{"id":438861,"date":"2025-05-07T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-05-07T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/?p=438861"},"modified":"2025-05-08T05:17:38","modified_gmt":"2025-05-08T05:17:38","slug":"oregon-national-guard-soldiers-work-to-bring-home-missing-vietnam-war-service-member","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/?p=438861","title":{"rendered":"Oregon National Guard Soldiers Work to Bring Home Missing Vietnam War Service Member"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n Oregon Army National Guard Sgt. 1st Class Nate Brushe, a recovery noncommissioned officer, wet-screens material during a Defense POW\/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) recovery mission in Vietnam, April 11, 2025. The DPAA mission is to provide the fullest possible accounting for our missing personnel to their families and the nation. This is the first time the Oregon National Guard has supplemented a DPAA mission.
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\n Rob Ingraham, a forensic archeologist for the Defense POW\/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA), excavates a unit during a recovery mission in Vietnam, April 11, 2025. The DPAA mission is to provide the fullest possible accounting for our missing personnel to their families and the nation. There are currently 1,572 U.S. personnel still unaccounted-for from the Vietnam War. (U.S. Army National Guard photo by Staff Sgt. Emily Simonson, Oregon National Guard)
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QU\u1ea2NG TR\u1eca, Vietnam – \u201cI will never leave a fallen comrade.\u201d<\/p>\n

That final line of the U.S. Army\u2019s Warrior Ethos is a promise that all service members will find their way back to American soil.<\/p>\n

Oregon National Guard Sgts. 1st Class Nathan Brushe and Brian Miller, with the Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Emergency Response Force Package (CERFP), spent more than 45 days on an archaeological site in Vietnam working to fulfill that promise. From March to April, Brushe and Miller worked with the Defense POW\/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) recovery team to bring home a missing service member from the Vietnam War.<\/p>\n

DPAA\u2019s mission is to provide the fullest accounting for missing personnel to their families and the nation. There are currently 1,572 U.S. personnel still unaccounted for from the Vietnam War.<\/p>\n

Recovery mission sites are determined by historical records, findings from prior DPAA investigative teams and interviews from possible eyewitness accounts. Recovery teams excavate for missing personnel based on the information DPAA gathers. Service members of all military branches are on the recovery teams, filling roles such as linguists, medics, photographers, explosive ordnance disposal technicians and recovery noncommissioned officers.<\/p>\n

This mission was the first time the National Guard had supported DPAA. Because Vietnam is partnered with the Oregon National Guard through the Department of Defense National Guard Bureau State Partnership Program, the Oregon National Guard has a special interest in aiding missions occurring in its partner country.<\/p>\n

Miller and Brushe joined the recovery efforts and got their hands dirty.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe DPAA experience has been great,\u201d Brushe said. \u201cThey\u2019ve obviously been doing this a long time and they know what works and what doesn\u2019t. They point us in the right direction and we just go.\u201d<\/p>\n

Each day, the recovery team and local Vietnamese workers hauled bucket after bucket of excavated material from the dig site to be wet-screened. Wet-screening uses a high-pressure water system to rinse away soil and identify anything that might lead to an identification.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re looking for anything that isn\u2019t dirt that will give us a clue,\u201d Miller said. \u201cSo if it looks different\u2026we just put it in the bucket.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anything that \u201cisn\u2019t dirt\u201d is set aside for the life support investigator and forensic archaeologists to examine. They are looking for material that could be connected with the missing personnel, such as pieces of uniform, safety gear, aircraft parts with legible serial numbers and – if they are lucky – human remains.<\/p>\n

One of DPAA\u2019s forensic archaeologists, Rob Ingraham, has completed more than 30 DPAA recovery missions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s something about being able to provide answers and work closely with host nation personnel \u2026 in these kinds of environments at this sort of scale and pace that\u2019s both challenging and rewarding,\u201d Ingraham said.<\/p>\n

Anything recovered from the site still has a long way to go before the service member can be identified. The host nation formally releases the collected material to the United States in a repatriation ceremony. The material is then sent for testing to the DPAA lab in Hawaii, the largest skeletal identification laboratory in the world. The findings are reviewed by the Scientific Analysis Directorate of DPAA and, hopefully, receive an identification.<\/p>\n

Although results are never guaranteed, Miller and Brushe\u2019s contribution to the mission is invaluable, and their work continues to fulfill our nation\u2019s promise.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.nationalguard.mil<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/TheNationalGuard<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/x.com\/USNationalGuard<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.nationalguard.mil\/Leadership\/Joint-Staff\/J-5\/International-Affairs-Division\/State-Partnership-Program\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1 \/ 2 Show Caption + Hide Caption \u2013 Oregon Army National Guard Sgt. 1st Class Nate Brushe, a recovery noncommissioned officer, wet-screens material during a Defense POW\/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) recovery mission in Vietnam, April 11, 2025. The DPAA mission is to provide the fullest possible accounting for our missing personnel to their families […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":438863,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-438861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=438861"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438861\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":438866,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438861\/revisions\/438866"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/438863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=438861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=438861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=438861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}