House Veterans Committee endorses search for Missouri POWs and MIAs

As of January, 15 Missourians are still unaccounted for - but presumed dead - from their service during the Vietnam War.

The House Veterans Committee endorsed state Rep. Tom Hurst's resolution Wednesday morning, asking the federal government's Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) to "prioritize finding the 15 Missouri servicemen ... and bring closure to those families."

On its website, the DPAA reports, "More than 83,000 Americans remain missing from World War II, the Korean War, the Cold War, and the Vietnam War."

The Veterans Committee's recommendation the full House pass Hurst's resolution followed sometimes emotional testimony about the missing men - especially the two from Osage County.

Paul Hasenbeck, of Freeburg, was drafted at age 18 and went missing only three weeks before his 20th birthday.

"(He was a member of) the 196th light infantry brigade, which at that time the members had a life expectancy of 90 days," Jeanie Hasenbeck, his sister, told the committee. "They were in constant combat, taken from one location to another in support of the Marines as they took the various hills around Vietnam."

On April 21, 1967, he volunteered for a mission and ended up being assigned as the lead machine-gunner on the second of two sampans - a flat-bottomed wooden boat - that had been commandeered to take the troops back to their base camp because, Hasenbeck testified, "they had acquired, accumulated or confiscated so many ammunitions that they could not carry them back over land."

The lead boat made it back to the camp. Paul Hasenbeck and three others didn't.

Soldiers returned to the spot where Paul's sampan may have been grounded because it "had begun to take on water," Jeanie testified, but they "did not find any indication those boys had ever reached shore. Now, the government will tell you that, in interviewing these villagers many, many years later, they said that they were ambushed as they came ashore."

However, over the years, others have said there was no ambush.

Also, she said, the soldiers who went to the site less than an hour after Hasenbeck and his fellow soldiers disappeared had found "not one broken twig. There was no disturbed earth for burials - there was nothing to indicate an ambush (had occurred). They basically disappeared from the face of the earth."

Jeanie said American officials told her family to wait until the end of the war - which came almost six years later - because "everything indicates they were captured."

However, Paul Hasenbeck wasn't among the prisoners released.

At some point, 16 of Paul's personal papers - including his Social Security card - "were on display in the war museum in Hanoi for years," Jeanie testified. "Everything was all there - 16 artifacts - but they can't remember what they did with my brother."

She testified the family always has felt U.S. government officials haven't done enough to help resolve what happened to her brother and bring home his remains.

State Historical Society Director Gary Kremer, testifying personally and not for the society, told the committee he was a friend of Paul Hasenbeck's, graduating with him from Fatima High School in Westphalia.

"Paul was just a kid from Osage County who hardly had been out of Central Missouri," Kremer said. "We owe him."

Former state Rep. Norb Plassmeyer - whose brother, Bernard, disappeared and likely was killed in an airplane crash on Sept. 11, 1970 - also testified at Wednesday's hearing.

"I feel it's very much worth having this action on behalf of Paul Hasenbeck," he said. "What is being asked in this resolution is really not that difficult to achieve."

Plassmeyer noted his daughter was on a trip several years ago that took her to Hanoi - and she visited that war museum "where the contents of Paul's wallet (had been) on display," although they weren't displayed when his daughter was there.

"How hard is it to go to the museum and start asking questions," Plassmeyer asked, "and say, if nothing else, 'How about give us the stuff?' That has not been done."

Still, he said, Plassmeyer said his family has all the information he expects to get in his brother's case, since he was a Marine pilot on a night attack mission, and "his plane was hit by ground fire and came apart before it hit the ground."

His family doesn't have the complaints Hasenbeck has about the federal government's help.

However, he told the News Tribune, "This case of Paul Hasenbeck should be a priority (because) there are elements of it that are so easy. It's a matter of having the will and, really, interest in pursuing it."

Hurst, a Republican from Meta, credited Plassmeyer for helping gather the information used for the resolution.

"This is basically a way for me and the state to say, 'You are not forgotten,'" he said.