While doing renovations in his Sandy Hook home recently, Gavin Arneth found a copper bracelet with the name of an American soldier who went MIA during the Vietnam War. The bracelet had been gifted to him years ago by his father Paul, a US Navy Vietnam War veteran.

Gavin’s next steps added a surprising new chapter to a 50-year-old story.

The bracelet was originally purchased by Paul Arneth shortly after he returned home from serving overseas. The copper bracelet was engraved Lt William Metzger and carried the date 5-19-67, indicating the date the soldier went missing in action.

For years, that was all Paul Arneth knew about the name on his bracelet.

Back In The Air

Paul Arneth is a retired US Navy carrier pilot. He received his commission in 1961.

He was one of three members of his squadron who reenlisted after two deployments to the Mediterranean, he recently told The Newtown Bee.

“I did the first two deployments in 1964 and 1965, and then in 1966 was deployed to Vietnam,” he shared.

“He was able to stay here,” Gavin noted, “but his commanding officer talked him into volunteering to go back to Vietnam.”

Gavin was two years old at the time. His mother was pregnant with the couple’s second child, Evan.

Paul was one of three senior lieutenants, he said, “and we had gotten pretty decent at flying on and off the ship.

“We were all due for shore duty but when the skipper found out we were leaving, he asked us to volunteer to stay with the squadron, to make the Vietnam combat deployment,” he said.

So Paul returned to the air, flying 50 missions during the next year. During his Navy career he made more than 400 landings on the aircraft carrier USS Franklin D. Roosevelt.

He returned to the US in February 1967 and then served with the Navy ten additional months. He retired that December with the rank of Lieutenant. “Red” then had a very successful career as a commercial airline pilot, retiring in 1999. He and his wife Liz are former longtime residents of Sandy Hook.

Paul doesn’t remember exactly when he received his copper POW bracelet, only that it was a short time after returning from the war, he said.

The idea for the bracelets was launched in 1969 by college students looking to draw public attention to Americans in captivity in southeast Asia. Voices In Vital America formally introduced nickel plated bracelets on Veterans Day 1970, and the copper versions followed soon after.

By 1976 a reported 5 million bracelets had been distributed, according to pow-miafamilies.org. Paul was among those to receive a copper bracelet.

“I wore it for a number of years,” Paul said.

“And then I wore it for a while,” Gavin added.

Today, the Arneth copper bracelet is almost wafer thin after years of wear. A crack has nearly stretched from bottom to top, starting within the 7 of the date and nearly through the first E of Metzger’s surname.

New Information

When Gavin rediscovered the POW bracelet his father had given him years ago, this time he did some research.

“As a kid, I’d always assumed he never came home,” Gavin admitted recently of William Metzger. “I just figured he was an MIA that was never found.”

With the power of the internet at his fingertips, Gavin started looking online for information about William Metzger.

Gavin quickly learned that Lt JG William J. Metzger, Jr was the pilot of an F8C sent on a combat mission over North Vietnam on May 19, 1967. His flight route, according to POWnetwork.org, took him to Ha Tay Province, North Vietnam, about ten miles southwest of Hanoi, where the aircraft was shot down.

Metzger’s plane was hit twice, according to his online biography. The second hit struck the left side of the cockpit. Shrapnel caused serious injuries to his left arm and leg, and his right leg was fractured.

Once on the ground, Metzger was captured by the North Vietnamese. He was held for the next five years and ten months in various prisoner camps including the infamous Hoa Lò Prison, commonly referred to by US POWs and soldiers as “Hanoi Hilton.”

American prisoners of war were held by North Vietnam in the prison complex from August 5, 1954 until March 29, 1973. Like so many countless others, Metzger was tortured while in captivity.

“They were brutal in that Hanoi Hilton,” Paul said. “They were mostly in solitary.”

Metzger was part of a general prisoner release on March 4, 1973. Due to his right leg never being set properly after his crash — and despite multiple surgeries years later — one leg is now a few inches shorter than the other.

A Familiar Name

When Gavin found Metzger’s story, including the news that the pilot had been released 50 years ago, he also located an email address for the former POW. Gavin reached out this past January, introducing himself and his father.

“I reached out and told him, ‘Hey, I have this bracelet and I’m so happy to hear about your outcome,’” Gavin said. He offered to send Metzger the copper bracelet each man had worn in his honor for years.

Gavin also made sure to let Metzger know that he and his father never forgot about him. Metzger responded in less than 13 hours.

The Arneths shared much of their e-mail correspondence with The Newtown Bee for this story.

Thanking Gavin for his “thoughtfulness and patriotism,” Metzger said he was “truly honored and humbly grateful” to hear from Gavin and learn about Paul and his service. Metzger told the Arneths he continues to receive correspondence from others who had bracelets engraved with his name, even a half-century after being repatriated.

He suggested Gavin keep his bracelet “as a link and reminder of a common experience.”

Metzger told the Arneths the copper bracelets are rarer to find these days than the nickel-plated ones. He also joked that Paul Arneth must be “much sharper than I am as he didn’t screw up any of his missions nor destroy a multi-million dollar tax-payer’s aircraft.”

Paul also reached out to Metzger, and the two began sharing and comparing their stories.

Surprisingly, Paul mentioned a landing signal officer he knew who had also been shot down in 1966, the year before Metzger. A Lieutenant, the man in question was in a different squadron than Paul, but they knew each other. Paul was one of Carpenter’s training officers.

Again, according to POWnetwork.org: Lt Allan Carpenter was a pilot assigned to Attack Squadron 72 onboard the Roosevelt. On November 1, 1966, Carpenter launched on a combat mission over the Haiphong region of north Vietnam.

Carpenter was leading a flight of three on a missile suppression in support of a photo reconnaissance flight in the Haiphong area when his aircraft was hit by anti-aircraft artillery fire. Following protocol, he headed for open water. His aircraft was on fire, however, and eventually went out of control. Paul wasn’t in the air the day Carpenter was shot down.

“The story I’ve heard,” said Paul, “was he got over the Tonkin Gulf, over the ocean, off the coast, when he got shot down. Then he had to eject because the plane was coming apart.

“He got down in the water, and the story was the Vietnamese were only a couple miles off the shore, and they were coming out with boats,” he said, concurring the online report.

“His wingman shot at them, trying to keep them away,” said Paul. “He ran out of bullets and then he had his two drop tanks — which are fuel tanks, that were empty — he dropped those on them, trying to scare them away.”

Despite the efforts of his wingman and several other aircraft from the FDR, Carpenter was pulled onto one of the many fishing boats in the water where he landed and taken prisoner.

Metzger definitely recognized Carpenter’s name when Paul mentioned it to him.

“He’s one of my closest POW buddies,” Metzger wrote to Paul. “He’s a good friend of mine. We communicate regularly.”

Carpenter was also part of the large prisoner release on May 4, 1973. He’d spent 6 years and 4 months detained in POW camps in and around Hanoi. Gavin and his father are both amazed at the way the post-war story continues.

“For my dad to be able to connect and correspond with him, it’s just a real neat experience,” Gavin said of connecting with Metzger, and learning about Carpenter.

“It just reminds me of how heroic my dad and all these guys are. They were 22, 23, 24 years old, going over there and doing this, and someone like Bill, who went through that experience and then continue on with his career,” he said. “Clearly it did not break their spirit.”

Bill Metzger’s Legacy

Upon his release from Vietnam, Bill Metzger returned to the Navy. He retired a US Navy Captain.

Bill Metzger and his wife Bonnie celebrated their 58th wedding anniversary in December. They have three daughters and seven grandchildren. The couple has lived in the Pacific Northwest since autumn 2001.

For his service he has been awarded 15 medals including the Silver Star, Legion of Merit, Distinguished Flying Cross, three Bronze Stars, and two Purple Hearts.

“He’s just a rock star,” Gavin Arneth said. “His is just an amazing, amazing story.”

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Managing Editor Shannon Hicks can be reached at shannon@thebee.com.