Those who knew I was writing this story hoped that I would get to tell it in full. They hoped that all the information and experience that they’d shared with me and that I had researched, dug up, resurrected, vetted and lived would end up in these pages. Lawrence R. Gardella, another man left alive to die by the United States in another time and place in American history, a man whose true story of survival, escape and redemption inspired this afterword to the Speicher story, wrote to his audience at the end of his book Sing a Song to Jenny Next1, that he didn’t have all the answers. Not all the questions you have after reading the long overdue ending to Scott Speicher’s story can be answered either.
Gardella’s words left a powerful, lasting impression on me. He cautioned what I will echo here. But for some of your questions, if I gave the answer, it would endanger the lives of prisoners of war and missing in action still out there, waiting to come home. These are the individuals to whom I owe my faith, loyalty and devotion. I owe as much to those, like me, who have never broken faith with the warfighter. From them I learned my craft. From them I know that I am not alone in trying to put the pieces together. But answers come at a price. In writing this book I hope you begin to understand that cost. I hope you will know, once and for all, that we have asked more than the full measure of devotion of Scott Speicher and all the men and women like him, those who came before and those sure to follow.
When I first took an oath to my country, now a quarter-century ago, I also made a promise to myself to be honest and true to the men and women with whom I served. They are my family. I had no idea when I started down this road that this promise would evolve to a sacred trust with the many missing Americans left behind on the field of battle. Do I break this promise by telling Scott’s story? Do I break it by telling the collective story of America’s prisoners of war and missing in action? No. The government that sent them to fight on foreign soil and left them behind did that long ago. But in the shadow of broken promises I found good people, professionals whose life’s work, like mine, is committed to bringing them home.
I cannot tell you what the outcome will be for all the unaccounted-for men and women – military and civilian – I have come to know through their files, photographs, families and friends. I can tell you that there are men, our countrymen, who know where they are, how they are and why they are still held captive. These are America’s dirty secrets. Secrets are easier to keep with support from determined enemies, acquiescent media and an apathetic public. Only God knows the rest, the stories of those whose mortal bodies have given way, their souls taken rest in faraway lands. There is not a day that passes that I do not think about one, if not all, the men whose lives touched mine and whose stories stand beside Scott Speicher’s in this narrative.
There is something else, something you should all know: secrets that end up costing a man his life are the hardest to keep. The guilt and the pain that comes from it are indescribable to those forced to live with the burden of what they know. When I interviewed, spoke to and provided counsel to those who tried to help Scott Speicher, men and women who provided valuable information, context and eyewitness testimony, I always thanked them on Scott’s behalf. To more than one of them this expression of thanks was gut wrenching. “If I were Scott I wouldn’t thank any of us who stood by and did nothing,” said a member of the evaluation team that convened immediately after his shoot down. This was the same group of military officers and “men in clothes” that began the cover-up that sealed Scott Speicher’s fate. “This thing cost a good man years of suffering and eventually his life, and it cost a wife her husband and children their father; there is no thank you or forgiveness for such a thing.” Pausing, he continued: “My motives aren’t pure, at best I’m trying to extinguish my own guilt; what’s done cannot be undone... I never spoke a word to anyone until…the guilt caught up with me and it was far too late. I will never be able to make up for the decision I made to forget and move along. I just try to honor him [Scott Speicher] by being a good father, grandfather, husband, friend and countryman. Thank you so much for taking up this fight for those of us who wouldn’t.”
When I think about what could have been for Scott Speicher, I come back to the hopeful comment Carlos Johnson made. “America has some great Americans in it. But it just doesn’t realize it yet.” In death as in life, Scott Speicher is a great American. He was supported by some great Americans, men and women who never broke faith with him and tried desperately to get him home. “The naval service and the nation must ‘keep the promise’ with those brave individuals who dedicate themselves to ‘duty, honor, country,’” said Craig Bertolett. “Only by doing so will we be worthy of future selfless service.”
1 Gardella, Lawrence. Sing a Song to Jenny Next. New York: Dutton, 1981.