Dr. Dan (White) Bookout

"Search for the Lost Blacksheep"
by Optimum Publishing (out of business)
Can now be purchased at Amzon.com
http://www.amazon.com/Search-Lost-Blacksheep-Dan-Bookout/dp/157397014X

Dan is the son of Artie & Nita [White] Bookout,
grandson of Newt & Emma [Foster] White, and
great grandson of Thomas M & Marthia [Harris] White.

Book details recovery of a lost pilot

By JOHN FOOKS of the Gazette Staff Some Missing in Action remains still lie in battlefields where they fell.

Some rest uneasy in unmarked graves on long-forgotten front lines. Others, like U.S. Marine Corps pilot Lt. Wayland Bennett of Texarkana, Texas, waited patiently in his Corsair cockpit coffin for a promise to be kept.

More than 50 years later, it was.

"This is Wayland Bennett's story, his loss, his disappearance, his recovery," said Dr. Dan Bookout of Texarkana, Texas, referring to his new book, "Search for the Lost Blacksheep" by Optimum Publishing. The book details the "high adventure spanning 50 years in the South Pacific jungles of Vanuatu" and the eight years Bookout and others spent searching for and rescuing Lt. Bennett's remains.

The book reads like a true-life adventure story. ending successfully when the team brought Lt. Bennett home to Texarkana with full honors in September 1994.

 Bookout was attending the first of four book signings scheduled through Jan. 27. Other people attending Saturday afternoon's book signing at Sterling Crest Restaurant were several principal players in the Bennett saga, including two of the four young men who originally made the solemn pledge never to abandon each other if something-anything-happened to any of them during the war. Bob Bowden, U.S. Army, was the youngest of the four buddies to join the service during World War II. D.A. Carson, now deceased, was another, joining the Marine Corps like Bennett. Robert Sandlin joined the U.S. Navy, and he attended Saturday's book signing,

"On the evening of the day that Pearl Harbor was bombed on Dec. 7, 1941, the four young men made a solemn pledge that if anything happened to any of the others, they would "bring him home, no matter how long it took,'" Bookout said. "It was what I have come to refer to in my book as "The Promise.' It took 50 years to keep the promise, but keep it they did."

Bookout was contacted by Bowden in 1987 in hopes of somehow finding Bennett, who had been assigned to fly one of the famous F4U-1 Corsair fighters for the Blacksheep Squadron, VMF-214, during the war.

"We researched all the historical data we could get our hands on from the U.S. government, as well as from Ling Tempco Vought (LTV) in Dallas," Bookout said. "Fortunately, we were able to talk to several of the living pilots of the Blacksheep Squadron, and they remembered the young man (Bennett)."

More importantly, they were able to assist in the approximate location where Bennett went down at Espiritu Santo island in the Republic of Vanuatu (New Hebrides Islands) in the Archipelago. Bookout organized a crew of volunteers and daredevils to take on the mission, and during the next seven years spent one month at Espiritu each year, combing the island for clues of the missing plane.

 "We went into the jungles and made friends with the natives, who had a reputation for cannibalism in years gone by," Bookout said. "With the language barrier, we weren't sure what they meant when they invited us to dinner. "We were searching for a site which had been declared "non-recoverable' by the government at the time of the crash, and we coordinated our searches with the U.S. Army's Central Identification Laboratory Hawaiian Islands (CILHI)."

Bookout hired natives and systematically scanned the areas where the missing plane was thought to have crashed. They eventually visited 35 aircraft crash sites, all of which they reported to CILHI.

"This was not a walk in the park," Bookout said of his search missions. "There is no 911 to call, no emergency helicopter service, no major medical centers. Searching for lost airplanes in the jungle is both magnificently beautiful and terribly dangerous. And when you come upon an airplane, you never know what you're going to find. Wild pigs, dogs and other animals love living in these airplanes."

During the eighth year of the search, after two weeks and 50 miles through almost impenetrable jungle, one of the natives pointed to a huge patch of undergrowth and said, "Plen hemi faldon hea," which loosely meant, "Plane him he fall down here."

The F4U-1 had been found, along with the remains of Lt. Wayland Bennett.

"The U.S. Army has the assigned task of making these recoveries and they promptly came to the island and recovered not only Lt. Bennett, but a significant number of other "non-recoverable' KIAs and MIAs," Bookout said.

"We stumbled across 35 airplanes just on that island alone. I know where 1,600 more are located on New Guinea, and most of those are 10-men crews on B-17s and B-24s."

Bennett's remains were returned to a hero's welcome in Texarkana in September 1994.

"I was only one of the players in a large team of people who were involved in those searches," Bookout said. "This was not a one-man show and we were not trying to be "super stars.' The book tells the whole story."

Other book signings include: n 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. today with the Creative Writer's League at the YWCA, 3410 Magnolia St., Texarkana, Texas;

n 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday (Jan 14, 2001), at the Dixie Diner in Nash, Texas;

n 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Jan. 27, 2001, at Books-A-Million, 3501 Central Mall, Texarkana, Texas.

Update: August 1, 2013:
Hopefully, Dan's book can be found online, the only publishing company
I knew that sold the book is no longer in business.