Alcohol, of course, was the most common drug of all. I can remember more than a few men flying hung over, but I never saw anyone fly intoxicated. Nevertheless, booze was a big part of everyday life in Vietnam for everyone, officer and enlisted man alike; a temporary bulwark against the stress and boredom of the war.
Still, even a drug abuse rate of only a few percent resulted in a large number of people needing treatment. Any treatment had to be done inpatient; there were no halfway houses. With the ready availability and low cost of heroin in Vietnam, it would have been impossible to have an effective outpatient treatment program.
Our inpatient unit wasn’t so much a treatment center as it was a place for detoxification. It reminded me a lot of a prison. The unit was a long, modular wing with no windows, located in the dispensary complex. The only entrance was through a steel wire door that was kept bolted and locked. The unit contained roughly ten beds, five on each side. The patients were tended by corpsmen rather than nurses. Those who tested positive were checked in and searched thoroughly. Then they usually had a few hours of grace before the withdrawal symptoms began. The patients quickly became restless and agitated, thrashing about, complaining of nausea, muscle aches, or abdominal pains. Paranoia was the addict’s constant companion. The withdrawal was brutal; the men hardly ever slept and rarely ate much. The severe symptoms seemed to go on for one to two days before gradually beginning to ease. We had none of the medications commonly used today to treat heroin addiction. We did the best we could to treat the symptoms with the drugs of that day, mainly anti-psychotics and sedatives.
My job was to check them twice a day, order their medications, and give them words of encouragement. Heroin withdrawal is hell on earth, but it’s not usually life-threatening. There wasn’t a great deal of prestige or reward working at a heroin detoxification unit in wartime, no one received a combat decoration.
Most of the patients were airmen twenty-five or younger who had gotten hooked in part because they were stationed in Vietnam, a place with high stress and cheap drugs. These men were in a bad place and their life was headed in the wrong direction. After they had been in the detox unit for a week or so and found negative on two separate tests, they were discharged. A few were able to return to duty; some went to a treatment program at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas; some may have gone to a bigger facility at Cam Ranh Bay. I never knew the final outcome; one of the principal drawbacks to military medicine at the time was that you rarely got to follow-up.
Many years later, I’m encouraged by the fact that the relapse rate for people addicted to heroin in Vietnam was relatively low: something like five percent in the first year, much better than people who became addicted in the U.S.
Today, heroin addiction is a growing problem found in all types of communities across our country. Unfortunately, unlike Vietnam, there’s little chance of removing the addict from their dangerous environment. Drug addiction, like war, has no simple, easy answers.
SEVENTEEN
FINAL MISSION
April 16, 1972
My last flight in an F-4 Phantom was at the battle of An Loc in the spring of 1972.
For anyone who flies in combat their final mission is a milestone event; a red letter day that signals that the hard and dangerous work is almost done. It also means that, in a short while, you’ll be gone from Southeast Asia and reunited with the people you love. At last—that elusive light at the end of the tunnel really is drawing nearer.
Normally, every effort is made to avoid scheduling a difficult target for the final mission. This is the time for a routine sortie, a safe ending to a long twelve months. There’s no place for heroes on the last mission.
As my departure date drew closer, I rarely thought about my final mission. I had watched as dozens of members of my squadron celebrated their good fortune, and I knew that when my time came, the last outing would be a welcome finish to an interesting career as a part-time Phantom backseater. In the years to come, my life would be a lot safer and saner, but also a lot less exciting.
Unfortunately, there was no glorious conclusion for me. My final mission, like many of the events in wartime, happened in an unplanned way with no fanfare. It was far from routine, and I didn’t know until well after the fact that this mission would be the last time I would ever fly in a fighter aircraft.
The North Vietnamese drive on An Loc was part of a three-prong attack known as the Easter Offensive, which the communists hoped would end the war. North Vietnamese troops had crossed the DMZ in the north, gaining control of Quang Tri. Other regiments attacked Kontum in the Central Highlands, hoping to push onto the sea, thereby cutting the country of South Vietnam in half. An Loc, the third goal of the Easter Offensive, was in the south, just sixty miles from Saigon; a real prize, very close to the capital city. The communists planned to make An Loc the seat of government for the liberated province.
The Easter Offensive wasn’t the usual guerilla warfare that characterized much of the war. The North Vietnamese brought armor, artillery, anti-aircraft guns, and (reportedly) some of the new shoulder-held SA-7 missiles.
In early 1972, everyone at Da Nang knew something big was going on. Our unit was the only fighter wing left in South Vietnam, and we were flying around the clock. The bases in Thailand were handling a full load, and Navy aircraft coming off the carriers in the South China Sea were busy, as well. I flew more in February and March than any other time in my tour. I had actually become a wanted man; the scheduling officer would call me at the dispensary to see if I was available to fly. After scheming to get a spot on the schedule for most of my tour, I was happy to have the opportunity. In addition, Tet, the lunar new year, was always a favorite time for rocket attacks. Both on the ground and in the air, 1972 was proving to be a busy year.
Nixon was determined to counter the Easter Offensive with American airpower. By the beginning of April, extra Phantom squadrons had been deployed from bases in Asia and the U.S. to Da Nang. Housing was suddenly at a premium, and I gained a third roommate. There weren’t enough revetments to shelter all the aircraft, and some were parked on the tarmac, unprotected from rocket attacks.
I’ve always found it strange how things work for the low man on the totem pole. Looking back at the time, I never really got the strategic big picture; I never knew how it all fit together. No one ever said, “This is the Easter Offensive. We’re sending you to the battle of An Loc to teach those North Vietnamese a lesson.” When it came to war strategy, I was way out of the loop; I didn’t even know where the loop was located.
One morning, I went into the mission planning room at wing headquarters and found out that our two-ship fight was being sent to An Loc, well out of our usual working area. On that day, most of our squadron was fragged down south, so several two-ship flights were headed to An Loc, spaced roughly forty-five minutes apart. I had been scheduled to fly in the mid-morning, but asked to be pushed back to a later flight so I could finish up with my patients at the dispensary.
During the intelligence briefing, we learned that the South Vietnamese forces and their American advisors were surrounded by a much larger communist army. The besieged garrison in the southern part of An Loc was being supplied by air. Our strike was to be part of a steady dose of American air power from helicopters, bombers, fighters, and gunships. This sortie was different from the usual interdiction mission over the Ho Chi Minh Trail. If An Loc fell, the road to Saigon would be open to the North Vietnamese.
Early in my tour, before U.S. ground troops had been phased out, I had flown some close air support missions, assisting American ground troops who were in contact with the enemy and needed help, but these small engagements were nothing like the situation at An Loc. This battle was turning into siege warfare, with none of the hit-and-run tactics of the early Vietnam War.
When our flight arrived over An Loc, the FAC gave us a target briefing and was very careful to keep us away from any friendly forces. This wasn’t hard to do, since the South Vie
tnamese were dug into an area not much more than a half-mile on each side. The sky over An Loc was filled with smoke and haze. Everything had an apocalyptic hue; it was obvious that this was a major battle that had been raging since long before we arrived.
The FAC marked the target with a white phosphorous rocket and cleared us for a low angle run in. On the second pass, as the frontseater released his bombs and pulled hard left off the target, I looked down and caught a glimpse of a couple of tanks lying in a helter-skelter position on one of the streets of An Loc. These North Vietnamese tanks weren’t our target; they had probably been destroyed earlier in the battle. They were just the skeletal remains of some of the dozens lost at An Loc.
The glimpse of the armor was so quick and so fleeting that I asked the frontseater if he had seen the tanks. He was as surprised as I was; this was a first for both of us, and it added another dimension to the war. In over fifty combat missions, I had been shot at from time to time, but I had never seen any real evidence of enemy troops; nothing other than rice paddies, jungle, and mountains. By and large, our main mission had been to destroy inanimate objects like trucks, weapons caches, and fuel dumps. During my tour, I never saw an enemy soldier or any object that looked like it belonged in a war, other than the tanks I saw that day at An Loc.
Most of my time had been spent blowing holes in the jungle and getting Bomb Damage Assessments from a perch high above the Ho Chi Minh Trail. At An Loc, for the first time, I encountered siege-like warfare, with armor and artillery, a battle that lasted weeks rather than hours or days. This mission gave me a different perspective of the Vietnam War.
Our flight recovered and refueled at Bien Hoa Air Base, located right outside of Saigon, before returning to Da Nang. I stopped by Base Operations and was told that I was needed immediately at the dispensary. Van, the flight leader of the previous two ship mission from our squadron, had been hit and lost his landing gear. He and his backseater were forced to eject and had landed in a field just outside Bien Hoa. They were both immediately picked up by the base rescue helicopter and sent to the dispensary to be checked over.
As far as ejections go, this was one of the better ones. Van and his WSO were able to pick their spot to punch out. It sounds simple and safe, but in reality, it was a very dangerous situation. When the ejection handle is pulled, your world changes in an instant. In less than two seconds, the rear canopy is blown, the backseater is ejected, the front canopy is blown, and the pilot is ejected. It’s fast and furious, much like having a rocket strapped to your rear end and being shot into the sky.
When I arrived at the dispensary I found my old friend Wendell, a flight surgeon I had known in Florida, checking the X-rays of Van’s lower spine. We both suspected a vertebral fracture, a common complication from an ejection from an F-4, but we weren’t sure. The findings were subtle and we weren’t radiologists, so we sent him on to the hospital at Tan Son Nhut to be checked.
Later, it occurred to me that I had had a close call of sorts. I had actually been scheduled to fly as Van’s backseater before I had myself pushed back to later in the day. I wondered, if I had flown with Van as originally planned, how would I have handled the ejection? There are so many “what if’s” in wartime, and this was an admittedly minor one, so I kept it to myself.
Around the same time as my trip to An Loc, the formal paperwork came through, scheduling me to leave Da Nang around May 16. The date, just a couple of weeks ahead of my one year anniversary, was nothing to get excited about; it certainly wasn’t my idea of what Vietnamization meant. With nearly a month to go in country and the Easter Offensive rolling along, I figured that I would have several more opportunities to fly.
A few days later, one of those unexpected golden opportunities arose, an undeserved stroke of good fortune for a man who had long ago grown tired of Vietnam. One of my patients was a C-47 pilot who flew all over Southeast Asia, ferrying people and goods from place to place. I had told him how much I had enjoyed visiting Thailand a few months back, and he generously invited me to come along the following week for a couple of days in Bangkok. It wasn’t combat, but I was happy to add my name to the manifest.
In wartime, luxury comes in many forms. The two days in Bangkok were a well-appreciated respite from a war without purpose or end. I enjoyed wonderful food in a sit-down restaurant, delicious Thai beer, clean sheets, and uninterrupted sleep. The time flew by quickly.
When I arrived back at Da Nang around 5:00 pm, I headed straight to the dispensary to check my mail, one of the few pleasures I had in Vietnam.
Lying on my desk, like a gift from heaven, were orders to leave Da Nang the following morning at 9:00 am. I was scheduled to report to the out-processing center at 6:00 am.
With barely a half-day left in Vietnam, I was ecstatic. I experienced one of the deepest joys of my life; I was going home to my wife and family. Exhilaration is too mild a word—I felt like I had been reborn.
The next twelve hours were a blur, spent packing, running errands, and saying farewell to friends in the squadron and at the dispensary. I was too excited to sleep, anxious to board my flight home. I wished I had a way of letting my family know the good news.
My career in a fighter squadron had come to an abrupt end. I would miss my last mission hose-down, there would be no fire truck drenching me with water as we taxied home for the final time. There would be no celebratory champagne, no round of drinks at the DOOM club, no squadron party. I would be back home in the USA by the time the next DEROS party took place. Having served me well, my party suit could be retired to an honored place in my closet. I would miss the rousing farewell from the world of combat, but I had the promise of a better world to come.
Several of my squadron buddies dropped by to drink a beer and say farewell. One gave me my Gunfighter plaque, a wooden shield with the wing’s logo, inscribed with my name and the number of combat missions I had flown. Normally presented at your last squadron party, it remains one of my most treasured possessions. I was glad to be able to take mine home. I knew that if you left anything behind in war, you would never see it again.
I had finished my year in Vietnam. My tour was over. I had had my last hurrah. I had survived the soulless juggernaut of war. For me, it wasn’t so much an achievement; it was more like a miracle. I had come a long way in flying, but no one else had had as far to go as I did. I had seen a lot of things I’d never seen before and done a lot of things I knew I never needed to do again.
The next morning as the “Freedom Bird” lifted off the Da Nang runway, the whole plane exploded in cheers and applause.
We were headed home.
Life is composed of chapters, and I had just finished a big one. I was filled with a sense of the possible, the future lay clearer in front of me. My wife, family, and career were waiting at home.
There were no mixed emotions. Vietnam was not hard to let go of. Like most everyone on my flight back to the U.S., I was certain that Da Nang was best seen through the rearview mirror.
II
BACK TO
VIETNAM
EIGHTEEN
FINDING A REASON
TO RETURN
March 2016
When I left Da Nang in April 1972, I was the happiest man alive, thrilled to be returning to my wife and family, looking forward to leaving the Air Force, anxious to begin a career as an ophthalmologist.
My departure—depending on your point of view—came either just in time or a bit too early. The Linebacker campaign began the week after I left Da Nang and my squadron started flying regularly over North Vietnam. The flights that I had flown over the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos were replaced by missions up north. I would have liked to have been a part of Linebacker, but I had done my duty; I’d finished my military career and was looking forward to becoming a civilian. My feet were firmly planted in what everyone in Vietnam knew as the “real world.” The United States would continue the air war for another eight months or so, but I would only read about it in the newspaper and wat
ch fragments of the conflict on television.
By 1973 the long war drew to a merciful end, our POWs came home, and America was glad to be done with Vietnam.
My separation from the Vietnam War was both abrupt and near total. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would be returning to Vietnam forty-four years later to participate in an Ironman triathlon. Of course, young men in their twenties rarely think about what they’ll be doing when they reach age seventy; life is too immediate, and there is no reason to look decades into the future when the present occupies every minute of your time.
Besides, how could I have imagined something that didn’t exist? When I left Da Nang, no one had ever heard of a triathlon. It wasn’t until 1974 that swimming, biking, and running were linked in a single event to form the modern triathlon.
During the Vietnam War era, the fitness boom was in its infancy and the public was just beginning to view exercise as an essential component of health and well-being. In those days, fitness had yet to become a business; there were few personal trainers, not many yoga studios, and no Pilates parlors. Swimming was something most people did at the beach or at the pool during the summer. Biking, with the exception of those crazy Europeans, was an activity for young kids or for those adults too poor to own a car. Foot races staged on the streets and roads were more of an oddity than a real sporting event. The triathlon craze was still many years away.
The basic idea of a triathlon is so simple that it’s a wonder someone didn’t think of it earlier. There is no standard distance for a triathlon, but all of the events follow the same format: swim, bike, and run. The clock starts at the beginning of the swim, continues through the bike segment, and stops at the end of the run. The sport requires basic skills in all three disciplines, as well as the ability to transition quickly from one activity to the next.
Racing Back to Vietnam Page 13