Back to Cambodia for MIA Air Force officers: Rescue mission with James Shorten

by John Stryker Meyer · December 16, 2017

[Editor’s Note: This is the seventh in a series of exclusive SOFREP stories of what led to the MACV-SOG Bright Light mission that haunts SOG Green Beret SSG James H. Shorten (Jones) to this day. It has taken him back to Cambodia twice. He hopes to return to Cambodia in 2018 to help DPAA officials locate and return two Air Force pilots, 1st Lt. Eric James Huberth and Capt. Alan Robert Trent, that he and his recon team tried unsuccessfully to find after their F-4D jet crashed May 14, 1970 on a bombing mission.
Read here: part one, part two, part three, part four, part five, and part six.]

Imagine being 70 years old and humping up and down steep mountains in Cambodia.

About John Stryker Meyer

Born Jan. 19, 1946, John Stryker Meyer entered the Army Dec. 1, 1966, completed basic training at Ft. Dix, N.J., advanced infantry training at Ft. Gordon, Ga., jump school at Ft. Benning, Ga., and graduated from the Special Forces Qualification Course in Dec. 1967. He arrived at FOB 1 Phu Bai in May 1968, where he joined Spike Team Idaho, which transferred to Command & Control North, CCN in Da Nang, January 1969. In October 1969 he rejoined RT Idaho at CCN. That tour of duty ended suddenly in April 1970. Today he is a program director at the Veterans Affordable Housing Program, based in Orange, CA and joined the SOFREP team of correspondents in March 2015. He has written two non-fiction books on SOG secret wars: Across The Fence: The Secret War in Vietnam - Expanded Edition, and Co-Authored On The Ground: The Secret War in Vietnam with John E. Peters, a member of RT Rhode Island. Meyer's website is: www.sogchronicles.com.

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Recon6
Tilt... as long as You provide the material we'll continue being excited to read and do whatever we can to assist... Never Forgotten....blessings....6
John Stryker Meyer
REcon6, Thank you for your note and your suggestion. I'll discuss it with SOFREP editors. I'm 99% they'd agree to do a follow-up on just that topic. Thank you.
Micky M
Thank you John for this series. I will continue to pray for the return of all.
Recon6
I continue to hear Vietnam Veterans disparage the current regime in Vietnam, primarily because of what each went through during their tour(s) in country and the loss of friends and family in an unpopular War at home... most do not want the U.S. to have any association with the communists, whether in talks, trade, or even areas of mutual interest such as the Chinese incursion into the S. China Sea... however, were they to become aware of this 'agreement' that might allow numerous groups to continue the search to bring our missing brothers home there is the possibility that a lot of the animus would/could be removed...my hope remains...best...6
TexJ3
Thank you for this. Bless all of the men and women that are bravely going on these missions to bring these men home. May there be more soon and the fruits of their labor realized. Warm regards, T3