HERREID, ROBERT DALE

Name: Robert Dale Herreid
Rank/Branch: E5/US Army Special Forces
Unit: Detachment A-402, Company D, 5th Special Forces Group
Date of Birth: 13 June 1946 (Williston ND)
Home City of Record: Aurora IL
Date of Loss: 10 October 1968
Country of Loss: South Vietnam
Loss Coordinates: 102247N 1045857E (VS975478)
Status (in 1973): Missing In Action
Category: 2
Aircraft/Vehicle/Ground: Ground
Refno: 1300
Other Personnel In Incident: (none missing)

Source: Compiled from one or more of the following: raw data from U.S.
Government agency sources, correspondence with POW/MIA families,
published sources, interviews. Updated by the P.O.W. NETWORK in 1998.

REMARKS:

SYNOPSIS: On October 12, 1968, demolitions specialist SP5 Robert Herreid was
an advisor to the 47th Mobile Strike Force Company during an operation on
the Nui Coto mountain area in Chau Doc Province, South Vietnam. When the
unit was advancing up the mountain, the unit was blasted by heavy bunker
fire and withdrew to a pagoda, where they set up a defensive perimeter.

During the initial fire fight, Herreid's Cambodian radio operator stated
that he had seen Herreid get hit in the chest and fall to the ground dead,
and he gave Herreid's weapon to the commanding officer. Nguyen Van Liet and
other soldiers said Herreid was shot in the left temple and was last seen
lying by a leafless mangrove tree. Other operations in and through the area
failed to locate him.

In 1974, while trying to locate the site, an inhabitant of the area claimed
that he had been with Herreid when he fell. He took U.S. officials to the
spot in question, which was searched several times, but a gravesite was
never found.

When the war ended, refugees from the communist-overrun countries of
Southeast Asia began to flood the world, bringing with them information
about live GI's still in captivity in their homelands and other information
on the missing in Southeast Asia. Since 1975, nearly 10,000 such stories
have been received. Many authorities believe that hundreds of Americans are
still held in the countries in Southeast Asia.

The U.S. Government operates on the "assumption" that one or more men are
being held, but that it cannot "prove" that this is the case, allowing
action to be taken. Meanwhile, low-level talks between the U.S. and Vietnam
proceed, yielding a few sets of remains when it seems politically expedient
to return them, but as yet, no living American has returned - nor has
Herreid - alive or dead.

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