Blake Hall
Joseph Hargrove, Gary Hall and Danny Marshall have been gone for a long time. Over forty years now. Together, they were a machine gun United States Marine team, and fought in the bloody Mayaguez Incident on May 15, 1975, on a Cambodian island called Koh Tang. Along with other American service members — including Lance Corporal Scott Steadfast and the rest of his infantry battalion, they were tasked with rescuing a U.S. cargo ship crew, after they’d been captured by Khmer Rouge soldiers.
There were never seen by American eyes again.
According to the USMC, per their own investigation, the disappearance of the three leathernecks was ultimately due to their own negligence: not getting to choppers in time — aircraft designated for a safe lift off the island in the aftermath of the operation. An operation deemed successful (its news sparked a widely-publicized uptick in then-president Gerald Ford’s approval rating), only after dozens of U.S. service members were killed. The branch, happy with its findings, closed the case on the matter decades ago, and told the country that Hargrove, Hall and Marshall were killed shortly after the helicopters went airborne.
Steadfast, though, didn’t buy it. Never has. His memory of what occurred when they left Koh Tang is hazy and scattered with some memories erased completely, but ever since, he’s attempted to get to the bottom of it, to learn the truth of what happened to the three men who were among the last to have their names added to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC.
For the full story — complete with every detail, date and eyewitness account, including a brief history lesson of Vietnam and its devastating history of prisoners of war — it’s recommended that one click the link above and dive in.
For those keen on an abridged version, however, here’s one as follows …
In addition to Burke’s own research, which was exhaustive, the story puts three pivotal viewpoints on paper, and into focus, as well as one damning anecdote, involving Pentagon brass and the deployment of Navy SEALs. One of the sources, of course, is Steadfast. The others are former Air Force staff sergeant Robert Velie, the last man to talk to the lost Marines via their radios, from a command center aboard a military transport aircraft, a former garrison commander of Koh Tang and an associate of the infamous Pol Pot, and the following research regarding a rejected rescue mission involving then leader of the aforementioned SEAL Team 1’s Delta Platoon, Tom Coulter:
Coulter hadn’t heard about that mysterious last radio call, but sailors on the Holt said there was “a problem with the head count.” Coulter met with Navy Vice Admiral Robert Coogan, the Navy’s on-scene commander, and their meeting quickly turned heated. Coogan wanted to drop fliers over Koh Tang announcing that the SEALs were coming, Coulter says, then send the men ashore, unarmed, during the day to retrieve “Marine bodies” that “may or may not be on the beach.” Coulter thought Coogan was advocating suicide. “I told him we would not be taking that mission.”Coulter eventually persuaded the brass that the SEALs should plan their own mission. He suggested they go in armed and at night, to avoid being detected. He and his 13 men then headed to the Holt with two inflatable boats, and the destroyer turned back toward Koh Tang.The hour was late, Coulter recalls, when he was called into Holt Commander Robert Peterson’s quarters for a conference call with the White House. He doesn’t think President Ford was on the call, and he can’t be 100 percent certain, but he believes Coogan was on it, as was Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. “Someone on the call had an accent,” he says, referring to the German-born Kissinger. They were canceling the SEAL rescue operation, Coulter recalls, because “the risk was too high.”
Velie’s account backs up the reasons for such a daring rescue effort, and strongly goes against the USMC claim that the Marines dismissed helicopters for their evacuation:
Just after 8:20 p.m., Velie’s radio hissed, and he heard an American voice asking when the next chopper was coming back to get them. Velie was puzzled; he knew there were no more helicopters heading back to the island. In fact, there were gunships headed in, ready to hose it down. Velie asked the caller if he was at the last pickup site and why he hadn’t boarded the chopper. “We were told to lay cover fire and they’d come back for us,” Velie recalls the man saying.
Velie immediately thought it was a Khmer Rouge trick to lure in more helicopters, so he asked the caller for the authentication code. The Marine didn’t hesitate; he answered correctly with the proper response. Velie says his superior then told Navy commanders there were still Marines on the island. A short time later, the commanders responded: Davis, they said, had told them everyone was accounted for.
Velie’s commander radioed a destroyer in the area, the U.S.S. Harold E. Holt. Someone on the Holt instructed him to have the abandoned Marines make their way out to sea, where they would attempt to pick them up. But the men, Velie says, didn’t like that plan; they still believed a helicopter would come to their rescue.The Marine Corps report on the disappearance of the three men states that one was a poor swimmer and the other two couldn’t swim at all, so heading far out to sea in the dark would have been dangerous. Velie told the Marine on the radio that he and the others should immediately take cover, because the gunships were about to arrive. The Marine said, “Roger,” and soon two gunships pummeled the island with cannon fire.After the barrage, Velie called the Marine back. There was no answer.
The details of the fates of the three service members left behind on the island came to light after Burke and other veterans met with one of the Marines’ enemies that day — a man from Phnom Penh named Em Son.
While Son claims that he’s the one that killed Hargrove, his account has changed slightly over the years. Some suspect it’s to avoid being nabbed by an ongoing United Nations war crime tribunal. Others, like the U.S. government, flat out deny his tale to be true at all.
Nevertheless, many (including Hargrove’s cousin, Cary Turner) assert that the essence of Son’s claim — that the three Marines were killed on the island by the enemy and that their remains still rest there, is indeed solid.
Here’s the first version:
In the days following the Mayaguez battle, Son claimed he and his comrades noticed food was missing from a hut near the east beach. They accused each other, then set a trap to nab the thief. Later that evening, they caught Hargrove and held him overnight in a makeshift cell, where he told them about the two other surviving Marines. (Son said Hargrove gave up that information without being tortured.) The next day, as Son and several Khmer Rouge soldiers marched Hargrove to another holding area, the Marine tried to escape. Son said he shot him in the leg, and Hargrove fell. Then Son said he walked over to him and fired again, killing him on the spot. (He said killing him was humane, because there was no medical treatment for miles.) The Khmer Rouge, Son says, buried Hargrove by a mango tree nearby. Later that day, they caught Hall and Marshall, Son says, and took them to the mainland, where they handed them over to Khmer Rouge navy chief Meas Muth. The Communists held the Marines at a temple converted into a prison, but eventually, Son says, the guards marched the two Marines out to the beach, where they beat them to death. (Muth declined a Newsweek interview request through his lawyers.)
And the second:
Son told him a similar war story about Hall and Marshall, but this time his account of Hargrove’s death was different. The morning after the battle, he said, five of Son’s men went down to a pool near Koh Tang’s east beach to get some water to cook rice. The fighters heard a noise on the other side of the water. When they went to investigate, a Marine fitting Hargrove’s description opened up on them, killing a Khmer Rouge captain who was Son’s friend. Hargrove fought until he ran out of ammunition, and then he was captured. Son said Hargrove had been wounded above the right knee and was hobbled, but the wound was dry, as if he had been shot the previous day. The fighters helped Hargrove into a nearby meadow, where they met up with Son. Hearing that the Marine had just killed his friend, Son shot Hargrove on the spot, by that mango tree, and ordered his men to bury him nearby.
The remains of over a dozen men who died in the battle on Koh Tang have been recovered since the 1990s. None of them could be officially identified as either Hargrove, Hall or Marshall. Nearly a decade ago, investigators traveled to the spot under that mango tree where Son claims he ordered Hargrove to be interred, as well as the spot where the other two Marines were beaten to death. According to the U.S. government, excavation only turned up Cambodian remains and animal bones.
However, a Newsweek source — a Cambodian — strongly believes that the body U.S. POW/MIA investigators removed near the mango tree in 2008 was an American. The remains were too tall to be a Southeast Asian; the bones were long …”:
In 2016, DPAA [Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency] announced it had found Hall’s ID card and personal items in an empty burial pit on Koh Tang. What it didn’t publicly disclose, according to Newsweek ’s Cambodian source, is that DPAA also found an American radio and a Marine flak jacket not far from where the last American chopper took off. The jacket had a name and a number in it. In an interview with Newsweek, DPAA officials acknowledged finding those items but declined to say to whom they belonged.
They also told me they had thrown away both the radio and the flak jacket.
Lance Corporal Joseph Hargrove would’ve turned 66 this year. Private Danny Marshall, 60. Private 1st Class Gary Hall, 61.
(Photo compilation via Newsweek)