The Ravens: The True Story of a Secret War (67 page)

These are the preliminary preparations for simulated carrier landings. The idea is to imitate bodily the perils of landing a jet on a carrier at night. A Raven takes a run toward the table from the far side of the room and dives onto it, attempting to keep between the lighted candles as he skids along a surface made slick by the melting ice. Two other Ravens take up positions at the far end of the tables, where they stretch Fred Platt’s cane about a foot and a half above the surface. This is the ‘snag,’ to catch the speeding body in the crick formed behind raised legs, before it hurtles off the end.

Newcomers to the practice are given the following advice: Don’t run too fast or you’ll break your legs on the edge of the table; don’t jump too hard or you’ll break your ribs when you land; for God’s sake remember to crick your legs as you speed along the surface or you’ll zip beneath the cane and brain yourself on the bar - best of luck.

There are accidents, and casualties. One Raven spins out of control and rockets off the side of the table, smacking his face on the floor in a crash landing. His bleeding wounds are bathed with whisky. H. Ownby attempts a landing blindfolded and runs into the corner of the table, and the pain is shared by onlookers, who let out a sympathetic groan. Fred Platt - who should not be participating in such an activity anyway because of his weak back - gathers such momentum as he screams down the length of the joined tables, that the cane fails to stop him and he knocks himself out on the bar.

As the carrier landings continue, a group of Ravens gather around a piano, played by Jim Roper, to sing selections from the Raven Song Book, a collection of violent and obscene ballads constituting the only publication of the Edgar Allan Poe Literary Society to date. Craig Morrison begs a light for his cigar, and Greg Wilson obligingly unzips the front of his party suit and sets fire to his chest. Morrison calmly draws on his cigar until it is alight, and Wilson smothers the crackling wall of flame moving up his torso with his left arm.

At the end of the evening when almost everyone is half or completely crocked, and the high spirits, acrobatics, and disco dancing have done their work, the Ravens sit in quiet groups and Jim Roper sets up his slide show - snapshots of a secret war. The lights are dimmed and the slides are projected onto the wall, accompanied by a synchronized soundtrack. The Ravens fall silent.

The soundtrack is made up of rock songs in vogue at the time, snatches of cheerful radio banter between Ravens and Hmong pilots, the rattle of a T-28’s machine guns, the scream of an F-4’s jet engine, and the dull boom of exploding bombs. The photos are of children on the ramp at Long Tieng, the dilapidated exterior of Madame Lulu’s Rendezvous des Amis, and the CIA bears receiving a can of beer through the bars of their cage. There are pictures of Hmong pilots in the cockpits of their fighters, the CAS guys in their golfing clothes, and paramilitary types loaded with weapons scowling into the camera. A rocket hurtles toward its target, smoke billows from a cave mouth, and napalm blazes orange against a green hillside. A flight of Skyraiders fire tracer across a blue sky, a T-28 drops in a vertical dive, while the Raven war-horse itself - the O-1 Bird Dog - hangs everywhere over Laotian landscapes of jungle valleys, river mists on the Mekong, and fantastic rock formations.

There is also a collection of portraits of Ravens, sitting in their planes or relaxing in the hootch, hamming it up for the camera. They all look so young. And occasionally there is a picture of a Raven who did not return: jaunty, smiling, seemingly immortal.

When the show is over Jim Roper begins to pack up his slide show. Most of the Ravens remain quiet, sunk into a nostalgic reverie that is tinged with sadness. The feeling throughout the room is that they would all go back in a heartbeat, but they probably wouldn’t - held back by family commitments, mortgages, and middle-aged spread.

They eventually drift back to the Carriage Inn where they wander in and out of one another’s rooms for a final drink. Late on Sunday they begin to straggle back to the O Club for another hungover breakfast, after which they bid each other farewell and go their separate ways. For another year, until the next reunion, everything fades once again into legend, a hazy, half-remembered war story known only to a few veterans of Vietnam.

‘The Ravens. Yeah, I remember - a weird bunch of guys who lived and fought out there in the jungle in the Other Theater somewhere. Hell, what was the name of the country?’

* * *

The surviving Ravens continue to stick together. The President of the Edgar Allan Poe Literary Society - their peacetime name - publishes a quarterly Newsletter to keep them informed. They continue to hold an annual reunion every year. October 2011 marked the 40th reunion and they again gathered at Randolph Air Force Base, in San Antonio, Texas, where the first one was held in 1972. Over the last few years, the Ravens have organized and manage a charity fund. The bulk of the money goes into a scholarship fund for the descendants of the Lao and Hmong troops they fought alongside. Donations are also made regularly to other charities supporting the wounded warriors of today and their families. The Ravens have also reprinted a hard-cover edition of this book. For further details on the Ravens, to purchase a copy of the book, or to donate to their charities, check the Ravens website,
www.ravens.org
.

Acknowledgments

The source for the greater part of this book has been the Ravens themselves. Their agreement to cooperate - on the understanding that the author should have complete freedom to write what he wanted as long as the Ravens were allowed to review the manuscript for factual errors - resulted in hundreds of hours of interviews. None of the Ravens received payment, although the author has agreed to contribute a tithe of the book’s earnings toward the Edgar Allan Poe Literary Society’s refugee fund.

It has been necessary to be brutally selective in telling the story, which could have run into several volumes if each individual Raven had been given his due. The author decided it could best be told by following the experiences of those Ravens posted to work with Gen. Vang Pao in Military Region II.

Space and continuity forbid a description of the Ravens’ activities in the other theaters of war that ran concurrently in Laos. The author recognizes that this is grossly unfair to those men who served in other military regions during different periods of the war, and the resulting lacunae have meant that some Ravens, who might have warranted a book to themselves in other circumstances, have received short shrift or not been mentioned at all: Frank Birk, for example, who was stationed at Luang Prabang, and whose heroic rescue of a CIA team cut off to the north of the Chinese Road and given up as lost deserved the Air Force Cross (he was hit forty-three times by ground fire during his tour as a Raven, and in one case took more than twenty hits when the glass and radios were shot up in his O-1, the fire extinguisher blew up in the Backseater’s face, and one gas tank exploded, ripping the wing three inches out of the fuselage - but he flew the plane back to base); or Al Dairies, the teetotal Mormon also posted to Luang Prabang, who impressed the Air Commando site commander as the bravest pilot he had ever known.

And while the panhandle of Laos was known as a country-club posting during the early years of the war, there were periods of intense battle and Ravens were killed there throughout. Early Ravens, like Bill Sweeney and Huey P. O’Neal, who served in the panhandle, certainly saw their share of action and might justifiably wonder where the ‘country club’ was - while later in the war the panhandle became the worst area of all. In Laos everything is relative and needs to be qualified.

The account here is not about the bravest or the best Ravens, but about the sort of men they were and the type of war they fought. A definitive history would have to include many more names than is possible in this book. For example, John Swanson is cited by his peers as the most competent FAC of his period; or the quiet and self-effacing Ed Chun, who is mentioned only briefly, is unreservedly acknowledged to be a pilot of exceptional skill, quite apart from his three thousand hours of combat flying. ‘I’ve got to admit it,’ one Raven said grudgingly, ‘he’s even better than me.’

Research has been an exercise in piecing together a large, faded jigsaw, of which many of the pieces have been lost forever. Recounting recent history is always a treacherous exercise, and even participants and eyewitnesses are subject to the inevitable distortions of time and memory. And then there is the transmutation from reality to war story, as anecdotes are polished and retold. Great pains have been taken to avoid the excesses and exaggerations to which a book based on first-person accounts is vulnerable. Details of events have been cross-checked with as many people taking part as possible, as well as with whatever declassified documents are available. Many of the Ravens spent a large amount of their time alone in the cockpits of their planes over remote jungle, but smuggled their small, green notebooks recording strike information, bomb damage assessment, hours logged each day, and so on, out of Laos with them. These have proved invaluable
aide-memoires
and kept people honest.

The author - who is not a pilot, has been unable to visit the areas of Laos described in this book, and has never been to war-was obliged to go back to basics in his research. Ravens who spent hours answering his endless questions

about flying and the art of being a forward air controller include Craig Morrison, who as president of the Edgar Allan Poe Literary Society helped locate Ravens scattered around the world; Fred Platt, who drove the author all over Texas to interview colleagues; Michael Cavanaugh, who gave the author valuable pointers at the Alfred F. Simpson Historical Research Center, Maxwell Air Force Base, Montgomery, Alabama, the staff of which extended patient and courteous assistance throughout; and Karl Polifka, who gave the author help at the Historical Research Branch, Center of Military History, the Pentagon, Washington, D.C.

Ravens other than those mentioned above who reviewed the manuscript for accuracy include Michael Byers, Craig Duehring, Al Galante, Carl Goembel, Jim Hix, Tom Richards, Jim Roper, Larry Sanborn, and Bill Williams.

Other Ravens interviewed by the author include Jim Baker, Victor Bonfiglio, Art Cornelius, Mark Diebolt, Jack Drummond, Robert Foster, Gerald Greven, Lew Hatch, Melville Hart, Charles Jones, Frank Kricker, John Mansur, Harold Mesaris, Douglas Mitchell, H. Ownby, John Wisniewski, Ron Rinehart, Don Service, Jack Shaw, Tom Shera, Michael Stearns, Chad Swedberg, Richard Welch, Darrel Whitcomb, Greg Wilson, and Tom Young.

Others who kindly granted an interview include ambassadors William Sullivan and G. McMurtrie Godley HI; air attaché Col. (ret.) Paul ‘Pappy’ Pettigrew and assistant air attaché Col. (ret.) William Keeler; Air Commandos Brig. Gen. Harry ‘Heinle’ Aderholt, Lt. Col. (ret.) Wayne Landen, Lt. Col. (ret.) Howard Hartley, and Lt. Col. (ret.) Robert Zimmerman; former Air America personnel Jack ‘90’ Knotts, David Kouba, and Stanley Wilson; and CM. Sgt. Patrick Mahoney.

Valuable background information was provided by T. D. Alhnan; Asa Baber; Douglas Blaufarb; Jane Merritt Brown; Dr. Yang Dao; Alan Dawson; Ed Dearborn, Continental Air Services; Arthur Dommen; Jinny St. Goar; Col. Martin Kaufman, USAF; the late C.A.S. Helseth, Commander China Post 1; Douglas Hulcher, Institute of Foreign Policy Analysis, and, American Refugee Committee; Col. (ret.) Tom Henry, Green Berets; A. R. Isaacs; Dr. Gene Kirkley, USAF medic at Long Tieng; Leon LaShomb, secretary of the Air America Club; Prince Mangkhra Phouma; Paul and Helen McClosicey; Thomas Powers; H. Ross Perot; Lt. Col. (ret.) John Clark Pratt, USAF Project CHECO; Sir Robert Thompson; Don Schanche; Col. Jack Schlight, Office of Air Force History, the Pentagon; the late Robert Six, Continental Air Services; Calvin Trillin; the late Col. Roger Trinquier; and Monsieur et Madame Max Varner.

I would also like to thank my literary agent in New York, Jane Cushman, for her support throughout; my editor at Crown, James O’Shea Wade, for his work on the manuscript; and my in-house critic and confidante, Mary Agnes Donoghue, without whom this book would not have been possible.

The Ravens

Wayne T Abbey

Robert L Abbott Jr

Walter E Ackerlund

Henry L Allen

Ernest B Anderson

William W Angliss

John J Bach III

James D Baker

Charles D (Bing) Ballou

Danny L Berry

Frank Tifton Birk

Robert M Blackman Jr

William M Blaesing

Victor J Bonfiglio

Craig S Bradford

Charles W Brewer

Park George Bunker

Joseph K Bush Jr

Michael Rhett Butler

John M Byers

James E Cain

Don Carlisle

John Leonard Carroll

Terry M (Moose) Carroll Jr

Michael E Cavanaugh

Randall J Chenevey

Joseph L Chestnut

Edmund BW Chun

James E Cochran

Jimmie L C Coombes

Arthur B Cornelius

James E Cross

Alan R Daines

Roger W Daisley

Timothy E Danforth

Peter K W Dan

John A Davidson II