WASHINGTON - Nearly four decades after 11 American servicemen were killed by North Vietnamese commandos at a secret radar site in Laos, U.S. investigators have made the first identification of remains %u2014 with the help of two of the commandos.

The breakthrough is one of the most remarkable achievements in the U.S. military's decades-long effort to find and identify the remains of hundreds of U.S. serviceman missing in action from the Vietnam War.

Yet the recovery and identification of the remains of Air Force Tech. Sgt. Patrick L. Shannon, of Owasso, Okla., also created a new mystery. On the mountain ledge where his remains were found, U.S. investigators discovered boots, clothing fragments and other personal items that indicated that some of the other missing Americans had been on the same ledge. None has been seen or heard from since the attack.

According to this companion AP piece, two of the missing Air Force personnel were from Oklahoma. The one still unaccounted for is from right here in El Reno. I had no idea.

Since the end of the Vietnam war in 1975, 771 missing American servicemen have been accounted for, including 199 lost in Laos. There are 1,812 still listed as missing from the war.

The men in this story are not counted as missing - they are officially listed as "killed in action/body not recovered". Two of the Vietnamese commandos who conducted the raid on the site where Lt. Col. Clarence Finley. Blanton of El Reno was on duty were interviewed in March 2003, and they said that they killed all of them and threw their bodies over a cliff. The military officially says that Lt. Col. Blanton died in the line of duty on March 11, 1968.

His name is on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. He was one of nine citizens of El Reno who died in the Vietnam War. It's listed as "Clarence F. Blanton," but Mom says that, like me, he went by his middle name and was known as Finley Blanton. His father was head of the El Reno draft board. Although the Pentagon says that Finley Blanton has been classified as "KIA/BnR" since 1973, Mom says his parents never knew that.

The P.O.W. Network isn't so sure he was killed, but that's their purpose - to press for answers on every American soldier who didn't come home and whose remains were never found.

Finley Blanton was 46 years, 27 weeks, and 3 days old on March 11, 1968.