JULY 31, 2024 – “You are not forgotten.” Those are the words inscribed on the Prisoner of War/Missing in Action (POW/MIA) flag–the only flag to ever fly alongside the Stars and Stripes at the White House.
Those words convey America’s promise to service members who have become prisoners of war or have gone missing in action, and to the families left behind.
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) is the Department of Defense organization charged with fulfilling that promise by providing the fullest possible accounting for America’s missing personnel, both to their families and the nation. Due to the unique demands of its mission, DPAA tasks joint volunteer teams from a variety of military services and specialties, including explosive ordnance disposal (EOD).
In 2023, U.S. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Robert Hile, an EOD team leader assigned to the 27th Special Operations Civil Engineering Squadron at Cannon AFB, spent six weeks on a DPAA mission to Laos People’s Democratic Republic (Laos PDR)to recover the remains of two Air Force pilots who went missing in 1966.
Hile’s sense of duty was firmly established in his family’s long-running tradition of military service, long before he ever wore the uniform.
“My father was in the Navy,” Hile said. “My grandfather fought in World War II with the Navy. My great-grandfather fought in World War I. Great-greats all the way back to the Civil War. With the exception of Korea, my family’s been in every war.”
That same sense of duty drove Hile to enlist in the Air Force in 2011, at the height of the war in Afghanistan. He had seen news that improvised explosive devices were the most lethal weapon used against U.S. personnel in the Global War on Terror, helping him determine that the most impactful avenue for his service would be in EOD.
“It’s immediate gratification,” Hile said. “Anything that’s explosive, you destroy it. It’s gone. You just saved someone’s life.”
Whether in combat overseas or conducting base support operations stateside, EOD technicians are specially trained to identify, mitigate, render safe and dispose of any chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or explosive hazard, making them a vital enabler to DPAA’s mission.
DPAA employs a contingent of archaeologists, investigators, laborers and other specialists to safely find and excavate remains that can often be surrounded by dormant explosive hazards. Hile’s mission in Laos PDR was no exception.
“When a plane crashes, there are explosive hazards, even if there’s no ordnance,” Hile said. “And Laos is the most bombed nation in world history. The area is riddled with unexploded ordnance.”
Between 1964 and 1973, the United States consistently flew bombing missions over Laos to dislodge the Pathet Lao communist government and disrupt the flow of supplies to communist forces in Vietnam via the Ho Chi Minh trail. In that time, more than two million tons of ordnance were dropped on Laos, which is an amount greater than all the bombs dropped throughout World War II.
On this mission in 2023, Hile and his DPAA team were excavating the 1966 crash site of a B-57 Canberra, a Cold War-era tactical bomber used primarily for nighttime bombing missions during the Vietnam War. The B-57 was piloted by U.S. Air Force Col. Everett Kerr and Col. Charles Burkhart, who perished in a mountainside crash enroute to a bombing mission over North Vietnam.
After an investigation team confirmed with local Laotians that a plane had crashed nearby in 1966, DPAA put out a call for recovery mission volunteers. When Hile’s leadership notified him of the request, he did not hesitate to volunteer. For EOD technicians, DPAA missions are highly sought taskings.
“As soon as you get the opportunity, you clear your calendar and you go,” Hile said.
Hile would have volunteered for a DPAA mission to any location, but his uncle’s experience as a U.S. Marine aviator during the Vietnam War made the trip doubly special. After growing up hearing his uncle’s stories of Vietnam, Hile would now be able to experience the sights, sounds and feel of the region for himself.
He arrived in Laos in February 2023 for a six-week stint working the crash site with over a dozen other joint service members. Hile’s duties alternated between excavating the site with other volunteers and diligently searching for buried unexploded ordnance, or UXOs, with his fellow EOD technicians.
“We were digging holes 12 hours a day, moving and sifting through tons of dirt daily just to try to get to the remains,” Hile said. “And other days I’d swing my metal detector 12 hours a day, and any time it would hit for metal, we’d investigate. Any UXOs we found we’d take off to the side and blow up when we had time.”
While many DPAA recovery missions search for members’ biological remains, the team in Laos PDR faced a unique challenge: the Laotian jungle soil is so acidic that it erodes bones, meaning they would instead need to search for personal belongings or uniform items that could confirm the pilots’ identity.
Hile recalls one member of the trip, a veteran of U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV), a joint-service unit used extensively in covert special operations during the Vietnam War. The man had come to Laos PDR repeatedly to search the hills and jungles for the remains of a teammate who had been killed in a firefight and left behind. Hile distinctly remembers how sobering it was to watch the man tirelessly work to find his friend.
“This man’s hunting around Laos for his partner who died out there in 1968,” Hile said. “The guy’s 74; he’s got the right to just retire and live his life. But he won’t because he’s still fighting that war.”
As the team continued uncovering the site and disposing of UXOs, Hile started to see that their work impacted more than just the families and friends of the missing; it also directly touched the lives of the local people.
“We were helping out by doing the normal bread-and-butter work of EOD,” Hile said. “We were protecting people and property and restoring the site to a safe, usable condition.”
Even with their difficult task and busy schedule, the team quickly became crowd favorites of the local children.
“We would buy a bunch of candy and soccer balls and go pass them out to kids in the village,” Hile said. “The kids would latch onto us. You’d have a kid hanging out with you while you’re digging on the mountainside. That was definitely something that I did not expect that I really enjoyed.”
Finally, after weeks of digging and reaching depths of approximately 30 feet into the ground, the team found the pilots’ helmets, uniforms, parts of their boots and a set of rosary beads, which Hile said Col. Burkhart always wore around his neck when he flew.
When teams like Hile’s discover remains or personal items of missing service members around the world, it allows DPAA to provide families some level of closure that was previously lacking in the indefinite “missing” status of their deceased service member.
“I was talking to Col. Burkhart’s son; he’s a 65 year old man now,” Hile said. “His dad went to war and never came home. He never got a casket and never got to have that closure. We owe that to them, whether it’s Laos, Vietnam, Germany. We owe that to them.”
Hile returned from the trip in April 2023 with an expanded interpersonal understanding of service, and of some of the lesser-known operations the U.S. military conducts around the world.
“This mission was completely different than anything else that you’ll do in in the military,” Hile said. “It was a completely different perspective from any mission that I’ve had.”
Going forward, Hile plans to continue serving as an EOD technician for the remainder of his Air Force career.
“I love it,” Hile said. “Can’t imagine doing anything else.”
Any service members interested in volunteering for a DPAA recovery mission can contact the volunteering program manager at dpaa.ncr.hcd.list.volunteer@mail.mil. More information can be found on the DPAA website at https://www.dpaa.mil/.
Story by Staff Sgt. Kevin Williams
27th Special Operations Wing