Name: Gregory John Harris
Rank/Branch: E4/US Marine Corps
Unit: H/3/11 1st Marine Division
Date of Birth: 01 October 1945
Home City of Record: Toledo OH (or Syracuse NY)
Date of Loss: 12 June 1966
Country of Loss: South Vietnam
Loss Coordinates: 145800N 1084900E (BS670578)
Status (in 1973): Missing In Action
Category: 2
Acft/Vehicle/Ground: Ground

Other Personnel In Incident: (none missing)

Source: Compiled by Homecoming II Project 01 July 1990 from one or more of the following: raw data from U.S. Government agency sources, correspondence with POW/MIA families, published sources, interviews.

SYNOPSIS: Gregory J. Harris was a radioman with a South Vietnamese company operating in Quang Ngai Province, South Vietnam. On June 12, 1966, the 5th Vietnamese Marine Battalion Headquarters was overrun by Viet Cong forces, and according to the U.S. Marine Corps, Harris was captured.

Two officers with Harris were killed, but the South Vietnamese saw Harris captured alive and apparently unhurt. According to Marine Corps records, Harris died in captivity.

The Defense Department has never classified Gregory Harris as a prisoner of war eventhough the Marine Corps believes he was captured and died in captivity. He was placed in a casualty status of Missing in Action.

In the summer of 1973, after Harris did not return with the released prisoners of war, his mother, Catherine Helwig, did something quite remarkable to tell the world that all the men did not return. She walked 450 miles in one month from Buffalo, New York to New York City. When asked why she did this, she responded, "If your child was lost in the forest you would not stop the search at the end of twenty-four hours. I can't look for my boy...it's better than staying awake night after night."

At the same time Mrs. Helwig was walking, then-President Nixon was declaring the task of accounting for the remaining missing, "Highest priority". President after President termed the accounting "highest national priority". Not too much has changed. The men are still in Southeast Asia. Their sons, daughters and grandchildren are marching and protesting because mounting evidence indicates that many of them are still alive.

It's time America insisted that "highest priority" meant just that...and that the U.S. Government get very serious about bringing Americans home from Southeast Asian prisons.

Gregory J. Harris was promoted to the rank of Master Sergeant during the period he was a prisoner of war. Marine Corps records list his home city as Syracuse, New York.