Johnny Redivivus

To everyone who saw it, the body certainly looked like Guinn, John W., Private First Class, 53756082, U.S. Army. Two of the infantryman's buddies identified the corpse in a paddyfield near Chu Lai after a firefight with the Viet Cong. When morticians in the Elizabethton, Tenn., funeral home opened the casket last week, even Mrs. Blanche Guinn, 54, thought she recognized her 23-year-old son, despite the bandages that partially covered his face. She hung funeral wreaths, framed the telegram notifying her of his death along with a $25 money order he had mailed on the day of the battle, and slipped a watch intended for Christmas around the dead soldier's wrist. Only after the burial did Johnny Guinn come home--alive.

The ghoulish mix-up was unraveled by Guinn's uncle, William Adkins, who began to doubt his nephew's death when the family received a letter from him dated two days after he supposedly died. Adkins had the corpse exhumed; Army fingerprints showed that the dead soldier was not Guinn but a look-alike Kentuckian, Private First Class Quinn W. Tichenor, also 23 and also with the 4th Infantry. He had been killed just a quarter-mile from where Guinn was fighting.

The Army quickly pulled Guinn out of the line, had him back home 24 hours later for a post-Thanksgiving reunion with his family, where Mrs. Guinn fainted. Johnny later said bitterly: "I don't feel we have any business being over there, and most of the fellows in my outfit feel the same way." The most painful impact of death, of course, is on the survivors, and Survivor John Guinn--who has already died once in Viet Nam--will probably not have to go back. After a 30-day leave he will be reassigned to Fort Bragg, N.C. Meanwhile, Quinn Tichenor was taken to Louisville for reburial.

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