MAJOR ALBRO LYNN LUNDY, JR.



Red Lao Claim To Have Returned MIA Lundy's Remains
Where Were His Remains Found? When Were They Found?
When Did He Die, And What Killed Him?

By Ted Sampley
U.S. Veteran Dispatch
Dec. 1997/Jan. 1998

Communist Lao's Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Soubanh Sprithirath strolled into U.S. Ambassador Wendy Chamberland's Ventienne office October 28 of this year and plopped a box onto her desk. "Here is an American MIA," he told the Ambassador.

Ambassador Chamberland accepted the box and in a later statement to the press praised the Lao: "We appreciate the compassion of the Laos citizens who have cooperated in the return of these remains and hope . . . that other Laos citizens will come forward with information which will help other American families come to closure on the death of their loved ones."

The box, according to a Capitol Hill source, contained the bones of U.S. Air Force Pilot Major Albro L Lundy, Jr., his dog tags, ID card and Blood Chit. A Blood Chit is a numbered reward offer printed on silk carried by fixed wing air crew members on their person. The Southeast Asian version states the following in more than a dozen languages of that region: "I am a citizen of the United States of America. I do not speak your language. Misfortune forces me to seek your assistance in obtaining food, shelter and protection. Please take me to someone who will provide for my safety and see that I am returned to my people. My government will reward you."

Nearly 600 American servicemen became missing in action as a result of the secret war fought by the United States in Laos. Because the United States government refused to admit fighting the war there, it did not negotiate with the Laotian communists for the return of U.S. prisoners at the end of the war. No live American POWs were released by the Lao.

The Capitol Hill source told the U.S. Veteran Dispatch that, because of the personal items in the box and their "excellent" condition, U.S. government officials are convinced that the remains are in fact those of Lundy, who was lost over northeastern Laos December 24, 1970.

Lundy was flying an A1E aircraft on a medical evacuation escort mission over a heavily defended communist controlled valley in Laos when he began having mechanical problems.

He radioed, "I've got a rough engine . . . It's backfiring."

He radioed to other members of the flight, "I've got to get out now."

The other pilots saw Lundy's seat rocket fire, followed by what some called a normal chute deployment. Seconds later, Lundy's plane hit the ground, disintegrated and burned. There were conflicting reports about Lundy's ejection. Some witnesses said Lundy's chute harness was empty. Others report that Lundy was in fact in the harness after the chute opened.

Aircraft circled the crash site which was located within five kilometers of a village for 30 minutes but found no signs of Lundy or received any emergency beacon signals from him. U.S. ground teams attempted to enter the crash site later that day but were driven away by hostile fire.

Two days later, the U.S. government declared Lundy "dead, body not recovered." His family was told in a telegram and official condolence letter that Maj. Lundy did not leave the aircraft and that he "died instantly as a result of the aircraft crash."

Following the U.S. government's certification that Lundy was dead, his wife Jonna Lundy began rebuilding her life and doing what was necessary to raise their six children. She pursued a law degree by attending night classes. She never remarried. One son, Albro Lundy III, is also a lawyer. He was 10 when his father left for the war that was raging in Indochina.

In 1991, a photo surfaced depicting three men believed to be American prisoners of war in captivity. The photo was accompanied by three sets of fingerprints and palm prints said to be those of the three men and carrying the date May 25, 1990. One of the three men was said to be Lundy.

The photo was brought into the United States by a Huston, Texas woman who had just returned from Thailand. She had done relief work in refugee camps along the Thai/Cambodian border in 1980-1981 and had returned 10 years later for a second visit to the camps.

After she returned to the United States in 1990, the woman contacted the U.S. Veteran Dispatch. She said that after returning to Thailand and visiting one of the refugee camps known as Sight Number Two, she was contacted by a "Cambodian refugee."

The refugee told her he wanted to talk about American flyers, "the ones that are alive." He said he represented a "Cambodian businessman" who had been able to "purchase" two Americans from captivity. The refugee gave the woman the names "Robertson" and "Stevens." He said they had been moved to a "safe site" in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

According to the woman, the refugee gave her the photograph and a map showing the site in Phnom Penh where the MIAs were being held. He wanted her to go and see for herself. The woman, suspecting some sort of scam, asked how much it was going to cost her. The refugee said it would cost her only $500 for the air fare. Instead of going to Cambodia, however, the woman took the information to the U.S. Embassy in Bancok where much to her shock, her information was received with little enthusiasm. The embassy personnel, the woman told the U.S. Veteran Dispatch, was simply not interested.

The woman asked the U.S. Veteran Dispatch for assistance in finding the families of the men depicted in the photo. She was provided with information regarding how she could reach the families and advised to contact former prisoner of war Navy Captain Eugene "Red" McDaniel who was head of the American Defense Institute (ADI), a think tank based in Alexandria, Virginia. ADI at that time was sponsoring the collection of information pertaining to the POW/MIA issue.

The Lundy family was contacted by ADI. After being shown the photograph, the family positively identified Albro Lundy as one of the men in the photo.

"The head shape is exactly the same," Lundy's son Albro III said in a news conference in July 1991.

"Look at the ear placements," he said, holding up another picture taken of his father more than 20 years before. "Look at the hair line, look at the cowlick, look at the eyebrows. Look how deep the eyes are set.

"Look at the nose and the broad tip at the end of the nose. Take a look down here at the chin with the dimples," Albro III pointed to one of the men in the photo and told the reporters, "this is my father."

The appearance of the photo made international headlines after ADI released it to Reuter's wire service. International interest in the photo brought to a screeching halt an ongoing U.S. government effort to declare the issue of American servicemen missing from the Vietnam satisfactorily resolved so that Vietnam's lucrative slave labor market could be opened to American business interests.

The other two U.S. MIAs purportedly in the photograph, Navy Lt. Larry Stevens and Air Force Col John Leighton Robinson, were also positively identified by their family members. Ironically, Vietnam had erroneously claimed to have returned the remains of Robinson in 1990, but the Pentagon said the remains were those of an animal.

The families immediately turned to the U.S. government and asked that the finger and palm prints be compared to the U.S. government held prints of the three missing pilots. To their amazement, the U.S. military could not find any fingerprint records to check against those accompanying the photo.

In Lundy's case, the absence of his fingerprint records required the loss or destruction of multiple sets of fingerprints known to have once been on file with the Air Force, the FBI, the State Department and his college ROTC.

The Lundy family was further astonished when they discovered that over the years the U.S. government had received at least 20 reports describing Lundy as alive and still in captivity. The family had only been told of two of the sightings.

Senators Bob Smith, John Kerry, Jesse Helms, Frank Murkowski, Alan Cranston and Charles Grassley met in private to discuss whether or not the Senate should establish a committee to look into the POW/MIA issue. Smith and Grassley demanded that such a committee be formed.

The Senate soon voted to establish a Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs, which began its investigation into the POW/MIA issue in November 1991. After 18 months, the Select Committee concluded that yes, some American servicemen were left behind alive in the hands of the communists after the end of the Vietnam War.

Nigel Cawthorne, a British author who investigated the "live POW issue" and wrote about his findings in his book The Bamboo Cage, estimated at least 300 American prisoners remained in the hands of the communists after the war. Authors Monika Jensen-Stevenson and William Stevenson claim in their book Kiss The Boys Goodbye: How The United States Betrayed Its Own POWs In Vietnam the number was at least 100. Jensen-Stevenson and Cawthorne both testified before the Select Committee.

While the Select Committee was still investigating, a year after the photograph from Cambodia depicting Lundy, Robertson and Stevens surfaced. Defense Department officials told the New York Times that they were convinced the photograph was a phony. They said it was a reproduction of a 1923 photo of three Soviet farmers that had been published in a December 1989 Khmer language issue of a magazine called Soviet Union.

The Pentagon produced a copy of the magazine which they said had been found in Cambodia's National Library located in Phnom Penh. The Pentagon could only produce one copy of the magazine.

Kathy Lundy, the daughter-in-law of Major Lundy, said the Pentagon's copy of the magazine and conclusion "raises more questions." She said that quick research done on behalf of the families by contacts in Moscow found that Soviet Union magazine was published in 22 languages but not in Khmer.

She said Russian and English editions from December of 1989 do not show the picture that was reported to have come from the Cambodian library. The Pentagon acknowledged that Ms. Lundy was correct in her findings but explained the discrepancy by saying that not all regional editions of the magazine were identical.

The establishment press believed the Pentagon. The photo was declared a fraud. The U.S. government moved forward with plans to normalize trade relations with Vietnam. To dilute its own findings, the Select Committee so as not to offend the communist Vietnamese and to appease the corporate interests lobbying to do business with Vietnam, also declared in its final report that there was no evidence proving the abandoned POWs were still alive.

POW/MIA families and activists countered, maintaining that in the absence of "credible" evidence proving the POW/MIAs dead, they should be considered still alive and in captivity. They adamantly opposed any normalized relations with Vietnam until such evidence was presented.

The establishment press headlined the Select Committee's conclusion that there was no evidence of live POWs still being held. The U.S. government moved forward and began the normalization process.

Six months after the Select Committee issued its final report, the New York Times reported the discovery in Moscow of a 1972 Russian intelligence document pertaining to U.S. prisoners of war held by Hanoi during the Vietnam War. The document, which became known as the "1205 Document", was authored by Tran Van Quang, a North Vietnamese Army Lieutenant General whose war time responsibility included keeping track of North Vietnam's American prisoners of war.

The 1205 Document, which was found in the archives of the Communist Party of the former Soviet Union, revealed that during the Vietnam War the communists were actually holding 1,205 American prisoners at a time when Hanoi officials were telling U.S. negotiators that they held only 386 American POWs.

The unexpected appearance of the 1205 Document provided even more compelling evidence that the Vietnamese were lying about continuing to hold U.S. POWs after the war. Controversy surrounding the document again stopped the U.S. government's rush to normalize relations with Vietnam.

U.S. officials soon declared the 1205 Document to be a fraud. The establishment press agreed, and the U.S. government resumed its preparation for trade with Vietnam.

American business interests were finally granted their wish in 1994 when President Bill Clinton lifted the U.S. trade embargo against Vietnam. On July 11, 1995, Clinton announced normalized diplomatic relations between the two countries, citing "enhanced Vietnamese cooperation" in resolving the POW/MIA issue.

And this year, it is well known that the Laotian Communist Party, not to be outdone by the Vietnamese Communist Party has solicited the support of U.S. business interests in pressuring the Clinton administration to grant Most Favored Nation (MFN) trade status to Laos.

Laotians have obviously learned from the Vietnamese how to find and use U.S. MIA bones to achieve their political goals.

What better way for Laotian communists to divert attention from the fact that no living U.S. POWs were returned from Laos at the end of the war. The miraculous appearance of a high profile MIA believed to still be alive in 1990 discredits any notion that Laos still holds live U.S. POWs.

Albro Lundy III says his family will not accept the remains as those of his father until they have been verified by qualified forensic experts. He wants to know how the Lao government obtained his father's ID information and remains. He wants to know what the chain of custody of the remains was and the exact circumstance and date of his father's death.

Good questions.

"The head shape is exactly the same," Lundy's son Albro III said in a news conference in July 1991. "Look at the ear placements," he said, holding up another picture taken of his father more than 20 years before. "Look at the hair line, look at the cowlick, look at the eyebrows. Look how deep the eyes are set . . . Look at the nose and the broad tip at the end of the nose. Take a look down here at the chin with the dimples," Albro III pointed to one of the men in the photo and told the reporters, "this is my father."


Children of Vietnam Veterans
Cathleen Lundy Daniel,
Wed, June 06 2001, 8:07:32
My Dad was MIA and then declared KIA in 1970, about a year after I was born. My brother Albro Lundy, Jr. has been very active in the POW movement. I'm thinking about putting together a website of stories, poems, and remembrances by children of vietnam veterans (COVV), whose fathers are still living or KIA or MIA. If you are a COVV and would like to contribute something or if anyone has any comments or suggestions please email me at cl3z@virginia.edu or cathleen_daniel@excite.com.
Thank you


Albro Lynn Lundy, Jr.
Major, United States Air Force

April 16, 2004
Honor Guard Lieutenant gives POW/MIA bracelet to hero's family

U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Alex Saltekoff
by Mike Campbell
11th Wing Public Affairs



First Lieutenant Nicholas Jameson, assigned to the U.S. Air Force Honor Guard at Bolling, displays his POW/MIA bracelet bearing Major Albro Lundy's name and information before giving the bracelet to the Lundy family.

When Major Albro Lundy Jr., went down in his A1-E Skyraider over northeastern Laos, on December 24, 1970, Lieutenant Nicholas Jameson's parents had yet to meet each other, much less imagine the birth of their first son almost a decade later.

Nearly 34 years after the brave pilot was lost to the ravages of war, he finally received a hero's burial at Arlington National Cemetery April 7, 2004, and young Lieutenant Jameson was on hand to direct Major Lundy's belated sendoff. As the ceremonial flight commander in charge of the U.S. Air Force Honor Guard contingent rendering full honors to the Silver Star winner, the lieutenant said the ceremony "was done with the same perfection that we always strive for" and "went off without a hitch."

Uninformed observers of the events at Section 68 on April 7, 2004, would likely describe the proceedings in much the same way. But beneath this event's solemn formalities, punctuated by the smooth, polished movements of the synchronized routines the Honor Guardsmen daily execute to near perfection, an amazing story's final chapter was unfolding for Lieutenant Jameson and the inner circle of the Lundy family.

Major Lundy's POW/MIA bracelet had found its way home, courtesy of Lieutenant Jameson and an utterly improbable convergence of events only the most hardened cynic could view as the result of fickle, random chance. The lieutenant certainly agrees, and says he never imagined when he bought the bracelet from a Daytona Beach, Florida, vendor in 1997, his second year at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University there, that a day such as April 7 at Arlington National Cemetery was even remotely possible.

"I was looking through the bracelets and I noticed that Major Lundy came from California, and that's the only reason I chose that bracelet," he said, explaining that his hometown, San Clemente, in Orange County, California, is fairly close to the Lundys' Sherman Oaks home in Los Angeles County (79 miles). "I've had the bracelet ever since and worn it almost every single day. I honestly thought that maybe one day we'd find out that he came back home, that I'd find out by reading it on the Internet or in the newspaper somewhere, but I never thought that I would ... actually be a part of the ceremony."

For the Lundy family, the April 7 full-honors funeral officially closed the file on their long, painful odyssey in search of the truth about husband, brother and father -- a journey laced with high hopes and leavened with false leads and dead ends. Although the Lundy family chose not to do media interviews during their visit to ANC and the Washington area, the below summary of Major Lundy's saga has been compiled from several legitimate sources, official and unofficial.

The long road to ANC

Major Lundy had volunteered to fly lead cover in a flight of two Douglas A1-E Skyraiders for three Air America helicopters on a dangerous medical-evacuation mission over the heavily defended Ban Ban Valley in northeastern Laos on Christmas Eve, 1970. Near the pickup point, he reported engine trouble, telling his wingman, "I've got to get out now." Seconds after the firing of the aircraft's seat rocket, the Skyraider crashed and burned, and an empty parachute was seen descending. Initially declared missing in action, Major Lundy was officially designated "dead -- body not recovered" two days later. The Lundy family was told he "died instantly as a result of the aircraft crash."

But the Air Force's initial verdict was hardly the end of the story. In June 1991, the Pentagon received a photo of three men reported to be American prisoners of war holding a sign bearing the date May 25, 1990; Major Lundy was identified by his family as one of them. The photo accompanied three sets of fingerprint records and palm prints said to be those of the three men in the photo -- all of which led to intense media speculation and a Newsweek magazine cover story on July 29, 1991. The Lundys would also discover that more than 20 live sightings of Major Lundy had been reported over the years, and the family "had seen only two of these reports ... and little if any investigation was done on any of them," according to the POW Network Web site, pownetwork.org.

The photo was later deemed "probably a hoax" by unidentified Pentagon sources, who declined to comment officially on the validity of the photos at that time. Soon the Lundys would be swept up on an emotional roller coaster that included extended visits to Laos by William Lundy, one of the major's three sons; multiple Freedom of Information Act requests; accusations of government incompetence and/or stonewalling when several sets of Major Lundy's fingerprints allegedly on file with several U.S. agencies were either lost or destroyed; and Albro Lundy III's testimony to the Senate Select Committee on POWs on Nov. 7, 1991.

When the Associated Press reported on October 28, 1997 that Laos had returned to the U.S. government the "possible remains of an American aviator missing in action from the Vietnam War" believed to be those of an "Air Force pilot lost Dec. 24, 1970, over Xiangkhouang province in northeastern Laos," a final resolution seemed imminent. Perhaps even more significantly, a dog tag and military ID belonging to Major Lundy accompanied his purported remains.

Just as it seemed the Lundy family was on the brink of writing finis and closing the books on their kinsman's fate, the U.S. Army Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii was unable to positively confirm the "bone fragments" as Major Lundy's. Nearly five more years would elapse before DNA technology had advanced to the point where the USACILHI could announce a positive ID (March 26, 2002), but the "family chose not to accept the identification, pending independent examination and testing," according to the Feb. 7, 2004 newsletter of the National Alliance of Families for the Return of America's Missing Servicemen.

Not until January 2004, according to the alliance, were the Lundys able to confirm through an "independent" review of the DNA evidence that "the remains returned by the Laotian government are his and we will inter them at Arlington National Cemetery April 7 with a hero's farewell."

Bracelets "born" in 1970

POW/MIA bracelets have never been about wrist ornamentation at all, but serve as visible symbols and public reminders of the 1,865 Americans (as of April 5) still "unaccounted for" in Southeast Asia.

In late 1969, then-college students Carol Bates Brown and Kay Hunter were introduced to three wives of pilots missing in Vietnam by then-television personality Bob Dornan, who later became a well-known U.S. congressman. Mr. Dornan was wearing a bracelet given him by "hill tribesmen" in Vietnam, which reminded him of the suffering that war had inflicted on so many. From this seed sprang Voices in Vital America, a Los Angeles-based student organization that produced and distributed the bracelets as "a way to remember American prisoners of war in captivity in Southeast Asia," Mrs. Bates Brown wrote in an article from the Web site, www.miafacts.org.

From the time of its official birth on November 11, 1970 until VIVA ceased operations in 1976, more than "5 million bracelets were distributed, raising enough money to produce untold millions of bumper stickers, buttons, brochures, matchbooks ... etc., to draw attention to the missing men," she wrote.

Liz Flick, a regional and Ohio state coordinator for the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia, began making the bracelets in 1984 and is the legitimate heir to the mission begun by Mrs. Bates Brown. She says POW/MIA bracelets are also produced by several "commercial vendors" throughout the United States, but unlike them, "Every dime we make goes to the league," she said. "This [POW/MIA] is an issue that is very dear to a lot of people's hearts, and it just seems wrong that a commercial company should make money off POWs and MIAs -- that's totally wrong."

Mrs. Flick, who's in her 32nd year as a league volunteer, has worn two POW/MIA bracelets for 31 years, even refusing to remove them while undergoing medical surgeries. The thousands of bracelets she distributes through the Ohio POW/MIA League of Families chapter are done in stainless steel (for a very modest fee) by a disabled Vietnam veteran and carry the member's name, rank, date of loss, country of loss and branch of service, as well as the League logo. For more on the bracelets and other POW/MIA-related information, see pow-miafamilies.org.

Arlington National Cemetery, April 7

As the big day at Arlington approached, Lieutenant Jameson stopped by to discuss and reflect upon the bizarre and baffling account of Major Lundy's road to repatriation, his own extremely visible role in it and how this all could come together in such an extraordinary, uncanny way. For starters, the likelihood that he would find himself at this particular ceremony after wearing this particular pilot's POW/MIA bracelet for seven years was virtually nil -- unfathomable variables over 34 years argued against its realization.

And though the lieutenant downplayed the incredible alignment of circumstances that paved the way for the events of April 7, when asked to explain how he could also be the Honor Guard's ceremonial flight commander on this occasion, he went speechless, shaking his head in wonder. He could only add that had he missed a staff meeting on March 18, and been out at ANC directing another of the daily funerals the Honor Guard performs there, he may have never been aware of Major Lundy's repatriation.

Moreover, no process exists to inform those who wear the POW/MIA bracelets of changes in the status of the heroes they honor, so news of their funerals or other findings is difficult to come by in a timely manner, especially for people as busy as Lieutenant Jameson. "If Major Lundy had been laid to rest at any other national cemetery in this country, I'd never have known," he said earnestly.

But at the end, nothing could derail Lieutenant Jameson -- and his bracelet -- from their appointed meeting with the Lundy family. Not long after Chaplain (Capt.) Mark Thomas, of the ANC Chaplains Office, delivered his inspiring words of consolation and the official proceedings concluded, the lieutenant approached the gathered Lundy family and friends, about 40 in all, to deliver his special tribute. The unique quality of his poignant, unforgettable encounter would be completely unlike anything the lieutenant had experienced in his previous 120 ANC engagements -- or surely ever would again.

Disengaging from the group, Albro Lundy III, the eldest son, and Lieutenant Jameson met for the first time. "When he came up, I said to him 'I was honored to be a part of the ceremony honoring Major Lundy,' and it meant a lot to me because for the past years I've worn his POW/MIA bracelet," the lieutenant recalled. "I showed it to him and he was a little taken aback that I happened to have his bracelet. I could tell that he kind of had the same emotions going on as I did. I felt a connection of sorts with Major Lundy, because you always wonder about how he lived, how he served and, unfortunately, how he became a POW/MIA.

"I said, 'Thank you for your father's service,' and I presented it to him and saluted him. He was very humble, very quiet and simply said, 'Thanks.' I was touched," said Lieutenant Jameson, and clearly he was.

"It was very a humbling experience," the lieutenant said, his voice breaking slightly, "but it was also very beautiful. I know they're appreciative, and to me that's enough."

April 16, 2004

Director of personnel presents flag to Vietnam hero's son

At the end of the Major Albro Lundy Jr. full-honors repatriation ceremony April 7 at Arlington National Cemetery, Colonel Thomas Hancock, 11th Wing director of personnel, presented an American flag to Albro Lundy III, eldest son of the Vietnam War hero. Colonel Hancock, whose niece is married to another son, Kyle, said he was honored to be part of such an important event.

"I know how proud they are of their dad," Colonel Hancock said. "I also understand the anguish they went through for so many years -- ever since December 24, 1970, the day he volunteered to fly what would have been his last mission for a fellow Airman so he could receive calls from his family. Major Lundy epitomized what we now refer to as Air Force core values -- 'Integrity first, Service before self and Excellence in all we do.'

"As Airmen, we must always remember the sacrifices of our Airmen brothers and sisters who made the ultimate sacrifice. We must also remember they not only believed in Air Force core values, but lived them day to day even to their death. I thank God for Airmen such as Major Lundy who did just that, and those who continue to serve daily as an example for us through their faithful commitment, dedication and service to the values we cherish!"

LUNDY, ALBRO L JR
MAJ US AIR FORCE
VETERAN SERVICE DATES: 02/28/1956 - 12/24/1970
DATE OF BIRTH: 11/17/1932
DATE OF DEATH: 12/24/1970
DATE OF INTERMENT: 06/30/2003
BURIED AT: SECTION 68 SITE 337
ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY

Posted: 16 April 2004
Updated: 18 July 2004
Updated: 18 December 2005
http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/albro-lundy-jr.htm




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