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'Nam Vet Surfaces: MIA Found In Australia

By VVAW

A Vietnam veteran, not heard from the last 17 years, has surfaced in the New South Wales state in Australia. Douglas Beane, a cook in the U.S. Marine Corps in Vietnam, was discovered when he applied at the U.S. Embassy for a visa to visit his father in the U.S. Beane had left the Marines in Vietnam when he escaped from a prison hospital where he was awaiting court martial for desertion.

According to The Sun-Herald, a New South Wales newspaper, Beane has a total of 9 children in Australia; he recently married the mother of two children. Several years ago he informed Australian emigration authorities about his status, but the government did not inform U.S. officials.

Recently Beane had been granted residency status in Australia. That, plus the passage of 17 years, had made him believe he could safely apply for a visa from the U.S. authorities; instead they promptly sought him out and had him arrested. He is now out on ball.

Beane's story is a better adventure than Rambo ever approached. He landed in the Marines when a judge, over a minor offense, gave him a choice of the Marine or jail. Naturally he ended up in Vietnam; the next stop was Laos where Beane went AWOL for several months living in a local village. From the stockade he escaped to live under-ground in Saigon where he was eventually picked up in one of the military sweeps of the area. Back in the stockade, he ate nails and was transferred to the hospital. It was from there he escaped, overpowering his guards and stealing a uniform which had an R&R pass in the pocket.

In Australia he was welcomed by the anti-Vietnam War movement. Friends helped him get the necessary identity papers (in fact his first job in Australia was with a U.S. firm which demanded a security clearance) and it was only fear of pursuit by the U.S. authorities which led Beane to move to NSW where he worked as a cook and a laborer. Along the way he had time for four women to bear his children (the paper calls them "defacto" wives). The paper reports on "dozens, perhaps hundreds of Vietnam veterans from both the U.S. and Australia ...living hermit existences in the deep, hidden valleys of the Tweed River (in NSW)." Where an American was once a rarity in the area, according to one local, they "are now all over the place here." The local population seems sympathetic. Among the Americans is ex-Colonel David Hackworth who left the U.S. to better attack the Pentagon over nuclear war plans. Hackworth inspired the character played by Marlon Brando in "Apocalypse Now."

So, what to do if your MIA/POW bracelet has the name of Douglas Beane on it?

First, of course, be glad that the man is alive and well, that his name is not one of those whose name will end up being moved from the Pentagon's MIA/POW ledger to the Vietnam Memorial Wall.

And then it's time to get mad as hell at a government which continues to push the idea that there are still POW's in Vietnam. Of course families of those who are not accounted for in Vietnam want to hope their son, husband or father is still alive—that is only natural. Most of those who demand the return of "prisoners" in Vietnam are sincere in their beliefs. Others, less sincere, use the POW issue as one more means to justify the Vietnam War, and to justify the U.S. refusal to abide by the terms of the Paris Peace Accords. Just as during the war the U.S. military had to portray the Vietnamese as less than human, as "gooks" to be killed off, still today the U.S. government finds it useful to show the Vietnamese as sub-human creeps who will hide away brave American soldiers and keep them from their loving families. The "insidious oriental mind" is at work torturing American GI's.

For those convinced that there are still Americans being held against their will in Vietnam—convinced for either emotional or political reasons—there is nothing we can say which will change their minds. For others, however, here are a couple of observations.

There is no conceivable reason for the Vietnamese to hold American prisoners; it's expensive, among other things, and the economy has sufficient strains without any more. If, according to argument, the Vietnamese are holding prisoners in order to get something from the U.S. (like, for instance, the U.S. agreement to abide by the agreement already signed in 1973) then Vietnam would have to let us know that prisoners are there.

Why are not all the MIA's accounted for then? It is not hard to imagine that the Vietnamese have more important things to do than search for American bodies, particularly when some of these bodies are in places not easily accessible (as any vet who humped through the jungles can testify). The Vietnamese have other priorities as we should accept.

What about French troops held "captive" for years after the French defeat in Indochina? We took the time to write to the French embassy to ask; they replied that they knew of no such prisoners.

And what about the thousands of reported "sightings" of Americans in Vietnam? I have little doubt that there are Americans in Vietnam. I believe that they stayed behind by choice. Many Vietnam vets can tell of friends who managed to move into a local village and while functioning, more or less, as a member of the U.S. military, took up something close to local life. In his book ...and a hard rain fell, John Ketwig tells of spending almost a year in Thailand living in the midst of the people, and of the temptation to just fade into the local scene and never return to the U.S. In other words, it is certainly possible for a GI to have become Vietnamese. No doubt some did and are still there with no interest in ever leaving.

And finally there's the story of Douglas Beane: how many GI's have simply slipped through the Pentagon counting pedicures, how many found it easier or safer not to be identified or listed? How many Vietnam vets don't care what list they might be on:, they simply want to be left alone with whatever new life they have created for themselves.

The losers in the elaborate charade are the families of the missing and, perhaps to a greater extent, the Vietnamese. Vietnamese children, suffering from exposure to Agent Orange, are denied medical aid which could from the U.S. because Vietnam is embargoed, an embargo which the U.S. government can continue in part because Reagan and Co can say there are prisoners still held in Vietnam. As was the case of the Vietnam War itself, only the U.S. government stands to gain.

Pete Zastrow, VVAW National Office