For three Vietnam veterans, the war in Southeast Asia has come full circle. They returned to battlefields where they once fought to meet with soldiers and officials from Vietnam who are no longer enemies. They share a common purpose: to find the grave sites of North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong fighters who died at those sites so their remains can be identified and returned to their families.

The effort complements but is separate from the joint recovery operations conducted by the U.S. Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, which works with the Vietnam Office for Seeking Missing Persons, looking for American missing servicemen.

Three veterans—Bob Connor, Richard Magner and Kinbourne Lo—in June completed a two-week visit to locations between Ho Chi Minh City and Danang as part of a delegation sponsored by the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), an independent, nonpartisan public institute founded by Congress and dedicated to the proposition that a world without violent conflict is possible, practical and essential for U.S. and global security. The institute’s Vietnam program is part of the Vietnam Wartime Accounting Initiative, a DoD-led effort that, since 2021, has assisted Vietnam in finding its own missing from the war.

Differences, Similarities

The three veterans served in different places and at different times. Lo was a 21-year-old U.S. Army private first class from Kailua, Hawaii, when he arrived as a replacement in the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) in Pleiku in July 1966. Connor was an Air Force security policeman assigned to guard the perimeter of the air base at Bien Hoa at the beginning of the 1968 Tet Offensive. Magner was an Army warrant officer and a helicopter pilot who flew AH-1G “Huey” Cobra helicopter gunships with the 1st Cavalry Division in 1969 from his base at Dau Tieng.

But they have something in common. All three saw fierce combat with significant casualties on both sides. And all three saw where the bodies were buried.

At many battle sites, Americans and their allies would recover their dead and send them home for a proper burial. But for fallen enemy soldiers, bodies were placed in mass graves.

With the Vietnam War a distant memory for most Americans, Connor, Lo and Magner are among a small cadre of U.S. veterans who have pioneered activities over the past 10 years to help the Vietnamese locate these mass graves so the Vietnamese can recover remains and bring closure to their families.

Each veteran has returned to Vietnam at least twice to help in this healing process, and they regularly contact other American veterans to gain useful recollections of the location of mass graves. Their June visit was as part of a small delegation sponsored by USIP in conjunction with the Vietnam Union of Friendship Organizations and the Vietnam Martyr Families Support Association.

Family Questions

Connor never talked with his family about his experiences in Vietnam. But in 2016, his granddaughter asked him to help with a high school project on Vietnam. “I showed her the base as it looks today on Google Earth and pointed out where the mass graves were at the southeast corner of the base. I put a post on a map page that said, ‘At this location is a mass grave of approx 150 [Viet Cong/North Vietnamese Army] Soldiers buried on or about Feb 2, 1968 as a result of the Tet’68 battle.’ ”

About 10 days later, Vietnamese veteran Che Trung Hieu and Col. Mai Xuan Chien, deputy political commissar of the military high command of the southern province of Dong Nai, reached out online to Connor, asking for his help in locating this mass grave.

“I told them, ‘There’s the one I pointed out on the map, and I know there’s a couple of others outside,’ ” Connor said.

Within three months, “We were invited to Vietnam and helped to identify one of the grave sites,” Connor said. “The Vietnamese were able to recover 80 remains at the first site. Of those 80, they were able to identify 12, based on artwork, letters and personal effects. The rest of the remains were destroyed due to construction that was done without the knowledge of remains being present.”

For the families of the Vietnamese remains that were identified, a memorial ceremony was held, attended by 1,500 people, including senior party and military officials

“Although I couldn’t attend, I watched some of it afterwards. The part that got me was seeing the funeral process for those soldiers,” Connor said. “I watched honor guard carry a casket with a woman following behind. [I] could see the tears on her face. And that convinced me to proceed and find as many more as I possibly could.”

According to Connor, “we had identified the locations of about 3,500 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers—not 3,500 graves, but total body count. We’ve also been able to provide information on a missing American, and we provided that information to [the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency].”

Surprise Attack

When Lo arrived in Vietnam in July 1966, he was assigned to the 1st Cavalry Division at Landing Zone (LZ) Bird, near Xuan Son Hill, and fought many battles against the North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong during his year in-country.

In December 1966, his unit fought in a pitched battle in Valley 506, about 6 miles from Xuan Son. “We suffered many casualties. We were moved to LZ Bird to give us a chance to recuperate. We were assigned to guard the perimeter. This was supposed to be rest for us. We enjoyed a Christmas dinner, not knowing we were being watched,” Lo said.

“The next night, we were attacked by more than 2,000 [North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong soldiers]. Our positions were being overrun. We had the 105 mm cannons firing beehive rounds—shooting down on the enemy at point-blank range to repel them. There were many casualties on both sides. We were able to recover our dead, but the enemy left their ‘martyrs’ on the battlefield, and we buried them in the two mass graves.”

Many years later, Lo learned that American veterans with knowledge of the battle were being asked to help find the grave sites. He went back to Xuan Son in 2022 with another group of U.S. veterans, sponsored by USIP and Vietnam Television.

“It was difficult to recognize anything when we went back,” he said. “The firing pits, bunkers and trenches were all gone. However, with the help of my fellow veterans, we were able to pinpoint the location of one of the mass graves, but have been unsuccessful so far in finding another one that we know is there.”

Database Project

Following the 1968 battle at Dau Tieng, Magner and several fellow pilots took photos of a mass grave, but Magner said the photos had no identifying features to help pinpoint the location.

Magner maintains a database of known or suspected mass grave locations.

“The Dau Tieng mass grave site was my focus when I first began this work in 2017. Now we have documented over 130 possible mass grave sites,” Magner said. “Most of the mass grave sites studied and compiled in my spreadsheet are in what was referred to as III Corps. Western III Corps is the area I flew in during the war, and the area I am most familiar with and have studied the most,” he said.

“Our first task is finding and contacting veterans of the battles for helpful recollections of where a mass grave may lay and get their accounts—and those witnesses are getting old, so we have a real sense of urgency,” Magner said. “We look at sketches or drawings of the battle sites and try to find aerial photo satellite imagery that we can overlay onto Google Earth.”

In the future, Magner thinks the use of ground penetrating radar in conjunction with dogs that can detect human remains would speed up the process of locating sites for excavation. 

Emotional moments

Magner said the USIP-sponsored trip in June was productive—and emotional. “I was often overcome with emotion, brought to tears by the events, yet I felt most welcome by our gracious hosts,” he said.

Now, he sees Vietnamese soldiers as brothers. “In Vietnam, many families still have missing relatives, and some mass graves are difficult to access and excavate. I intend to keep up this work as long as I am able. It is a salve for me, and I hope for others as well. I sincerely want to find my brothers.”

Lo grew up witnessing the hatred his parents had for the Japanese following the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He said he now understands how many Vietnamese felt about Americans who came to their country to fight.

“We have since resolved our differences that caused the [Vietnam] War, and I believe we’re on the right path toward a lasting peace between our two countries,” Lo said.

The three veterans agree that there’s more to be done when it comes to finding mass graves. They call upon their fellow veterans to come forward and provide information that may lead to successful recovery operations.

The Vietnam Wartime Accounting Initiative is assisting the government in Vietnam to locate these grave sites and to recover and return remains to Vietnamese families.

The initiative brings together DoD, USIP, the U.S. Agency for International Development, Harvard University in Massachusetts as an academic partner and the International Commission on Missing Persons, along with the Vietnam Martyr Families Support Association.

Big News

Andrew Wells-Dang, the senior expert on Southeast Asia who leads the Vietnam War Legacies and Reconciliation Initiative at USIP, said when American veterans help the Vietnamese find the remains of their missing men, it is big news in Vietnam. “It’s a positive narrative of U.S. and Vietnam cooperation and information-sharing, and we think that also includes sharing information about Americans who are still missing,” Wells-Dang said. “The efforts our two countries are making to resolve the cases of our [soldiers who are missing in action] is in many ways the foundation of our security relationship, and helping that relationship grow further.”

There was television news coverage of the USIP delegation veterans touring the battle sites in June, and that resulted in Vietnamese residents reaching out to the team before they left Vietnam to offer information and artifacts about missing Americans.

“When the news gets out, we find people who show us artifacts or tell us about where Americans are buried,” Connor said. “The process works for both countries.”

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Capt. Edward Lundquist, U.S. Navy retired, served 24 years as a surface warfare officer and public affairs officer. After retiring in 2000, he held corporate positions and worked as a contractor for the Navy. Currently, he writes for defense, naval and maritime publications. He serves on the board of Mission: POW-MIA, a nonprofit that seeks to account for missing and unaccounted-for Americans from past conflicts.