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 AT HIS BASE CAMP in Vietnam, JPAC anthropologist August Goodman used to post on his tent this quote by Titus Andronicus, the Roman general returning from the Gothic Wars, bearing his lost sons for burial in their homeland . In Greek mythology the River Styx was the underworld river separating the worlds of the living and the dead. A few days after we returned from Vinh, Mr. Tu called and said the Quang Tri officials had arranged a meeting with two witness from Lang Vei, who now claimed to have two sets of remains to turn over. He said we had permission to do the contingency mission and that we should all go immediately . It was a mad scramble to pack, order plane tickets, make vehicle arrangements in Hue, and head to the airport. Fortunately, we had an anthro in country, Dr. Pete Miller, who had just arrived to familiarize himself with the giant pump we had brought in for his big dig in Vinh. He would drive south from Vinh and meet us in Dong Ha. Buddy, Gary Flanagan, and I headed to the airport to fly to Hue and drive to Dong Ha, where we would meet Mr. Tu and our other VNOSMP counterparts before driving on to Lang Vei via Khe Sanh. During the Tet Offensive of 1968, when the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN) and the Viet Cong were laying siege to the Marine base at Khe Sanh, the Special Forces built a camp a few miles away at Lang Vei. The camp was well suited to observe the Lao border, which was a mile and a half away and was manned by twenty-four Green Berets and about nine hundred Bru and Ca tribesmen, who formed a mobile strike force. Near midnight on February 6, 1968, the camp came under attack by the PAVN 66th Regiment, Chapter 6 CROSSING THE RIVER STYX Why suffer’st thou thy sons, unburied yet, To hover on the dreadful shore of Styx? Make way to lay them by their brethren. —William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, Act 1, Scene 1 CROSSING THE RIVER STYX  supported by ten PT-76 light tanks. In a fight that lasted well into the next morning, the PAVN overran camp, killing ten Americans and wounding thirteen . Because it was the first time in the war that the PAVN used tanks against U.S. forces, Lang Vei became a legendary battle in Special Forces circles. Although some of the Green Beret dead were recovered, we had five MIA from the site, as well as a missing A-1 Skyraider pilot who was shot down nearby while attacking the tanks. The name on the dogtag rubbing we had seen at Vinh, SFC Kenneth Hanna, was last seen with Master Sergeant Charles Wesley Lindewald Jr. The two were observed taking cover in a bunker on the southwest of side the camp just before one of the PAVN tanks lumbered up and fired into the bunker. The JTF-FA had done a number of recovery operations at the old camp in 1994–1995, but it was a very large site—two hills with perhaps fifty old caved-in bunkers—now a heavily vegetated banana plantation. Landing in Hue, we met our driver and took off north up Route 1 to Dong Ha to spend the night in a no-star hotel. Dong Ha was the last town before the DMZ. The hotel was kind of interesting, an art-deco holdover from the French era, and I do mean authentic art deco, as in the original paint, curtains, and furniture. It had one English TV channel, Fashion TV, which broadcast a special on male models that night. We watched Vietnamese soap operas. Early the next morning, following the van carrying Mr. Tu and Colonel Mao, we headed west on Route 9, just below the old DMZ, and into the Khe Sanh, the vast, sparsely settled mountains of western Quang Tri province, mostly occupied by H’mong and Chu-ru minorities. North of the town of Khe Sanh we stopped to wander around the plateau of the famous marine firebase, walk the old runway, and take pictures with Tiger Tooth Mountain in the background. Some of the old bunkers were still there, but one had to be cautious while exploring because unexploded ordnance still littered about such places. Passing through the unmemorable little town of Khe Sanh, we pushed ten kilometers farther west, pulling up at the Lang Vei...

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