HASENBACK, PAUL ALFRED (Spelling is different depending on the source:
WALL - BECK, POW/CIA records BACK)
Name: Paul Alfred Hasenback
Rank/Branch: E3/US Army
Unit: Company D, 4th Battalion, 31st Infantry, 196th Light Infantry Brigade
Date of Birth: 11 May 1947
Home City of Record: Freeburg MO
Loss Date: 21 April 1967
Country of Loss: South Vietnam
Loss Coordinates: 152118N 1084704E (BS622987)
Status (in 1973): Missing In Action
Category: 2
Acft/Vehicle/Ground: Sampan
Other Personnel In Incident: David M. Winters; Daniel R. Nidds; Thomas A.
Mangino; (all missing)
REMARKS: DISAPPEARED ON SAMPAN
Source: Compiled from one or more of the following: raw data from U.S.
Government agency sources, correspondence with POW/MIA families, published
sources, interviews. Updated by the P.O.W. NETWORK 2003.
SYNOPSIS: On April 21, 1967, SP4 Thomas A. Mangino, squad leader; PFC Paul
Hasenback, PFC David M. Winters and PFC Daniel R. Nidds, riflemen; were
returning from a combat patrol in the second of two sampans 100 meters apart
near Chu Lai, Quang Ngai Province, South Vietnam.
Just before arriving at their destination, a Vietnamese civilian was seen
moving in his sampan toward the sampan carrying SP4 Mangino's squad. Another
sampan with 3 Vietnamese women was moving toward the first sampan, in which the
platoon leader rode. The first sampan started to leak, so proceeded faster
around and headed toward the beach. The Vietnamese women were still following
the first sampan. The distance between the two sampans carrying the Americans
was 200-250 meters.
The last time the platoon leader saw Mangino's sampan, the Vientamese civilian
was talking with SP4 Mangino's squad. The platoon leader's sampan arrived at
the beach 45 minutes later, and waited 20 minutes, then reported to the command
post that Mangino's sampan had not yet arrived.
Two hours after the platoon leader's sampan beached, SP4 Mangino's sampan had
still not arrived, so search efforts were begun. Two platoons searched the
area, and a helicopter searched from the air using a loud speaker. All efforts
were unsuccessful in locating Mangino and his squad.
Navy divers searched the river area without success. All aboard Mangino's
sampan knew how to swim. The Army strongly suspects that the enemy knows what
happened to Mangino and his squad.
Although returned POWs did not report having seen the men lost on the sampan,
Nidd's photo was identified by a refugee as having been a prisoner of war. The
circumstances surrounding their loss indicates the strong possibility, at
least, that the enemy forces knew their fates.
Mangino and his squad are among nearly 2500 in Southeast Asia who did not
return from the war. Unlike "MIAs" from other wars, most of these men can be
accounted for. Further, and even more significant, mounting evidence indicates
that there are hundreds of them still alive in captivity.
Refugees fleeing Southeast Asia have come with reports of Americans still held
in captivity. There are many such reports that withstand the closest scrutiny
the U.S. Government can give, yet official policy admits only to the
"possibility" that Americans remain as captives in Southeast Asia.
Until serious negotiations begin on Americans held in Southeast Asia, the
families of nearly 2500 Americans will wonder, "Where are they?" And the
families of many, many more future fighting men will wonder, "Will our sons be
abandoned, too?"
[r0647.97]
PROJECT X
SUMMARY SELECTION RATIONAL
NAMES: MANGINO, Thomas A., SP4, USA
WINTERS, David M., PFC, USA
NIDDS, Daniel R., PFC, USA
HASENBECK Paul A., PFC, USA
OFFICIAL STATUS: MANGINO: MISSING
WINTERS: MISSING
NIDDS: DEAD, BODY NOT RECOVERED
HASENBECK: DEAD, BODY NOT RECOVERED
CASE SUMMARY: SEE ATTACHED
RATIONALE FOR SELECTION: When last seen, all of the men were alive and
unhurt in a sampan, and all could swim. An extensive search found nothing.
One informant report indicates possible capture, but there have been no
subsequent reports of death for any of the individuals in this incident.
REFNO: 0646 19 Apr 76
(U) CASE SUMMARY
1. On 21 April 1967, SP4 Thomas Mangino squad leader, and PFC's Paul A.
Hasenbeck, David M. Winters and Daniel R. Nidds, riflemen,- were returning
from a combat patrol in Quang Ngai Province in South Vietnam in the second
of two sampans. Just before arriving at their destination, in the vicinity
of grid coordinates BS 622 987, a Vietnamese civilian was seen moving in
his sampan toward the sampan with SP4 Mangino's squad. Another sampan with
three Vietnamese women was moving toward the first sampan in which the
platoon leader rode. The first sampan started to leak, so proceeded faster
around a jetty toward the beach. The Vietnamese women were still following
the first sampan, as they had loaned it to the platoon. The distance
between the two sampans carrying the platoon was now 200 to 250 meters. The
last time the platoon leader saw the second sampan the Vietnamese civilian
was talking with SP/4 Mangino's squad. The first sampan arrived on the
beach 45-minutes later. The platoon leader waited 20 minutes more and then
reported to the command post that the second sampan had not arrived.
2. Two hours after the first sampan beached, SP4 squad still had not
arrived, so a search effort was begun. Two platoons searched the area, and
helicopters, one with a loudspeaker, searched from the air. All efforts
were unsuccessful. Naval divers searched in the area of the last sighting
(vicinity BS 622 987) without success. All personnel on board the second
sampan could swim. (Ref 1)
3. An informant reported that on 5 May (1967) he had seen four US prisoners
of war who had been captured at (GC) 630 005 by a Viet Cong unit on the
date of this incident. (This information correlates well by time and
location, although there is no other information available for
verification. (Ref 2)
4. During the existence of JCRC,, the limited information available
precluded any efforts toward the resolution of this case. These
individuals' names and identifying data were turned over to Four-Party
Joint Military Team with a request for any information available. No
response was forthcoming.
5. SP4 Mangino, and PFC Winters are currently carried in the status of
Missing in Action. PFC Hasenbeck and PFC Nidds are carried in the
presumptive status of Dead, Body Not Recovered.
REFERENCES USED
1. RPT (U), AVAFAG-P2 Investigation of Personnel MIA, 4 May 67.
2. RPT (U), Missing Status, AVHAG-C, 15 Apr 68.
ASSOCIATED INDIVIDUALS
1. Paul A. Hasenbeck 0646-0-01
2. Thomas A. Mangino 0646-0-
3. David M. Winters 0646-0-
4. Daniel R. Nidds 0646-0-04
* National Alliance of Families Home Page
========================================
A sister's unhealed war wound
Pentagon update on search for MIAs brings little comfort
Bill Wallace, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 21, 2003
c2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback
URL:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/01/21/BA120793.DTL
Ever since Jeanie Hasenbeck's brother, Paul, disappeared in the jungles of
Vietnam 35 years ago while on patrol with his squad of soldiers, her search
for him has been a morass of uncertainty and frustration.
This past weekend, Hasenbeck joined some 160 other relatives of American GIs
who have vanished in various wars dating back to 1941. The relatives went to
a daylong meeting called by Pentagon officials to update the families on the
government's search for MIAs.
Three and a half decades have passed, but Hasenbeck still does not know for
sure what happened to Army Staff Sergeant Paul Hasenbeck, who vanished in
Quang Ngai Province on April 21, 1967, with three comrades from the 4th
Battalion, 31st Infantry, which was assigned to the 196th Light Infantry
Brigade.
She said officials at the Pentagon have disputed reports from Vietnamese
sources and U.S. intelligence services that her brother had been captured
and moved to several different locations by troops who forced him and his
companions to teach Viet Cong cadres to speak English. The CIA told her
flatly it had no files on her brother at a time when she already had
obtained several CIA documents from other sources.
Over the years, the Vietnamese government has released one contradictory
account of her brother's fate after another -- all of which appeared to be
designed to conceal the truth.
"It is hard to know exactly where to point the finger," said Hasenbeck, who
lives in Daly City. "I feel that right now, (defense officials) are doing
everything they can to locate everyone who is missing. But they haven't
always been that way.
"There were many years when nothing was being done. I think they just hoped
this issue would go away, but that didn't happen. These families (of the
missing) organized and supported each other. I don't think they thought we
would get together and compare notes, but we did."
Hasenbeck and the other relatives of missing U.S. military personnel met
with Department of Defense officials on Saturday for a briefing on the
Pentagon's Missing in Action (MIA) program.
Larry Greer, a Pentagon spokesman, told The Chronicle there are roughly 88,
000 GIs still missing in action from conflicts dating back to World War II.
About 78,000 of them were lost during 1941-45, and the rest disappeared in
Korea, the Cold War, Southeast Asia and the Persian Gulf.
The 1,902 troops still missing in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia are a major
current focus of the program, Greer said. Under a recovery project
code-named "Stony Beach," teams of Defense Intelligence Agency experts comb
isolated areas of Southeast Asia looking for traces of missing soldiers,
sailors and aviators.
The joint teams of 50 to 100 U.S. and Asian investigators spend as much as
six months at a time in the field, interviewing villagers, reviewing local
records and excavating possible burial sites, Greer said.
He said the work is difficult and dangerous. A helicopter containing 16
members of a Vietnamese-U.S. search team crashed on a mountain in Thahn
Trach Province nine months ago, killing everyone aboard. "Many of these
areas are remote, and some are located in places where there is unexploded
ordnance or minefields," Greer said.
Although much of the effort is aimed at recovering the remains of those who
were killed in action, the group also investigates the recurrent claims that
U. S. prisoners of war remain in custody in Southeast Asia.
"There have been credible reports from time to time," Greer said. "We have
spent extensive man hours and time and money to insure that all those
reports are fully investigated . . . Unfortunately, the answer still comes
up zero."
Many MIA families are not satisfied. They believe Vietnamese officials have
only pretended to cooperate in order to secure trade advantages and move
toward normalization of postwar relations with the United States. They also
believe, though the evidence is slim, that the Vietnamese may still be
holding U.S. prisoners of war.
"Our expanded aid and trade with Vietnam has not opened Vietnam to
democracy," said Dolores Apodaca Alfond, president of the National Alliance
of Families for the Return of America's Missing Servicemen, an MIA support
organization headquartered in Seattle.
"Vietnam remains a closed society, oppressing its people and doling out
POW/MIA information as it suits their needs," she said.
As the Hasenbeck case shows, not all the information Vietnam releases is
reliable. Jeanie Hasenbeck said the Vietnamese government claims her brother
was killed in an ambush in 1967, but various intelligence documents and
physical evidence provided to her contradict this story. The Vietnamese
government also claims that Hasenbeck and his three companions were buried,
but has given conflicting locations for their graves and seems to be unable
to find their bodies.
"We learned there was a museum in Hanoi that had 13 pieces of Paul's
personal identification in it and all of them had his name, rank and unit,"
Jeanie Hasenbeck said. "The museum had everything marked from the province
where he had disappeared.
"We find it really hard to believe that they (the North Vietnamese) took
such meticulous care of all his paperwork, but could not keep track of where
he was buried."
Hasenbeck said her brother may no longer be alive, but she believes the
evidence suggests he survived for some time after his capture.
She says some new U.S. efforts -- tracking down 35-year-old maps of the area
where he vanished for analysis, or using dogs that can sniff out long-
buried human remains -- may help searchers locate her brother's body so he
can receive a family burial in the United States.
In the meantime, she waits and hopes.
"It's a wound that never heals," she said. "On Saturday I went and thought
it wasn't going to bother me after all these years. But it does . . . If he
isn't still alive, there should be some way to mark that he was once on this
earth."