by Robert Coram
ON May 28, only a few days after they returned from Washington, Colonel and Mrs. George E. Day were remarried. It was their twenty-fourth wedding anniversary. Doris wanted to wait another year until their twenty-fifth, but Bud was not sure he would live another year, and life was too precious and too fleeting to postpone the important things. So in front of an Air Force chaplain, with no guests, they renewed their wedding vows and then had a quiet dinner with the chaplain and the chaplain’s wife.
BECAUSE Doris had lived in Phoenix for six years and because of her long involvement with the Republican Party, Day was honored at a Republican dinner and given a gold watch. But that was only a hint of what was to come. It seemed that America could not do enough for the former POWs. They were given parades, cars, and free vacations anywhere in the world; were honored at countless dinners; received hundreds of requests to make speeches; and were idolized as few military groups ever have been idolized. Within all branches of the U.S. military, the near canonization of the former POWs was in full blossom. These men were venerated to a degree that civilians simply cannot understand.
In previous wars, POWs were identified by the conflict during which they served. For instance, “He was a POW in World War II” or “He was a POW in Korea.” But for these men, no qualifier was needed. For the rest of their lives, they would be identified by “He was a POW,” and it would be understood.
The POWs were the rallying point around which America could begin to come back together. The POWs were America’s heroes.
And these heroes were obsessed with the early releases.
The POWs had fully expected to find these men, if not in stockades, at least drummed out of the military. Day was astonished to learn that Norris Overly was a wing commander and on the list to become a brigadier general. The military considered the other early releases heroes and had promoted them and given them assignments that almost guaranteed future promotions.
“What stupid idiot promoted these bozos?” Day publicly wondered.
Because he was Bud Day and his story was becoming widely known, his comment was widely circulated, especially since the “stupid idiot” happened to be General Robert Dixon, now the four-star commander of the Tactical Air Command.
Perhaps the most revealing story about Dixon is that he was so abrasive and so abusive with his power, such an unpleasant fellow, that when he played golf, he played alone.
An outsider who does not understand military culture might expect Day to cut Overly a little slack — that forgiveness was in order. But that would not happen. For Day, a fundamental principle was at stake: American military men must know that if they violate the Code of Conduct, there will be consequences. Now it was payback time. And not just for those who had come home early but for those who, during their internment, were — to use Day’s phrase — “poor performers.”
Day, as did Larry Guarino, Jeremiah Denton, Robbie Risner, Jim Stockdale, John Flynn, and a few other senior officers, began writing ERs on the men who were their subordinates in Hanoi. When the military saw the ERs, they were astonished. The early releases had been taken at their word when they said they were sent home as a goodwill gesture on the part of the North Vietnamese. These men were stars of the military, and some had been given highly visible jobs or, like Overly, fast-tracked for senior leadership. Now the military was discovering, as Larry Guarino said, “Not all of our pilots were valiant.” It was hard for military leadership to understand that although almost every POW who had stayed behind had been broken at one time or another, they had neither divulged classified information nor were disloyal.
Robbie Risner is a good example. He was promoted to brigadier general while he was in jail, and then the Air Force heard that he had been broken and had signed certain statements. The Air Force withdrew his promotion. The other POWs said they were the only ones who knew whether or not a man had served honorably and that Robbie Risner was one of the Air Force’s greatest heroes. The Air Force reinstated the promotion, which probably made Risner the only Air Force colonel twice promoted to general.
If the POWs rallied around Robbie Risner, they were bitter in their denunciation of those in the Fink Release Program.
Fred Thompson, the early release who taped a message to the other POWs that they should obey camp regulations, the man whom the guards described as “having a good attitude,” now was — of all places — up at Fairchild AFB at the survival school, teaching young pilots how to handle interrogations if they ever were captured by the enemy.
Following the Hanoi ER, he was relieved of duty.
Jim Bean, the colonel whom Day had relieved of command, was sent to a military school, where he was scorned by other POWs. He soon retired.
Hubert Flesher, who had refused to carry out the tasks Day assigned to him, was “Freedom 01,” the first POW to be requalified in a fighter at Randolph AFB. He was on the promotion list for lieutenant colonel and was being assigned to the National War College. After Day’s ER, the promotion came through but the assignment to the War College was canceled. Flesher knew his career was over and in a fit of pique called the Sacramento Bee and complained about the mean-spirited Colonel George Day who had ruined his career. The reporter called Day, who remembers that he said, “It’s all true. He is a loser and a meathead.”
When Pentagon officials saw Day’s ER on Overly, they were alarmed. This officer was a protégé of General Dixon. They showed the ER to other senior POWs and said, “What do you think of this?” They backed up Day. Overly’s promotion to brigadier general was canceled, and he was relieved of duty as wing commander. The man who replaced him sent word ahead that he intended to stop at the front gate and make an inquiry of the security police. If Colonel Overly was still on base, he would be arrested and jailed.
Overly apparently left by the back gate as his replacement was arriving. He served a bit longer in a staff job before retiring.
General Dixon was the man who, a few years earlier as chief of the Air Force Personnel Center, had promoted the early returnees. Now he was embarrassed that those men were being ostracized by the POWs.
Another dynamic — unknown to the general public — was taking place about this same time. Larry Guarino, who was a camp SRO for most of his years in Hanoi, wrote Day’s ER and said, “I believe the Air Force should push him for the highest position of responsibility.” He said Day “is a man of exceptional integrity, unbounded vigor, and unquestionable patriotism, with a potential of becoming a national figure of considerable advantage to his country.”
This is the ER that should have guaranteed Day’s promotion to general officer. And that was what Day wanted. Retirement was put on hold.
Guarino also wrote up two Air Force officers for the Medal of Honor (MOH), America’s highest award for valor. The award for Lance Sijan was posthumous. He was a young Air Force Academy graduate who was shot down in November 1967 and, despite a concussion and a compound leg fracture, evaded capture for forty-six days. In the short time he was at Hoa Lo before he died, every minute was spent planning an escape. His story was an inspiration to all POWs.
The second recommendation was for Colonel George E. Day.
Guarino kept quiet the fact that he had written the recom-mendations.
Senior military officers from all branches of the military must consider each recommendation for the Medal of Honor. They go to a secure room in the bowels of the Pentagon, a place known as “The Tank,” where they consider the merits of each proposal. With Sijan and Day, the process would take several years and — with Day — become involved in presidential politics. But both would be approved.
Inevitably, the Medal of Honor delegation was complicated by interservice rivalries. At one point, Guarino was approached by several Navy admirals who said, “We think the Navy should get a Medal of Honor. The Air Force is getting two; we want one.”
Guarino waited.
“We think Jim Stockdale should get the medal,” one admiral told him. “And we want you to write him up for it.”
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bsp; “May I ask why Jim Stockdale?”
“Because he was senior,” snapped one of the admirals.
“Yes, sir,” Guarino said.
Years later Guarino would laugh about this and say that at the time he thought, Funny, I didn’t know seniority was a basis for receiving the Medal of Honor.
(This does not mean, and Guarino did not mean to imply, that Stockdale was not a tough resister and an inspirational leader who was deeply loved and respected by the POWs. But the citation for his Medal of Honor talks mostly of how he inflicted injuries on himself to avoid speaking to peace delegations. It reads, as some POWs — not Guarino or Day — say in private, “like a recommendation for a Bronze Star.”)
Then a Marine Corps general came to Guarino and said, “You recommended the Medal of Honor for two Air Force officers and a Navy officer. We think the Marine Corps should have a recipient.”
“Sir, do you have anyone in mind?” Guarino asked.
The general waved his hand dismissively. “No, you were there. You knew the Marine Corps personnel. You pick an officer and write a recommendation. We’ll take care of it from there.”
Guarino by now was annoyed at how this process was turning out to be so political. But he also was a career officer, and he did what he was told. He wrote up a recommendation for a Marine Corps officer who had died of starvation in a remote camp up on the Chinese border. The Marines had envisioned a tough resister, maybe a man who was tortured and died for his defiance. They did not want to award the medal to a man who had died of starvation. The issue was dropped.
ON the civilian side, Day came home to a country altogether different from the one he had left six years earlier.
He did not like the jeans his daughters wore; they reminded him of the Depression, when jeans were all that people in Riverside could afford, and they somehow reminded him of the conformity of his Communist captors. Doris mediated the solution: the girls could wear jeans to school but not at home.
One Sunday, Colonel and Mrs. Day attended the St. Thomas Evangelical Lutheran Church at 5237 West Thomas Road in Phoenix, where everyone in the congregation knew who he was. So did the minister, a young and militant antiwar activist. At one point in his remarks, the preacher injected an antiwar sentiment into his sermon, then paused for dramatic effect. In that pause, Day, in a voice heard throughout the congregation, said, “That’s a lie.”
After the service was over, the minister stood in the door to shake the hands of those who had been present. He avoided Day. Afterward, the Days found another Lutheran church, one where the minister was more concerned with things spiritual than with things temporal.
To take his mind off such things, Day decided to resume his golf game. But he could not hold a driver. His arms and hands had so little strength that, with every swing, he lost control of the club and it went flying down the green. Golf now was a part of his past. He would never again pick up a golf club.
NOW that the boss was home, now that Misty 1 was back in uniform, the Mistys could have a real reunion. They came to Luke AFB in the summer of 1973.
Bill Douglass and Ray Bevivino arrived early. Day met them at the airport and was walking with them to his car when he saw a man urinating on a van at the front door of Sky Harbor Airport.
Douglass and Bevivino were amazed when Day cursed, grabbed the man by his lapels, and threw him against a van and began lecturing him about peeing in public where women and children might see him. The man not only was considerably bigger than Day but was strong and young. Nevertheless, the power of Day’s personality was such that the man did not resist. Day summoned the police and filed a public-indecency complaint against the parking-lot urinator, who later was fired from his job as a schoolteacher.
At the reunion, Day was presented with the silver goblet that Doris had been holding for his return. Bill Douglass filled the goblet with champagne and gave it to Day with the admonition, “Drink all of it.”
He tried.
It was a raucous, fighter pilot sort of party. The Mistys had heard talk of awards and decorations for Day and were proud of their leader. For much of the night they drank and replayed the old missions.
Day, in turn, was immensely proud of the Mistys. He nodded in approval as he was given all the statistics on what the Mistys had done during their three years of existence. They were amazing men. Later, two Mistys, Tony McPeak and Ron Fogleman, would become four-star generals and chiefs of staff. Don Shepperd would become a two-star who headed up the Air National Guard and later would become a commentator for CNN. Dick Rutan would become the first man ever to fly an airplane around the world without refueling.
Douglass was master of ceremonies and tried to make a speech about Day, but as usual in these instances, he became so emotional he could not speak. Day could. He stood up and talked about his experiences in Hanoi and how it was so important to him that the North Vietnamese had never learned about the Mistys.
During the evening, young fighter pilots at Luke heard the Mistys were having a reunion, and they hung around the door of the Goldwater Room hoping for a look at one of these legends. These young pilots were invincible — superior to all other life-forms. But they grew humble upon hearing that Mistys were in the building — as well they should.
BY late summer of 1973, Day and Guarino and several other commanders, men who were SROs in Hanoi, were upset that no formal action had been taken against the men in the Fink Release Program. The commanders asked for a meeting with General John Flynn and Admiral James Stockdale, the highest-ranking POWs. At the meeting, Day delivered an ultimatum: “If you don’t file court-martial charges, we will.”
Stockdale replied by filing court-martial charges against Edison Miller and Walter Eugene Wilber, accusing them of mutiny and attempting to cause insubordination.
Colonel Ted Guy initiated court-martial proceedings against eight enlisted men who, as the so-called Peace Committee, had — he claimed — openly collaborated with the enemy. He charged them with disobeying the lawful orders of a superior officer, acting in conspiracy with the enemy, and aiding the enemy.
In rapid succession, charges were filed against the eleven officers who had accepted early releases. But after Abel Kavanaugh, one of the enlisted men, committed suicide on June 27, all charges against all personnel were ordered dropped. For better or worse, the POWs were all lumped together in the mind of the public, and the White House did not want a series of bitter and highly public courts-martial. Those charged were allowed to quietly leave the service. They returned to their homes in far-flung corners of America, civilians beyond the reach of military justice. Because their experiences remained unknown by the general public, they were revered in their hometowns and in their adopted towns.
The POWs would not go public on an issue their superiors clearly wanted closed. But their anger toward the early releases was unabated. Day came up with a solution. He incorporated a group known as the NAM-POWs and was the first president. One of the bylaws, subtle enough to be overlooked by most, said membership was open to those who had served honorably in the prison camps of North Vietnam. “Served honorably” was the operative phrase. Early releases and members of the Peace Committee — as the controversial enlisted men called themselves — were not eligible for membership.
The NAM-POWs, from the moment of their creation, had more moral authority than any other veterans’ group in America.
THE POWs had been out of the cockpit and out of Air Force life for years. Word from the White House was to give them any job, any assignment that they wanted. And on the surface, that is what happened. But in fact, the military struggled to find a place for the former POWs.
Getting back on flying status was a top priority for many Air Force pilots. They went to Randolph Field near San Antonio, where they had their “Freedom Flights” in the T-38 supersonic trainer. They thought that once they requalified, they would get jobs in the operational Air Force.
But the bureaucrats who ran the Air Force were not too sure abou
t the POWs. Their only frame of reference was Korea and brainwashing and The Manchurian Candidate. The POWs might be ticking time bombs. It would be best to watch them for a while, to place them in jobs where they could do little harm until their measure had been taken. School was a safe place. Many of the POWs were assigned to Command and Staff College or the War College or other military colleges. Some were assigned to civilian universities for advanced degrees.
The Air Force would not give Day a command job in the fighter community. So, very much against his wishes, Day enrolled in the political science PhD program at Arizona State University.
When not studying or in class, he spent hours every day writing ERs, getting his people from prison back into the mainstream of the Air Force. He wrote them up for medals. Air Force jets arrived at Luke once or twice a week to take him to other Air Force bases to make speeches about his POW experiences, about leadership, about adhering to the Code of Conduct. All the while he was steaming. When he returned from Vietnam, he had changed his mind about retiring. He wanted to get requalified in a fighter and become the director of operations at Luke. From there it would be easy to become a wing commander, an almost obligatory step before he could be considered for promotion to general officer. He wanted to be promoted to general, but he had no intention of taking a staff job.
Day was deeply unhappy. He still was one of the most educated men in the Air Force and, at this point, did not need a PhD. He asked Robbie Risner about the jet-requalification program and what he thought of the T-38. Risner replied, “Every kid ought to have one.” He suggested that Day requalify in the F-4 Phantom. “It’s like an F-100 with two engines,” he said.
For months it seemed the Air Force ignored Day’s wishes. Then in the spring of 1974 he was ordered to go to Luke to be requalified. He would do so in the F-4 and in a twenty-five-hour course for senior officers.
But there were a few problems. He had a history of head trauma, loss of consciousness, and gastrointestinal hemorrhage; a deformed right arm; and injury of peripheral nerves. It is an understatement to say his overall physical condition was not at the level expected for fighter pilots.