Remembering and honoring a hero
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And there has been little closure for his family and close friends in the 35 years that have passed since his presumed death. According to the U.S. Army, his death followed enemy capture, imprisonment and escape, but his remains have never been located.
When he was drafted in 1966, Delong, who rose to the rank of staff sergeant, left behind a life. He was a popular member of his graduating class. He had a best friend and a car. And he had his aunt and now deceased uncle, Mary and Ernest Curtis and other family members, who held out hope he would return safely.
Even though so many years have passed, Mary Curtis remembers the sweet young boy she and her husband raised up from a small child.
All of those thoughts, spoken at one point, and surely more thoughts never spoken, were in their minds as they remembered Delong in a memorial tribute held at Smyrna Church of Christ Cemetery, which culminated with a 21-gun salute. About 75 people attended.
“He was a young man when he left us and that’s the way I will always remember him,” best friend Roger Ware, now 53, said before reading a poem that wished his long-time school friend eternal rest. “He will always stay in my heart and in my mind.”
Curtis said it was a year before family members learned Delong was captured after being taken prisoner in May, 1967. And it was several years later, in 1973, they learned he was presumed dead.
According to one Army report sent to the family dated October, 2000, prisoners of war held with Delong in a Cambodia-Vietnam border camp, but who were released in April, 1973, told the Army the prison camp commander told them Delong had been killed during an escape attempt in November, 1967.
According to an Army telegram sent to the family in 1973, based on the accounts of the released prisoners who were told Delong was shot, the incident occurred Nov. 8, 1967 after the escape attempt.
Curtis said one of the prisoners of war who was with Delong, Nathan Henry, has contacted her due to a pact he made with Delong to contact each others’ families if anything happened to either of them. By his accounts, she said, Delong’s bullet-ridden pants were hung up for the rest of the time they were imprisoned, even as their camp was moved to Hanoi, as a reminder not to try to escape again.
There are many stories and several letters from the military describing the incidents and the investigations. Some make sense. Some don’t.
“We don’t know what happened,” Curtis said. “All we know is he didn’t come back.”
But that hasn’t stopped her from trying to find answers. In the years following the ordeal, the Army has corresponded with the family, writing at least three times last year, and even asked for DNA samples a few years ago when a team found a cemetery in Vietnam.
But she hasn’t heard anything about the DNA, and although she is inclined to accept her nephew’s death, she said she would like to see the remains returned, although it may not be possible.
In a letter to the family dated March, 2001, the Army again confirmed Delong’s death, saying he was shot while fleeing the prison camp. It recommended closing the case, concluding his remains were “unrecoverable” and may have been buried, disinterred and used as a training aid at a hospital, then buried again or lost.
Part of the reason for the ceremony at Smyrna, Curtis said, was due to her age and health. She said her nephew told her before he left that although he expected to return, if he didn’t, he wanted to be placed beside the Curtises in the cemetery.
“I carried out his wishes. That was all I could do,” she added. “That was his request to be put with us.”
Curtis and Delong’s two sisters attended the ceremony, made more poignant by the number of people who attended, and stood along side Ware as he read from his poem.
Some cried. Friends later laid roses near the headstone. The minister, a World War II veteran, asked people to never forget the sacrifices of the soldiers.
Two brothers, now living out of state, were unable to make it to the service and Delong’s parents, Goldie and Grady Delong, are both deceased. Curtis said the fellow ex-prisoner of war she has communicated with about the ordeal wanted to be there, but faced surgery and wasn’t able to come.
Nephew Edwin Lewis said during the ceremony that when he joined the Army, he ended up in the same division Delong belonged to so many years earlier. He said he was able to learn more about the brutal reality of the war from people who had been there.
“As far as I know, where he was at, they didn’t take enlisted men prisoner, they just killed them on the spot. But he did his duty, and one of the duties of a soldier is to escape if at all possible. And the people he was held prisoner with, that’s what they did. But I remember Joe in his uniform and I was so proud of him. I’m still proud of him,” he said.
Delong earned the Silver Star, two purple hearts and war-time service medals as well as the combat infantry badge. Curtis knows the horrors of the war, but prefers to remember the sweet, young boy who favored her and who wrote a letter addressed to the Curtises just one day before he was captured in May, 1967.
“He was just happy and I enjoyed every minute I spent with him. I just hope someday that we’ll find out. We all love him dearly,” Curtis said.
Ware later said the ordeal has never sat well with him.
“It’s like a void, like something’s missing or like you’re craving something, but you don’t know what it is. And it’s still there, really,” he added.