Solo (22 page)

It was as if I were in a very bad dream.

“Copy. Pull in your parachute, and remain stationary. If you’re under good cover, do not move to any other location.”

“Roger.”

My next job was to find him or Jingo 2-Bravo below. I needed to initiate a series of procedures that the SAR team would continue as soon as they arrived. But a very low cloud cover was over the general area where they’d bailed out—a big, flat white cloud way down there just above the ground. I knew that rows of mountains ran east-west under those clouds. And I knew we were in an area known for heavy antiaircraft artillery. The downed pilots
would be very difficult to find, since no one had seen them go in.

“Two-Alpha, can you give me your location?”

“Negative,” he whispered. “I’m not sure.”

“We’re going to get you out. Search and rescue is on the way and I’m coming down to find you. Do you know if Bravo is okay?”

“He bailed out. Yes, I think he’s okay.”

I called to the backseater, “Jingo Two-Bravo, how do you read? Over.”

No response.

“Alpha, can you hear my aircraft above you?”

He whispered, “That’s affirmative.”

I banked the aircraft and looked far below. The large, flat cloud was covering all the ground below me. I didn’t know the altitude of the cloud base—nor of the tallest mountain below, perhaps
in
the clouds.

“Greg, get your map out and tell me the highest elevation in the area below us.”

Using distant landmarks, I calibrated my position and then started a spiraling dive toward the flat cloud top. It was easy to see over the student from my high backseat. Our normal minimum altitude, forty-five hundred feet above the ground, was no longer a factor. I was about to descend to treetop level if necessary. Any precautions at all, any acting on fear of being shot at or shot down, was extinguished by those forces above me, watching. Two human beings were counting on me to save their lives. I was their only hope right now. There was only one thing to do:
to go down and try to find them, and when I found them, to try to understand the situation and quickly decide what to do next.

Suddenly, all through me ran a sense of fearlessness. The instinct to protect myself had lifted. Looking back, I see that, operating on some kind of strange, almost mad instinct, I would have died trying to save those guys. I do not see my actions as courageous. Rather, they were the only actions available. Doing anything else would have been more difficult than doing what I was doing.

“Thirty-four hundred feet is what I come up with,” said Greg. “That’s the top of the highest mountain in the grid below us.”

I was approaching the flat cloud top. I looked at my map. I had to see for myself. The elevation of the highest point of land in each map grid was printed on the map in the top right corner of that grid. Yes, the tallest mountain in the grid we were above appeared to be thirty-four hundred feet.

I continued my spiraling dive, making it more shallow.

“We’ll either break out below the clouds or we’ll start climbing back up at thirty-six hundred feet,” I said. The two hundred feet was insurance.

We entered the cloud above four thousand feet, and I kept my eyes glued to my instruments. We were descending slowly in a wide circle. Thirty-eight hundred feet, thirty-seven hundred. I slowly began to level the aircraft.

We were suddenly below the clouds. There under my wings was the jungle.

“Jingo Two-Alpha. Nail Two Three. How do you read?”

No response.

“Jingo Two-Alpha. How do you read? Over.”

A mountain stood between us and him. Either that, or troops were so close to him he could not talk. I looked all around, jinking my aircraft madly. I saw nothing but jungle. I climbed back into the clouds. If he was in another valley, he’d never hear my radio at low altitude.

“Nail Two Three, this is Sandy One Two. We’re a flight of two plus one. We’re proceeding to your area. We’re about fifteen minutes out.”

“Copy Nail Two Three.”

Sandy would be one of the two A-1Es with the Jolly Green Giant helicopter. The A-1Es were used on rescue missions because they were so tough and so difficult to shoot down, as mentioned earlier, in large part because of the relatively simple design of their operational systems. And because they were relatively slow and could turn sharply, there was less time between strikes than with jets. The helicopter was very large and heavily armored.

“Jingo Two-Alpha. Nail Two Three. How do you read? Jingo, Jingo. How do you read?”

Nothing.

We climbed back up through the clouds and got Jingo 2-Alpha on the radio about the time the Sandys arrived. He was whispering again. “I think my back is broken. I have enemy troops all around.”

Oh, God, I said to myself. Then I called, “Jingo, this is Nail. We just descended. Did you hear us close to you?”

“Negative.”

The Sandys were there. I briefed them on the situation
and turned the rescue mission over to them. The rescue helicopter was waiting several miles away. The plan was that the A-1Es would “neutralize” any resistance to a pickup of the pilot—after he was found—and then the helicopter would pick him up. If necessary, a paramedic would be lowered from the helicopter into the jungle to help the pilot. It’s more complicated, but that’s the overview.

Sandy called to Jingo, who answered, again whispering. He said he had a bunch of troops around him. I pictured him covered in brush, trying to hide, and I visualized gray-clad North Vietnamese troops—my mind would only handle images of personified evil. This is what the mind allows in a situation like this, and if the mind moves to positions of compromise, negotiation, or consensus, then death is invited, with open arms, into the house.

I had fuel, guns, and rockets and told Sandy Lead that I would hang around if I could be of assistance.

“Nail, we need to fly under the clouds and up some of those valleys down there to try to locate him. Join in as number three. Follow us in extended trail.”

Suddenly, AAA flak was going off all around us—a lot of it—apparently being shot into the air blindly from below the clouds. The two pilots had parachuted into a highly defended area.

Our flight of three started our descent, Sandy Lead first, his wingman, and then our OV-10 following, with a few hundred yards between each aircraft. We flew west of the cloud bank below us, then down to just above treetop level. We headed up a valley, mountains on either side. I remember
feeling almost as if I were underwater, in a new world, not the world I’d been viewing for months from a mile high. I looked for antiaircraft fire but saw none. Jingo had been instructed to tell us if we flew anywhere near him. I followed as the A-1Es started to climb back up above the clouds. As we were climbing, Jingo 2-Alpha’s voice came through my earphones. He was screaming. “I’m hit, I’m hit.” I could hear gunshots in the background. I pictured a caged rabbit, screaming. More gunshots. “I’m hit.” Silence. Grim knowledge seeped through me. I felt as if, without electricity, I’d been electrocuted. I felt hollow, placed in nontime. There was no color.

I was getting low on fuel. I informed Sandy that I was bingo. Greg and I returned to base without speaking. We found out that the A-1Es contacted the Bravo and that he too was whispering. Hidden and uninjured. The clouds stayed over the area for two days. Rescue teams stayed above the clouds constantly. After a day, Bravo could no longer be heard on radio, and several days later the search was discontinued. The clouds had not moved away. An informal search lasted several weeks. It was unsuccessful.

Recently I found out, through a Web search, that Jingo 2-Alpha has not been found, but that the backseater, Jingo 2-Bravo, was captured, served as a prisoner of war, and was released in 1973.

I
WAS FLYING
with a young pilot, Lieutenant Marty Carroll, on his first combat mission. I believe he was the grandson of an Air Force general, or perhaps a
son. I don’t recall. In any case I had the feeling that he was not happy doing what he was doing but that he was flying out of a sense of duty.

Over Mugia Pass, a highly defended area, we began taking antiaircraft fire.

“Sir,” he said, “would you take the aircraft for just a minute?”

“I have the aircraft.”

I banked to look for sources of fire, flashes from the ground at the base of an imaginary line of orange tracers, slowly coming from the ground up toward us. I looked into the front seat. Carroll was taking off a glove. He threw up into it, placed it on the floor of the aircraft, and then said, “I have the aircraft, sir.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yessir.”

After the mission, Carroll seemed upset, quiet.

He was reassigned. I never knew where he went, but I suspect he was unhappy flying combat and was able to get a transfer. If he requested to be relieved of combat duty, then he’s the only pilot I ever knew who did so.

D
ANNY
N
ICHOLS, FRESH
from pilot training in the States, became my student. I liked him immediately. I broke him in just as Captain Charles had broken me in. Danny’s call sign was Nail 16. He was freckle faced, easygoing, and eager to do well. He was also intelligent and a very good pilot. You could sense that he’d always been an A student, but he had a kind of mischievousness about
him that was winning. He was a joy to instruct, one of the best of our new young pilots.

Hoot, besides flying with Prairie Fire, was also an instructor for the Nail FACs, and he flew with Danny a few times.

Hoot recruited Danny for Prairie Fire. And on July 6, 1971, not long after he’d joined, he did not return from a mission. He was due back around 5:30 in the afternoon. By 6:30 those of us in the Nailhole and in headquarters knew that Nail 16 was overdue. Such tardiness was not unheard of. Sometimes a pilot lost hydraulics or electrical power, or even an engine, and diverted to another air base in Thailand. And several hours might pass before we got word.

I remember that I was in a headquarters briefing room, and high on the wall was a small speaker. I sat in a big, soft chair and listened. An announcement with the latest on Nail 16 came every thirty minutes to an hour. I stayed around for a long time to hear good news. It never came.

I learned later that Danny’s last radio call came at about 3:30, when he reported that the weather in his area was bad. I’ve learned since—on the Web—that “a source” reported seeing an OV-10 pilot as a prisoner in Laos a week or so after Danny was last heard from. Some reports say as many as six hundred pilots remain missing in Laos. Other reports say that that number is a consequence of faulty statistical analysis. In any case, many pilots apparently survived crashes and bailouts over Laos, never to be heard from again. A rumor during our combat time was that pilots captured in Laos were beheaded.

I’d begun to think to myself that the reason I flew was to protect my former Yokota roommate, Jim Butts, who was stationed at Da Nang Air Base in South Vietnam. Traditional reasons for warfare were wearing thin. A general feeling among us, though we never said it directly, was that we were losing. I heard rumors of pilots refusing to conduct reconnaissance over highly defended areas unless a strike was scheduled. My rationale for flying combat was that if I did not go out and do my job, then the supplies shipped down the Ho Chi Minh Trail might cause Jim harm or death.

When Danny didn’t return from his mission, I decided to write his parents to tell them how much I liked him and what a fine young man he was. It struck me hard: I’d known him well. I kept seeing his face. He was gone, and it was because of the war that he was gone. If we’d not been over there—and I was no longer able to believe we were
defending our country
—if we’d not been over there, Danny would not be missing and very probably dead. I did not have a sense that he had made a sacrifice for something more important than his own life. This was not the way things were supposed to be turning out. Before getting to SEA, I had believed that going to this war was right. After participating—listening, seeing, learning—I didn’t.

B
EFORE
I
ARRIVED IN
Southeast Asia, several pilots, prior to landing after their last flight, had put on high-speed, low-level air shows. Their tour was over. What could happen? Why not have a little fun? But one of the pilots from another squadron had attempted a low-level loop just before landing and had flown into the ground, killing himself.

The new policy: pilots on their final mission would have an observer along on the flight. The assumption was that the observer could prevent hotdogging. I took a tape recorder and a Super-8 camera on my last mission along with Bob, an O-2 pilot I’d never flown with.

The flight was like most flights except that awaiting me after landing was a bottle of champagne and a dousing with a fire hose from the flight line fire truck.

After several pilots had flown their last flight, a going-home party was held in a back room at the officer’s club. Everyone wore his party suit. The party suit was particular
to Southeast Asia, a tailor-made flight suit, black, decorated with an assortment of patches, in addition to our names over one chest pocket and a small OV-10 over the other. It was unofficial, paid for by the pilots. A pilot’s motorcycle jacket, I guess. All kinds of patches would be sewn on party suits—perhaps a map of Southeast Asia on the back, squadron emblems on the sleeves, a tiger, a flight school patch, and a personal patch commemorating a battle or an event or a flight school attended. (Some pilots wore pendants. One I remember was something like a peace symbol except that the symbol held the word
WAR
.) These suits were macho outfits, and most pilots seemed to enjoy wearing them.

I didn’t particularly like the party suits—I was never fully socialized into the “club”—so when I had mine made (at a tailor shop off base, where we all had our party suits made) I asked for no patches except for a small one on my left shoulder that said
BLUE PATCH
and a white one on my right that said
WHITE PATCH
. The tailor was puzzled. I have a photo of Hoot Gibson and me in our party suits at my going-away party. That must have been the night I told him about almost shooting him down.