Ghost Army reuinion - and documentary!

I'm sure many of our customers in the Northern part of the US (I like to call it "Lower Canada") of our customers read this story in the Journal Sentinel; let's hope it makes it across the country ("all the way to Upper Mexico). In the meantime, I've re-posted the article below as well as other links and video.

I suppose the movie will be out soon - the ghost army wiki article says as of 2010 it is under production. There was a recent eBay auction of an original work of art by artist Harold Laynor to benefit the production of the movie, which unfortunately lost funding a while back, but I haven't figured out the final price. Anyway, visit the Ghost Army website and support the film however you can. Here's a trailer:

Secret WWII Army unit reunites on film

From Journal Sentinel


For 50 years, Al Albrecht did not talk about his unit's missions during World War II.

He was still following orders.

Albrecht, now 86, served with what became known as the Ghost Army. Long top-secret, it was a combat deception unit, using disinformation to support the Allied war effort. Weapons included giant rubber inflatable tanks and sound recordings that could be heard for miles.

"We were told we couldn't tell our wives or anybody about what we did" for 50 years, he later said. "It was totally secret."

Finally free to speak, Albrecht was happy to attend the first reunion of Ghost Army veterans, held 51 years after the end of the war. It proved to be just the beginning of the conversation.

Rick Beyer, a Lexington, Mass., filmmaker working on a film about the Ghost Army, discovered him at a reunion in Washington, D.C. Albrecht was one of more than 20 veterans interviewed for the film.

Now dying of pancreatic cancer, Albrecht was the star Saturday at a special screening of Beyer's film. Bedridden, he was wheeled into the auditorium at the Zablocki Veterans Affairs Medical Center. Other vets at the hospital attended, too, as did Albrecht's friends and family.

"He's been talking away like crazy about the Ghost Army," daughter Karen Skibba said earlier, "because he's so excited about the movie."

Officially, 82 officers and 1,023 enlisted men served with the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops. They completed 21 missions between D-Day and the end of the war, including clandestine work in France, Luxembourg, Belgium and Germany.

"Where else did you have a unit that had rubber tanks, rubber trucks, rubber aircraft and false sound equipment?" Albrecht said in an interview with Beyer.

The camouflage unit had artists - including Bill Blass, later known as a fashion designer - responsible for deploying the large-as-life props. Radio unit personnel worked from elaborate scripts to feed false information to enemy ears.

Albrecht, a native of Two Rivers, was drafted right out of high school and assigned to the sonic unit. Sonic members were responsible for projecting recordings of the sounds, big and small, that mimicked an army on the move. At full blast, the 500-pound speakers could be heard 15 miles away.

"I drove a halftrack," Albrecht told Beyer. "I tell my children that was the biggest boom box you ever heard."

In some instances, Ghost Army efforts were enough to divert and distract the Germans, including enemy pilots reporting to their commanders. Some "special effects" artillery booming added to the illusion.

"This is the part I like," Albrecht continued. "We could deflate all the rubber tanks and disappear. In about two hours, we were gone.

"Can you picture the German commander  . . .  going over there, but finding nothing? Maybe a lot of tank tracks," he said. "We slipped away in the night. That's the Ghost Army."

Operations were so secret that, even among the Ghost Army units, information was on a need-to-know basis. Albrecht recalled traveling with explosives under their truck seats and orders not to let equipment fall into enemy hands.

The Ghost Army also took on the task of impersonating other personnel - Albrecht still has a collection of patches from outfits he never belonged to - with incorrect patches and ranks and vehicle markings. Sometimes they would visit villages, sampling enough of the local beverages to make disinformation seem credible.

"We were playacting," Albrecht said last week from his hospital bed. "This was a different unit."

"Even his discharge papers were false," his daughter said. "It said he was part of the infantry, but that was false."

Nighttime subterfuge

The units moved under cover of darkness, hoping to confound the enemy and disguise Allied troop movements.

One story became the stuff of Ghost Army lore. Two Frenchmen saw four soldiers pick up a tank - 90-some pounds instead of tons - and turn it around. Arthur Shilstone, who served with the camouflage unit, was on guard duty and saw the Frenchmen's faces.

"The Americans are very strong," Shilstone said, later repeating the story to Beyer.

Under fire, though, rubber tanks and howitzers were not the answer. The Ghost Army's worst days came during Operation Bouzonville in March 1945. Two men were killed and 15 wounded.

"We knew that at any time, we could be attacked, and we had nothing," Albrecht said. "Hey, we had no real weapons. They were mostly all artificial.

"Yes, we were scared," he said. "We didn't know whether we would come back the next day. . . .  It was possible that that mission would be our last."

Albrecht returned home and fell in love with a young woman from Two Rivers, Doris Mae Grenier. They married 62 years ago, later moving to Milwaukee. They raised five children and became grandparents and great-grandparents.

He was a natural talking to groups and giving speeches about the Ghost Army, once he was free to do so.

"He took the show on the road as long as he could," Skibba said.

Historians can now debate just how effective the Ghost Army was, but it proved a crucial element in at least one engagement. That came during Operation Viersen later in March 1945, as they created the illusion of a massive Allied movement miles from where the real 9th Army was crossing the Rhine River.

"There's strong evidence, particularly with that operation on the Rhine, that they succeeded in fooling the enemy and saving lives," Beyer said.

"It's one thing to use inflatable tanks and it's another to use inflatable tanks within the sound of enemy artillery, within, in some cases, 600 yards of the front line," Beyer said. "They were 1,000 guys pretending to be 10,000 or 20,000. In their final deception, with the help of some other units, they pretended to be 40,000."

The ruse worked.

"I'm sure the biggest thing that we accomplished was saving many Americans - and also Germans," Albrecht told Beyer. "War is meant to shoot people and kill people, and we saved people. And to me, that made me very proud."

Airmen invented them. Soldiers collected them. U.S. presidents owned them. Not being able to produce one could cost you a round of drinks. Yet the craze died almost as quickly as it caught on. Back in the day, everyone had his own “short snorter.”

Short snorters were basically dollar bills signed by friends, unit comrades, and/or famous people. They were carried by those in the military for good luck, and if asked to show yours, you had better have it or you would be required to buy small drinks for everyone. “Snort” was slang for a mixed drink, hence the term short snorter.

The tradition is said to have originated with Alaskan pilots during the 1920s. Soon, people crossing the ocean joined the short snorter “club.” If you did not have one you were obligated to pay a dollar to anyone who asked. The practice may also trace its roots back to Civil War soldiers who wrote the names of places they visited on their canteens.

During World War II, airmen collected them, signed by crewmembers, and it wasn’t long before everyone in the armed services wanted their own keepsakes, too. Often, foreign currency was used instead of dollar bills. Indeed, some men had so many pieces of currency signed that they would tape them together, making one long bill that was rolled up and carried in a pocket. The fad was so widespread that in 1943, in “There Once Was A War” John Steinbeck wrote a brief tirade against the “Short Snorter War Menace.” Steinbeck mentions the large numbers of politicians and celebrities who signed them and even carried their own.

George Patton had a short snorter signed by, among others, George Marshall, “Hap” Arnold, Omar Bradley, and Louis Mountbatten. Patton’s signature is preserved on the short snorters of others. Other signatures found on various bills include Dwight Eisenhower, Franklin Roosevelt, Chester Nimitz, Bob Hope, Greg “Pappy” Boyington, John Wayne and Winston Churchill. Eleanor Roosevelt carried her short snorter with her during World War II and was pictured signing many bills for Soldiers. Marlene Dietrich is said to have had her own as well. In 1944, Coca-Cola ran an ad in a journal depicting a soldier showing off his autographed bill to others. An old 78 rpm jazz record titled “Short Snorter” has even been unearthed. It seemed everyone in uniform had a souvenir of this type, and servicemen would sit around clubs comparing them, and often the person with the least number of signatures would buy the drinks.

Although the fad appeared to die out after World War II, to this day commemorative short snorters are still printed. Additionally, the idea of signing dollar bills isn’t a completely lost art. American Idol’s David Cook signed a short snorter during a USO tour of Operation Enduring Freedom.

Both original short snorters and commemorative ones appear at auction, and are usually not worth much, unless of course they are signed by a famous name. A few are on display in museums. Eleanor Roosevelt’s can be seen in the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum. Occasionally, books and magazines dealing with currency collectibles will have an article.

Short snorters are another example of American uniqueness, and one of many ways troops have found to entertain themselves while away from home.

From Ft. Leavenworth Lamp

Students enjoy annual Vietnam lesson

Since 2001 Haddonfield Memorial High School history teacher Michael Busarello has been teaching students about one of the most divisive wars in American history, the Vietnam War. The HMHS teacher inherited the program from Patty Kolodi, who began the class in 1991, and it remains one of the most popular electives at the high school.

While it’s important for students to know the dates and figures of the war, it’s always been the program’s intention to have the students become more familiar with the men and women who fought and served during the conflict, he said. One of the most important features of the class is a deep-well of Vietnam veterans who have been coming to the high school for many years to share their stories with HMHS students.

Last week Andy Tally, perhaps the longest tenured speaker of the program, visited HMHS with some of his massive collection of Vietnam War memorabilia. The Camden native was drafted to the conflict in August 1967 and served with the 1st Battalion 22nd Regiment for a term.

Tally has been speaking with HMHS students since the early 1990s when the program started, he said last week.

“The Army gave me discipline and structure. It definitely helped me later on in life,” Tally said as he spoke about his career as a state policeman after the war. Going through state police training was easy compared to his basic training for the military.

It’s easily the highlight of the class for the students, as various speakers come in and share their experiences. During every presentation he gives, Tally picks a student from the audience and dresses him or her in the full uniform and equipment.

Pat Donnellon, a senior, offered up his services and donned the 60-pound outfit that Tally had to wear each day for a year as he and his battalion marched through the jungles of Vietnam. Ammunition, a flak jacket, MREs – it was all there as Donnellon took each piece of equipment and slung it over his shoulders like Tally.

Donnellon said it was heavy just standing in the classroom. Tally said that the walking regiment would hump the equipment every day for the equivalent distance of Haddonfield to the Echelon Mall.

Helping the students get a better understanding of what men and women went through in the conflict keeps him coming back each year, Tally said.

From The Haddenfield Sun

US report shows Nazis given 'safe haven' after WWII

A newly revealed "secret history" written by US officials has detailed how successive administrations provided refuge to Nazi war criminals in the aftermath of World War II.

"America which prided itself on being a safe haven for the persecuted became -- in some small measure -- a safe haven for the persecutors as well," said a report from the Office of Special Investigations (OSI) first revealed by The New York Times and examined by AFP.

Created in 1979 to hunt Nazis residing on US soil, the OSI has since merged with other units in the Justice Department.

But the 600-page report -- which the government worked to keep hidden for four years -- raises numerous ethical questions about US practices after the collapse of the Third Reich in 1945.

The report highlights "ethical compromises involved in the US policy in using former high-ranking Nazi officials as informants and in putting to work Nazi scientists for the American space programme or other classified military projects," said Efraim Zuroff, head of the unit tracking down former Nazis at the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

"While there is little new information in the revelations," Zuroff wrote in an op-ed piece for The Guardian newspaper, the issues are worth re-examining, he said.

An administration official, who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity, said the report was a draft copy that "was never finalized and contains errors and omissions," but added that finishing the report would have "diverted too many resources."

The report revealed that one of the alleged ex-Nazis was Arthur Rudolph, a scientist who who ran the Mittelwerk munitions factory where Auschwitz detainees were forced to work.

Rudolph was brought to the United States in 1945 for his rocket-making expertise and later took part in a US space program that resulted in the development of NASA's Saturn V rocket.

Justice Department investigators later found evidence that Rudolph had been much more actively involved in exploiting slave laborers at Mittelwerk than he or American intelligence officials had originally acknowledged. Nevertheless, some intelligence officials objected when the Justice Department sought to deport him in 1983.

The report identified another Nazi as Tscherim Soobzokov, a former Waffen SS soldier who worked for the CIA before emigrating to the United States in 1955.

Soobzokov became a naturalized US citizen in 1961 and was outed as a former Nazi in 1972 but subsequent investigations were dropped and the case against him allowed to lapse.

"Some may find ironic that we must terminate this litigation because the defendant admitted his affiliation with organizations loyal to the Third Reich. But that, in my opinion, is the law, ironic or not, as it applies to this case," said OSI director Allan Ryan to the press in July 1980.

Soobzokov was assassinated in August 1985 when a bomb was set off at his home in New Jersey.

The history of granting entry to German and Austrian scientists in the years after Nazi Germany's fall, to accelerate victory over Japan to begin with, and then to gain a technological edge over the Soviet Union, has been documented.

The report however provided key details on procedures for welcoming individuals with Nazi pasts, and notes they were granted entry to the United States "knowingly."

The Department of Justice "is committed to transparency and providing information in accordance with relevant laws," spokeswoman Laura Sweeney told AFP, saying redactions in the first revelation of the report were based "on privacy and other considerations under the law."

Due to the amount of deleted passages, the report in its entirety was eventually given to The New York Times.

David Sobel, counsel at the non-profit National Security Archive, pointed out that now "we can compare the redacted document with the complete text of the original report, it is clear that the Justice Department is withholding information without legal justification."

Noting the administration of President Barack Obama and his Justice Department had pledged an "unprecedented" level of transparency, the issue of the OSI report "provides a troubling example of how far the reality is from the rhetoric," added Sobel.

"We're still covering up, we're still hiding the role that some in our country played by some perverse sense of national interest. I think it's time that our country knew," Anti-Defamation League director Abraham Foxman said on NBC this week.

By Lucile Malandain (AFP)

Royal family memorabilia collectible value predicted to surge

Could Prince William and Kate Middleton’s engagement bring a collectibles boom?

Newspapers are calling them the next Charles & Di, what will Kate & Will's marriage mean for collectors?

Yes, it's official! Prince William has finally ended the guessing game which has kept Royal watchers busy for the past eight years and has become engaged to long-term girlfriend Kate Middleton.

The proposal, we are told, took place in Kenya last month, after the Prince very properly asked Kate's father for permission first. Clarence House has just confirmed the news in a statement and the couple are expected to give their first interview tonight.

The wedding is expected to be in spring or summer 2011, and is likely to be one of the most eagerly watched Royal events for many years.

Comparisons are naturally being drawn between the glamorous couple's nuptials and the world-watched wedding of William's mother, not least as it will be 30 years since her wedding in 1981.

Prince Charles married Diana with a global audience of 750 million, making it one of the most watched events ever, and whilst the world is in a different place than it was in 1981, there's no doubt that the eyes of the world will be on Wills and Kate.

This is certainly big news in the world of collectibles too. Royal memorabilia is one of the strongest performing areas of collectibles.

In particular, Princess Diana's autograph has increased in value by a startling 580% over the past 10 year according to the PFC40 autograph index. Some examples currently on the market, including a Christmas card, a signed portrait and even a personal letter from the Princess, are likely to be snapped up by canny investors.

The upcoming wedding is likely to produce some very valuable memorabilia with any items directly involved in the ceremony likely to become highly collectible. As a guide-line, a copy of Princess Diana's wedding dress made for Madame Tussauds sold for £100,000 in 2005 - we are certain it would be worth far more now if it went under the hammer.

Princess Diana's plunging black dress - sold for £192,000

Of course there is no certainty that a comparable dress will be made for Kate, and she is unlikely to sell her original wedding dress. But investors will want to be on the look-out for other dresses. Earlier this year Diana's famous 'take-the plunge' dress which introduced her to the public sold for nearly four times what was expected: £192,000 at Kerry Taylor auctions.

Items relating to the time of William meeting Kate at St Andrews University are also likely to become more valuable.

But in general, the wedding is likely to lead to a worldwide increase in Royal memorabilia, and lead to a new generation taking interest.

Interest in Royal collectibles is likely to rise not merely in the British Commonwealth, including India, and America but perhaps also in China, where nostalgia for the country's long past monarchy may spur an interest in the Royal couple.

From Paul Fraser

WWII bomb threatens NATO HQ

Someone needs to make a novelty patch . . .

NATO was forced to evacuate a section of its headquarters in Brussels on Monday after a World War II bomb was discovered during road work nearby.

NATO told workers in the staff centre to leave the premises, which include a cafeteria, a supermarket and sport facilities, after the 50-kilo device was found on Leopold III Boulevard.

The decision to evacuate the building was taken as a precaution on the advice of a Belgian bomb disposal team, a memo said.

Only one exit remained open during the alert, causing confusion among staff and visitors.

The boulevard that passes in front of the 28-nation alliance complex is undergoing major work to extend a tram line that will link NATO to downtown Brussels.

Noriega personal items on Manion's Auction

Some of you may have noticed an extensive grouping formerly belonging to deposed Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega listed in our Premier auction closing November 22. It's quite an interesting collection and includes personal photos, insignia, and even a box of cigars in an official "Noriega" wooden cigar box and each with a personalized cigar band.

A highpoint of the collection is a bayonet believed to have been brandished during an iconic TV broadcast when Noriega addressed the threat of US invasion (click here for video). The reserve price has been set by the consignor at $20,000 - which is quite a chunk of change, but who's to say what's too much to pay for a tangible piece of monumental military history? Here's a quick video of our man John Conway talking a bit about the machete . . .

The Power of Prayer? Nuns get $220,000 from sale of rare baseball card

Years after his death, baseball legend Honus Wagner hit a home run for a group of nuns, who will use proceeds from the sale of his extremely rare baseball card to do charitable work.

Texas-based Heritage Auctions conducted the internet auction, which concluded Thursday night with a winning bid from Doug Walton, whose family owns seven stores in the Southeast specializing in sports cards and collectibles.

"I have been in the market for this card for a long time," Walton told CNN. "It is the Mona Lisa of baseball cards."

Walton paid $262,900, Heritage said, with $220,000 of that going to the School Sisters of Notre Dame. The card's price beat initial estimates by $162,900.

Both the card and the account of how it came to be sold make for compelling stories.

Like other stars of the early 20th century, Wagner, a Hall of Famer with the Pittsburgh Pirates, appeared on tobacco company cards.

The T206 cards were made between 1909 and 1911. Wagner's likeness was removed, either because he opposed being associated by young fans with tobacco or because he wasn't being paid enough by the company, said Chris Ivy, director of sports sales for Heritage Auctions.

Only 50 to 60 T206 Wagner cards are believed to exist.

One in near-mint condition sold for $2.8 million in 2007.

The Catholic order, which has a facility in Baltimore, Maryland, obtained the card when the brother of one its nuns died earlier this year, leaving several baseball cards to the congregation. Neither of the siblings has been identified.

Never mind that the card's sides had been trimmed to fit in a scrapbook, that it was laminated and lost some paper on the back, leaving it in poor condition. It's an authentic T206 Honus Wagner card.

"The fact that this was in her brother's collection since the 1930s and no one knew it" makes its history special, Ivy told CNN.

The Catholic missionary and teaching order said Wagner's name "is blessed to us now."

"We're very grateful to have the extra funds to help the School Sisters of Notre Dame where we minister in more than 30 countries," said Sister Virginia Muller, treasurer of the order's Atlantic-Midwest area, in a statement.

Walton, managing partner of Walton Sports Cards and Collectibles, said he's tried three previous times to buy a Wagner card, but was outbid. He plans to have the card make the rounds of the company's stores in Tennessee, Florida and South Carolina.

He concedes he paid about $60,000 more than the card is worth, but "the back story made me spend the extra money on it."

About 75 percent of his pursuit of the T206 card was emotion, he said. "I'm a very stubborn person."

From CNN

Vietnam War bracelets come full circle

Decades after the war's end, some who wore POW/MIA bracelets are reaching out to learn what happened to 'their' guy.

By Mike Anton, Los Angeles Times

November 4, 2010

In high school, Joleta McNelis was never far away from a man she had never met. She carried Lt. John Ensch in her heart — and on her wrist.

Aside from his name, the only thing McNelis knew about Ensch was the date his fighter jet was shot down over North Vietnam: 8-25-72. It was etched under his name on the metal bracelet she bought when she was 14.

"I prayed for him. But it wasn't just prayers. I talked to John, imagining he could hear me: 'I'm pulling for you, John. Be strong,'" McNelis said. "One night I got a checkerboard out, set it up on my bed and said, 'OK, John, we're going to play checkers now.'"

When McNelis went off to college, she boxed up the ephemera of youth and entrusted it to her mother. The items collected dust for more than 30 years, until her mother gave them back to her in February.

"It was like a time capsule," said McNelis, now 52.

There were letters from friends. Middle school report cards, bead necklaces and a troll doll. A coffee mug with a yellow smiley face and a pin on which the same round face has a frown. "POWs Never Have a Nice Day," it reads.

Tucked away underneath it all was the bracelet with Ensch's name. Holding it again after so many years brought a flood of emotions.

"I had always wondered what happened to my guy," McNelis said. "Who was he? Did he make it home? Did he have a family? Was he still alive? I had to find out."

Just a decade ago, answering such questions would have taken persistence. Today all it took was an Internet search from her home in Gig Harbor, Wash. McNelis soon found her guy — and his e-mail address — in San Diego.

"Dear John," she typed. "I never thought I would be so happy to write a Dear John letter…"

They were 1-ounce talismans of hope, slivers of engraved metal that became a bandage for a divided nation.

More than 5 million POW/MIA bracelets were sold for $2.50 to $3 apiece in the early 1970s. They transcended politics and were embraced by strange bedfellows. Nixon and McGovern. Bob Hope and Sonny and Cher. John Wayne and Dennis Hopper.

Hopper probably didn't know that the organization behind the cultural icon was Los Angeles-based Voices in Vital America (VIVA), a conservative student movement formed in the 1960s to counteract campus antiwar protests then sweeping the nation.

"There will be no political activity by this group unless exposure of the lies and myths of communism and socialism is so construed by some professors," an Orange County fundraiser for the group told The Times back then. There is "still time to save this great country from the enemy who is plotting and scheming around the clock."

In 1970, the year four antiwar protesters at Ohio's Kent State University were killed by National Guardsmen, Carol Bates Brown was a member of the VIVA chapter at what is now Cal State Northridge. She didn't approve of students who marched against the war, burned draft cards or took over administration buildings.

"We baked cookies and sent them to the soldiers," Brown said.

But she yearned to do more. A chance encounter with Bob Dornan, an Air Force veteran and future congressman who was then a local TV talk show host, sowed the seeds of an idea.

Dornan wore a bracelet given to him by Vietnamese mountain tribesmen — a reminder to him of the sacrifices of war. He introduced Brown and classmate Kay Hunter to the wives of POWs. The students were so moved by their stories, they decided to travel to Vietnam and obtain their own bracelets to show support for POWS.

"Amazingly, nobody wanted to pay to send two sorority girls to Vietnam with a war going on," Brown said with a laugh.

Instead, they decided to make and sell their own bracelets, using the proceeds to print bumper stickers and brochures and buy ads promoting awareness of imprisoned and missing servicemen.

Jack Zeider's Midway Stamping & Die Works in Santa Monica was hired to make a few prototypes.

"Pops had no idea what he was getting into. It just snowballed," said Richard Zeider, an Oregon dentist who worked for his father during college. "He started at 500 a week. Then 1,000. Then 10,000. At one point, he was making 40,000 a week."

His father eventually employed 120 workers, mostly college kids and Vietnam veterans who pumped out bracelets around the clock. Two tons of brass a day came in one door and went out the other as bracelets.

"He didn't make a lot of money on it," Zeider said. "He did it because he was patriotic."

Brown became national chairwoman of the bracelet campaign for VIVA and worked six days a week, from morning to midnight. "My mother would find me asleep in my bed covered with checks and bank deposit slips," she said. She eventually dropped out of school.

"There was something about a specific name being on them," said Brown, 62, who went on to work on POW/MIA issues for the nonprofit National League of Families and later for the Pentagon. "People made a personal connection — 'I'm watching out for this guy.'"

The plight of the POWs gave people a way to separate their feelings toward policymakers from their feelings toward those who fought in the war — a shift in public attitude still evident today. Whatever people think of U.S. policy on Iraq and Afghanistan, support for the troops remains strong.

So, too, do the connections made by Vietnam-era bracelet wearers. Thirty-seven years after the war's end, the Defense Department's Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office receives requests for information on former POWs or relatives of missing servicemen nearly every day.

"It's a delicate matter," said Larry Greer, a spokesman for the office. "Some families have told us they don't want to hear from people."

That's what Lenore Dowling thought when she never heard from the family of Air Force Col. Elton Lawrence Perrine — one of more than 2,600 servicemen unaccounted for at the end of the war.

The case had gnawed at Dowling, 56, since she first slipped on Perrine's bracelet in high school. Ten years ago, she left a message for Perrine's family on a veterans website. In January, she received an e-mail from Perrine's niece: His remains had been found.

"I was absolutely floored," said Dowling, who was invited by the family to attend Perrine's funeral at Arlington National Cemetery. "My guy was finally coming home."

Air Force Capt. James Hivner was 60 miles north of Hanoi on Oct. 5, 1965, when his F-4 fighter was hit. He dropped his bombs onto the ammunition dump he was targeting and ejected from the burning plane.

Hivner was quickly captured and endured nearly eight years of brutality. He was beaten and whipped, starved, and held in near-total isolation. In 1973, he was one of 590 American POWs in Vietnam released as part of the cease-fire agreement that ended the war.

"I was in the hospital recovering when I started getting these little packages," Hivner said.

Inside each was a bracelet with his name etched on it and a note of thanks.

Through the years, the 79-year-old retired colonel has received scores of bracelets. The most recent came last Memorial Day. He keeps them in a shoebox.

"I got one from a woman who said back then she was a little girl. She was at a swimming meet and there was a rule you couldn't wear any jewelry," Hivner said. "She said, 'Oh, no, I can't take it off.'"

After much discussion, the girl was allowed to swim wearing Hivner's name.

Hivner, who lives in Plano, Texas, keeps in contact with 31 people who wore his bracelet. Most of them don't know about the others.

"A lot of them thought they were the only person who had my name on a bracelet," Hivner said. "They feel like they've got a direct line to me. I don't want them to think they're part of a party line. I owe them that."

When one of his "bracelet family" died, Hivner stayed in contact with his widow. When he didn't get a Christmas card from her a few years later, Hivner called the woman's daughter, who informed him of her mother's death. Hivner now stays in touch with the daughter.

Hivner has followed his far-flung adopted family through marriage, children, even grandchildren. And they have come to know Hivner's wife, Phyllis; his two daughters, who were 6 and 8 years old when he was taken prisoner; and his four grandsons.

"We talk about the kind of stuff you would with any friend," said Karen Owings, 64, of Mission Viejo, who tracked down Hivner a decade ago.

She can still recall the transcendent connection she felt in 1970 when she bought her bracelet and saw that Oct. 5 — the date Hivner was taken prisoner — was also her birthday.

"I've never met the man," Owings said. "But he is part of my family."

The bracelets arrive in the mail with the regularity of the seasons. Each one sends a shudder through John "Jack" Ensch.

Eventually, each one leaves him with a feeling of joy and thankfulness.

"I'm one of the lucky ones. I came back," said Ensch, 73. "It was a part of my life, not the end of my life."

Ensch, released in 1973, retired as a Navy captain in 1995. Today he works as a veterans outreach coordinator for the San Diego Padres, where he is known as "Capt. Jack." He keeps some of his POW bracelets in his office at Petco Park — along with a brick from the notorious Hanoi Hilton prison camp where he was held.

When Ensch arrived there in August 1972, he brought news that he passed along to his fellow prisoners through tap codes between cells: People across America were wearing bracelets with their names on them.

"They were dumbfounded," Ensch said.

Ensch is still struck by the outpouring of goodwill.

"Even those people who were against the Vietnam War could indentify with us being held captive there — the torture and the mistreatment. Nobody could argue that wasn't wrong," he said. "I think it was a collective learning experience for our society."

So when someone reaches out to Ensch, he always reaches back.

Joleta McNelis' "Dear John" e-mail arrived March 29 — the 37th anniversary of Ensch's release.

"I would be honored to receive your (our) bracelet," Ensch wrote back, telling McNelis about his family and career. "I'll sign off with the sign off that ended every tap code communication by all POWs during our time in captivity — GBU."

God bless you.