REMEMBERING ARCHIE

By Edwin Cooney

Saturday, May 5th, 1945 was a lovely spring day in southern Oregon. Reverend Archie Mitchell, the newly appointed pastor of the Christian and Missionary Alliance in nearby Bly, was on an outing with his pregnant wife Elsie and five members of the church’s Sunday school class. The hiking and fishing picnic was a “getting to know you” activity. Suddenly and tragically, without warning, Elsie Mitchell and the five children would make history by becoming the only casualties on the U.S. mainland during World War II.

Anxious to get into the woods to start exploring, Elsie and the kids got out of the car while Archie searched for a good place to park. By the time he was pulling their lunches and fishing gear from the back of the vehicle, Elsie and the children were well into the woods.

Suddenly, Elsie called out to Archie that they’d discovered something. It was a balloon-like machine in the middle of the woods. Archie yelled back that they shouldn’t touch it, but someone, one of the kids perhaps, did.

Before Archie was within a hundred yards of them, there was a powerful explosion. Large clumps of earth and branches from trees were hurled through the air. By the time Archie and a road crew working nearby reached them, the five children were dead and Elsie, lying in her flaming clothes, would live, mercifully, hardly a minute longer.

During the 9/11 tragedy, you’ll no doubt remember that much of our incredulity stemmed from the insistence on the part of our leadership (from the president on down) that this was the first time Americans had suffered violence from foreign attack since the British burned the White House and the Capitol in 1814.

During World War II, the Japanese government had sent thousands of balloon bombs into the atmosphere. They were designed to explode on impact into American cities, towns and villages to create panic. However, the explosion mechanism on these vehicles was faulty and the bombs were ultimately too heavy for the balloons. Most of these balloon bombs landed in the Pacific or on Pacific islands and several hundred were sighted and destroyed by our military. However, at least one was neither lost nor destroyed. (Note that not until June 1, 1945, nearly four weeks after the incident, did the U.S. government identify the source of the balloon bomb.)

Even if the source of the explosion had been immediately identified, events on Saturday, May 5, 1945 were rapidly superseded by the news the following Tuesday (May 8th) of Victory in Europe and the whole world celebrated.

In comparison to the worldwide scourge of war, the deaths of Elsie Winters Mitchell, age 26, Sherman Shoemaker, 10, Jay Gifford, 11, Edward Engeen, 13, Joan Patzke, 13, and Dick Patzke, 14, seemed to be personal rather than national tragedies. Thus, as long as they were considered so, the full comprehension of the tragedy’s significance was hidden from Archie, the children’s families, and the world.

Of course, loss of life is always devastating, but one has to wonder if the revelation of the cause of this accident affected the feelings and perspectives of the victims’ families.

I became familiar with this incident a little less than two years ago when the late Paul Harvey told of it on one of his last “Best of the Story” broadcasts. Although Mr. Harvey told you “the rest of the story,” he didn’t come anywhere close to telling you Archie Mitchell’s entire story. Paul Harvey’s point was that it’s only realistic to understand that innocent people increasingly will be the victims of war.

Two and a half years following Archie’s first tragedy, on December 23, 1947, Archie Mitchell and his second wife Betty Patzke (older sister of Joan and Dick Patzke who were victimized by the Japanese balloon bomb), set sail for Vietnam where they would start the first of three tours of duty as missionaries for the Christian Missionary & Alliance Church. Their goal was, of course, to spread “the good news” and to do God’s work by improving the living conditions of the poor and sick of Southeast Asia.

On the night of Wednesday, May 30, 1962, while working at the Ban Me Thuot Leprosarium, Archie, the Reverend Daniel Gerber and Dr. Eleanor Vietti along with a generous supply of medicines and equipment for the benefit of their sick and wounded were removed from the clinic by a 12 member unit of the Vietcong.

According to Betty Mitchell, it was the Vietcong’s original intention to take her and her children captive along with Archie, but the plan changed when Archie insisted that he wouldn’t cooperate with them if they did that. (Keep in mind that this was well before large numbers of American troops were sent to Vietnam.) Surely Archie’s non-cooperation would have doubtless resulted in everyone’s instant death.

Although U.S. intelligence over the next several years had a pretty good idea where Archie and his two companions were located, however, they were guarded too well to be rescued. In 1969, negotiations for their release were near completion when they were suddenly broken off. None of the three have been seen since.

Thus, the fate of Archie Mitchell is unknown. Were Archie and his fellow companions murdered by the Vietcong? Or might they have been the innocent victims of our bombing? Who knows? Neither Betty Mitchell nor any of their four children have the slightest idea of Archie’s fate, or that of Gerber and Vietti.

Archie Mitchell was twice the victim of war; one has to wonder why this good man had to suffer so. We know that the Japanese government’s decision to send balloon bombs was, in part, revenge for the April 1942 firebombing of Tokyo by Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle. We know also that the reason for the seizing of Mitchell, Gerber and Vietti was largely due to the healing they could bring about for the Vietcong.

What is hard to grasp is what it took for Reverend Mitchell to keep on giving to a world that had taken so much from him. Even more amazing to this observer is the kind of strength required to handle these two potentially soul-destroying trials! What must life have been like during the final seven plus years of Archie’s life? Were any tender moments left for Archie Mitchell and his co-prisoners? Did they ever smile or laugh again? What, beside the threat of death, fueled Archie’s energy to keep on keeping on? What sustained his faith?

My point in telling you this story is that, as I see it, aggressive war is humankind’s greatest crime. Too often, too many good people make excuses for it. We explain it away as “legitimate national security,” but that’s where we’re all wrong regardless of our nationality or our political or religious convictions. As far as I’m concerned, human sin didn’t begin when Adam ate an apple; it began the second we decided it was legitimate to kill one another.

Archie Mitchell’s story is powerful for me because his suffering was brought about by humankind’s most impersonal act: war. Yet, he kept giving back in a very personal way. Too often when man chooses to expand or defend even the legitimate writ of his authority, he invariably destroys not only his enemy, but his enemy’s innocent brothers, sisters and children. The great statesmen of the world, even with all of the guidance mechanisms on their instruments of destruction, have no more control of their destructive force than did Hurricane Katrina or the December 2006 tsunami. Still the Archie Mitchells of this world appear to live their best dreams even amidst the uncontrollable outrages brought about by both man and nature.

Archie Mitchell, I’ve only just met you, but I’ll never forget you!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY