by Robert Coram
Nevertheless, he was given a check ride. His right hand was so weak that he could not adjust some of the critical cockpit switches. Unseen by his check pilot in the rear seat, he reached across with his left hand to make the adjustments. And he had to use both hands to pull high-G maneuvers.
But by now the story of Bud Day had made its way throughout the Air Force. If Bud Day could take off and land a jet aircraft, the Air Force would put him back in the cockpit. He requalified in less than twenty hours. It took thirteen waivers, but Bud Day was back on flying status.
Then, in September 1974, Day received orders to report to Eglin AFB in the Florida panhandle, where he would be vice commander of the 33rd Tactical Fighter Wing. He had a job that easily led to his becoming a wing commander. From there, he would be on track for promotion to general.
But General Dixon was lying in wait.
15
Over the Side
ALL Day remembered from his time in the Florida panhandle was Panama City and the stench of the paper mills and a dozen tacky little beach towns. But when he tapped into the Air Force network, he was told that he had landed a great job. “This is a shit-hot deal,” he remembers being told. “It’s a TAC base. You are not responsible for the chapel and the BX [base exchange]. All you have is the airstrip, a few fire engines, and your own people. There are only two squadrons in the wing and you could get promoted.”
So it was with considerable hope and with great expectations that Colonel Day and his family moved to Eglin AFB in the fall of 1974. But that hope and those expectations soon would be squashed by petty Air Force politics. Eglin would be Day’s last assignment, and it would be a bitter one.
Day, like many of the POWs, came back from Hanoi as a full-throttle kind of guy. There was so much catching up to do. And, again like many of the POWs, whatever pretense or posturing or just plain old bullshit there might have been about him had been stripped away in Hanoi. The POWs had nothing to prove to anyone. Ask a POW a question and — if he wants to answer it — you get a straight, stripped-down, no-frills answer. Order a POW to perform a task and it will be done to the best of his ability. There was a purity about them that made them — and these are odd words to describe such men — innocent, even naive. Most of those who remained in the military were lieutenant colonels or colonels, ranks in which politics and political awareness are important. But POWs were concerned with doing the right thing rather than the political thing. To them, there was no gray area; the world was black and white.
That was Bud Day.
He believed that God had saved his life many times so he could perform a certain task — to be an inspiring leader during the POW years by following when he was junior, leading when he was senior, and always setting the example. Now that job was done. And at his core was peace and serenity. He thought the remainder of his military career would be relatively uneventful. All he wanted was to be promoted, to have the chance to go back to Sioux City in the autumn of every year to go pheasant hunting and maybe pick up a few Bing Bars, and then to retire and practice law. Eglin was the stepping-stone to the rest of his life.
He had barely arrived at Eglin when he was ordered to Louisiana to investigate the crash of an F-4. The commander of the 9th Air Force, a three-star who reported to General Dixon, sent down word that he thought the wing commander in Louisiana was at fault, that his lack of leadership was the reason a pilot crashed. The three-star was named James Hartinger, a diminutive fellow who referred to himself in the third person as “The Ger.” Day investigated, determined the accident was not the fault of the wing commander, and so stated in his report.
When Day was Misty 1, he had warriors working for him. Birds of a feather, if you will. The other side of that coin is obvious: bureaucrats also flock together. And in the Air Force there are far more bureaucrats than there are warriors. The people working for General Dixon either were like him or were fired or transferred out of TAC. The three-star had Day’s report rewritten and fired the wing commander.
OFF base, Day was finding he had moved to a strange part of America. The First Congressional District of Florida then ran roughly from Pensacola to Panama City. It long has had the highest concentration of ex-military people of any congressional district in America — about 110,000. They are drawn here by warm weather, shopping privileges at the BX and commissary, and free medical care at the military bases. The small towns around Eglin — Shalimar, Fort Walton Beach, Valparaiso, Nice-ville — are inextricably tied to the military. Much of Okaloosa County is taken up by Eglin AFB. There is Eglin Parkway and Freedom Boulevard and Commando Boulevard and Doolittle Street and other streets that remind visitors they are in a patriotic and conservative community. Naval Air Station Pensacola, the primary flight-training base for Navy and Marine Corps pilots, is forty miles west. Hurlburt Field, center of Air Force Special Operations, is nearby. So are Duke Field and — to the east about forty miles — Tyndall AFB.
All this Day found good. He was among his own. But in other ways that was not true. Most military people travel widely during their careers; they are transferred about every three years, often to overseas postings, and in many ways are very sophisticated.
But one of the names for the panhandle is “LA” — as in “Lower Alabama” — and the beaches here and to the east often are referred to as the Redneck Riviera. It was pickup-truck country, predominantly protestant and then yellow-dog Democrat to the core. Day had never seen or heard of the sort of politics he found in the First District. Democrats held every elective city, county, state, and national job. Bob Sikes, congressman from the First District, was the political boss of the panhandle. He had more seniority in the district than anyone but God and was almost as omnipotent. Sikes called himself the “He Coon,” because the male racoon knew where the food was and how to get the water. Sikes brought in more pork than a meatpacking house, and it seemed that coon tails, signifying the driver’s allegiance to Sikes, waved from the antennae of every pickup truck in the First District.
When Day and Doris took Steve to register to vote, they told the registrar they wanted to register as Republicans. The reaction they got was about the same as if they had said they wanted to register as Catholics.
“Ain’t no use in you all registering as no Republicans because there ain’t no Republicans to vote for,” the elderly registrar said.
Day was appalled. Because of Nixon and because of the long conversations he and McCain had in jail about politics, he was a committed and devoted Republican. He thought there should be Republican candidates running in every race in the district.
Day was then and remains so today a man of elaborate and courtly manners. But he does have his hot buttons. And the registrar had punched one.
“When I need advice on how to register to vote, I’ll ask for it,” he said. “Until then, hand me the paper and I’ll register as a Republican.”
When he left the registrar’s office, he had that same head-up, arm-pumping, determined, and hard-eyed look of defiance that Jack Van Loan had noticed in the yard at the Hanoi Hilton. Turning to Doris, Day said, “We’re going to have to do something about this.”
DAY’S life at Eglin existed on two parallel but distinctly different tracks. On one level, he was one of the most famous officers in the Air Force. Speaking invitations poured in from around the world, and he and Doris made several trips to Europe. As more and more people learned about his escape and his hard-nosed resistance, the legend of Bud Day grew. He received numerous combat medals, and word had gotten out that he had been recommended for the Medal of Honor.
But at the same time, Day was having to deal with two enervating facts. First were the bitter realities of an Air Force in the post-Vietnam era.
The F-15 — the follow-on aircraft to the F-4 — would not be operational for a few more years, and numerous upgrades were necessary to bring the ancient F-4 back up to combat-ready status. The two squadrons of F-4s in the wing of which Day was vice commander were weary airplanes. They had
stress cracks in the wings, a problem that necessitated major modifications. The heavy G-loads of combat flying had caused leaks in the fuel tanks. The aircraft had to be rewired.
Dixon had decreed that all TAC squadrons have 65 percent of their aircraft combat ready, an impossible target. Indeed, for most of the mid- and late 1970s, only about 20 percent of Air Force tactical squadrons were combat ready. Wing commanders who wanted to keep their jobs reported to Dixon that their wing was 65 percent combat ready, whatever the reality.
Day’s boss was no different, sending up report after report saying the wing was at 65 percent readiness, and Day knew it was a lie.
Day’s experience was a microcosm of what was happening throughout the Air Force at the time. The Air Force has the meanest and most petty bureaucracy of all the services. This is in part because the Air Force defines its mission by the type of aircraft it flies; it is in the hardware-acquisition business rather than the war-fighting business. Even today there are roughly 74,000 officers in the Air Force, about 13,000 of whom are pilots. Most of those pilots fly noncombat aircraft; about 2,000 are combat pilots. Thus, a case can be made that the Air Force is not really a fighting force. It is a bureaucracy, the main purpose of which is to buy ever more expensive aircraft.
Day’s second problem was that General Dixon disliked him intensely for the “stupid idiot” comment. While most of the Air Force revered the former POWs, word had come back to Day that Dixon did not. He sent a letter to all Air Force colonels in TAC who had been POWs and told them that they should not expect to be promoted simply because they had been POWs, that they had to prove themselves, that they had to be reassimilated into the Air Force, and that their superiors must agree they were suitable for command in a tactical unit. This sounds fair enough. But the tone of the letter was such that many recipients considered it harsh, even mean-spirited, especially after Dixon was widely quoted as having said, “None of those neurotic POWs will ever become wing commanders in TAC.”
About this time, a pistol went missing from a sealed crate in the Eglin weapons-storage area, a serious breach in security. Day’s boss was fired and Day thought that his time had come, that he would be promoted to wing commander. But instead of giving Day the job, Dixon summoned a colonel from Thailand to take over, a move that not only humiliated Day but sent a signal that he would not be promoted.
Bud Day realized his Air Force clock had run down.
SHORTLY before Christmas, the Ford administration sent Day and now commander John McCain to Saigon to meet the president of South Vietnam and to receive the National Order of Vietnam, that country’s equivalent of the Medal of Honor.
While in Saigon, the two officers visited U.S. ambassador Graham Martin, who told them that the war was going well in South Vietnam, that this was a country that had repulsed its enemies for a thousand years.
“It was insane drivel,” Day said. “It was like being lectured to by the drunkest guy in the bar at four a.m.”
Four months later, in April 1975, South Vietnam fell to Communist forces in the North.
WITH the end of the war and concurrent budget cutbacks, flying hours for Air Force fighter pilots were radically cut. Squadron officers were limited to five hours per month — not enough to maintain proficiency in a high-performance jet aircraft. Day flew only occasionally so the younger pilots would have more flying time, but when he did, young pilots competed to fly with him. His greatest joy in those days was going out onto the bombing range with young pilots.
It was a tradition that before going to the range, every pilot bet a quarter on every bomb dropped. The young pilots had great hand-eye coordination, great motor skills, and almost instantaneous reaction time. They figured they could easily best Colonel Bud Day; after all, in 1975 he was fifty years old, wore glasses, limped, and was beginning to aquire a slight stoop. To the young pilots, he was an old man.
But that old man waxed their asses.
It was uncanny how his bullets, bombs, and rockets went where they were supposed to go. And when it came to night-bombing or night-gunnery practices, no one in the wing was in his league.
But then, no one in the wing had been a Misty.
The young pilots would have been even more chagrined had they known the full extent of Day’s injuries and the practical effects of those injuries. He still had to cross his left hand over his body to operate some of the switches. He had to use two hands to honk the F-4 around in high-G maneuvers. An impartial check pilot would have grounded him. But there he was.
WHEN McCain was transferred to Jacksonville, Florida — about three hundred miles away — as commander of an air group, he and Day and their wives saw one another frequently.
One afternoon McCain flew to Eglin and met Day in the officers’ club. Day had been flying and was still in his flight suit. The men sat at the bar, two of the most famous and most widely recognized of all POWs, drinking and talking about the old days and about politics. A young captain swaggered up. He was not from one of the operational fighter squadrons in Day’s wing but rather from the test squadron (a group that tested new weapons or new technology). He was tall and trim, a recruiting-poster sort of fighter pilot. The captain greeted Commander McCain, then turned to Day and said, “Colonel, may I ask why you have those leather clips on your flight suit?”
Day looked down at the leather tag attached to the end of every zipper clip. He was aware that younger pilots thought the clips useless and cut them off.
“Because it’s government property and part of the uniform.”
“It’s not necessary, sir.”
“I think it is.”
The captain reached out and flicked one of the clips.
“Only the old guys wear these.”
“Captain, I think you’d better go back to your table and sit down.”
Day was tolerant of junior officers even when those officers were fueled more by booze than by recognition of military courtesies. But McCain recognized the change of tone in Day’s voice. He saw Day’s eyes turn glacial, and he knew what was coming.
“I think your flight suit would look better without them,” the captain said. He reached out and seized one of the clips, intending to rip it off the flight suit. But before he could do so, Day leaped off the bar stool. With his weak right hand and his withered right arm, he knocked the young captain on his ass.
Officers from all around the big room looked around to see Colonel Day, fist still clenched, and the astonished captain looking up and rubbing his jaw. There was a moment of absolute silence. Then the officers broke out in applause.
McCain howled with laughter.
The captain stood up and returned to his group. Day went back to his bar stool and resumed his conversation with McCain.
Word swept across Eglin and throughout the Air Force: “Bud Day punched out a captain in the officers’ club.”
“Yeah, that Bud Day.”
A few weeks later the pilots from the 58th Fighter Squadron gave Day a set of boxing gloves emblazoned with the squadron insignia — a gorilla.
Colonels do not publicly punch out captains. Had any other colonel in the Air Force done this, or if the young captain had pressed charges, Day might have been court-martialed.
IN early 1975 Day received an unofficial call from a former Misty who was working in the chief of staff’s office: “Sir, you have been recommended for the Medal of Honor.” He was told to expect an official call and to prepare for a trip to Washington, where President Ford would award the medal.
Doris bought new clothes for herself and the children. And they waited for the summons.
Then Day received notice he was to receive the Air Force Cross (AFC). He assumed the Medal of Honor had been downgraded, a not-uncommon practice. In any case, the AFC is the highest medal awarded by the Air Force. The three-star who flew to Eglin to pin on the medal said it was the first he had ever awarded. The citation that accompanied the medal indicated that it was awarded for failing to give jailers any information du
ring the sustained torture in the summer of 1969.
A few weeks after receiving the AFC, Day was notified that he would also receive the Medal of Honor. The friend in the chief of staff’s office privately told him that when he came to Washington, the chief was giving him a surprise: a spot promotion — one outside normal promotion channels — to brigadier general.
Uncomfortably close to all this was a request from the Ford White House asking Day to work in President Ford’s election campaign. Ford had taken over as president when Nixon resigned and now sought election to the office. But Bud Day was a Reagan supporter. After Day incorporated the NAM-POWs, he invited Reagan to be the featured speaker at the 1974 and 1975 reunions of the POWs. He turned Ford down. It would be another year — on March 6, 1976 — before Ford awarded the medal, waiting until Betty Ford was campaigning in Florida and could point to Day’s Medal of Honor as an example of how her husband supported the military.
And Day was not promoted to general. He was told that a spot promotion for an Air Force officer would have meant a spot promotion for a Navy officer also, and since Stockdale (also awarded the Medal of Honor) was a relatively new admiral, it was too soon to give him another star. Day looked at the citation that went with the MOH and saw it was dated a year earlier. He was incensed that Ford had so politicized America’s highest award for valor.
(It was a disappointing time for Day. Out in Sioux City, Paul Jackson, one of Day’s boyhood friends, had organized a write-in campaign for Day to fill a congressional seat. It came to nought.)
The overwhelming majority of Medal of Honor recipients are ground fighters, Army or Marines, with a few in the Navy and even fewer in the Air Force. For a member of the Air Force to receive the MOH is such a rare event that the recipient is granted a private visit with the chief of staff. When Day arrived at the office of General David Jones, he was ushered straight in and made comfortable, and in the ensuing small talk, the general asked, “How are things going with the POWs?”