Curtis Lyle Busby aka C.M. Hayden; phony POW

Someone sent us their research on this fellow, Curtis Lyle Busby who wrote a book once entitled An American Veteran’s Journey, under the pen name Chris M. Hayden, which was supposed to be about his time in Vietnam. He told the journalist at the Beacon Senior News that he had suffered war wounds and captivity while he was in Vietnam;

Sgt. Chris Hayden, of Montrose, was unable to accept his medal in person—he was recovering from surgery to alleviate pain from old war wounds.

Hayden served in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve in high school and enlisted the day after graduation in 1963. By 1965, he had completed aviation training and was assigned to the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing. He became a crew chief and gunner with UH-34D helicopters. He served 26 months just south of the Vietnamese Demilitarized Zone, was shot down and returned to the U.S.

He went back to Vietnam, serving in the Marble Mountains in Da Nang, and was promoted to sergeant. While flying into Laos searching for hidden prisoner of war sites, Hayden’s helicopter was shot down. Only he and one other crew member survived.

They were captured and suffered months of atrocities in a POW camp. Hayden was eventually rescued and returned to Great Lakes Naval Hospital in the U.S. His fellow crew member did not make it. Hayden was awarded a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star for his service.

Busby, as Hayden, told the Washington Post, in 1984, that he’d been shot down as a crew chief on a UH-34D while in Vietnam. He didn’t mention the POW thing, though.

Hayden, who said he was shot down three times as a Marine helicopter gunner in Vietnam, said he dedicated his run to fellow veterans who survived the war only to “slowly die when they arrived home.”

We’ve been sitting on these articles for a month or so because we’d heard he had another name that we had to search until we came across this;

So we checked DPAA and he doesn’t show up under either name. Captain Mike McGrath, a real Vietnam POW and historian for the NAM-POW, Inc., had no record of him being a POW in Vietnam. So we ordered his records.

Busby had been in the Vietnam theater from March – October 1970, but not as crew chief on a UH-34D, he was a 6615, Technician, Aircraft Communications/Navigation System in the Marine Aircraft Group 15, 1st Marine Air Wing – MAG-15 was a fixed wing aircraft unit at Da Nang during the Vietnam War – no helicopters for him to crew.

MAG-15, 1st MAW was actually in Japan while Busby was assigned to them, but the FPO address in Busby’s records is 96022, for Da Nang, so he must have been advance party for the unit that moved to Da Nang after Busby went back to the States.

He did spend a few weeks (September/October 1970) in VMO-2 (Marine Observation Squadron 2) of the Marine Aircraft Group 11 (MAG-11) an OV-10 Bronco unit – again fixed-wing aircraft at Da Nang, no UH-34Ds.

In a war where it wasn’t unusual for helicopter crew chiefs to have thirty Air Medals after a year in Vietnam, Busby has not even one.

He left the Marine Corps as a sergeant, no aircraft he rode was shot down with him on it, no Purple Heart Medals, no Combat Action Ribbon. No real sympathy for a non-POW lone survivor.

Category: Phony soldiers, Valor Vultures