A new documentary claims to have a found a US Army Vietnam veteran still living in Vietnam who was listed as Killed In Action (KIA) over 40 years ago. US Army Sgt. John Hartley Robertson was shot down in 1968.
The filmmakers of Unclaimed were in Vietnam recently when they heard rumors of a man believed by locals to be a surviving US Army veteran. The filmmakers went through some effort to locate him, and when they did, he didn’t appear to have any memory of his old life or his family. But he remembered being shot down, captured, and tortured for a year, then being released into the jungle. And the man’s memories and circumstances matched the facts of the Roberton case.
British and Canadian news sources report that filmmakers arranged a reunion with Robertson’s surviving sister, 80 year old Jean Robertson Holly, and she told the Toronto Star: “There’s no question. I was certain it was him in the video, but when I held his head in my hands and looked in his eyes, there was no question that was my brother”. Robertson reportedly recognized his brother-in-law and said “Oh, I remember, you worked in the drugstore.” He was correct; the brother-in-law had been a pharmacist for 50 years.
If all true, this is a stunning development.
I learned of this story last night from an email sent to me containing a link to a Newsmax article. The article references a source article at The Independent in the United Kingdom. From there, I tried to visit the film’s website and it was slammed, I first received MySQL error messages and nothing else. I wonder if it were receiving major traffic that night? This has the potential to be a huge story. After a few repeated attempts to access the website, I eventually managed to bring it up, and from there I found the official trailer, which is actually hosted at YouTube, here it is:
My father was in Vietnam about the time of Robertson’s disappearance. I had two dear uncles there about the same time, one in the Green Berets – like Robertson – and another in the 82nd Airborne. Even my mother travelled to Saigon for a period of time in 1967. This poor man could’ve been a family member of mine.
Unclaimed will be screened at the 2013
in Washington, DC this month.