40 Years On, Veteran Strives to Reunite Families with Fallen Heroes

JOINT BASE PEARL HARBOR-HICKAM, Hawaii -- Johnie Webb's corner office is full of memories from a grim but fulfilling mission.

As the Army veteran leans over his desk -- strewn with gifts given to him over the course of a 40-year career -- he grabs a wooden box and pulls out a modest bracelet. Engraved on stainless steel reads the name of a staff sergeant killed in the Vietnam War.

When he begins to share the story of how he received it, his light blue eyes well up with tears.

"I keep it on my desk, because this is what we're all about," said Webb, deputy of outreach and communications for the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.

Since 1975, Webb has traveled dozens of times to former combat zones as a Soldier and later as a civilian for the joint agency or one of its predecessors. The agency is responsible for locating the remains of the more than 82,000 Americans who are still missing from past conflicts.

While much of his time had been in search of those fallen service members, Webb, 72, is now an advocate for their families who continue to wait for updates.

"I'm not going to say closure, because I'm not sure if there ever is closure when you lose a loved one. But at least [we can] provide them answers and give that loved one back," he said. "That's extremely important and I'm honored to play a small part."

VIETNAM VETERAN

Early in his Army career, Webb, a retired lieutenant colonel, led convoys as a logistics officer all over Vietnam to ensure bases had fuel for operations during the war.

Under the constant threat of roadside bombs and ambushes, he briefed his Soldiers to move their vehicle out of the road if it were ever hit so other vehicles could escape.

"If you block the road, then we're all done," he recalled saying.

During one of those missions, a Soldier did just that after a rocket-propelled grenade struck the cab of his 5-ton vehicle and left him with severe burns.

His sacrifice was something Webb never forgot.

"Unfortunately, he didn't survive," he said. "But he probably saved the rest of us by doing what we were trained to do and that was to get his truck off the road."

A few years after his tour, the Army assigned Webb to the Central Identification Laboratory-Thailand, which was later moved to Hawaii and consolidated into DPAA.

The role of the new unit was to find the remains of Americans from the Vietnam War.

At first, he was confused, he said, since he knew nothing about the organization or its mission. In the Army's eyes, though, he was qualified for the job because as a young lieutenant he once took a course on graves registration.

It would eventually come full circle for Webb in 1985, when he was chosen to lead the first recovery team into Vietnam only a decade after the end of the war.

"It became very personal for me," he said, regarding the sacrifices made by fallen comrades. "We couldn't let them be forgotten."

Being back in Vietnam was initially "unnerving," he said. After all, he had once fought an enemy there and it was uncertain how his team would be treated.

The mission was to search for human remains from a B-52 bomber crash site near Hanoi. But the team's visit to Vietnam was also an opportunity to rebuild the diplomatic relationship between the former warring nations.

The Vietnamese still distrusted Americans then, he said, and even photographed his team with cameras that were crudely hidden in briefcases.

Now, more than 30 years after that first mission, Vietnamese officials work closely with the DPAA teams that rotate in and out of the country each year. The agency is even permitted to permanently base one of its detachments in Hanoi to support teams as they search for roughly 1,600 Americans missing from that war.

"We were there before we had diplomatic relations. We were there before an embassy was ever established," Webb said. "A lot of groundbreaking effort went into getting us to where we are today."

NORTH KOREA

While the agency's mission started with the work to account for those lost in Vietnam, it grew to include sites from World War II, the Korean War, the Cold War and other conflicts.

Webb was again behind another pioneering effort, but this time in North Korea. He and others took several trips to the country and helped negotiate with the North Koreans so teams could conduct missions at former battle sites from 1996 to 2005.

They even traveled from the capital, Pyongyang, to the Chosin Reservoir, where a decisive battle had taken place in the winter of 1950. As they were driven through the country, Webb recalled seeing how desperate the North Koreans had lived.

"It was very interesting times," he said, "but it made sure you were really appreciative of being an American."

As U.S. and North Korean governments currently aim to thaw relations between each other, Webb hopes it will lead the reclusive country to reopen its borders to the agency's teams.

About 7,700 Americans are still unaccounted for from the Korean War, with the majority believed to be in North Korea.

"If we want to get answers to the families, and we definitely want to get them answers, we're going to have to get access back into North Korea," he said.

With the days of digging at excavation sites now behind him, Webb maintains a pivotal role in keeping families, distinguished visitors and veterans service organizations apprised of agency efforts.

"I couldn't say enough good things about Johnie Webb and the fact that he is literally one of the staunchest contributors to this mission," said Kelly McKeague, the agency's director.

McKeague, a former Air Force major general, credits Webb's "Texas roots" for his compassion and calm demeanor. There is no better person, McKeague said, to speak with families struggling with loss.

"Johnie has a sense about him to be able to communicate with them, to be empathetic to them, and to literally not just be their friend but be their confidant," he said. "They have so much confidence in him."

FAMILY ADVOCATE

Whether in a foreign country or back at the headquarters in Hawaii, Webb said the younger troops at the agency have always impressed him.

"Most of them weren't even born when the guy who they are trying to recover was lost," he said. "Still, they feel that kinship to that military buddy who wore the uniform for them."

The "grunt work" these troops -- many of whom are Soldiers -- do at an excavation site can take months to years to find remains, if there are any. Once recovered, it can take even longer to identify them by lab staff.

While the long process sometimes leaves families irritated, the agency wants to ensure human remains are properly excavated and identified.

"Not only is it frustrating to the families, it gets frustrating for us as well because we want to provide those answers," Webb said. "We want to return that loved one, but we want to do it right."

When the answers do come, some family members do not want to believe them.

Inside a wooden box on his desk, the engraved bracelet reminds Webb of one such family member.

The father of the staff sergeant whose name is on the bracelet often spoke to Webb about his missing son before he was found. He had hoped his son was still alive and pleaded to Webb to bring him back.

A team then discovered remains from a site of a crashed helicopter, which the staff sergeant was on. Shortly after, Webb advised the father to prepare to receive his son's remains so he could honor his life.

"It was clear that he was not wanting to hear that," Webb remembered.

Webb asked other families who knew the grief-stricken father and had also lost loved ones to talk to him so he could come to terms with the news. He finally did.

When his son's remains were returned to the family, there was a huge outpouring of public support. The funeral had full military honors and even dignitaries showed up to it.

"It was a day of celebration for this young man to come back home," Webb said. "I was happy that he had honored his son the way he should have been honored."

A few weeks later, a brown envelope addressed to Johnie Webb came in the mail. In it, there was a "thank you" note along with the bracelet, which the father always wore.

"I'm giving to you the POW bracelet that I have worn since my son was lost," Webb said, recalling what the father wrote. "I finally took it off when he came back home. I want you to have it as a token of my appreciation."