March 28, 2024

‘Constantly in my mind and heart’

Brotherly love and uncertainty behind one man’s 47 year search

At the Prescott home of Alan and Lynnette Worth, a bottle of Jack Daniel’s whiskey with an “ANGLICO” label sits on a shelf. And, on the shelf it will sit until Alan’s brother James comes home.

This whiskey is special. The commemorative, single-barrel whiskey displays a personalized ANGLICO medallion to commemorate the unique unit within the United States Marine Corps for which it was named after.

The ANGLICO whiskey is also special to Alan as it was a gift from Skip Cox, a Naval ship gunner, who became fast friends with Jimmy during their years of service in Vietnam.

“He never met my brother, but he talked to him on the radio all of the time,” Alan said.

Staff Sergeant James Frederick Worth – or Jimmy as his brother calls him – was drafted into the service in 1970 and served as a U.S. Marine in the Subunit 1, 1st Air Naval Gunfire Liaison Companies (ANGLICO), Fleet Marine Force, Pacific (FMFPAC), when he went missing in action.

Vietnam

Cox, who was located on a ship in the Sea of Tonkin during the war, launched missiles onto land based on the coordinates Jimmy delivered to him via radio from the tower he stood in – located on a small military base, Alpha 2, in Gio Linh District, Quang Tri Province, in South Vietnam. The tower overlooked the DMZ (demilitarized zone), which was a half-mile away, and Route 1 – the only route into North Vietnam from the south.

“It was the most dangerous part of Vietnam you could be in,” said Alan.

Despite Jimmy’s visual advantage from the tower, on April 1, 1972, the Vietnam People’s Army of the north launched the Easter Offensive, officially known as The 1972 Spring-Summer Offensive.

“At this point … they were evacuating. They had to,” said Alan. “There was no way to stand up to them.”

Alan said Jimmy’s sergeant, Joel Eisenstein, ordered a helicopter to go in for one last trip to evacuate the eight U.S. troops in the zone.

“They were under heavy fire, and a shell hit right where the helicopter pad was … people started scrambling,” said Alan.

As they attempted to load into a helicopter, Lt. David Bruggeman was hit in the head. The crew was able to load him into the chopper, but he died on the way to safety. Thomas (Doc) Williamson, J.D. Swift, Dan McMahon, Thomas E. Williamson, Darryl Grounds and Kent Beougher were all extracted from the area, however Jimmy was nowhere to be found.

Found     

Two days after the extraction mission at Alpha 2, U.S. military officials received a radio communication from Jimmy.

“They couldn’t discern what it was, but he was headed towards the next town south of there, which was called Da Nang,” said Alan.

Jimmy never made it to Da Nang, but a U.S. military soldier with a radio still strapped to his back was found dead in a Jeep nearby.

“They think it was my brother,” said Alan.

The search          

After his retirement, Alan made the search for his brother his full-time job.

Alan, who worked for a number of years as an Air Force contractor in the applied physics laboratory at the Pentagon, exhausted every resource he could, such as reviewing records from National Security databases, questioning other National Security and military personnel and the soldiers who were at the very location the day Jimmy disappeared.

During Barack Obama’s presidency, Alan petitioned the administration to go to Vietnam himself, in an attempt to recover the buried U.S. Soldier believed to be Jimmy. Alan had, what he believed, to be two potential coordinates based on interviews with the farmers and civilians who buried him.

However, due to the nature of Alan’s past employment, his petition was denied.

“My software work was very, very highly classified,” said Alan.

As a defense contractor once having the highest level of government security clearance possible, and having worked on top-secret “Blackworld Work,” Alan’s presence in Vietnam was deemed too high-risk for the U.S. government by the Obama administration. However, he has hopes that President Donald Trump’s administration will grant him permission to develop a task force.

Encrypted

After nearly 45 years of gathering files, photos and interviews, Alan’s home computer was struck by a cryptovirus – a type of computer virus which seeks out files and disables access to them. This is a tactic typically used by cyber criminals to extort money from the user; however, this only caused Alan heartache.

Not even Alan, who spent his career developing defense software for the military, could hack it.

“It was a bad one,” said Alan. “All my pictures, all my family pictures, all the stuff that’s sacred ...”

Homecoming

The last time Alan saw his brother was Christmas, 1971. Jimmy was scheduled to be discharged shortly as his two-year commitment was nearing an end, but it was important to him to visit his mother, who raised her 12 children as a single mother. To gain approval for the Christmas visit, Jimmy had to extend his contract an additional nine months.

Alan described his brother Jimmy growing up as adventurous, good-looking, well-dressed, smart and as a gifted-athlete.

“I was kind of jealous of him,” Alan said.

Alan said his brother, who was two years older, was a bit rough and tough at times, and taught him to fight. He recalled how he once broke his arm when their roughhousing got out of hand.

But, the Jimmy who came home for Christmas was different.

“He was happy ... mature,” said Alan.

Had Jimmy not come home for Christmas, Alan thinks his brother might still be alive today.

The notification

Around June 1972 is when the Worth family was notified of Jimmy’s M.I.A. status.

“It’s ironic. We were at my oldest sister’s house in Annapolis, Maryland, and when we got home, there was a military car in the driveway,” said Alan.

Alan’s mother Syma (Klemola) Worth met the uniformed men at the door and invited them in.

“She broke down. It was a bad deal,” said Alan. “I got very angry afterwards.”

Alan, a high school student at the time, said his anger drove him to pick fights with Vietnamese kids at school.

“I was going to enlist to try to go over there, but my mom broke down again and begged me not to go. So I didn’t. I kind of regret that in a way, but in other ways I don’t,” said Alan. “I feel bad now, being a mature adult looking back at myself – forcing a fight on a kid who had no idea, who probably came out of a bad deal himself ... but I had a lot of hatred in my heart.”

Healing

Alan said the news of Jimmy’s disappearance broke the family apart as they struggled with the uncertainly of his whereabouts or existence.

“It was just an ongoing, continuous sadness,” said Alan. “There’s really no answer. We really don’t have a conclusion for my brother, there’s no grave to go visit.”

After his disappearance, the family continued to host family gatherings. Over the decades, the family – his mother, siblings and eventually their children – have gathered in Jimmy’s memory for an annual Easter egg hunt at Cedarville State Forest in Maryland, where they regularly camped and played as children. Alan’s wife, Lynnette, said the children enjoyed seeking out the large egg, in which $50 was hidden inside for Jimmy.

An emotional visit

As the family waits for Jimmy’s body to return stateside, a headstone has been erected in Arlington National Cemetery for him and his name is listed on the Vietnam War Memorial, which the family visited for the first time together in the early 1990s.

“It was emotional,” said Alan.

After the visitation to the memorial and the cemetery, the family visited the Cedarville State Forest once again, the day after Easter. Visits to the state park the family grew to love has become fewer and further between over the years as their mother Syma has passed and the siblings are aging and living farther apart, which makes travel difficult.

Alan may be aging, but he remains semper fidelis – always the loyal little brother.

“My goal is to bring my beloved brother back home before I meet him in heaven,” said Alan. “Jimmy is constantly in my mind and heart.”

James Frederick Worth was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart, Bronze Star, National Defense Service, Vietnam Service, Republic of Vietnam Campaign, and Marine Corps Good Conduct medals.