P-MAN XII Progress Report #22 - Reid waxes nostalgic
11 March 2010

I wish I'd been able to go along this year. About the only thing I don't miss is the way Pat, Derek, Warren, Paul, and Mike are feeling right about now (10:30 a.m. EST, which is half-past-midnight tomorrow in Palau). I remember what that's like.

They don't want to leave. They feel like they were just hitting their stride, and now they're being snatched away for 11 months. Their flight leaves at 2:30 a.m., just two hours from now, so they're probably already at the airport. Each person has been stuck with his own thoughts for part of the evening as he finished packing and policing up his room at the hotel. Maybe he jotted some notes about this last day in country, or something he just remembered from a few days ago. Or something about the half-dozen intriguing and frustrating phone calls that have come in (as they always seem to do) during the past 36 hours that he desperately wants to follow up on but can't, and that'll be eating at him for the next year, until he can get back to Palau. They know Joe will be able to follow up on some of the new-but-unverified leads, but they'd rather be helping, too. They're elated about this year's major find, but already thinking about how to best document the site and make a case for its identification - and for the possibility of a recovery mission.

As always, it's painful to have to say goodbye to Joe (and Esther and their two very cool sons). But to soften that parting this time, they know that there's a chance that they'll be seeing Joe late next month at Arlington National Cemetery, at the ceremony for the eight B-24 crewmembers whose recovery and identification and repatriation depended so greatly on Joe's skill and determination over many years. One of Joe's sons is named for one of the American airmen who will be honored in that ceremony at Arlington...his other son is named for a Marine fighter pilot who was shot down 2000 meters from Joe's house.

When you've spent the last three or four (or sometimes six) weeks doing absolutely nothing but think of ways to track down the many MIA sites that are still undiscovered in Palau, it's really hard to make the transition home - both mentally and physically. There's a little residual sleep deprivation from the last few weeks, and they haven't yet even strapped themselves into the first of several planes that will be their world for the next 24 hours or so that it'll take to get home.

They'll be sad to have to leave the members of the Civic Action Team, who have shared some jungle-crawling time and become friends and colleagues, after such a short acquaintance. They know there'll be a CAT detachment in Palau when they (we?) return next year, but they'll all be people we've never met before - and it's absolutely guaranteed that by the time we leave at the end of next year's expedition, we'll feel exactly the same about them, whether they're Navy SeaBees, Air Force civil engineers, or - as with this year's DET CAT - Army Strong.

The team will be sad to leave Jolie, who always teaches us something new and interesting and useful about archaeology - something that will make us better and more perceptive searchers as we continue the process of locating and identifying MIA crash sites.

They'll miss all of the other team members, each in his own way. This time, they know that for a long time they'll still feel the glow of the utter appropriateness of Warren's promotion ceremony on Orange Beach on Peleliu. There are a lot of ghosts on Peleliu who surely appreciated that, too.

They know they're going to miss seeing the school kids in their blue and white uniforms, and hearing the roosters crowing in the middle of the day, and seeing the dogs sleeping in the middle of the road, and watching Mikey dribbling that bright orange betel-nut juice down his chin instead of - as the Palauan pros do it - propelling a sleek, bright orange stream of spit into the street as they drive along and lean out an open car door.

Question: What does it mean when orange drool is running down both sides of Mikey's chin?
Answer: The ground is level.

- Reid

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