite, shows a prison camp located near Haiphong, Vietnam. Some who have viewed this photograph see, in a field just outside the prison, the following sequence of letters and numbers: 72 TA 88. The numbers and letters are big. Just above the numbers and letters is a word, seemingly etched into the earth. The word, in capital letters, is SEREX. The photo was taken in June 1992.

Was Lieutenant Colonel Serex alive just 19 months ago? The very notion is heart wrenching. "If he's there," says Kathryn Serex, "and the government does nothing to get him out, it would be absolute torture." Kathryn Serex was 10 when her father was shot down in April 1972.

But not everyone agrees that these numbers and letters are there. Officials in the Pentagon's POW/MIA office say that such apparent "ground signals" are photographic anomalies, or markings that are not man-made.

Many symbols. Members of the Serex family want to see for themselves. Pentagon officials will allow Henry Serex's former wife, Barbara, and his daughters, Jennifer and Kathryn, to view all the pertinent, still-secret imagery. The Pentagon's official position: The letters and numbers disappear when the original imagery--that which was broadcast from the satellite--is examined. The Serexes have insisted that they be accompanied by their own experts and by Sen. Bob Smith, a New Hampshire Republican who has seen the photo and says the SEREX "is very clear."

Even if the SEREX photo turns out to be unconvincing, however, questions raised by other ground-signal imagery are unlikely to go away. In 1988, huge letters spelling out USA appeared in a field in Laos. Underneath the letters was an image, possibly a K, a signal for "pilot down here." In 1973, on the Plain of Jars in Laos, the images 1573 or 1973 TH were identified. The numbers and letters appear to have been tramped into deep elephant grass. Pentagon officials concede that these two symbols remain unexplained. Some observers contend that many other photos containing possible signals need to be adequately examined, a point the Pentagon disputes.

Fueling the debate is the obscure nature of ground signaling. During the Vietnam War, every American airman was given a top-secret, four-digit authenticator code of his own choosing. Fliers were also issued two-letter distress symbols periodically. Downed fliers could use these alphanumerics to signal by radio or by ground writing.

The signals had to be large enough to be seen from miles overhead, yet so clever or subtle that they would not be noticed by their captors. Fliers might use logs, stomped grass, turned-up soil or stacked brush to make symbols. They might use rice-paddy dikes or existing paths to help form letters or numbers.

The fliers were also taught to make their letters distinct by attaching little appendages. The K, the signal for a downed pilot, was to have a little foot added at the bottom of its leg. It was termed a "walking K" The problem is, the more hurried or subtle the signal, the more expertise is required to see it.

Yet some such signals have been seen and identified. While planning the illfated 1970 raid on the Son Tay prison camp in Vietnam, photo analysts spotted a possible K, a 55 and an SAR, for Search and Rescue. In 1981, when human and signals intelligence had indicated prisoners were still being held at Nhommarath prison camp in Laos, photo interpreters were assigned to study it closely. In a garden plot inside the prison walls, they saw what looked like a 52-K, or possibly B-52 K. Pentagon officials approved a raid on the camp, dubbed Operation Pocket Change. The raid was canceled after it was leaked to the press. Over the years, many of the four-digit authenticator codes were lost.

Enter Bob Taylor. An investigator for the Senate Select Committee on POW/ MIA Affairs, Taylor was looking into Pocket Change and other POW covert operations, records show. One day in April 1992, while he was at the CIA, Taylor heard about the letters spelling out USA. The image had turned up in CIA aerial surveillance of drug cultivation in Laos. It was what was underneath the USA that galvanized Taylor, however: He was able to make out a walking K. Taylor called Robert Dussault, an expert in Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape training (or SERE, the Pentagon acronym). Dussault and assistants scanned that and other photos.

As Dussault pored over one photo of Dong Mang prison, the word SERE caught his eye, along with some other symbols.

To Dussault's eye, they looked like this: 72 TA 88. SERE might be a signal to his agency, he thought, but then he saw an x at the end. Scanning a list of missing men, he found the name of Henry Serex. The T and A, it turned out, were distress codes in 1972, though not at the time Serex went down. Might he have been moved to the prison in 1988? It's all highly unlikely, says the Pentagon's office of POW/ MIA affairs. Its best information indicates that Serex died when his EB-66 aircraft was shot down over Vietnam.

Ed Ross, acting director of the POW/ MIA office, says that the nation's best photo analysts have examined all imagery of Southeast Asia, including the new "discoveries," and the only unexplained images are the USA-K and the 1573 or 1973 TH seen in Laos in 1973. For that reason, Ross says, there is no reason to set up a task force to study imagery, as the Senate select committee recommended. The problem, Ross says, is that all the "discoveries" have been made by persons who are untrained in photo imagery analysis.

One person who has viewed some of these images, though, is a photo expert Retired Col. Lorenzo W. Burroughs has 40 years of experience in photo interpretation in the Air Force and the ClA he served as acting director of the National Photographic Interpretation Center. Burroughs developed techniques during the cold war for finding signs of items that were purposefully camouflaged. Burroughs and another analyst, Carroll Lucas, were hired by the Senate select committee in 1992 to review ground signals from Southeast Asia. Lucas disputed all but the USA as a man-made symbol.

More symbols. But Burroughs reported seeing 10 sets of numbers and letters that he deemed worthy of more examination. Near the USA, for instance, he made out the name of another downed pilot. When Burroughs examined photographs of the Dong Mang prison camp, before he even got to the SEREX image, he discovered another set of symbols near the prison: GX 2527. The x was a walking x, the 2527, the authenticator of yet another missing pilot. Burroughs says he has 100 percent confidence the GX 2527 is real. Burroughs's contract ran out, and he never got to examine the SEREX image.

This week, Burroughs finally will have his chance. The Serex family has requested that Burroughs be with them, as well as Bob Dussault, the escape-and-evasion signals expert. If they see the SEREX, family members say, they will want to know what their government will do next. And if they don't see it, they will be even more confused. "Who do we trust?" says Barbara Lundeen, Henry Serex's wife, who has since remarried. "Do we trust the government? Do we trust the politicians? Is there anyone out there we can trust?" 

NETWORK NOTE - many more articles regarding this case are available through the P.O.W. NETWORK 660-928-3304 or info@pownetwork.org