Photo By Master Sgt. Jocelyn Ford | Dr. Penny Minturn, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) anthropologist, studies an...... read more read more
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VIETNAM -- Seven members of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) and six individual augmentees came together in Vietnam to accomplish a single mission: to bring a missing man home, Nov. 2015.
Every day for 11 days, the team, along with more than 40 local villagers from two neighboring villages, started their day with a mile-and-a-half hike from their base camp up a mountain, deep in the Vietnam National Forest. Once they arrived on site everyone manned their stations, eager to work to find the pilot of an A1-H Skyraider aircraft crash.
“When I first saw the site, it kind of took me back to the Vietnam Era during the war, how things were and trying to imagine the plane actually being here,” said U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Aviam Krupnick, DPAA individual augmentee recovery non-commissioned officer.
Working the screens can be one of the more tedious tasks, but not any less important than the other work going on on-site. Tedious or not, the team does not lose momentum or morale.
“Every time we started finding something, we started finding more and more life support equipment,” said Krupnick. “Knowing that this person was strapped in to this life support equipment, his body was here, just kept on pushing me more especially looking to the screens.”
On day nine there was a large piece of evidence that brought a sense of excitement and fulfillment to the team. There was no doubt in anyone's mind that the pilot of the A1-H Skyraider aircraft was once in that very location.
“I have never found anything that large before,” said Dr. Penny Minturn, DPAA forensic anthropologist and recovery leader. “That was a pretty large piece, with lots of pockets and lots of zippers; if you have ever seen a flight suit before you just know, that is what it is. You are there, and you know he is there, and whether you actually recover any human remains or not you know you have got him. And that is always very moving, when you get to the point where you know you have him.”
Mission success may be defined differently by each member of a team, but Minturn had a very personal way of defining it.
“I can stand up and say ‘John Doe, I gave it my best shot,’ and I hear in my head him saying ‘I appreciate it Penny, thank you,’ and that is what I hear. So that is a successful mission for me.”
The site was closed on day eleven.
The days that followed included packing and report writing, before the 13 assigned to DPAA made their way to another site.
“At the heart of every person that does that job is honestly a good flame,” said Minturn. “Nobody does this job because it is fun, or because it is easy, or because you get great kudos for it, or for a bunch of money. Every individual that works at this job is dedicated and has a flame in their heart that other people cannot claim.”
| Date Taken: | 07.27.2016 |
| Date Posted: | 11.22.2016 14:26 |
| Story ID: | 215606 |
| Location: | VN |
| Web Views: | 28 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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