Re: Digest for vietnam-old-hacks@googlegroups.com - 2 updates in 1 topic

[Dawson]

On Sat, Dec 13, 2025 at 3:13 AM <vietnam-...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

I' ve been trying  to local Chad for some time, he was a good friend of mine and my wife's both. At one time he also most hadd us talked into moving to San An.

This is coincidence!

I was on an internet hunt and up popped the Wikipedia write-up on Alexander Shimkin and it's interesting and double-informative on his death. Shimkin was super-fluent in Vietnamese and Huntley thinks, probably correctly that he was attempting to talk the North Vietnamese into not killing him with a  grenade at the exact second they killed him dead  with a grenade.

Chad told me the story at the time -- Shimkin went forward, arms out to show he was unarmed, Huntley beat feet in the opposite direction, as Shimkin should have. Reminds  me of the old saying that  the faction of "middle-of-the-roaders" get run over by 18-wheel trucks whose drivers  didn't even notice them in the middle of the road.

The Wiki article  says Huntley did an official sit-down interview with a Pentagon group on the Shimkin death -- I presume it was the MIA Pentagon Joint Recovery thingy group, especially  LTC Paul Mather and his army sergeant, who were info collectors extraordinaire. I believe Shimkin's probably  shattered body was  never recovered.

I just got back from a drive to the border and your other message is on hold for a mo, forgive the delay. cheers

73

Donald Kirk <kirkd...@gmail.com>: Dec 11 11:12PM -0500 Thanks. I caught up with Chad Huntley a few times in San Antonio over the years after "the fall." . He told me that Shimkin, speaking Vietnamese, had called out to the North Vietnamese troops thinking he could talk to them. Chad slipped away., as Alex should have done. Chad, however, has totally disappeared since I last saw him more than 30 years ago.. Any idea where he;s gone, what he's been up to., what happened to him?

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[Donald Kirk]

Guess nobody knows what's become of Chad. Simply disappeared. Any clues at all? He did have family back in San Antonio but seems no more.

Meanwhile, look forward to your take on the border war. Thanks

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[Dawson]

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Jack van Ommen <vanomm...@gmail.com>: Dec 20 09:05AM -0500 JACK VAN OMMEN   Thank you for your reaction. You might like to read more about Ed and the UPI connection at: https://cometosea.us/albums/InVietnam1961.pdf

Oh, thank you for that, even that one chapter is a great trip back in time in Saigon. Yeah... the Cercle Sportif and the Botanical Gardens (zoo) were two of my favorite places as that city aged. The Cercle deteriorated slowly,  as Europeans do

Love the passport plot. I  too was a foreigner in the  U.S. Harmy and I never  let my Canuck passport go; I  even posted marriage baans at the Limey embassy because Canada had no diplomatic ties important enough to have diplomats in Saigon. It worked fine even though the U.S. military never understood why any upstanding soldier would want to marry a Saigon gal -- Cholon actually.

cheers

73