Lost In Vietnam: The Disappearance Of Dallas Pridemore



On the night of September 8th 1968, East Liverpool resident SSGT Dallas Pridemore was enjoying some R&R while serving in South Vietnam. While wearing civilian clothes he traveled from the capitol Saigon, 4 miles northeast to the Thu Duc District in the Gia Dinh Province to visit a local girl who was presumed to be his girlfriend. At around 10:00pm several Viet Cong showed up at the residence of the girl's family wanting to search for another Viet Cong who had defected to South Vietnam. Upon seeing the plain clothed American, the Viet Cong fighters kidnapped Pridemore at gunpoint. They told the family that he would be returned in a day or two, but never was. He was held captive in the Binh Duong Province before being taken to Phong Phu and transferred to the custody of the Liberation Army Headquarters.
On September 10th, 1968, Pridemore was reported to have been held prisoner in the area of the Ong Tang Swamp.
Pridemore wasn’t heard of again until January 6th, 1969, when a South Vietnamese source reported that his brother, who was a Viet Cong postal clerk, told him that he saw the name of a captured US Soldier named "Dallas Primont" on a roster at an interrogation camp in the Svay Rieng Province of Cambodia and that he was transferred there toward the end of September of 1968 from Gia Dinh. The last time that he was seen was on January 4th, 1969. The United States Army has admitted that they have more information on Pridemore, but the details are still considered Classified despite numerous requests to declassify the files. Following the end of the Vietnam War, several visits were made to Gia Dinh in an attempt to confirm the detail's surrounding his kidnaping. For the most part, no one would admit to knowledge of the incident. The Vietnamese Government denies any knowledge of Pridemore what so ever. Some villagers told investigators of an American Soldier and a girl, but they didn’t know what happened to them. There was also speculation that he was killed by US bombings while being held captive in Cambodia, but there was no real evidence to suggest it.In November of 1964 a source reported that Pridemore was alive in MR-IV, but it was determined that the source was unreliable.  Due to the fact that there was no solid evidence to prove he was still alive, the US Army issued Pridemore a Death Certificate in 1977.
There are some in the United States Government that still believe several hundred American's are still alive and being held captive in Vietnam and other parts of southeast Asia.
 Life Magazine did a story in 1986 on 25 POW's that the Pentagon believe are still alive and Pridemore’s name was listed.
During an investigation in April of 1992 by the Joint Task Force for Full Accounting, one of Pridemore’s former commanders stated that Pridemore’s Vietnamese girlfriend was a Viet Cong agent that set up his capture. There was also speculation that her family was involved in an illegal drug ring and that Pridemore was killed because he saw something that he shouldn’t have.
The United States Army determined that there is no evidence that he was killed so Pridemore's status is still listed as a Captured Prisoner Of War.
The last time that a American POW was released alive was during Operation Homecoming  on March 28th, 1973 when 591 prisoners were released by the Vietnamese Government.


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