FROM THE WEB MASTER:  I will send you an email in a few minutes.

FROM THE WEB MASTER:  The Tan Son Nhut Association would like to take this time to share our latest Member information:

1.  Butz, Tim, Nebraska, 12th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron (Crew Chief RF-4C) (Renewed his membership, and a donation)

Name:  Margaret Swaim                      Mar 15, 2010
Email:  
Comments:  Hello!  I am the widow of an air police named L. E. Swaim, who was stationed at Davis-Monthan with Steve Porovich.

It's been a lot of years since Steve died in Viet Nam, and I suppose your resources probably won't help, but it won't hurt to ask.

I need to find ANYONE who knows the history of Sgt. Porovich's Air Force service.  I see that his widow was residing in Tucson when he died, but I don't find any trace of her at this point.

Sgt. Porovich was the NCOIC of a group of 13 Air Policemen (including my husband) who went to Korea in 1951 from Davis-Monthan.  The group was taken POW after Sgt. Porovich was shot when a North Korean army contingent attacked them at night.  He was presumed dead by the other 12 Air Policemen, who were quickly marched away and eventually reached a POW camp across the Yalu.  My husband was one of a handful of prisoners who escaped the camp in June 1952.  He was subjected to a fiercely hostile debriefing at Travis AFB upon his return, and warned that he was never to mention to anyone as long as he lived that he had been either in Korea or a POW camp.  They told him that they would have means of knowing if he ever told anyone, and he would be subject to general court martial.   He honored that charge until 1995, when he told me shortly after we married.  (We had been engaged for a short period before he went to Korea, and reconnected after 43 years.)  And he learned later that the only one of his Air Police buddies who escaped with him and that he could find 48 years afterward was obviously warned not to talk, and refused to discuss it with him -- even getting so upset that his wife grabbed the phone and blasted my husband and hung up.

The reason I'm engaged in research at this point is that I recently discovered that Sgt. Porovich obviously survived being shot in Korea (after having survived the Bataan Death March in WWII), and in fact remained an Air Policeman and died of a heart attack on his base in Viet Nam.  So I'm very, very interested in finding out what information anyone might have about the "rest of the story."   Some websites where it seems I might succeed in making contact with someone involved don't permit non-members to post messages; and I don't qualify to become a member.  Snooping around for such information 58 years after the fact is perhaps foolhardy (that's a little bit like idiotic), but I won't be able to do it any sooner!

Other Air Policemen who were among those 13 from Davis-Monthan were A/3C Buchanan (who died in POW camp), John F. Yoder, Wogan, and Craig.  Yoder and Craig were the only ones from the group who wound up in the same hooch as my husband.  Craig chose not to risk escaping with the group and remained in the POW camp.  Wogan and the other 8 were taken POW with them, crossed the Yalu in the same pair of boats, and proceeded in the march to the POW camp; but they apparently went to different hooches, and my husband never heard of any of them again.  He was stationed at Davis-Monthan for a good while after returning, and never saw any of the 13 again except Yoder, from whom he was separated at Travis before the debriefing and never saw again.

I would appreciate a contact.

Thanks,

Margaret Swaim