WADLEIGH, CARL D.
REMAINS RETURNED - SEE NEWS ARTICLE

Name: Carl D. Wadleigh
Rank/Branch: US Army
Unit: IN BN 03 CO A
Date of Birth:
Home City of Record:
Date of Loss: 21 June 1968 (680529 USAEREC LIST)
Country of Loss: South Vietnam
Loss Coordinates:
Status (in 1973): AWOL
Status in 2004 - Killed in Action Body not Recovered
Category:
Acft/Vehicle/Ground: Ground

Other Personnel in Incident: (none missing)

Source: Compiled by Homecoming II Project  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 2004.

REMARKS:

SYNOPSIS: In Vietnam, military experts devised a system to try to relieve
the battle fatigue experienced in earlier wars by those who served long
tours with their units intact. In Vietnam, soldiers were rotated after
roughly one-year tours. The practice had noble intent, but it served to
isolate the soldier and interrupted continuity. Virtually as soon as a man
learned the ropes, he was shipped home and a green replacement arrived to
fill the gap. Some were quite literally, in the jungles one day and at
home the next. The emotional impact was terrific and thousands of veterans
are dealing with it two decades later.

Vietnam was also a limited political war, and had peculiar problems: a
vague enemy, restrictive rules of engagement, an uncertain objective,
non-military State Department minds directing many aspects of the war. In
certain periods of the war, military morale was lower than perhaps any
other time in our history.

Adding to these factors was the extremely young age of the average soldier
shipped to Vietnam. For example, the average combatant's age in World War
II was 25 years, while Vietnam soldiers were 19. The young fighters became
jaded -- or old -- or died -- long before their time.

For various reasons, some soldiers deserted or even defected to the enemy.
Their counterparts in the U.S. fled to Canada, manufactured physical or
mental problems, or extended college careers to escape the draft.

There are only a handful of American deserters or AWOL (Absent Without
Leave) maintained on missing lists. At least one of these was known to have
fallen in love with a woman whom he later learned was a communist. Another
fled because he had scrapped with a superior and feared the consequences.
This man was ultimately declared dead, and his AWOL record expunged. Most
are on the list of missing because there is some doubt that their AWOL
status is valid.

There is little information regarding those listed as AWOL on the missing
lists. For instance, the Army does not maintain a missing file of Carl D.
Wadleigh, who was reported AWOL on June 21, 1968. Although his name appeared
as AWOL through on lists through 1982, by 1984, it had been removed without
explanation. His story and his fate are unknown.

=========================================

The Jersey Journal
Top News

HE'S 'AWOL' NO LONGER

Army now admits decades-old error Hudson GI will get burial with honors

Saturday, March 06, 2004

By Ken Thorbourne
Journal staff writer

It's been nearly four decades since Army Spc. 4th Class Carl Wadleigh of
Jersey City went missing during the war in Vietnam.

Unlike other soldiers in his company, judged to have fought bravely and died
for their country, the former student of Jefferson Elementary School in
North Bergen - his twin sister, Margaret, likens him to Matt Dillon, the
handsome sheriff on TV's "Gunsmoke" - was branded a deserter.

After 36 years of living with this cloud hanging over their brother's
reputation and military career and their family's name, Wadleigh's six
surviving siblings were told last month that the Army had it wrong all
along. Military brass now believe that in 1968 Wadleigh, then 21, died
fighting on behalf of his country in Vietnam's Ben Tre province.

DNA tests have definitively proved, Army officials now say, that Wadleigh's
remains had been confused with those of another soldier, Master Sgt. Frank
Parrish, and were buried in Texas in 1973.

In a stark reversal, the Army now says Wadleigh is entitled to a full
military funeral, and family members are planning for a burial in May at
Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

Just beginning to digest the Army's revised determination on their brother's
disappearance, Wadleigh's siblings say they feel a sense of closure and
vindication, but also anger and bewilderment that the government could get
things so wrong for so long.

"I was shocked. I was glad it ended," said older brother Clifford Wadleigh
Jr. of Jersey City, an ex-Navy medic who enlisted shortly before Carl was
drafted in 1964. "It just felt like part of you was missing."

Carl's parents - Clifford Sr. and Mary - died in the 1980s without that
closure. All they knew of their son's last days was what they had heard from
FBI agents who visited them inquiring about their youngest son's
whereabouts. They said that Carl had gone AWOL - Absent Without Leave.

"We all thought he was AWOL," said Michelle Wadleigh, another of Carl's
sisters, a religious science teacher who lives in Florham Park. "That was
the hard part. There was an absolute stigma."

Mistaken identity

The Army's reappraisal of Carl Wadleigh's status as a soldier began in 1989
when the Vietnamese government shipped boxes containing the remains of 21
U.S. soldiers to the United States, according to Lt. Col. Jerry O'Hara, a
spokesman for the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command in Hawaii.

With the emergence of mitochondrial DNA as an unassailable tool for
identifying remains, military forensic experts were able to definitively
identify one set of these remains as Master Sgt. Frank Parrish. The
discovery was shocking because military officials were convinced they had
already recovered and buried Parrish's remains.

Parrish, who worked as an adviser to a South Vietnamese strike force, was
believed to have been the soldier found in 1972 alongside the body of Master
Sgt. Earl Briggs, according to an account compiled in 1990 by the Homecoming
II Project, an advocacy group for families of missing soldiers. Both men
were killed in an ambush on Jan. 16, 1968.

Military officials had based their identification of the remains on a
comparison done with Parrish's picture and a toothless and jawbone-less
skull.

There also was circumstantial evidence, said 1st Lt. Ken Hall, who works
with O'Hara. Parrish was a medic, and a set of forceps had been found near
the remains, he said.

Parrish's brother Johnnie had long rejected the forensic evidence the
government had used to identify his brother, the Homecoming II report
stated.

"The Pentagon informed Johnnie Parrish that he could accept it or reject it,
but the identification was final," the account states, noting that Parrish's
parents accepted the determination and eventually a reluctant Johnnie
Parrish did, too.

As it turns out, Johnnie Parrish was right; the government was wrong.

In Parrish's grave

The definitive identification of Parrish in 1989 set in motion a series of
events, beginning with the exhumation of the remains in the Texas grave.
Then came the time-consuming process of figuring out who that man was.

"We went back to Ben Tre," the province where the remains initially believed
to be Parrish had been found, O'Hara said.

"We also deduced who the person could be by process of elimination. Who was
in the area? . It takes an awfully long time."

It was November 2001 before military officials contacted two of Carl
Wadleigh's six siblings in New Jersey, asking for blood samples that could
be used to compare DNA patterns with the remains unearthed in Texas.

Just last month, Army officials contacted family members and confirmed that
the remains that had been buried in Texas were those of their brother Carl.

In a Feb. 18 meeting with family members in the Branchville home of eldest
sibling Maryjane, Army officials said they still believe Carl went AWOL, but
not for as long as originally thought. Rather, they think he went AWOL for
13 days, having run off with a Vietnamese girlfriend.

Sent to a hospital near Saigon to undergo a procedure in 1968, Carl never
showed up, Army officials said, according to Carl's siblings.

Army officials failed to return dozens of calls seeking verification of this
account, which four siblings said they took away from the meeting.

Family members acknowledge that Carl had sent pictures home of a French
Vietnamese woman he claimed to have married. Once, they said, he asked
family members to raise $1,000 so he could send her to the United States.

Army officials told the family they now believe Carl returned to active duty
sometime after his unexcused absence. He died fighting for his country, they
said, and is entitled to a full military funeral, according to family
members.

"He died a hero," Michelle Wadleigh said.

Family memories

Mary and Clifford Wadleigh Sr. began their family in Jersey City in the
early 1930s, with the birth of Maryjane. In 1945, the family moved to North
Bergen, where Carl and Margaret were born on Dec. 20, 1946.

Without elaborating, Margaret, who now lives in Black Hawk, S.D., said
family life was not happy, recalling that as kids she and Carl ran away from
home. Carrying two bananas for sustenance, they got as far as a carnival
park in Bayonne before tossing in the towel, Margaret remembered.

"We called home and my mom said we could take the rest of the day off" from
school, Margaret recalled.

Clifford Jr. remembers swinging on trees in the hills of North Bergen with
his younger brother.

Once, when a branch snapped, Clifford Jr. remembers shoving Carl out of
harm's way, sparing him a steep fall.

"We were very close," Clifford said. "I saved his life once or twice as
kids."

Carl never attended high school, family members said, and was living with
relatives in Jersey City when he was drafted in 1964. He was shipped out to
Vietnam in 1965.

The last family member to see Carl alive was first cousin Kenneth Wadleigh,
a lifelong Jersey City resident who served with Carl in the Army's Ninth
Infantry Division. Kenneth, now a supermarket manager in Fort Lee who
remembers Carl as outgoing and interested in wrestling, said he never
believed Carl went AWOL.

One reason for Kenneth's staunch belief is that he visited Carl in 1967 at a
hospital near Saigon where Carl underwent treatment for a hernia he
developed from carrying heavy artillery.

It not clear whether this is same hospital visit Army officials were
referring to when they said Carl never showed up for an appointment in 1968.
Kenneth is sure of the year, because it was the same year he finished his
tour of duty and it was shortly after the visit that he heard family members
mention that his cousin had gone AWOL.

"I would never believe it," Kenneth said. "I sat and talked to him for three
hours, and that was the furthest thing from his mind. He wanted to do his
job and go home."

Kenneth's theory on what happened to his cousin: "After he was discharged
(from the hospital), I think he hitched a ride on a truck and (I believe)
the truck was ambushed. . He was found right outside of base camp."

A soldier's reputation

Carl's service was also remembered positively by his fellow soldiers,
according to Michelle Wadleigh, who attended a reunion of her brother's
platoon five years ago.

"My brother had quite a reputation for being an incredible soldier," she
said. "He carried heavy artillery rifles. . I know he didn't like it. I
remember the letters, but I know he did what he had to do."

In the years since the Army classified Wadleigh as AWOL, the family's trials
were more than emotional, they said.

Clifford Jr., who works as a security officer at City Hall, lost several
jobs because of suspicions raised by federal agents visiting his workplace,
mistaking him for his younger brother, he said.

And while Margaret is grateful for the sense of closure the identification
of her brother's remains has brought, she isn't prepared to forgive the
military its errors.

"I'm totally disappointed in the government," Margaret said. "Not knowing if
he was dead or alive and finding him in someone else's grave. . It does give
it some closure, but I am totally disappointed by the whole thing."

Clifford Jr., who spent his Navy years stateside, said he's come to peace
with the Army's performance concerning his brother.

"They put us through a lot of hell saying this and that," he said. "But
after 30 years they found my brother. They did their job."

Overdue honor

With the history of their brother's service now officially rewritten, the
kind of personal praise Michelle received about her brother from his fellow
soldiers can now be bestowed publicly.

This Memorial Day, Jaime Vazquez, Jersey City's director of Veteran Affairs,
plans to attach Carl Wadleigh's name to the Vietnam memorial rock in
Pershing Field that honors city residents killed in action.

Wadleigh's will be the 68th name affixed to the rock, Vazquez said.

Michelle Wadleigh also wants her brother's name placed on the Memorial Wall
in Washington, D.C.

"He served with dignity," she said. "He deserves to be there."