T

he search consumes him now, almost 50 years after Bob Connor smelled the stench of their piled, rotting bodies from across the base and then went back to his duties.

DAVID SWANSON / Staff Photographer Bob Connor, a Vietnam War veteran who is helping the Vietnamese government identify mass graves of its soldiers killed during the war.

For hours on end and days that bleed into nights, the 70-year-old retired facilities manager sits at the computer in his Maple Shade, N.J., apartment, poring through vast troves of data, military records, and maps in search of clues about where long-missing bodies of Viet Cong and North Vietnamese soldiers might be buried.

For Connor — a U.S. Air Force veteran of the Vietnam War — this is more than a quest. It is a question of humanity.

In the United States, the Vietnam War has been etched into the fabric of an entire generation and is fading into history books. All but 1,603 American casualties have been found, their remains laid to rest. But in Vietnam, the final chapter of the war remains unwritten, families and comrades unsettled as nearly 300,000 soldiers are still missing, according to the Vietnamese government.

Courtesy of Bob Connor. Top: Sgt. Bob Connor (second from left) with his fellow U.S. Air Force Security Forces members in 1967 at Bien Hoa Air Force Base in Vietnam.

Bottom: Connor carries a flare chute outside the barracks.

Many of the missing were buried in mass, unmarked graves dug by their former enemies — American servicemen. In a twist of internet serendipity, the Vietnamese government found Connor and asked him and other veterans to help locate the unmarked graves, to give thousands of Vietnamese families the closure that has eluded them for five decades.

Connor has answered that call with obsessive urgency. His mission to bring comfort to the families of his former enemies has taken him halfway around the world, alienated some Vietnam veterans, and unearthed vivid memories of the futility and horror of a war that ended long ago.

'The colonel will be in touch'

Connor was not out looking to start a new mission at this stage in his life.

He had been helping his granddaughter with a school project about the Vietnam War when he searched Google Earth for Bien Hoa Air Base, where he had served in 1967-68 as a sergeant with the U.S. Air Force Security Forces.

In the interest of cataloging history, Connor left a comment — and his email address — on one of the photos of Bien Hoa. He didn't really expect anyone to see it.

Using a now-defunct service called Panoramio that allowed users to augment Google Earth maps with personal photos, Connor left a comment – and his email address – on one of the photos of Bien Hoa. Click here to see his full note.

"Significant battle took place here at the start of the Tet Offensive '68," he wrote. "Those VC [Viet Cong] killed had to be buried in a mass grave at the end of the runway."

Ten days later, an email arrived from Vietnam.

It was from Che Trung Hieu, a 70-year-old veteran of the North Vietnamese People's Army, who was "very excited to hear about the grave because they knew nothing about it," Connor said. "So he's in shock, and I'm in shock, and he says, 'The colonel will be in touch with you.' "

Connor, who had been honorably discharged from the Air Force in 1969 and has been perfectly happy enjoying retired life since 2003, had no idea who "the colonel" was or what he had gotten himself into.

"I damn near s—," Connor said. "I thought, 'What did you do, you idiot?"

Soon after, he got another email. Col. Mai Xuan Chien — deputy political commissar of the military command in the province where Bien Hoa is located — said the Vietnamese government had been searching the area for decades with no success.

"We are so glad because over 40 past years, we have so many times searched and excavated along the perimeter of Bien Hoa Air Base, but we didn't find any of the mass graves," Mai wrote. "Would you please contact other veterans to give us more specific information?" Click to read the entire letter.

'You have to get by that bitterness'

In Vietnamese culture, soldiers who die in war but remain unaccounted for are referred to as martyrs. Their spirits are believed to wander between this world and the next until their bodies are found, identified, and properly entombed. Only then can they be called heroes.

Mai said first-person accounts were one of Vietnam's best resources for finding mass graves.

JARED WHALEN / Staff Retired Sgt. Bob Connor describes his experience during the Tet Offensive at Bien Hoa Air Base, Vietnam.

"Veterans of the United States who are witnesses ... are the best clues, with their memory, souvenirs, photographs, and even their hearts of humanitarians," Mai wrote in an email to the Inquirer and Daily News, "along with the generosity and sympathy sharing the pain of war between two peoples of Vietnam and the United States."

Connor thought it strange that people in Vietnam would put so much faith in his word alone. It was an honor he did not take lightly.

He scoured the internet for other veterans who could have more detailed information about the mass grave at Bien Hoa, or any other mass graves in Vietnam. He posted on military Facebook pages and message boards. He sent emails and contacted website administrators.

Many times, he received no response. Sometimes, the responses were hostile.

"Let those stinking commies lay where they are," one Vietnam veteran wrote back to Connor. "I won the nation's 5th highest award for heroism … and killed as many of those commies as I could."

Connor hit roadblocks at every turn until one veteran put him in contact with retired Col. Martin Strones, who had been a captain of the U.S. Air Force Security Forces at Bien Hoa during the Tet Offensive battle and had been awarded the Silver Star for valor in combat.