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.
(Sources: POW Network and The Eugene Register-Guard )
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