Racing Back to Vietnam

by John Pendergrass

  Since all the aircraft flew blacked out, I quickly learned that the darkest spot in the world is over the Ho Chi Minh Trail at night. The Spectre had a small, shielded rotating beacon on the top that we could see but which was invisible to the people on the ground. The gunship orbited high above the target in a pylon turn, going around two hundred miles per hour. We flew about six thousand feet above the Spectre, trying to stay to the right and back of the gunship, ready to roll in on a target. If the Spectre encountered AAA, it would move off the target and clear the fighter in on the guns. The F-4s usually carried cluster bomb units (CBUs) that were very effective against AAA.

  During the Vietnam War, the tactics used by gunships and their fighter escorts changed over time. The number of fighter planes, the use of flares, and the type of ordnance varied as both sides adapted and tried to gain an advantage.

  Whoever designed the F-4 Phantom did a poor job on the ergonomics. In an F-4, you were solidly anchored in the cockpit by an assortment of hoses, wires, belts, and harnesses. Calf garters held your lower extremities snugly to prevent them from flailing about during an ejection. You could barely move your legs at all, and couldn’t even dream about crossing them. Things were tolerable for a quick day mission over the Trail—something that rarely exceeded an hour and a half—but after four hours or more in the backseat on a night mission, I felt as if someone would need to pry me out when we landed. As the mission dragged on, you’d scoot about on your seat, squirming to find a comfortable spot, trying to ignore your sore rear end while remaining focused on your job.

  The INS, which was the main navigation system we used to link up with the gunship, could sometimes be a mile or two off, so after about thirty minutes in the air, I always tried to crosscheck the TACAN range and bearing heading. This usually meant unfolding and checking my maps, always a struggle in the dark—the lights in the cockpit were kept dim to stay dark-adapted. The only light available was a small bulb on a gooseneck arm that illuminated a small field of vision, only a few inches of a huge map.

  Spatial disorientation was a big threat at night. The pilot had to divide his attention between the target on the ground, the bombsight, and his cockpit instruments. When he rolled in on a target, I would call out the altitude and dive angle as we headed into a dark abyss with no visual reference point.

  Making this more dangerous was the mountainous terrain of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. . We always briefed staying well above the highest peak in the neighborhood, and I would repeatedly check the map to find the highest elevation nearest our target. We often heard that the maps of Laos had been made by the French decades ago and weren’t completely accurate. I don’t know if that was true or not, but just the rumor of error was enough to concern me.

  I almost always came back from a day mission in an F-4 excited. There was a spring in my step as I dropped my gear off and debriefed. I had had the great thrill of tagging along in combat in the world’s best fighter aircraft. Night missions were different. After a night mission, I was just glad to have found my way home in the dark. I was exhausted, mentally and physically. I had no room for a sense of satisfaction. I wanted nothing more in life than a couple of beers and a soft bed.

  It was a dark and dangerous world at night over the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Our wing lost several planes during my tour on night missions. I could only admire the men in my squadron who rose to the challenge.

  THIRTEEN

  PRISONERS OF WAR

  February 18, 2014

  George Robert Hall—my friend, neighbor, and hero—died today. He lived a full eighty-three years, seven and a half of which were spent in the prisons of North Vietnam.

  On September 27, 1965, Hall’s RF-101 was shot down near Hanoi. At the time, George Robert was based at Okinawa Air Base, but had been sent on temporary duty (TDY) to Udorn Royal Thai Air Base in Thailand. In one of those cruel twists of fate, he had finished his TDY assignment but was held over to fly a few more missions.

  The Rolling Thunder Air Campaign had been going on for around six months. The idea was to gradually increase the bombing of North Vietnam until Ho Chi Minh came to his senses and decided to negotiate an end to the war. Rather than use the full might of American air power, as his military advisors recommended, President Johnson put in place heavy-handed restrictions at the very beginning of the campaign. Obvious targets like North Vietnamese airfields and ports were left untouched. The military had little voice in the tactics used. Lyndon Johnson and his Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara selected the time and the targets—a task for which they proved to be ill-suited.

  Once the target had been selected, a strike package of fighter-bombers would run a gauntlet of AAA and SAMs to hit the target, all the while watching for Russian-made MiG fighters.

  After the targets were struck, it was essential to know the extent of the damage. Was it “mission accomplished,” or did the fighters need to come back another day? To answer that question, an unarmed jet aircraft with no fighter escort and little chance of search and rescue would fly straight and level over the targets and take photos of the bomb damage. It is difficult to imagine a more dangerous mission.

  Hall was part of a two-ship photoreconnaissance mission tasked with assessing the damage to two bridges south of Hanoi that had been struck earlier in the day. Flying just two hundred feet off the ground at nearly six hundred miles an hour, his aircraft was hit by ground fire. Hall was just three minutes from the South China Sea. Since the U.S. Navy owned the South China Sea, he very likely would have been rescued if he could have made it there before ejecting. Unfortunately, Hall’s aircraft broke in half; he pulled the handle on his ejection seat, blacked out, and came to on the ground surrounded by North Vietnamese.

  Thus began a seven and a half year ordeal of torture and deprivation. Hall was initially listed as Missing in Action (MIA), as is the case except in very clear-cut incidences of capture or death. His wingman had seen a chute, but wasn’t sure if it was Hall’s or the drag chute from the plane. Most of Hall’s squadron mates thought he was dead. Sixteen months passed before his family learned that he was a Prisoner of War (POW). It would be another three and a half years before they received their first letter from him.

  The early years in prison were the worst. Hall was beaten and starved, losing nearly sixty pounds. Two meals of weak broth and three cigarettes was the North Vietnamese idea of a daily ration. Looking back, this should come as no surprise; the North Vietnamese had a long history of treating their prisoners brutally. Less than a third of the French troops captured during the First Indochina War survived captivity.

  The POWs, mostly Air Force, Navy, and Marine officers, were an intelligent, resourceful, imaginative group that followed a strict code of conduct that required you to resist by all means available and to disclose as little information as possible. This code of conduct was deadly serious business that I was exposed to often in my Air Force career. We studied the POW experience and our obligations under the code of conduct both at flight surgeon school and at JSS. I was even tested on the code of conduct at Da Nang before I was allowed to fly in combat.

  In the Vietnam War, most of the POWs were well-educated, highly motivated volunteers who, by and large, performed honorably in captivity. The POWs had an elaborate command structure with the officer in charge based on the rank at the time of capture. A creative tap code was used to communicate with other prisoners. Today, most of the POWs cite good leadership and the ability to communicate as having been essential factors in their survival.

  As the war progressed, conditions did improve for the POWs, thanks in part to pressure from the Nixon administration and the National League of Families of Prisoners of War (later called the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia). Letters and packages began to be permitted on a limited basis. The POWs conducted classes to stay mentally sharp (Hall taught French to other POWs) and tried as much as possible to stay physically fit, a difficult task when most of your day is spent in a
prison cell.

  Sometimes I was forced to confront the possibility of becoming a POW. Midway through my tour at Da Nang, I got a call at the dispensary to report to wing headquarters for a mandatory briefing. We were all herded into a room, the doors were locked, and security guards were posted outside. We were briefed on a secret ink technique used to send messages on letters and packages arriving and leaving the POW camps. It seemed like a scene from a bad James Bond movie. I listened carefully and hoped I’d never need to use the information. The POWs were men we all admired, but I didn’t want to join them.

  In a fighter squadron, little time is spent talking about the bad things that might happen. The threat of becoming a POW was real, but the men who flew every day accepted the risk as part of their job. Between Christmas and New Year’s of 1971, our wing was sent over North Vietnam, but this was the exception during my tour—most of our missions were over the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos. We knew that Search and Rescue (SAR) prospects were much better over the Trail than in the North. If you were shot down, you had a good chance of being picked up in Laos. If you were captured, your chances of surviving and becoming a POW were greater in North Vietnam. Not many airmen captured in Laos became POWs; few survived to come home.

  When the first group of POWs came home in early 1973, it was one of the great days of my life. Their fate was always in the back of my mind, and many in the United States felt the same way. By war’s end, the POW/MIA issue had been at forefront of American society for several years. We flew the POW/MIA flag. People with different beliefs about the war wore bracelets with the name of a POW, the bracelets were a bandage for a divided nation. Most Americans wanted our POWs returned, as well as a full accounting of the MIA.

  In wartime, the role of the hero usually falls to the fighter aces, the men who shot down five or more enemy aircraft. In Vietnam, it wasn’t until 1972, late in the conflict, that America had its first ace. In an unpopular war, the POWs became our rallying point, the focus of our celebration. They were given the honor and respect they deserved.

  George Robert Hall once compared the POW experience to the challenge of flying: hours and hours of boredom mixed with moments of sheer terror. The terror as a POW may have been episodic, but the pain and loneliness, as well as the boredom, were a near constant. The POWs devised any number of strategies to cope with the monotony of prison life.

  One way Hall passed his better days was by “playing golf.” Part of a family of notable golfers, George Robert was captain of the U.S. Naval Academy golf team. He grew up in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and spent much of his time on the links at the Hattiesburg Country Club. George Robert had played all over the world, but the eighteen holes in Hattiesburg were his home course; he knew every inch of the links. As he described in his memoir Commitment to Honor, golf provided a momentary mental escape from life in a prison camp.

  Each day, Hall would mentally leave his prison cell in North Vietnam and arrive at the country club, always taking time to greet his fellow golfers by name. These men were his lifelong buddies; sometimes he would decide to join them for lunch, and on other occasions he would visit a bit with the golf pros before hitting the links.

  At the make-believe first tee, Hall would swing a stick that he had sneaked past the guards, knocking the imaginary ball a full two hundred and forty yards down the middle of the fairway. He would then walk a brisk two hundred and forty steps in his cell before hitting his second shot. Maybe it was the spot for a seven iron, perhaps a wedge was called for. Hall knew the layout well, he always chose the correct club, his swing was flawless, and he never lost a ball.

  And so it went. Nine holes in the morning, nine holes in the afternoon. The conditions were perfect: there was no grass that needed mowing, no children to pick up, and he never missed a day because of rain.

  George Robert Hall, a scratch golfer in real life, was as steady as they come. He never had the pleasure of a birdie or the frustration of a bogie while in prison. Every single round he shot was even par.

  George Robert Hall was a genuine hero to the people of Hattiesburg, who knew him simply as “George Robert.” I first met him in the early 1980s when he finished his Air Force career and returned to Hattiesburg to work. It took a long time for me to call him anything other than “Colonel Hall.”

  We sometimes talked about flying in Vietnam, but I was careful not to go where I didn’t belong. Anyone who has flown fighters in wartime shares a certain bond based on respect, but I knew I had no license to probe into that dark period of his life.

  When the issue of POWs came up, George Robert was very precise about the length of his captivity. If someone said he was in prison for around five years, he would correct them: it was seven and a half years. If the issue of POWs came up at all, it was usually when George Robert was praising one of his fellow prisoners. He held Everett Alvarez, one of the first POWs, in particularly high esteem.

  George Robert Hall once wrote that, throughout his life, he had attempted to be honorable, polite, truthful, and fair. I think he achieved his goals.

  And I think the same can be said for almost all the American POWs.

  FOURTEEN

  I CORPS MEDICAL

  SOCIETY

  1971–1972

  When the U.S. military divided the country of South Vietnam into four regions—or corps, as they were called—someone made the decision to use Roman numerals to designate each zone. As a result, there was I Corps in the north, II Corps next, then III Corps, and finally IV Corps in the Mekong Delta area of the south. (These last three corps were known as “Two,” “Three,” and “Four” corps, but I Corps was always pronounced “eye” corps.)

  Da Nang was in I Corps—the region closest to the DMZ.

  Approximately every three months, as many physicians as possible would gather at China Beach for the I Corps Medical Society meeting. Even though the U.S. ground troops were being gradually withdrawn from Vietnam, I Corps still had a heavy medical presence. These were men from the Air Force, Army, Navy, and Marines, plus a few civilians. Our society included specialists from the field hospitals, battalion surgeons, general medical officers, and flight surgeons; any physician was welcome to attend. Few of the physicians were career types; most were like me, serving their two to four years of active duty, waiting to go back to the U.S. for further training or private practice.

  Each time we all met, it was like a homecoming. You saw people you knew from medical school, internship, flight surgeon school, or from a previous military assignment. The medical world is different from the military world. These folks spoke your language; the conversation revolved around medical issues, rather than military ones. No one stood on formality, there was no saluting—it was like being back in the real world.

  For much of the war, China Beach (along with Vung Tau in the South) was an in-country rest and recuperation (R & R) center. After serving ninety days in-country, military personnel were eligible for three days of in-country R & R. For the troops in the bush, China Beach was like heaven, a welcome respite from the unpleasantness of war. After spending weeks in the field, the soldier got a clean bed, decent food, swimming, surfing, and plenty of time to drink beer. The beachfront was nearly a mile long, and the center was able to host over two hundred people at a time, usually enlisted men.

  When I arrived at Da Nang in April 1971, the withdrawal of American ground troops was well underway, and by the fall of that same year, most of the combat infantrymen and Marines were gone. As a result, China Beach had faded a bit; it had a bare-bones glamour, just an old beach house with a decent restaurant remained. The beaches and the waters of the South China Sea were a marked improvement over the dirt, heat, and noise of Da Nang, but China Beach was nothing like it appeared in the television series from the late 1980s. The place had seen better days.

  At our society meetings everyone would first gather for a nice meal, often prawns. The very large prawns of Vietnam had a thick, fibrous texture with little flavor, but compared to the usual me
ss hall cuisine, they were a delicious treat. One of the members would give a presentation about a pertinent medical topic, followed by case presentations. It was a lot like the grand rounds we had all experienced as medical students and residents.

  After the medical program was finished, the waitresses would bring the checks. This was back in the days when drug companies would often sponsor medical education, treating physicians to lavish meals and accommodations while promoting their new drugs. Sadly, this cherished custom never quite made it to Vietnam. Inevitably, someone would go on the PA system and announce, “Is there a drug representative in the house, please report to China Beach stat.” We would all laugh and bemoan the fact that with no generous drug rep in sight to pick up the tab, we had to pay for our own meals. I think that physicians, more than anyone else in the military, were able to find that touch of irony that often puts the war in perspective.

  As the evening progressed, the I Corps Medical Society inevitably transitioned into the I Corps Drinking Society. Drinking beer while discussing medical topics seemed to somehow legitimize the drink. Everyone would talk about where they were going to go and what they were going to do when they left Vietnam. We’d compare our present jobs and working conditions, lament the lack of equipment and facilities, and denounce the many senseless military regulations. Most everyone was anxious to leave Vietnam and move on to the next phase in our lives.

  At this point, it would be late in the evening and we would have all finished several rounds of drinks. It was now time to curse the unfairness of it all. Our classmates had finished training and would soon be making big bucks, we moaned (“big bucks” was anything greater than our present salary), all while we slaved away in Southeast Asia.

  But then the sad reality of the war would intrude when one of the surgeons described some of the terrible battle injuries he had taken care of during his tour: the amputees, the head wounds, and such. We would all realize how very fortunate we were to serve as physicians. Everyone in Vietnam was exposed to some risk, but it fell disproportionately. We were bitching and moaning at an R & R center, a place many servicemen would have been delighted to visit. Compared to the grunts in the field, we were truly blessed. We all knew that fortune sometimes smiles on those who least deserve it.