THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, October 5, 1995 TAG: 9510050379
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KERRY DOUGHERTY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Long : 117 lines
Ginger Davis was calmly reading her newspaper one morning last week when she came upon a story that had her choking on her coffee.
The paper said the Pentagon had announced that the remains of her husband and nine other Air Force fliers who were shot down over Laos in 1970 were coming home at last. They will have full military honors and be buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
You'd think she'd be relieved.
Finally. An end to 25 years of not knowing. A quarter-century of wondering.
Ever since that frosty April morning in 1970 when an Air Force colonel and a chaplain knocked on her door, Ginger Davis has been haunted by the unknown fate of her husband, Air Force Col. Charlie B. Davis.
Davis' AC-130 was flying over Laos with two escort planes when the gunship was hit by enemy fire. A minute and a half later the massive modified transport plane crashed into the thick jungle canopy. But not before the escort planes could report that they observed the crew ``bailing out.'' In fact, one flier who parachuted to safety was rescued the next morning.
The 10 other crew members vanished.
The military listed some of them as missing. Then, years later, declared them all dead.
But no one knew for certain what happened to the men.
In the beginning of this 25-year-long ordeal, Ginger Davis believed Charlie would be found - alive. But as the Vietnam War wound down and POWs straggled home and the United States pulled out, hope faded.
She can't pinpoint when she began to accept her husband's death.
``I don't believe he's alive anymore,'' she said, her green eyes filling with tears as she remembered the dashing young pilot she married in 1954. The boy she had grown up with in Decatur, Ga. The boy who would now be 66.
``I hate to say it but I hope he hasn't been a prisoner all these years,'' she said. ``The Pathet Lao were among the cruelest people known, as bad as the Khmer Rouge. I couldn't think about that.''
But that didn't stop her from writing the Air Force, the Pentagon, and the Senate and its committees and subcommittees, begging them to look for Charlie Davis' remains, asking for information and details of the crash. Something to hold on to.
A year and a half ago a joint U.S. and Laotian excavation team located the wreckage. They found large chunks of the plane. And they found some bones.
``None any bigger than this,'' said Craig Davis, 36, the Davises' middle son, holding up an animal cracker.
The government says some of those fragments belong to Col. Davis and his crewmates. The bones will be buried in a common grave on Nov. 8.
Ginger Davis and her three grown sons will be there. But they say this is no funeral.
``Charlie's not going to be in that box,'' she said, staring out her kitchen window at a blue jay pecking at seeds on her deck. ``I'd be happy to go to Washington to a memorial service. Something to honor Charlie that would be at least as honorable as the life he lived.
``But a funeral? No way. He's not in there.''
And she's probably right.
The military's own forensic reports acknowledge that of the 1,424 bone fragments at the site, only 139 were identifiable. And none of those fragments repeat, so a ``minimum of one individual is present.''
In other words, all those bits and pieces could have come from a single skeleton.
The reports also admit that the bone fragments leave questions about the sex, age and race of the person.
``Who knows, the plane may have hit a Laotian peasant when it crashed,'' Davis said, shrugging. ``There is no way to know whose remains they have.''
DNA testing is out of the question since the bone fragments are badly charred.
Nevertheless, all of the fragments will be buried in a single coffin, under a headstone bearing the names of all 10 missing men.
Davis calls this a ``sham.''
``The reasons for doing this are political,'' she says angrily. ``If they bury these 10 men then that's 10 fewer families they'll be hearing from.
``And another thing. When Bill Clinton gets ready to run again he can add these 10 to the number of men killed in action he's brought home. The more bodies, the better it looks for him.''
Davis isn't alone. Patti Hallman, a Saluda case worker with the elderly, is also angry.
Her father, Lt. Col. Charles Rowley, was also on that plane. Two years after he was shot down, Hallman said, there was a sighting of her father by another POW.
Then in November 1987 Life magazine ran a story on people missing in action and featured a story about her father and the picture of a Caucasian man smuggled out of Laos. The Laotians called the man ``Mr. Roly.'' He looks remarkably like Hallman's father.
She doesn't believe her father's remains will be in the box, either.
``I have more evidence that he's alive than dead,'' she said. ``I don't for a minute believe there are any of my dad's remains.''
Like Davis, Hallman will be in Washington next month. Like Davis and most of the other family members, she'll be part of a news conference criticizing the government for trying to close the case.
Davis said the families always felt betrayed when the United States pulled out of Southeast Asia, leaving behind thousands of men unaccounted for.
The government lists 1,618 American servicemen as still unaccounted for in Vietnam, 499 in Laos, 77 in Cambodia and eight in China.
``People look at you and say things like, `It's been 25 years, get over it,' '' Davis said. ``They say it's not news anymore. No one wants to remember Vietnam.
``But some of us can never forget it.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
TAMARA VONINSKI/Staff
Ginger Davis doubts that recovered bone parts are those of her
husband, who was shot down over Laos in 1970. Davis' son, Craig, is
in the background.
Air Force Col. Charlie B. Davis in a photo from the early 1950s.
KEYWORDS: MIA/POW SOUTHEAST ASIA VIETNAM WAR by CNB