No one had anything negative to say about Mark Dennis. Believing he had been born to help people, the nineteen-year-old recent Miamisburg, Ohio, high school graduate was planning a career as a missionary. One example friends and family recall of Mark’s generosity is his buying a prom dress for a high school friend unable to afford it.

Mark provided many similar small acts of kindness. To everyone but himself, his final act of charity, was above and beyond the call of duty.

As the war in Vietnam was escalating, young men from across America were called to serve their country. In 1964, the call came to a Miamisburg man who was married with two small children. The unmarried Mark did not know him but volunteered to take his place. The future missionary believed God had given him another mission to first complete. Mark deemed it his duty to serve his country so that another man could fulfill his duty to his family.

Following two years stationed on the aircraft carrier USS Wasp, Mark asked for a transfer. In April 1966, he became a Navy corpsman (AKA medic) and was sent to Vietnam. Soon after arriving in Southeast Asia, he was given another hat, that of acting chaplain to a Marine unit. He was still a man of God in the godawful jungle.

Mark’s service lasted barely three months and ended awfully; exactly how, was the subject of controversy. The Navy repeatedly said he was killed in combat on July 15, 1966. The Dennis family initially accepted the ruling but later came to believe he had instead survived and was taken captive by the Viet Cong.

After over half-a-century, the controversy was finally settled.

Navy Hospital Corpsman Third Class Mark Dennis

In an effort to push the North Vietnam Army (NVA) behind the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), separating North Vietnam from South Vietnam, General William Westmoreland approved Operation Hastings. Begun on July 15, 1966, the three-week endeavor was successful. In addition to pushing the NVA behind the line, American forces captured a great amount of North Vietnamese weapons and equipment.

Like all military attacks, however, Operation Hastings was not without its losses.

The Offensive Is Launched

On the first day of Operations Hastings, the CH-46 Chinook helicopter carrying Mark Dennis and his Marine unit were struck with enemy ground fire while approaching a landing zone in South Vietnam’s Quang Tri Province. The below photos were taken by a war photographer only seconds before the helicopter crashed just outside the landing zone.

Upon impact with the ground, the helicopter exploded.  Of the sixteen men on board, only three survived. Mark Dennis was declared as one of the unlucky thirteen.

Chopper Shot Down

The Navy returned what they said were Mark’s remains to his parents, Charles and Vera. Told by officials that the remnants of their son were burned beyond recognition and unsuitable for viewing, Mr. and Mrs. Dennis kept the coffin closed at Mark’s wake.

Following a small private service on August 9, the Dennis family sought to shut the Vietnam War from their lives.

Mark (We Think) Is Buried

For the following four years, the topic of Vietnam was never mentioned in Dennis family gatherings. Then in December 1970, Mark’s older brother Jerry was thumbing through the November 30 issue of Newsweek. A picture in the magazine not only caught his eye, it caught his heart   . . . and then his hope.

Jerry believed the unidentified POW (Prisoner of War) in the photo was Mark. He was, however, mistaken.

                                          Mark Dennis  American POW

Three years earlier, Life Magazine had published a photo of the POW, identified as Navy Lieutenant Commander Paul Galanti, on its October 20, 1967, cover. He had been shot down and was held prisoner of war at the infamous Hanoi Hilton in North Vietnam. An East German camera crew visited the prison and took the photos of him sitting in a cell.

Lieutenant Galanti was released after five-and-a-half years of captivity in February 1973.

The POW Is Not Mark

Even though the photo was proven not to be of his brother, Jerry Dennis still believed it possible Mark had not perished when the helicopter was shot down. The 1970 Newsweek article mentioned the multitude of soldiers who were Missing in Action (MIA) as well as the large number of POW’s. The article also told of the frequent misidentification of remains in the chaos of war. Furthermore, remains processed by military morgues were also often incorrectly identified.

When the Navy returned the remains of Mark Dennis to his family, no one saw any reason to question if they were those of their loved one and, at the Navy’s advice, did not view them. But after reading the Newsweek article, Jerry Dennis believed it possible his brother was still alive.

He soon had good reason.

 

Jerry Dennis

Mark’s Brother

In conducting his own investigation, Jerry learned that Mark was the only person aboard the downed helicopter whose remains had not been positively identified. Because the other twelve men’s remains had been confirmed, the Navy assumed the unidentified remains were Mark’s, even though his dog tags were not found on the body.

The Dennis family then had the remains, said to be of Mark, exhumed and analyzed in 1971.

Could Mark Still Be Alive?

The body’s hands were completely charred, making fingerprint examination impossible, and only one tooth remained in the body’s skull. The conditions made it difficult to say with absolute certainty, but forensic analysis conducted by the Air Force and a Smithsonian Institution anthropologist supported the Navy’s findings.

Independent forensic analysis by an Ohio State University anthropologist and a Cincinnati metallurgist, however, declared the remains were those of a man at least thirty-years-old and approximately five-feet-seven-inches tall. Mark was nineteen-years-old and nearly six-feet tall. The Ohio analysts also concluded the remains were those of an Asian man. They surmised an NVA solider who was recovered from the battlefield and misidentified as Mark.

The Dennis family appealed to the Board of Correction of Naval Records to officially change Mark’s status from “killed in action” to “missing in action”. The board declined to do so, standing by the Navy’s finding that the remains were those of Mark due to their more sophisticated testing resources.

In subsequent years, however, bones in the possession of the Dennis family were tested multiple times by several independent experts. Each one concluded that the 1966 remains were not those of Mark Dennis.

The Navy, though, also conducted three additional forensic tests on the remains. Each time, it concluded the remains returned to the Dennis family were those of Mark.

Different Findings

In 2015, a final analysis was performed, using advanced DNA extraction technology. The following year, half-a-century after Mark Dennis’ helicopter was shot down in North Vietnam, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency determined the advanced methods showed, conclusively, the remains were a positive DNA match to Mark Dennis.

Jerry Dennis had passed away in 2002. His sisters, Eileen and Anne, accepted the findings.

Remains Confirmed 

On April 4, 2017, Mark Dennis was cremated and reburied, again with full military honors, alongside his mother and father at the Garden Sanctuary Cemetery in Seminole, Florida,

Mark Is Again Buried

After over half-a-century, the uncertainty about what happened to Mark Dennis could finally be laid to rest . . . and so could Mark Dennis himself.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/13710230/mark-v.-dennis

http://www.vvmf.org/Wall-of-Faces/12964/MARK-V-DENNIS

Finality

SOURCES:

• The Daily Reporter, Dover, Ohio
• Dayton Daily News
• Life Magazine
• Newsweek Magazine
• POW Network
• Tampa Bay Times
• Task Force Omega
• Unsolved Mysteries
• Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund