NOLAN, McKINLEY

Name: McKinley Nolan
Rank/Branch: E2/US Army
Unit: 1st Infantry Division
Date of Birth:
Home City of Record: Washington TX
Date of Loss: 09 November 1967
Country of Loss: South Vietnam
Loss Coordinates: 104520N 1063900E
Status (in 1973): AWOL/Deserter
Category: 1
Aircraft/Vehicle/Ground: Ground

Other Personnel in Incident: (none missing)

Source: Compiled by Homecoming II Project 30 June 1990 from one or more of the
following: raw data from U.S. Government agency sources, correspondence with
POW/MIA families, published sources, interviews.

REMARKS: LAST SEEN PA>AA 2 NOV 1973

SYNOPSIS: PVT McKinley Nolan served with the 1st Infantry Division near Saigon.
On November 9, 1967, he disappeared with his Cambodian wife. After that, all
sources seem to indicate that Nolan went over to the enemy.

Nolan later turned up in Hanoi, doing some broadcasts for Radio Hanoi and
writing leaflets that were circulated among American prisoners of war. One
returned POW, James Stockdale, described him as a "U.S. soldier who defected in
South Vietnam and supplied Hanoi Hannah with tapes on defecting."

Returned POWs reported seeing him almost daily, together with his Cambodian wife
and child. He reportedly later went over to the Khmer Rouge, who were then
fighting alongside the Vietnamese. When the Americans left in 1975, and Vietnam
invaded Cambodia, Nolan was caught in the middle and told a source he had been
"mistreated" by the Vietnamese.

In late May, 1974, Nolan and his family were seen at a coffee plantation in
Cambodia where he went by the name of Buller. A later CIA document stated he was
alive and healthy in 1978 and there was an unconfirmed report that he visited
Cuba in 1978. This report was confirmed by a late-returning POW (Robert Garwood)
who stated he had heard this information while held in Vietnam.

In 1986, several national news articles revealed that intelligence documents
showed at least 7 missing Americans had been seen alive in Vietnam in the last
dozen years, including McKinley Nolan.

POW/MIA advocacy groups reverberated with anticipation, wondering if Nolan would
ultimately be brought home, to provide new information on those men still
missing would be available. No further word surfaced on Nolan in the next few
years, and the hope vanished.

Nolan, for whatever reason, apparently chose love of a woman over love of his
country and remained behind, perhaps even to defect. America cannot completely
ignore a man who may have a wealth of information on Americans still alive in
Vietnam. If McKinley Nolan should ever wish to return to his homeland, will what
he has to say about missing Americans be discounted because of allegations that
he defected? How much less forgiving would we be to him than we were to those
Americans who fled to Canada to avoid the war?...or to a woman who once
playfully aimed a Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun to the skies over Hanoi in
protest of American bombing of Vietnam?