US Marine Sergeant's Final Farewell To American Mias In Cambodia

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Twenty-three US Air Force personnel also died when their helicopter-as part of the rescue mission-crashed in Thailand shortly after takeoff.

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Over the years since, in interviews with former Khmer Rouge, it is believed – but not confirmed – that of the three Marines left behind, Hargrove was captured on May 16 and killed shortly after.

Marshall and Hall were captured on the island after about a week when they were caught trying to steal food from the Khmer Rouge base on the island.

Former Koh Tang Khmer Rouge commander General Em Son said in 2015, when Hale also visited the island, that when Hargrove tried to escape, one of his men fired into the sand and the bullet“ricocheted up and killed one.”

Son said the other two soldiers were sent to the mainland and held there before being executed in a temple used as a prison. Then one body was buried near the coast and the other dumped in the ocean. What happened after he turned over the captives, Son said, was not his responsibility.

In 2015, former Khmer Rouge General Em Son said one of the US Marines was killed inadvertently after being captured. No one believed him. Photo: Michael Hayes

At the time, Em Son was no doubt aware of the ongoing Khmer Rouge Tribunal in Phnom Penh and most likely worried he might be arrested and tried for war crimes. Was he telling the truth? It is impossible to know for sure.

In 2015, Hale and six other Mayaguez vets were taken to the temple and then to spots along the coast of Sihanoukville where Marshall and Hall's bodies were allegedly left by the ocean.

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Hale and his wife Teresa, from Noble, Oklahoma, were joined on their latest return visit to Cambodia by Danielle Jones, the niece and surviving next of kin to MIA Danny Marshall.

Born in 1983, Jones never met her“Uncle Danny”, but her family has anguished over his fate, especially Marshall's mother and grandmother–both now deceased–for decades.

Jones, from Marietta, Ohio, became close over the years to members of an informal Mayaguez veterans group. She said she has spent countless hours on the phone letting the vets talk at length – some of whom she says still suffer from“survivors' guilt.”

“I gained two platoons worth of uncles,” Jones said, referring to her involvement with Mayaguez vets over the last two decades.

When Hale called her seven weeks ago and asked if she wanted to go to Cambodia, she had to scramble to get her first-ever US passport.

The flight to Phnom Penh-paid for by Mayaguez vets – was her first time on an airplane, and the trip to Koh Tang was the first time she had seen an ocean.

On May 14, Hale, Jones and others on the trip organized by Vietnam veteran John Muller were taken to the temple in Sihanoukville, where the two Marines were thought to have been executed.

The place where her uncle was possibly buried is now an abandoned construction site and the beach was unreachable. But that didn't prevent her from becoming overcome with grief she has harbored for so many years.

“Here we are 50 years later and none of the three Marines are back,” she grumbled to this reporter later that day.

Danielle Jones, consumed by grief at the site in Sihanoukville where her uncle Danny Marshall was allegedly buried. John Muller, a Vietnam vet who organized the trip, tries to offer some solace (May 2025). Photo: Michael Hayes

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The US government, for its part, has spent multiple thousands of hours and a bundle of what the US military sometimes calls“treasure” looking for American MIAs in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

When official relations were re-established-after an 18-year hiatus – with the Cambodian government in 1993, recovery efforts were started under an effort called the Joint Task Force/Full Accounting (JTF/FA), which has been re-named the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA).

After 1975, there were 81 American servicemen listed as“Missing” in Cambodia. Over the last 32 years, 41 remains have been recovered in the country.

Digs have been undertaken all over Cambodia, including as many as 15 on Koh Tang. The exact number of recovery missions undertaken on Koh Tang was not available from US government sources on short notice to this reporter for this article.

DPAA is understandably reluctant to openly discuss details of their ongoing recovery efforts (and their previous ones) out of fears that hopes will be raised with loved ones back in the United States, only to be dashed again if no remains are found.

Some skeptics, however, accuse the government of trying to hide the truth.

The work is exhausting, time-consuming and often frustrating, like looking for a needle in a haystack when even the location of the haystack itself is open to serious debate.

One of JTF/FA's more extensive operations-which this reporter visited – took place on Koh Tang in November 1995, when the USS Brunswick, a navy salvage ship equipped with underwater search gear and teams of SCUBA divers, spent several months examining the three helicopter wrecks off the beaches there, while separate teams also scoured sites on land.

Multiple teams were set up who sifted through buckets of silt and soil, looking for bones or other human artifacts, including clothing or anything that might be used for identification purposes.

US Marine Staff Sargent Clark Hale has visited Koh Tang three times in the last 30 years, hoping to find answers to what happened to three of his men. Above, in 2015, remains of a US helicopter shot down were still on the beach. Picture: Michael Hayes

Sixty Cambodian soldiers based on the island were paid to help dig and sift. In the sea, gear was used to siphon up silt and debris from helicopter wreckage.

Offshore, 161 pieces of human remains-teeth, arms, legs, fingers, ribs and jawbones-were recovered at one helicopter crash site, after which they were sent to labs in Hawaii for DNA testing. The remains of nine servicemen killed in action were identified from that operation.