Published: July 05, 2008 06:54 pm      

That’s four down, and too many more to go

“Did I ever show you this?” my friend asked. “I’ve been wearing this for, oh, 15 years now.”

I recognized “this” as a silver POW/MIA bracelet, and it was well-worn. The engraving on new ones is easy to read, but you had to get close to this one to make out the name on it.

Carol Bates made the first POW/MIA bracelets during the early 1970s. She and Kay Hunter, a college friend, wanted to draw attention to American servicemen who were Prisoners of War or Missing in Action in Vietnam. Their story is at www.miafacts.org/

bracelets.htm on the Internet.

My friend was Air Force and survived Vietnam. I see him once a year in his old dress uniform, which has two sleeves full of sergeant’s chevrons. I don’t hesitate to tell him that he and his lovely lady are easily the most elegant couple in the place.

The man named on his bracelet also was Air Force: Staff Sgt. James K. Caniford of Brunswick, Md., the only Vietnam MIA from Frederick County. Caniford’s present rank is senior master sergeant because as an MIA, he was considered to be on active duty and has been promoted occasionally over the last 36 years.

Caniford was one of 14 crewmen aboard an AC-130 Spectre gunship that was shot down by a surface-to-air missile over Laos on March 29, 1972. Search and rescue efforts produced no results and were called off after three days because of enemy activity. The remains of nine crewmen were recovered in 1986, but those of Caniford and four others were not.

Turning again to the Internet, I read about Jim Caniford in a Frederick News-Post article by staff writer Joseph M. de Leon.

According to de Leon’s story, Caniford’s mother, Janice, awakened suddenly at 3 a.m. on March 29, 1972, then sat up in bed and screamed “Jimmy!” because she had seen him dead.

Some people scoff at such things, but I believe in them.

Grandmother Goldsworthy told me about waking in the middle of the night many years ago to see her younger son at the foot of her bed. Children often flee from their nightmares to seek safety in their parents’ bedrooms ... only Abe was no longer a child. His nightmare was that of a fully grown man.

“He was in his Army uniform,” she said, “and he was standing there, holding his arms out to me. When I got out of bed to go to him, he disappeared.”

At the time, my Uncle Abe actually was thousands of miles away on a troop ship in the Atlantic Ocean, headed for Europe and an eventual date with a German artillery round that would vex him for the rest of his life.

When the stories were later told and compared, it turned out that at the very moment Abe appeared to his mother, he was standing on the deck at the railing of his ship, looking down at a German torpedo that was headed straight toward him.

Unable to move, he watched as the torpedo went under the ship directly between his legs. Soldiers on the other side of the ship saw it emerge and speed away without exploding. My friend Clifton Brooks, who is West Virginia’s only surviving Tuskegee Airman, said the same thing happened to him.

Miracles can come in the strangest forms at the most unexpected times, but not for everyone. Why isn’t for us to know.

My friend with the bracelet and I recently heard Jan Scruggs discuss his plans for a learning center that will include a museum housing all of the items people have left at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial — The Wall.

Scruggs was the driving force behind The Wall’s creation, and I wrote a news story about his visit to Cumberland Chapter 172 of the Vietnam Veterans of America.

My friend is a member of the chapter, and he said he plans to leave his bracelet at The Wall, to become part of a memorial honoring all who have served in America’s wars.

He said he had looked on the Internet in hopes of finding Caniford’s parents, who have moved from Maryland, so he could send them the bracelet.

Instead, he found an entry announcing that Caniford’s remains and those of three other crewmen had been recovered and were identified and repatriated earlier this year.

Caniford was buried May 28 at Arlington National Cemetery, where two years ago my friends from the VVA chapter and I attended the funeral of another MIA whose sister lives near Cumberland. Grady Cooke and his C-130 cargo plane and crewmates were lost less than a month after Caniford’s AC-130 went down, under almost identical circumstances.

“That’s four more found and brought home,” my friend said. Four more, I agreed, and too many more to go — about 1,800 from our generation’s war alone.

Caniford’s father, James, was quoted as saying he dreaded the thought of dying without knowing what happened to his son. An even greater fear was that he might be a Prisoner Of War.

“You don’t know whether to be happy or sad,” he said after Jim’s remains were identified. “People say you got to live your life and move on, but you have to have something to hang onto in the process.”

Now, after waiting three and a half decades, he and his family have that.

Welcome Home, Jim.

You had loved ones and many friends who refused to let you be forgotten ... and most of us never even met you.