Missing in Action was mostly Phantom pilots that went down in areas where the NVA got to them before rescue did....or entire squads that got captured or troops separated and grabbed during combat.....tunnel rats that got lost etc.
I've meet Hal Moore he'd blow his brains out if he abandoned a wounded man...and I'm a history minor, with a penchant for russian civil war 1917-1923 formation of the рсфср...also US industrial revolution and WWII.
So I will be happy to review these cases where field officers abandoned wounded to save their own skins...
John MastersDuring the Second World War, British Army officer John Masters served primarily in Burma fighting the Japanese. In his 1961 memoir, The Road Past Mandalay, he described a wrenching decision he had to make in May 1944 while commanding a brigade in northern Burma that was about to be overrun by a larger Japanese force. His unit had previously cared for and evacuated all of its sick and injured men, through extremely challenging terrain and weather. But now it lacked enough healthy men, horses and mules to safely withdraw all of its wounded: some would have to be left behind. So Masters ordered 19 of those in the worst condition, whom his medical officer judged to be near death, to be put to death immediately rather than abandoned to die of their wounds or at the hands of their captors. All of those men who were still conscious were given morphine before being shot (Masters 1961, 253-4)
