Charles E. Shelton - The Last POW

From: David Hendrix

Among the more interesting cases of Post 1973-captures of Americans in Southeast Asia are those of civilians Arlo Gay and Rosemary Conway. Both are particularly interesting because each tells of coming across information of American POWs being held post 1973, including one of the nation's more prominent cases, Col. Charles E. Shelton. Shelton was an RF-101 pilot shot down over Laos in 1965 and was KNOWN to be alive for years, along with his prisonmate, F-105 driver David Hrdlicka.

Rosemary Conway is quite a story. I'm almost reluctant to tell it because of the disinformation that will come flying out of the woodwork. But people should know. Rosemary went to Southeast Asia at the request of the US government. She wound up in Vientiane, Laos, teaching English in 1974 and 1975. She mingled with US, Royal Lao, Neutralist and Pathet Lao officials. She had two US passports -- diplomatic and regular. She crossed between Laos and Thailand, providing information to US officials. When, in 1975, it became apparent the "secret war" in Laos would be lost to the Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese, US officials asked her to persuade Lao pilots to fly their aircraft and families to Thailand so the Pathet Lao would not wind up with a ready made air force. She did and they (pilots) did and the Pathet Lao captured her on June 4, 1975.

She spent until Aug. 11, 1975 as a prisoner and was beaten during the time.

Rosemary gained her guards' admiration through three levels. First, she could speak their language. Second, she taught them Elvis Presley songs. Third, she attacked her guards one time and beat them up.

She said she got the idea and courage for the third action after guards told her of a famous prisoner - Air Force recon pilot Charles E. Shelton - in the prison system who had killed three Vietnamese interrogators with a metal chair during one interrogation session. Shelton was not killed, the guards said, because he was expected to resist. Rosemary was not punished because she was expected to resist.

Shelton was shot down over Sam Neua on April 29, 1965, his 33rd birthday. F-105 driver David Hrdlicka joined Shelton in mid-May. Both were known to be alive and prison mates for years. Photos of Hrdlicka appeared in Communist and European newspapers and he made recordings aired on Communistradio. They were filmed. They were paraded before visiting journalists and dignitaries by their captors, who included one of Laos' three princes. Shelton was famous on both sides for his resistance and escape attempts.

Shelton and Hrdlicka allegedly were rescued by friendly forces in an operation called "Duck Soup" and then fell back into their captors' hands. The date(s) of their rescue(s) and conditions of their recapture(s) are points of major disagreement. US officials, including Col. Schlatter, said "Duck Soup" never happened, never existed as any kind of Vietnam War operation. However, documents unearthed in the LBJ Library in 1995 proved otherwise. So much for having all the pertinent information needed to reach conclusions. Then US officials said "Duck Soup" had nothing to do with Shelton and Hrdlicka. But people involved in the operation, both Lao and US, say otherwise.

Declassified CIA reports say Shelton did kill three Vietnamese interrogators in 1968 and that he then was moved to Hanoi. Intelligence sources say he was moved to Ho Thac Bai, an island prison on En Bai Reservoir, north of Hanoi, in April 1985, the 20th anniversary of his capture and only months after the US announced his case was going to be kept in active POW status until the US learned whatever became of him. Remember, he and Hrdlicka were among the almost 600 US military and civilian POWs and MIAs who did not return from Laos. A large number of those were known to be alive on the ground. Shelton remained on active duty status as a POW until 1994.

That's right, 1994. His monthly paycheck continued to his wife, who literally searched the world over for her husband, until she committed suicide in San Diego in October 1990. She told me in 1985 that she was told about Duck Soup by mission participants but the US government denied the operation's existence.

She died before documents were unearthed that bore out what she had been told. Officials now say Duck Soup was designed to shoot down North Vietnamese transport planes coming into Laos in 1965. Mission participants say that was a cover story to provide CAP resources when the two were rescued.

Unfortunately, the CAP crews never got to mount their part of the mission.)

Upon Marian Shelton's death, Col. Shelton's monthly active-duty paycheck continued going to his family's estate until his children asked in 1994 that he be declared presumed dead to end the terrible emotional drain on the family. The Air Force concurred in September 1994 and on Oct. 4, 1994 - four years to the date after Marian Shelton's suicide -- a symbolic burial ceremony was held for Col. Shelton in Arlington Cemetery. But his body was not there. Marian had been buried there in 1990 by special permission.)

Rosemary Conway, who heard about Shelton while a prisoner in Laos, told her story to US authorities as soon as she was released, no small fete. She got the help of some of the Pathet Lao officials she knew and Sen. Barry Goldwater worked from the US side. When Rosemary talked to US officials in Thailand in August 1975, she told them about four other Americans she had heard the Pathet Lao talk about, while discussing sending her to Tchepone "where the other Americans are:" Capt. Morgan Donahue, John Emerson, reportedly a teacher, a Mr. Huxley and a "Connelly."

US officials said they had no information about Emerson or Huxley. And they discounted Conway's information also because she talked fast and appeared agitated.

(Anybody out there missing anybody with those names? Nobody knew anything officially about the missing Site 85 people either, and they had been gone seven years at that time. Because US officials said they didn't know about a missing Emerson or Huxley, they discounted Conway's information. As for Connelly, a Connelly was KIA/PFOD and Conley KIA/BNR).

US officials will tell you Conway never worked for them in the capacity she says she did, that she was not the one to influence the Royal Lao pilotsto take themselves and their planes to Thailand and that she was jailed, not a prisoner.

I've talked to the Lao pilots who immigrated to the US and they tell Rosemary's story, not her. They say she's the one they trusted, not others.

Rosemary shows up on the official POW lists and received POW benefits until the American bureaucracy screwed things up in the mid-1980s, after she began talking. She's fighting to regain her benefits and is a near pauper and in poor health in Arizona. So much for national appreciation.

Charles Shelton, by the way, was supposed to be America's representative POW" when the Reagan administration in 1984 decided to keep his status active. Odd. The US government never asked the Shelton family what they thought nor told them of their intentions. A friend of Marian's read about it in Air Force Magazine and informed her of the decision two months after it was made.

So much for being forthcoming.

David E. Hendrix

PS By the way, the February 1980 DOD list of American citizens and military personnel detained, captured, missing, lost and imprisoned lists 155 Americans confined or killed in Vietnam, Cambodia or Thailand between May 1973 and May 1979. That includes the Mayaguez incident.

The names of the Site 85 personnel are not on that list, which goes back to November 1963. So we know it's incomplete. What else is incomplete?

By definition, we don't know.

-- Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA) Home Page: http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Shadowlands/8832 Sites: Fortean Times * Northwest Mysteries * Mystic's Cyberpage * U.S. Message Text Formatting (USMTF) Program ------------ Member: Thailand-Laos-Cambodia Brotherhood (TLCB) Mailing List TLCB Web Site: http://www.seacoast.com/~jsweet/brotherh/index.html Southeast Asia (SEA) service: Vietnam - Theater Telecommunications Center/HHC, 1st Aviation Brigade (Jan 71 - Aug 72) Thailand/Laos - Telecommunications Center/U.S. Army Support Thailand (USARSUPTHAI), Camp Samae San (Jan 73 - Aug 73) - Special Security/Strategic Communications - Thailand (STRATCOM - Thailand), Phu Mu (Pig Mountain) Signal Site (Aug 73 - Jan 74)