She was married only 33 days before Joseph Hargrove shipped out and didn't come home, but she has kept his last name for 32 years because he asked. That's how much a promise means to Gail Hargrove, 50, who lives outside of Goldsboro.

Some say that when the U.S. helicopters lifted off the beach of an obscure Cambodian island on May 15, 1975, it marked the end of the Vietnam War. But Gail Hargrove knows that the war lasted at least a day longer for her husband.

What did end when those helicopters clattered away over the surf was the Hargrove family's faith in that unwritten promise that's regarded as sacred among military families: We will leave no troops behind.

A Marine force had been sent to rescue the crew of a captured U.S. civilian freighter, the S.S. Mayaguez. The island was too heavily defended, though, and the Marines withdrew after three helicopters were shot down, 15 men killed and 50 wounded. In the haste and confusion, a three-man machine gun crew protecting the flank of one landing zone was forgotten: Lance Cpl. Joseph N. Hargrove of Mount Olive, along with Pfc. Gary L. Hall and Pvt. Danny G. Marshall.

Cambodian witnesses later said that the trio were captured and executed. That made them the U.S. final troops to be killed in action in the Vietnam War.

The military unit that finds and identifies the dead from previous conflicts -- the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command in Hawaii -- is sending a team to look for Hargrove and others lost on the island, but recently turned down a request from a family member to go along, something that some family members call vital.

The families of missing troops often remain hopeful for decades that the MIA teams will find their loved one. Gail Hargrove, though, said she has no faith that the government will make a proper search for her husband. Joseph Hargrove's mother, Charlotte, and at least one of his brothers are nearly past the point of caring.

"It would make no difference where his bones lie," said Hargrove's brother George. "I don't know what the big deal is about the whole thing."

It makes a difference to his cousin, Cary Turner, though. Turner, a Duplin County commissioner, started a political push last fall to get Hargrove's remains returned.

The family has been put through too much, he said, even by the standards of MIA families. They had already lost one of Joseph's brothers, Lane, in combat in Vietnam in 1968. They were never officially told Joseph was left behind while still alive, he said. More than a year after they were declared missing, without any explanation to the families, the men were ruled dead by the military.

The family didn't get Joseph's Purple Heart until 1999, 24 years after the battle.

"It's just been one thing after another," Turner said.

Turner hoped to restore the family's trust in government by traveling to the desolate island at his own expense to observe the recovery team's work. It could take a year or more after any remains are found for the military's rigorous scientific identification process to render an answer.

Turner figured that would be too long for Hargrove's mother, and that he could report back quickly as to whether it was likely the remains had been found, or at least that the team had made an honest effort at the only site where they could look.

The family, Turner said, knows that this is almost certainly the last chance that Hargrove will come home while his mother is still alive. She's 84 years old and has a failing heart.

"It's real important that I or someone from the family goes," he said. "Otherwise, they'll think it's just another government story."

That's about right, said Hargrove's wife. "If he was there, I'd know this time I wasn't being lied to," she said.

She has been raising money to help pay for Turner's trip, and she called her casualty contacts at the Pentagon several times to ask that he be allowed to go.

Turner had persuaded the state House to pass a bill urging the Pentagon to seek Hargrove's remains. He also got support from members of the state's congressional delegation. One of his biggest allies was Walter Jones, who called the MIA command to support Turner.

A dangerous job

Last week, though, Turner got a letter from Jones. An assistant deputy secretary of defense had written to say recovery teams couldn't allow an outsider like Turner along, for his own safety and for the sake of the mission.

The recovery teams, which work in former war zones all over the world, toil in conditions that are often not just austere but dangerous, with hazards such as poisonous snakes and insects, harsh climates, possibly live ordnance.

What's more, the delicate scientific nature of their work means that anyone not trained could ruin an identification.

Turner, who is in his 50s and owns a small trucking company, isn't Indiana Jones. He has only been out of the United States once, a trip to Germany. But he's willing to brave the risks. And even if it's rare for outsiders to be allowed to accompany the search teams, he said, this should be one of the exceptions because Hargrove's mother is running out of time.

"If a woman gives up two sons for her country, can't her country do this one little thing for her?" he said.

Some outsiders do accompany the search teams. Coincidentally, one -- author Ralph Wetterhahn -- went with the last U.S. MIA search team to visit the island, in 2001. He spent 40 days there and visited other key sites in Cambodia. Later he wrote a book, "The Last Battle: The Mayaguez Incident and the End of the Vietnam War."

Koh Tang is a hellish place, Wetterhahn said. There's seldom any breeze, it's mainly covered with jungle and it's infested with hard-biting army ants that dangle from leaves as you brush past.

"If you're there for any length of time, your hands and arms are covered with welts from the bites," he said.

The only inhabitants, he said, are about 40 unlucky Cambodian soldiers, who serve six-month rotations to protect the island, since it's also claimed by Vietnam and Thailand.

Despite the hopes of Turner and Gail Hargrove, there's no way to be certain that Joseph is buried where the military plans to look, Turner said, or whether Hargrove's remains are even on the island.

Witnesses diverge on details such as how many Marines were captured and when. It seems likely, though, that one man was captured the day after the Marines attacked, Wetterhahn said. Probably the other two were caught a few days later, after Khmer fighters noticed that discarded food was disappearing and staked out their garbage pile. By many accounts, the two Marines were taken to the mainland and executed there.

A witness talks

The best witness, Wetterhahn said, is Em Son, the Khmer Rouge company commander on that side of the island during the battle.

U.S. investigators worked with Em Son, and Wetterhahn interviewed him several times.

The former fighter, who lost a leg in battle and suffered several other wounds, said that the day after the Marine assault, his unit was patrolling the area to make sure all the Americans were gone when someone shot one of the Cambodians. Wetterhahn thinks that Hargrove is the most likely shooter.

The Cambodians quickly captured a Marine. The description Em Son gave fit Hargrove, who was the only one of the three with red hair. Em Son tried to execute the Marine with a pistol, but his hand was shaking so badly -- probably with anger, Wetterhahn said -- that he missed. In frustration, he ordered another Cambodian to shoot the Marine with an AK-47.

The Cambodians buried the body near a mango tree.

In the 2001 mission to the island, Em Son showed the search team a tree stump that he said belonged to the mango. "How he knew it was a mango stump, I don't know," Wetterhahn said.

Em Son's memory is excellent, Wetterhahn said, but the area is thick jungle, and he would only have to be off a few feet for the team to miss. "You've got to get a little lucky," Wetterhahn said.

The Cambodian commander and other witnesses said that the other two Marines were taken to the mainland. At least one said they were beaten to death rather than shot.

Em Son described one as unusually large and the other as small, descriptions that better fit Hall and Marshall, respectively, than Hargrove.

So the Hargrove family's hopes that Joseph will be found are hanging by two thin threads: Em Son's descriptions of the three Americans and his memory of where the first body was buried.

The military's MIA teams and its identification lab in Hawaii have impeccable reputations, and Jones said he has confidence that they will do a good job. But he has offered to continue to pursue the matter.

Turner said he's not sure what he'll do. "I don't give up easy," he said. "I'll just attack it from another angle."

Gail Hargrove said it's hard to describe what it would mean to have her husband's remains home.

"I just want to know if the person I am now could go back to being the person I was," she said. "I'd like to have some of the anger out of me."

Hargrove's mother is past anger.

"My health is feeble, and my mind isn't clear all the time," she said. "I guess it would be all right if they brought him home, but about all I've got to say about it is that Cary Turner is a conscientious person, and I appreciate what he's trying to do."

Staff Writer Jay Price can be reached at 829-4526 or jay.price@newsobserver.com

News researcher Brooke Cain contributed to this report.