The Name on the Bracelet: A Small Piece of Metal and a Six-Year Story of Captivity
I have had this bracelet for decades.
It is simple: a curved silver-colored band, scratched and worn with age. There is no decoration and almost no explanation. Just a man’s name, his rank and a date:
MAJ. CHARLES E. GREENE JR.
3-11-67,
For decades, bracelets like this have survived in jewelry boxes, dresser drawers, old military collections and family keepsake boxes. They can look almost insignificant until you stop and ask the obvious question:
Who was the person whose name was placed on the bracelet?
I finally asked that question about mine.
And what I discovered transformed this little piece of metal into something very different.
A bracelet born during a divided America.
To understand my bracelet, you have to go back to 1970.
America was deeply divided over the Vietnam War. Protests filled college campuses. Families watched casualty reports on television. At the same time, another issue was becoming increasingly visible: American servicemen who had been captured or were missing in Southeast Asia.
Two college students, Carol Bates Brown and Kay Hunter, wanted to do something for those men without becoming part of the political battle surrounding the war.
They were involved with a California student organization called Voices in Vital America — VIVA.
The idea they developed was remarkably simple.
Make a metal bracelet.
Put the name of one POW or missing serviceman on it.
Add his rank and the date he disappeared.
Then ask an American to wear it.
According to Brown’s history of the project, the first sample bracelets were made by a small Santa Monica shop that normally engraved silver used to decorate horses. VIVA initially didn’t even have enough money to manufacture them in quantity. Eventually, enough brass and copper were donated to make the first 1,200.
The official bracelet campaign began on Veterans Day, November 11, 1970.
And then something extraordinary happened.
Americans wanted them.
Lots of them.
At the height of the program, VIVA was receiving more than 12,000 requests a day. Contemporary reporting in 1972 estimated that approximately four million bracelets were already being worn. Historical accounts put VIVA’s eventual distribution at nearly five million.
People on very different sides of the Vietnam debate wore them. The bracelet wasn’t necessarily a declaration about whether the war itself was right or wrong.
It said something much simpler:
There is a person behind this name. Don’t forget him.
You didn’t choose a symbol. You carried a person.
Each bracelet bore an individual name.
That was what made the idea so powerful.
Instead of thinking about thousands of POWs and missing servicemen as statistics, someone might look down at a wrist and see one name.
The Smithsonian explains that the tradition was to wear the bracelet until that serviceman returned to the United States. The bracelet could then be presented to the returning POW.
Imagine putting one on in 1971.
There was no Internet.
There were no searchable POW databases.
You couldn’t type the man’s name into Google and discover what had happened.
You simply wore his name.
And waited.
My bracelet
When I turned my bracelet over, I discovered something particularly important.
Stamped into the inside is one small word that I never noticed:
VIVA
That stamp helps establish what this bracelet is.
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund has cataloged original POW/MIA bracelets preserved in the National Park Service collection. Those examples have the serviceman’s information engraved on the outside and VIVA stamped into the inside surface. The Fund specifically identifies that stamp as indicating that the bracelet was created and distributed by Voices in Vital America and is among the original VIVA-produced bracelets.
Mine has that same VIVA mark.
Its construction, engraving and appearance are also consistent with documented Vietnam-era VIVA bracelets.
So, while a photograph alone cannot provide the kind of absolute authentication that a museum conservator could make after physically examining an artifact, the evidence is compelling:
My bracelet appears to be an original VIVA POW bracelet from the Vietnam era.
And the man named on it was real.
His name was Charles Edward Greene Jr.
March 11, 1967.
Charles Greene was a United States Air Force fighter pilot.
He was a captain assigned to the 333rd Tactical Fighter Squadron and flew the formidable Republic F-105 Thunderchief, better known among its pilots as the “Thud.”
On March 11, 1967, Greene was flying a combat mission over North Vietnam.
It was the exact date that would eventually be engraved on my bracelet.
His flight was operating against the heavily defended Thai Nguyen area. According to his Silver Star citation, Greene was flying number four in the mission commander’s flight and was wingman to the deputy mission commander. Under intense enemy defenses, he repeatedly attacked an antiaircraft position and warned the other aircraft about antiaircraft fire and surface-to-air missiles.
Then Greene’s F-105 went down.
He ejected.
He survived.
And he was captured.
The Maine Military Museum’s POW record gives the dates with stark simplicity:
Captured: March 11, 1967.
Released: March 4, 1973.
The date on my bracelet wasn’t the date Charles Greene died.
It was the date his captivity began.
Six years.
Think about what six years represents.
Six birthdays.
Six Christmases.
Six springs.
A child entering kindergarten could be approaching middle school by the time six years had passed.
Greene spent almost that entire span as a prisoner in North Vietnam.
And only five days after his capture, on March 16, 1967, another chapter of his story began.
Records associated with Greene’s military decorations describe severe physical and psychological pressure intended to force cooperation from him. He resisted his captors’ demands and continued doing so through years of imprisonment. His conduct in captivity contributed to an extraordinary military record that ultimately included two Silver Stars, along with other decorations.
Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, Americans were eventually walking around with his name on their wrists.
One of those bracelets is now in my hand.
Then came 1973.
In January 1973, the Paris Peace Accords were signed.
American POWs began coming home.
Charles Greene was among them.
He was released on March 4, 1973, only days short of the sixth anniversary of his capture.
By then, the captain who had been shot down in 1967 was Major Charles E. Greene Jr.
That helps explain another detail on my bracelet.
It says:
MAJ. CHARLES E. GREENE JR.
His promotion occurred during those missing years. The rank on the bracelet therefore provides an intriguing clue to when this particular bracelet may have been produced, although it isn’t enough by itself to establish a precise manufacturing date.
Then, on March 9, 1973, came the moment captured in the photographs I plan to place beside the pictures of my bracelet.
He came home.
Greene arrived at Westover Air Force Base in Massachusetts aboard a C-9 Nightingale.
Waiting for him were his wife, Sandra, and their 10-year-old daughter, Kim.
The surviving photographs are wonderful.
One shows Greene holding his daughter.
Another shows him with his wife.
Others capture the crowd that had gathered for his return.
The Times Union archive records that Greene continued kissing his wife and daughter and wiping away tears as they rode toward the base hospital. His parents, brothers and other relatives were also there.
There were signs in the crowd welcoming Major Greene back to freedom.
And consider Kim.
She was 10 when her father returned.
She had been only about four years old when he was shot down.
Her father had missed much of her childhood.
Then suddenly, after nearly six years, Dad was coming home.
The bracelet suddenly means something different.
When I first looked at the bracelet, I saw an old piece of metal.
Now I see a timeline.
March 11, 1967: Charles Greene is shot down and captured.
1970: VIVA launches the POW/MIA bracelet campaign.
Early 1970s: Somewhere in America, a bracelet bearing Greene’s name is produced and someone wears his name on their wrist.
March 4, 1973: Greene is released.
March 9, 1973: A photographer captures him embracing his family.
And more than half a century later, I am holding one of those bracelets.
The scratches don’t bother me anymore.
In fact, I like them.
I originally wore this particular bracelet. I lived in Pennsylvania, I likely acquired it with the help of my parents or don’t recall the news in 1973 and if I learned that my POW had finally come home.
Those are mysteries the bracelet still keeps.
But I handled it. I kept it. And eventually it surfaced from my jewelry box and I pulled it out to wear again.
Why I am not going to polish it.
My first instinct with an old metal object might normally be to make it shine.
Not this one.
The scratches, oxidation, discoloration and wear are part of the object’s history. Aggressive polishing could remove original surface material and evidence of age.
So I am treating it as a small historical artifact rather than a piece of jewelry.
For anyone fortunate enough to have an original POW bracelet, I would follow a few basic conservation principles:
- Don’t use metal polish, abrasive cleaners or polishing compounds. Don’t try to buff out the scratches.
- Handle it with clean, dry hands, preferably by the edges, and avoid unnecessary flexing. Repeatedly opening and closing an old metal cuff can eventually fatigue the metal.
- If loose dust needs to be removed, use a very soft, dry brush or microfiber cloth, without aggressively rubbing the surface.
- Don’t try to remove the discoloration or patina. Age is not dirt.
- Keep the bracelet dry and away from high humidity, direct sunlight and large temperature fluctuations.
- For long-term storage, place it in an acid-free archival box or inert archival-quality enclosure, rather than directly against ordinary cardboard, newspaper, rubber, PVC plastic or adhesive material.
- Keep photographs and documentation about the bracelet with it, but preferably in separate archival sleeves so the materials aren’t resting directly against the metal.
Most importantly, I would photograph the bracelet carefully now—front, back, both ends and especially that tiny VIVA stamp.
Because provenance is part of preservation.
CHARLES E. GREENE JR. — 3-11-67.
There is something wonderfully human about the POW bracelet campaign.
The organizers didn’t ask Americans to remember an abstract cause.
They gave them a name.
One name.
For me, that name was Charles Greene.
I put his bracelet around my wrist without knowing whether the story would end with a funeral, an unresolved disappearance or a homecoming.
Fortunately, we know how Charles Greene’s story ended.
Almost six years after his F-105 disappeared over North Vietnam, an airplane landed in Massachusetts.
A 10-year-old girl waited near the ramp.
And Charles Greene came home.
More than fifty years later, his name is still here.
It’s scratched into a little silver-colored bracelet sitting in my hand.
And that was the whole point.
Not to forget.
