Hamfist Over the Trail (6 page)

Navigation was different. Unlike the Florida panhandle, there were precious few roads in this area marked on the charts. And, also unlike Florida, where it was sea level pretty much everywhere, the terrain elevation around Phan Rang varied immensely. The only way to determine terrain elevation was to read the notations on the contour lines on the chart showing elevation in meters. The accuracy and safety of the fighter aircraft we would be controlling in real airstrikes would depend upon me providing the exact elevation, in feet, of the target.

To determine the elevation of the target, in feet, I would need to multiply the elevation in meters by three, then add ten percent. It doesn't sound so hard to do this in your head at groundspeed zero, but it's a different story altogether trying to do it in an airplane that's being tossed around by thermal air currents rising from the hot jungle floor, clearing the skies for other aircraft, reading the tiny print on the aeronautical chart, listening to up to three communications radios and watching for enemy ground fire. I started out doing pretty badly, but eventually got the hang of it.

We had a training flight every day, lasting about three hours, and then pretty much had the rest of the day off. Usually, we'd all get together at the Officers Club after the day's flying. The O'Club was situated on a hill, and had a great veranda overlooking the runway. For the brief time we were going to be at Phan Rang, we decided, we'd all get together at the O'Club every day at dinner time and sit on the veranda, drink beer and grade the landings of the F-100s that were coming back from combat missions.

The F-100 jocks, we found out, weren't even active duty pilots. They were from the Colorado Air National Guard, and had been called up for duty in Vietnam. I could visualize it: one day they're having dinner with their families in Denver, the next day they're flying halfway around the world to go to war. All of a sudden, I had a lot more respect for Air National Guard troops.

One of the big adjustments was getting used to the constant, unrelenting sound of artillery fire. Apparently, Phan Rang Air Base sat fairly close to an artillery base, and Phan Rang was in the line of fire of most of the artillery rounds. Every few minutes we'd hear a loud bang, and then what sounded like a jet plane flying low over our heads. A few seconds later we'd hear the explosion, perhaps 20 miles away. The old-timers on the base said we'd get used to it after a while.

“It's just like the way New Yorkers get used to the sound of the elevated trains that go by their apartments,” remarked an IP.

During the brief time I was at Phan Rang, I never did get used to it.

And I was still way too new to get used to hearing about someone getting shot down.

On about our fourth day at Phan Rang, I was scheduled for a late afternoon flight, but when I showed up at Operations, the flight had been cancelled.

The Operations Officer, Major Anderson, pulled me aside. “You were scheduled to fly with Captain Jackson in aircraft 663, but he didn't come back from his flight this morning, so we don't have an airplane or IP for you today. We'll get you rescheduled tomorrow.”

“What about Captain Jackson? Who was he flying with? Do we know where they went down?” I had a million questions, and I was more than a little upset with how blasé he was.

“We have several birds in the area looking for any signs of where they might have gone down, but it's pretty hard to spot anything in triple-canopy jungle. We never got a distress call, and there are no beepers. They just didn't come back, and we checked with nearby bases, and they didn't recover at any of the nearby fields.” He rifled through a sheaf of papers, then said, “His student was a Lieutenant Mitchell. Friend of yours?”

It hit me like a ton of bricks. Mitch was down!

17

December 29, 1968

I felt really sick about Mitch going down. What really made me feel awful was that I had just never even gotten to know him. Here we'd been room-mates for over a month, and I didn't even know anything about him. He was just some stranger who showed up in my life and just as quickly disappeared, and I had acted like he didn't even exist. What the hell was the matter with me?

I decided then and there that I would try to really get to know the guys I hung around with. Not necessarily cherish them, but appreciate their individuality. Each was unique, and I wanted to discover that uniqueness. Some were still going to be assholes, but they would be assholes with unique qualities.

I actually got a chance to know Mitch a bit more, in a roundabout way.

The day after Mitch went down, Major Anderson called me back into his office.

“I've been told you were Mitch's room-mate.”

“Well, sir, I was,” I replied. “Back at Hurlburt we shared a VOQ apartment.”

“Okay, then. You'll be his Summary Courts Officer.”

“Uh, sir,” I stammered, “what's a Summary Courts Officer?”

“You'll be cleaning up Lieutenant Mitchell's personal affairs. You'll make contact with his next-of-kin...”

I froze. “You mean I have to tell his next-of-kin?” I asked incredulously.

“No, no. The Chaplain's office at the base closest to his home of record will do that. Your job is to sort through his mail, see who he's been corresponding with, advise them that you'll be handling his personal affairs. If he owes any money, you'll have access to his bank account to make any payments.”

“I'll have access to his
bank account
?”

“As soon as the Staff Judge Advocate signs the SCO orders. Also, you'll need to ship all of his belongings back to his next-of-kin. I don't see a wife listed here. Did he have a girlfriend?”

“Well, sir, I didn't really know him all that well. We pretty much kept to ourselves at Hurlburt.” I could feel Major Anderson's eyes drilling into me.

“You know, Lieutenant, you're an FNG, so I'll spell things out for you.” As soon as he said “FNG” he saw the puzzled look on my face. “Fucking New Guy. It usually takes an FNG a while to catch on, so I'm going to help you out.”

“Despite what you may have seen in that bullshit John Wayne movie, we're not here to help the brave and valiant people of Vietnam repel Communist aggression. We're not keeping the world safe for democracy. We're not preventing the yellow hordes from invading our country. We're only here for one thing: we're here for each other. We pay attention to what's going in each other's lives, and we do whatever is necessary to help hold up a guy when he's about to fall down.”

“Other than our families,” he continued, “the people back in the States don't give a shit what goes on here. The fucking anti-war hippies will be spitting on you when you go back home. So we,” he gestured toward the flight line, “are your family.”

“One other thing, Lieutenant,” he added, “I could see by the look in your face yesterday that you thought the world should come to a screeching halt when Bongo 33 went down.”

“Well, sir,” I answered, “Back at Laughlin we had an aircraft accident in our sister squadron, and the wing had a safety stand-down for two days.”

“We've got a war on here, Lieutenant, and it doesn't stop every time we lose a man. For your information, I added three additional sorties last night to fly over the Area of Operations where Bongo 33 was assigned. They orbited the AO for the entire night, listening for beepers or to see if either of the pilots would come up on Guard frequency. But that AO is the size of Delaware. And it's covered by triple-canopy jungle. For all I know, they could've gone down five miles from the base perimeter and we still wouldn't know it. But we're doing the best we can.”

“I understand, sir. I'm going to do the SCO job to the best of my ability.” I was hoping he noticed that I caught on to the abbreviation “SCO”.

“Good,” he responded. “One more thing. When did you go to Clark?”

“Uh,” I answered, “I'm not sure who Clark is.”

“Wait a minute! Are you telling me you haven't been to snake school?” The veins on his neck were starting to standing out.

“Sir, I really don't understand.”

“Goddam it!” Major Anderson was yelling now. “It's the Pacific Air Forces Jungle Survival School at Clark Air Base, in the Philippines. If you haven't been there, it means Mitchell didn't go there, either! So, none of the pilots in your class have been to snake school, right?”

I nodded in agreement. To be honest, I still wasn't really sure what he was talking about.

“That means none of you have been taught a goddam thing about your survival vests. You don't know how to use your URC-64, you don't know how to use your flares, you don't know how to use the tree-lowering device. Do you even know how to use your goddam parachute?”

“Well, sir, we had ejection seat instruction in pilot training.”

He was now apoplectic. “We don't have fucking ejection seats, Lieutenant!”

He picked up the telephone on his desk and dialed a number. While he waited for someone to answer, he motioned for me to be seated. I didn't realize until just then that I'd been standing at attention this whole time.

“Hi, Carol, let me speak to the boss.” He was no longer yelling. “Hello Colonel, this is Major Anderson, from FAC-U. We've got fourteen Lieutenants from Hurlburt Class 68-55 who got here without snake school.” He paused and listened intently.

“Yes, sir,” he continued, “I'm certain Lieutenant Mitchell didn't go, either.” He looked at me for confirmation, and I nodded. “Yes, sir. Right away, sir.” He hung up the phone and dialed another number. “Sarge, I need you to get these 13 remaining FNGs to snake school ASAP. Tomorrow. Make it happen.”

He hung up the phone and leveled his gaze at me. “Lieutenant, you are now a proud DG of FAC-U.”

I was puzzled. We were supposed to get three more flights. And my performance in calculating spot elevations certainly didn't qualify me for Distinguished Graduate.

“You're done graduated, along with everyone else in your class. Whatever you didn't learn here, you'll learn out in the field. I'll be damned if I let anyone else get his ass shot down without knowing how to use his survival equipment. You'll all be leaving for Clark tomorrow.”

“And Lieutenant,” he continued, “You're still Lieutenant Mitchell's SCO, so I suggest you get on it right away. Dismissed!”

18

December 30, 1969

The previous day had been a blur. The FAC-U admin clerk had given me a Summary Court Officer packet containing a very comprehensive checklist, along with contact information for the Mortuary Affairs Office.

I called the MAO and they explained in detail what I would need to do for Mitch. I would have 45 days to complete all the required duties, they said. When I told them I only had the rest of the day, they pretty much flipped out.

“It can't be done in one day,” screamed the Mortuary Affairs Officer. “For one thing, you need to go through Lieutenant Mitchell's hold baggage that was sent on to DaNang.”

He was right, of course. I gave it the old college try for the rest of the day. Fortunately, there wasn't much for me to do with the limited personal effects Mitch had brought to Phan Rang. There were no letters, since we our mail hadn't caught up with us yet, so I had no idea who Mitch's correspondents were.

I found his checkbook in his A-4 bag, along with his camera. I held onto those, and inventoried and packed up the rest of his stuff and took the box to the MAO. They said that, under the circumstances, with my leaving for Clark the next day, they would take care of shipping the box to Mitch's next-of-kin.

I'd have to wait until I got to DaNang and looked through Mitch's hold baggage to see what else I needed to do.

I noticed that the camera had a half-finished roll of film in it, and I rewound and removed the roll and took it to the Base Photo Lab. When I explained that I would be leaving the next day, they put in a rush order and had the film developed later the same day.

It was a damn good thing I had the film processed. When I looked at the prints, I saw a selection of photos of our travels since leaving Travis Air Force Base. There was a picture of the Travis terminal, a few photos of the inside of the World Airways DC-8 we had flown in on, a picture of the ramp at Hickam, and a photo of the long line on the tarmac at Ton Son Nhut where we had waited for in-processing.

And then I saw the photos that, if I had left the film in the camera, would have devastated Mitch's family if they ever saw them.

At Phan Rang, like every other air base in Vietnam, there was an “airplane graveyard” alongside the runway. We had all visited and looked at the wrecked planes that had either crashed or been shot down and later retrieved. One of the crashed airplanes was an O-2. As a joke, Mitch had posed for photos on the O-2, like he had just stumbled out of the crashed airplane. He had made a face like he was in pain in all the photos, and in one of the pictures he was hanging out of the cockpit window. That type of joking around was emblematic of the gallows humor that would punctuate our entire time in Vietnam. It had already been pretty much standard for somebody to say, “Hey, if you don't make it back, can I have your stereo gear?” every time a pilot left on a mission. I guess it was the equivalent of “Break a leg” that they say to an actor before he goes on stage. But that kind of humor would sound terrible when taken out of context.

I immediately destroyed the negatives and prints. Yeah, it was a damn good thing I had gotten the film developed.