Something Important For This Intermission

About Vietnam Protesters

( And The Harm They Still Do )

B.Kortegaard

Peace? Defeat?
What did the Vietnam protesters want?

The self-serving anti Vietnam war movement damaged our country beyond measure.

In the process, they shamelessly denigrated all Americans who fought there.

This site attempts to keep these facts fresh in the minds of the American public. This is especially important today, as similar cowardly ignorance threatens the freedom we have won for the people of Iraq.

Before you read further, review your impressions about Americans who fought and suffered in The Vietnam War.

Now, ask yourself if your impressions are consistent with these facts:

• 9,087,000 military personnel served on active duty during the official Vietnam era from August 5, 1964 to May 7, 1975

◦ 2,709,918 Americans served in uniform in Vietnam (Actual Vietnam Veterans).

◦ The rest served their tours in Germany, Alaska, South America and the United States.

▪ Many protesters claiming to be Vietnam Veterans never served in Vietnam or any branch of the military.

• North Vietnam admittedly invaded democratic South Vietnam to further Marxist-Leninist ideology.

◦ With instruction and aid from the entire communist bloc.

• The American military did not lose a single significant battle in the Vietnam War.

◦ The US lost 60,157 KIA and MIA

▪ The Communists admit to 1,100,000 KIA and MIA.

◦ The Tet Offensive of 1968 was a military disaster for Hanoi.

▪ It resulted in the death of some 45,000 NVA troops and the destruction of most Viet Cong elements in South Vietnam.

◦ The fall of Saigon happened 30 April 1975, two years AFTER the American military left Vietnam.

▪ The peace settlement was signed in Paris on 27 January 1973.

▪ It called for release of all U.S. prisoners, withdrawal of U.S. forces, limitation of both sides' forces inside South Vietnam and a commitment to peaceful reunification.

▪ South Vietnam fell only because a pusillanimous congress failed to honor our pledges of support when the North violated the terms of the treaty.

• The ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) countries, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand stayed free of Communism.

◦ This can be argued a result of the U.S. commitment to Vietnam.

◦ This is one argument for the validity of the "Domino Theory"

• Two-thirds of those who served during Vietnam were volunteers rather than draftees.

• 77 percent of those who died were volunteers.

• Of those who died, 86 percent were Caucasian, 12.5 percent were African-American, and 1.2 percent were from other races.

• Fully 91 percent of those who served in Vietnam combat stated that they were glad they had served their country.

• 74 percent said they had enjoyed their time in the military.

• 71 percent of those who expressed an opinion indicated that they would go to Vietnam again

◦ Even knowing the end result.

•

• Betrayed at home by the university elite, the media, and the privileged, in the final analysis they had fought for each other.

Most Americans who served in Vietnam were ordinary citizens, grateful to live in a Democracy, trusting our elected government to call upon them to bear arms only when necessary for the defense of our country and our freedoms. This has to be the assumption of anyone claiming citizenship in any country.

• The Vietnam War was regarded by those who fought it as a struggle to help preserve freedom and democracy for the people of South Vietnam against communist invasion.

•

• Post-war Communist documents show that was exactly the true situation.

•

• Pampered celebrities, such as Hanoi Jane Fonda and John Kerry, arrogantly helped divide our country in the name of stopping "an unjust war."

•

• As those Communist documents also show, these "protesters" actually helped cause unmeasurable tragedy, tragedy which better Americans sacrificed their own lives trying to prevent.

•

• In our Democracy, any government position faces judgment at the next national election, but the duty to respond when called is 24/7 for any responsible citizen.

•

• The main imbalance in the war, (as in the Korean War), was simply that the privileged avoided their obligations, and have persisted since that time in demeaning the war and the patriotism of those who did serve their country, in order to protect themselves from the judgment of history.

•

• Hopefully, this brief account will help remind us all of the truths behind the war, and those who fought it as Americans.

•

• In a very elementary way, America's actions in Vietnam define Patriotism.

•

• They do so again today, in Iraq.

•

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A SOLDIER DIED TODAY

He was getting old and paunchy and his hair was falling fast,

And he sat around the Legion, telling stories of the past.

Of a war that he had fought in and the deeds that he had done,

In his exploits with his buddies; they were heroes, every one.

And tho' sometimes, to his neighbors, his tales became a joke,

All his Legion buddies listened, for they knew whereof he spoke.

But we'll hear his tales no longer for old Bill has passed away,

And the world's a little poorer, for a soldier died today.

He will not be mourned by many, just his children and his wife,

For he lived an ordinary and quite uneventful life.

Held a job and raised a family, quietly going his own way,

And the world won't note his passing, though a soldier died today.

When politicians leave this earth, their bodies lie in state,

While thousands note their passing and proclaim that they were great.

Papers tell their whole life stories, from the time that they were young,

But the passing of a soldier goes unnoticed and unsung.

Is the greatest contribution to the welfare of our land

A guy who breaks his promises and cons his fellow man?

Or the ordinary fellow who, in times of war and strife,

Goes off to serve his Country and offers up his life?

A politician's stipend and the style in which he lives

Are sometimes disproportionate to the service that he gives.

While the ordinary soldier, who offered up his all,

Is paid off with a medal and perhaps, a pension small.

It's so easy to forget them for it was so long ago,

That the old Bills of our Country went to battle, but we know

It was not the politicians, with their compromise and ploys,

Who won for us the freedom that our Country now enjoys.

Should you find yourself in danger, with your enemies at hand,

Would you want a politician with his ever-shifting stand?

Or would you prefer a soldier, who has sworn to defend

His home, his kin and Country and would fight until the end?

He was just a common soldier and his ranks are growing thin,

But his presence should remind us we may need his like again.

For when countries are in conflict, then we find the soldier's part

Is to clean up all the troubles that the politicians start.

If we cannot do him honor while he's here to hear the praise,

Then at least let's give him homage at the ending of his days.

Perhaps just a simple headline in a paper that would say,

Our Country is in mourning, for

A SOLDIER DIED TODAY

© 1987 A. Lawrence Vaincourt

© Kortegaard Engineering ©

Document: Vietnam Protesters

Last Update: Sun, 30 Mar 2008 15:31:20 GMT

Milk Run - Heading Home

I probably wound up saying nothing except that which shouldn’t be posted here. It was pretty obvious what had happened. Like I said before, every now and then one of them pesky AA shells takes a life of its own and seeks a higher effective range than it’s suppose to. We were in its airspace.

First thing, fly the airplane. OK, so I did that and it seemed to respond to the controls. There was something distinctly different though. The best word that I can think of to describe the way the phantom was flying is wallowing - that is, it was rolling from side to side albeit in a controlled fashion. The F4C has hydraulically driven flight controls. It flies smoothly and reacts to pilot input quickly. This bird wasn’t flying that way. I found out later that left wing damage had pretty well cancelled out the effectiveness of the flight controls on that side. The ailerons and spoilers were not working properly, if at all. There was some new induced drag on that side of course since the sheet metal was all screwed up. The plane flew kind of like what I remembered the T-33 felt like. Big stick input. Wait! There! She’s beginning to move. Wallowing.

We were still heading up with a lot of power, so as I rolled back more or less level, I pulled back on the throttles and got that part of it under control. Level flight, heading to Ubon, reasonable speed. They say pilots react instinctively. That’s true. I can’t really remember doing anything as a result of analyzing the immediate situation. It was all reaction. Anyway, as soon as we could, Bill and I ran the checklist for lighted Christmas tree in the cockpit (the lights are in the lower right in the cockpit picture). One thing I do remember though, is how relieved I felt that we were still inside the airplane and not hanging on a parachute outside in the wind. That was a very good feeling.

My flight lead called and asked if everything was under control. He informed me that I was headed in the right direction and that he was joining up on me from seven o’clock low. Once there, he gave me a look over, but I have forgotten what he said. I’m sure that he mentioned that there were no more bombs attached (that’s good), I think he may have said something about all of hydraulic fluid stains under the wing. He was mainly interested in how we were doing and what our intentions were. First of all, my intention was to get the hell out of there and go “home”. We were already on the correct heading and our speed would get us there in about twenty minutes or so. That gave us time to think about what we were going to do to get the airplane on the ground. As Willy looked us over he had his own situation develop. He got one of those pesky low oil pressure lights and he had to RTB (return to base) ASAP. So long Willy. There were still a couple of guys nearby to watch us fly home. Meanwhile Bill and I assessed what we were dealing with.

I could control the aircraft fairly well. As it turns out I had flight controls on the right side only, that’s why it flew so sloppily. Some turning require almost a full stick deflection. There was a failure in the A system (PC 1) and Utility Hydraulics. Engines were both operating OK. The lack of hydraulics meant no brakes, no flaps, no nose wheel steering. Manual rudder control with attendant high pedal pressures. No gear retraction once they were down pneumatically. The “hook” would work and I would have to make an approach end barrier engagement. A no flap final airspeed with unknown battle damage could be around 200 knots. There would be no leading edge flaps and so no boundary layer control to help reduce the approach speed. I could deploy the “RAT” (ram air turbine) to see if that helped. It was unlikely. The drag chute would work, but wasn’t necessary in an approach end trap.

Good thing we had trained for this emergency. Too bad most of the training had taken place at happy hour.

Milk Run - BAM!

In the business of daylight bombing, there is a distinct advantage over night time bombing under the light of flares. It lies mostly in the fact that you can see outside and generally tell what’s going on. Sometimes, however, you still can’t really know about what’s going on because there’s simply too much going on at the same time! Does that make sense? I’ve tried to let you experience some of what went on in the preparation and roll in to deliver weapons. A lot of stuff.

I forgot to mention that you still have to fly the airplane all the time too. If you forget to fly the airplane, bad things happen. Sometimes when you do the prep, get into the delivery mode and fly the airplane, bad things happen anyway. That was the case for me and my back seater Bill, that early afternoon day in November of ’65.

To digress a bit and set the scene some, there was a lot more going on than just a quick call for some air support or tactical bombing. It seems that intel had received word that a very large shipment of materiel was making its way down the trail to Tchepone (see the entry for September 7th, two blogs back). The area had been under almost constant attack since dawn. This is not good when you are the guys coming for the tenth or twelfth raid on the same target. First, there is no element of surprise left. Second, they are waiting for more folks to come along and bomb them and most importantly, they are really pissed. So there goes Dave and Bill, two first lieutenants, number two in a flight of four, down the slot. We were probably the twentieth group of yankee air pirates to visit that day. They were ready.

The 37mm Anti Aircraft guns and their crews were ready too. The range of that weapon is about 4 kilometers, or about 13,123 feet. In theory, if you stay fifteen thousand feet above the target area, you won’t get hit. Sometimes that doesn’t work, for every now and then, one shell will make it further. The golden BB. The one that got us. (You can click on the pictures to enlarge)

When you get hit by one of these things, an explosive charge goes off and thousands of pieces of lead and steel are propelled in a spherical shaped cloud. The idea behind it is, of course, to rip the airplane apart or in the very least so damage it that it won’t fly. Best of all, for those on the ground, the airplane might disintegrate in a cloud of smoke! Thankfully, the shell that hit us was a partial dud and only the bottom half of the charge went off ("How does he know this?" Sez you, the loyal reader. That's a part of the rest of the story). Even so the noise was very loud (like a cherry bomb at your feet) and the phantom shuddered like nothing I had ever experienced before. We had taken the hit a couple of feet from the leading edge and not far enough back to screw up the left main landing gear. There was a big hole in the left wing. The plane rolled over to the right about 200 degrees and flopped around like it was on the verge of forgetting how to fly. Most of the amber warning lights in the cockpit came on together as if someone had thrown a switch controlling a Christmas decoration you didn’t want to see.

The first thing that came to my mind was to tell Bill, “Don’t Eject!” In a microsecond I also thought, “What if he only hears ‘Eject!’”?

Milk Run - All Shook Up!

The forward air controller talked with flight lead and described the target that he needed us to take care of. To be perfectly honest, I don’t remember what it was. It could have been that almost “invisible” bridge or something else that the FAC could see pretty easily, but we couldn’t, considering our altitude and speed as we circled above. Whatever it might have been, the FAC marked it with a phosphorous smoke rocket and the area of interest became very visible. “Lay the bombs down a hundred yards east of the smoke”, or something like that he’d say. “Your target is under the tree canopy, on a line southeast to northwest beginning east of the smoke and continuing for about a quarter of a mile”.

We followed Willy as he positioned himself on a perch, about fifteen thousand feet up (I really don't remember). It had to be close enough in (that is, off set) and high enough up (distance away, along the off set), to allow the pilot to maneuver into a fairly steep (some thirty to forty degrees) path which paralleled the target’s axis. If you were too far out, the glide path would be too shallow and the bombs would drop short, too close in and the opposite would happen. It took some maneuvering around, but it wasn’t as difficult as it may sound. The “pipper” a depressible, illuminated reticle, (ooops, does everyone know what that is? )

reticle |ˈretikəl|

noun

a series of fine lines or fibers in the eyepiece of an optical device, such as a telescope or microscope, or on the screen of an oscilloscope, used as a measuring scale or an aid in locating objects.

would have been preset to give the correct representation along the path over the ground as to the alignment of the Phantom along the desired run in. So you have these factors to confirm as you fly around positioning yourself on the lead and the other two planes in the flight - altitude to roll in, angle off to get the correct dive angle, pipper setting, arming the appropriate weapon stations, keeping your eye on the target, watching the smoke, airspeed within a few knots of correct release velocity, and listening for lead to be cleared in. Lead rolls in, I follow just enough behind him to give myself good spacing and allow me to recover without worrying too much about where he was going to be.

Ok, everything’s done. Rolling in hot. Good angle off. Acceptable dive angle (can adjust release to compensate). Pull throttles back a bit to maintain speed in the dive (seems like we used about 350-400 knots, but I forget). Watch altimeter. Adjust alignment for a better run in heading. Trim the airplane. Be aware of “G’s”. You want the plane to fly down the chosen path, all trimmed up and smooth as possible. Pipper moving along nicely towards smokey target area (a bunch of tree tops!). Willy’s bombs hit right on the target, my pipper crosses aiming point, I release. There’s only one spot in space that is the correct release point above any particular target. Airspeed, altitude, angle, pipper position all must be correct and perfect. This rarely happens. Most of the time you simply compensate one way or another for what you know to be the anomaly in your “perfect bomb run”.

When all of those bombs leave the plane there is a pretty big mechanical sounding jerky vibration. Over in a half second. You know the bombs are gone (hopefully, all of them).

The fun has just begun. If you’re smart, you’ll begin the 4 G (or whatever you can get) pull up with a hard turn, one way or another. Firewall the power. Follow this with another turn immediately in the other direction. Reverse. Reverse. Reverse again. Go up. Climb. Get the hell out of there! It’s called jinking, basically not setting up a straight line or climb angle for a gunner to get a sight on you. You can look in the rear view mirror to see if you hit anything, but don’t worry about that too much.

We had been briefed that there was no significant anti-aircraft weaponry in the area. They were wrong.

Milk Run - Turning Sour

It's 135 miles from Ubon Royal Thai Air Force Base to Tchepone Laos, as the crow flies. You can see from the map at the right, the Ho Chi Minh trail came out of North Viet Nam, into Laos and paralleled the South Viet Nam border all the way down to Cambodia and beyond."It linked North and South Vietnam via the Laotian panhandle, and it was an indispensable source of supplies for communist forces operating below the 17thparallel in the 1960s and early 1970s. Air interdiction and special operations forces slowed but never stopped the flow of matériel. President Lyndon Johnson, primarily for political considerations, would not approve air strikes around Hanoi and Haiphong, which might have been more successful in the overall effort to disrupt enemy activities. Initially opened to support Viet Cong guerrillas in South Vietnam, the Ho Chi Minh Trail was nothing more than a skein of rustic traces through the wilderness in the late 1950s. Dedicated men, women, boys, and girls trudged down its paths bent bandy-legged beneath heavy loads, all but ignored by senior officials in Washington and Saigon because the invoices were unimpressive: a little rice, pitted handguns captured from the French, homemade weapons pieced together like so many Rube Goldberg inventions. The tempo, however, gradually picked up and the consignments increasingly included items such as radios, pharmaceuticals, plastic explosives, recoilless rifles, and repair parts. Ammunition requirements multiplied exponentially after U.S. combat forces hit North Vietnamese Army (NVA) regulars head on in 1965." (from Autumn/Winter 1997–98 / JFQ)

On 16 November 1965, Willie Wells and his flight of four phantoms took about thirty minutes to get to Tchepone. Flight lead contacted the FAC (Forward Air Controller) and began to get final instructions for the mission we had briefed.

It always seems simple enough. The idea is to cut the highway or destroy the bridge serving the highway. The enemy was clever. The "bridges" were built so that they were about two feet under the surface of the water and the road usually divided into a web of roads leading up to the river, and there was another web on the other side.

You really never knew where the bridge was.

Milk Run, Intelligence and the Art of Leaving Town

OK, so maybe it wasn't REALLY Robert MacNamara who walked into the alert shack that afternoon. But it was an honest to goodness minion of his and he had some news about something or other that needed bombing really soon. "Since you guys aren't doing anything to earn a living just sitting around here playing cribbage, take four Phantoms, eight fighter jocks and about 52,000 pounds of bombs over here to this small town in Laos and blow up the bamboo bridge that leads into town." Well, something like that.

The name of the place was Tchepone Laos, (on most maps now, Sepone) about seventy-five miles west of the South China Sea, fifteen miles from the South Vietnamese border and the same distance from the cease fire line of 1954. Oh, did I mention? It was a major intersection of the Ho Chi Mihn Trail. This seemed easy enough we all thought, after all, it was daylight! We were going to be able to see where we were going by looking outside the airplane! It was a typical SE Asia early winter day - scattered clouds probably working their way up to a thunderstorm or two, no strong winds and unlimited visibility. A Phantom Phlyer's dream mission: flight of four, air to ground bombing, possible targets of opportunity after the initial passes, no reported triple A, only a hundred fifty miles from "home", quick and easy, back for dinner.

After the intelligence guy got through with his briefing, my flight leader "Willy" told us what he expected from us and we walked briskly out to the waiting airplanes. As we strapped in, we ran the cockpit check lists. It was designed so that each man had his own things to check and there was little need initially, for cross-checks. Once things were powered up, you’d put on your helmet and begin a brief crosscheck with the guy in back and then wait for start-up time. Firing up the engines was straight forward and then you’d switch to internal power and you’d be ready to go. It was easy to see the other guys, and the flight leader would say “Raven flight, check in.” We answer simply... “two, three, four.” The leader called the tower “Ubon, taxi Ravens.” The tower responded “taxi runway 27 right, wind two seven zero at eight knots, altimeter setting 29.89.” You’d go out to the ramp area and then to the taxiways and see the other guys and fall in line according to your position. It wasn't far to the end of the runway and there was the arming area. The pins on the bombs and rockets and other neat stuff would be removed and the armament would be further checked by ordinance people and made ready to go. I guess I should have mentioned before that initially the pilot just checks to be sure that the bombs, etc. are the ones called for on the mission and that they are in fact, safe to taxi with. He doesn’t pull pins on the weapons in the ramp area, that is the very last thing that is done before takeoff. The ordinance guys show all of the pins to the pilots double checking everything as being ready to go and then the leader will get a head shake from the guys indicating “ready”. He calls the tower, “Ubon, Raven ready for takeoff”. “Taxi into position and hold”. The four Phantoms taxi onto the runway and take their predetermined position, two by two. “Raven flight, winds two eight zero at ten knots, cleared for takeoff.” Willie points his right index finger up in the air and with a circular motion gives the signal to “wind up” the engines. You run each engine up separately (the engines on the F4’s were so powerful that the brakes wouldn’t hold if they were both powered up simultaneously) and check them out one last time. You nod to the leader and he powers up to about 85 percent on both engines, releases his brakes and I begin to count "one thousand one, one thousand two" and at five seconds or so, I release the brakes, apply 100% power, then into full afterburner. It doesn't take long to get to flying speed, airborne, and clean up the jet. As number two in the flight of four, I look for my leader, now turning North. I join him in the turn.

Milk Run, Finally We Get To Fly In The Daytime!

I was priviledged to have as mentor, drinking instructor and flight C.O. a man who had flown in the Korean war. He taught us how to use a black grease pencil to mark on the inside of the canopy to use as a sight and other neat tricks. I think of him most every day and thank him for teaching me so much and being a friend and great leader (in his own cantankerous way).

I can see the guys sitting around, playing cribbage or something, waiting for someone to come in the room and announce that our skills in close air support were needed. Everybody was more or less similar in appearance, having partially prepared ourselves for the fastest exit and take-off possible.
So, you put your G-suit on first, then your survival vest, which had little pockets all over it containing stuff for use if the worst thing happened. There was a first aid kit and I also chose to have one hundred rounds of 357 ammo and some tracer bullets. A shoulder holster with its contents more or less duct taped in was in the next layer. I had purchased a Smith and Wesson 357 magnum with a six inch barrel (my personal weapon). They issued us a puny little thirty eight snub nosed thing of a revolver, but it seemed to me that I could fight my way out better with the magnum. This of course, was just a pipe dream and simply used to bolster my own confidence! Then there was the harness. It was a bunch of straps which went all around your chest, up through your crotch on either side and was all sewn on to a garment that could be said to resemble a vest, of sorts. We would typically get ready to fly by putting on a harness which connected to the rocket ejection seat in the plane. This was good, because everything remained in the plane and you didn’t have to lug it around like you did with the older fighters. This all hooked up to the ejection seat, as I mentioned. It wasn’t really as complicated or weighty as it may sound. It was comfortable, more or less and once you got everything fitted OK, which took some time initially, it was a good outfit and I felt that everything could be used for survival, if you were unlucky enough to be shot down and escape immediate capture.
The aircraft were assigned (in either flights of four or two) and they were all parked on the ramp that was just outside the squadron ops building. We either would walk or get a lift to the plane. Typically all of the planes would be fairly close together or even next to each other, so you could use hand signals for things if you needed to.

A guy from intelligence came in about two that afternoon.

Milk Run, The Briefing

After we had been in Thailand for a couple of months, learning as we flew about strategic targeting, night refueling, long trips to North Viet-Nam and bombing things in valleys under the light of flares, we looked forward to what was called "alert".

Standing alert was almost a treat some days. The term comes from the fact that you weren't scheduled for any particular target or time. You stood by, on "alert", for someone to call in a need for close air support, or a quick response to a new threat discovered by "intelligence". It was a good way to spend an afternoon. Here's why. First of all you got to fly in the daytime! Secondly, the missions were quick, no airborne refueling, in most cases, the whole thing over in an hour or so. The hard part was often being so close to the friendlies - there was real concern over collateral damage.

Our leaders and their aircrews were very well trained, experienced, standardized and knew each other well enough to minimize the briefing required. It often was something like, "takeoff at 1545, this is the target, everything's standard, any questions?" It worked really well, considering the complexity of getting four bomb-laden Phantoms and their eight crew members into the planes, out to the runway, armed and off to fight in as few as twenty minutes or less. In the Deuce (Convair's F102), we made into the air in three or four minutes from a dead sleep, but that was an interceptor's mission, somewhat simpler.

Anyway, sitting on standby alert was a special treat. I can remember an afternoon in November of 1965 when I was on alert.

Valentine's Day - 1945

This is the continuation of a story written by S/Sgt Chuck Walter, the armor gunner on my cousin Rufus' B-26. He is recalling the last flight of their crew and what happened to them after they were shot down.

The picture on the left is of me, age five or six and Rufus when he was still in the Aviation Cadet program at an airbase near our home in El Monte California.

At age twenty, Charles “Chuck” Walter became a member of the U.S. Army Air Corps. He would spend most of the war in a B-26 Marauder as an Armor Gunner attached to the 9th Air Force’s 323rd Bomb Group with the 455th Bombardment Squadron.

The Marauder was a fairly new plane to the Air Force. Ordered as a “twin-engine bomber with great emphasis placed on speed, range and operational altitude,” it was manufactured by the Martin Company. 5,157 planes would be used in the war efforts, including one flown by Jimmy Doolittle in North Africa to prove: “It’s just another airplane. Let’s start it up and play with it.”

The 323rd was first assigned to the 8th Air Force, then transferred to the 9th in October of 1943. In July of 1943 the group began attacking marshalling yards, airdromes, industrial plants, military installations and other targets in France, Belgium and Holland. It then undertook numerous attacks on V-weapon sites along the French coast and attacked airfields, and Leeuwarden and Venlo as part of the Allied campaign against the German Air Force and aircraft industry from 20-25th February 1944.

FEBRUARY 14, 1945
VALENTINE DAY MISSION #25

Flight going well until we encountered heavy flak at about 10:00 A.M. Right engine took heavy hit. We feathered the prop and dropped out of the formation, as we couldn’t maintain speed and position. We started back toward our lines, were met with oncoming flak from the ground. The engine caught fire at about 3500 feet. We did evasive action, trying to avoid getting hit. I was in the tail telling Willie, my pilot, where the shell bursts were, and we would turn away. We weren’t hit again but every time we turned to the dead engine side, we would lose altitude until we were at about 1200 feet.
My pilot rang the “bail out” button and the enlisted men bailed out. I was the farthest away in the tail, but was the second man out. My chute opened and I did one or two swings, being fired at on the way down, having bullet holes in my chute to prove it. I landed real hard on my butt, injuring my back. I also sustained burns from the flames that were coming in the waist window as I bailed out.
The gun crew that was shooting at us picked me up. Their crew chief was a little 5’5” fellow, but he had a P38 pistol pointed at me before I could get to my feet. The radioman, Rouser, was picked up by the regular army and was treated okay. Frank Miller, our engineer, was picked up by the townspeople and was beaten quite badly.
The first 24 hours were the worst because we didn’t know if any of the crew had survived. I was put in a jeep-type vehicle and taken by a private in the German Army to a gathering point. Our planes, fighters, were circling overhead; and every time my captor saw a plane, he would stop and run for the ditch, leaving me in the car. I was sure glad that our fighters didn’t see us. We finally arrived at the outpost where I was thrown in an upstairs bedroom in an old farmhouse, scared to death.
During the next twenty-four hours, planes bombed close enough that as I lay on the floor, I could see the plaster crack above me. The next day we made the outpost where I was joined by my engineer and radioman. While we were there, an ambulance arrived. In it were my pilot, Lt. Rufus Wilson, my co-pilot, 2nd Lt. John Weinstein, and my bombardier, 2nd Lt. James Rudig. Lt Wilson had a broken neck, dying three days later. The co-pilot, Weinstein, had broken bones, but Bombardier Rudig was not injured very much. The three officers had gone down and crash-landed with the plane. The hydraulic system had been shot out, and the doors of the plane would not open. The plane was on fire when it landed and was damaged quite badly.
There was a lot of screaming coming from within the plane when it landed. The rescuers thought that the enlisted men had not gotten out of the plane and were trapped inside by the flames. There may have been some of the enemy on the ground and the plane landed on or trapped them.
The interrogators took our money, anything else they wanted, and one dog tag. We were marched to the next place by one guard—an old soldier in the regular army. As we marched, we met forced laborers from different countries. They told us (sign language) that we would be killed.
We arrived in one town and went to the railroad station. While we were there, a group of townspeople gathered and started yelling. A crowd surrounded us, and we were afraid they were going to hang us. We walked out of the town with our soldier guard following behind. We finally arrived in Wetzler where they took all of our Air Force clothing and issued us plain U.S. Army clothing. Each of us got a long winter coat. We were then sent to Frankfurt on the Main to be questioned.
I was placed in a very small room and asked all kinds of questions about the U.S. Air Force. If we refused to answer questions put to us, the heat was turned up with each refusal. We were told that they didn’t need our answers—they were just trying to verify the information they had. They knew everything. They told me where we were based, the type of plane we flew, the
name of our commanding officer. Since they were getting no answers, they finally gave up and shipped us to Wuerzburg to a camp where we stayed for some time. Wuerzburg was a camp by a small town that held a 20MM gun barrel factory.
Our camp, located on top of a hill, was divided into two parts. One section was for POWs and the other was for the German Army troops. They thought it was a safe location for them, but the British low-level bombers could pinpoint their section and bombed the German part of the camp without touching our section. Every morning, weather permitting, our 26s would come in and bomb their factories. All of the townspeople would race up the hill to our camp for protection.
It was while we were in this camp that we first saw their jet fighters. We saw one of our planes attacked and shot down by their jets. Only three of the crew parachuted.
We arrived in Nuremberg and walked by the station and on to camp. At one time while we were there, the city was under siege for an entire day. The British Air Force took over where the Americans left off and bombed the city the entire night. The next morning there were a lot of new members in our POW camp—mostly British.
At times the British were firebombing. During those raids the Germans would attack the British planes in their night fighters. A direct hit on the incendiary-laden British planes lighted the skies for miles around.
Our Army was now moving in for the kill, so the Germans began moving us out of there to keep our troops from releasing us. There were many thousands of us on the road. The Americans were first in ranks. The British were next. I don’t recall how the remaining POW’s were lined up.
We walked seventeen days, arriving at Moosburg. During the march, we were kept alive by the Red Cross rations that were passed out to us—one package per three prisoners. The food didn’t always serve the whole formation. The captors did feed us at times, but the rations were very poor. But we were hungry so the bugs in the bean soup went unnoticed.
En route we would pass through small towns. If we spent the night, there was a ring of soldiers with guard dogs stationed around us. In the morning the dogs would get us out of hiding. I was the cook, my engineer was the fireman and the radioman was the thief. That radioman could steal an egg from under an old hen without her ever realizing it was gone. We slept in a barn one night and explored and found the farmer had hidden some wheat behind and under the hay. When we left, we had our socks and pockets full of grain. We traded for a coffee grinder and ground our wheat—almost like Cream of Wheat.
We slept one night in a shed of pine boughs. We discovered that the boughs covered ice and the “ice house” was a storage place for the farmer’s potatoes. I spent the night with a stick spearing potatoes. We had all we could carry when we left the next day.
One day while on march, we were going under a train trestle and some P47s dive-bombed it and strafed it while we were under it. Some of our POWs were killed but the planes had cameras synchronized with their guns. When they returned to base and studied the films, they discovered that they were attacking some POWs. From that point on, while we were on the march, we were put to bed every night and awakened every morning by a P51. He would fly beside us on a road fill, wave and smile and give us the ol’ “Thumbs Up”. Each time we stopped to rest, we marked our campsite with a ground sign, “POW”, made of toilet paper. We finally reached Moosburg, staying there some time before we were liberated.
On April 29th 1945 General George Patton overran our camp, releasing us. Our first act was to look for something to cat. We went down the road to a farmhouse, confiscated some tame rabbits and on the way back to camp, picked up some chickens—really traded for them. We took the chickens but left the rabbits in their place.
We were flown out of Germany, then taken by train to Reims, France, on May 8th 1945, the very day the Germans were signing their surrender. We were taken to Camp Lucky Strike near Le Harve, France. After four weeks we boarded the ship, Monticello, for our journey back to the States. The time at Lucky Strike was spent sleeping, eating and getting our strength back.

Memories of War: “I’ll Bring Her In”

This blog entry is about my cousin, Rufus Wilson, 1/LT, United States Army Air Force. The text was written by S/Sgt. Charles H. Walter, U.S. Army Air Corp, 9th Air Force, 323rd Bomb Group 455th Bombardier Squadron. I will conclude the story tomorrow with part two. See the entry on Monday, May 25, 2009 for some background.

Coming back from a mission, we were waiting to land but did not know our nose wheel would not come down. After discovering our problem, we talked to our Commanding Officer and decided that the crew would stay with the plane. We circled until our ship was the last plane aloft. We tried to lower the nose wheel but after opening the hatch, we found the hydraulic line was ruptured and was spewing fluid all over and inside the cockpit. The windows were covered and the pilot could not see out.
Pilot “Willie” opened the side window and “flew her in.” While in the air, the crew decided to go to the rear of the plane to keep the weight far back to help keep the nose of the ship off the ground as long as possible. We would be landing at 130 miles per hour.
I was sitting with my butt behind the bulkhead - my radioman between my legs. We had hardly touched down when he freed himself and jumped out of the waist window. The last I saw of him he was rolling down the runway. I thought he would surely be killed. He survived with not even a broken bone. We landed with a full bomb load. I had to go back and deactivate the bombs before we landed. We continued down the runway to the end and nosed it in.
All of this was being watched and recorded by Associated Press. The crew was later interviewed and the following appeared in the Stars & Stripes.
“Sergeant Walter had very little to say about his recent narrow escape when a crippled bomber came back to the base with the bomb bays still loaded. The bombs had not been released because of the danger to Allied soldiers near the bomb target. Sergeant Walter enclosed the following clipping from the Stars & Stripes the newspaper for men overseas; which gives an account of the perilous flight: ‘Don’t worry. I’ll bring her in all right,’ Lieutenant Rufus Wilson, 23 year-old Marauder pilot from Corsicana, Tex., radioed the control tower as his plane, its nose shell shot away, circled the field with a full crew and full bomb load.
“Colonel Wilson R. Wood, of Chico, Tex., group commander, approved the crew’s decision to stay aboard and suggested that the explosives be left aboard to hold the tail down. Wilson brought the plane down on its two main wheels and for two- thirds the length of the runway he kept both the tail and nose off the ground. Unable to apply the brakes because of the danger of the ship nosing over, Wilson rode the screeching Marauder off the end of the runway. The nose dipped and propeller hit turf but the plane didn’t tip over.
“Crew members included Lieutenant James Rudig, South Bend, Ind., bombardier; Staff Sergeant Frank Miller, Atlantic City, N. J., engineer; Sergeant Charles Walter, Knoxville, Iowa, tail gunner; Lieutenant Louis Carrington, Houston, Tex., co-pilot, and Sergeant Martin Terrell, Little Rock, Ark., radio operator.”

December 26th
Going to briefing early the 26th. Weather clear and cold. We had already flown 3 missions in 3 days and this would be our second of the day. In the briefing room, we were informed of our second mission of the day. They informed us the target would be heavily defended with 99 guns. There were 52 ships - 3 boxes of 18. Our flight failed to release our bombs on the first run so made a second pass. Lt. Fox and crew were flying Mission Belle on her 149 mission. He was flying on our left wing when the plane was hit by flak and exploded, going down. No survivors.
Lt. Fox was a very good friend of mine. We were also hit and thrown out of control and out of formation, but my pilot regained control. We returned to formation and dropped our load on target., On our way back to the base, I roamed the plane and picked up two handfuls of flak. Luckily, no one was hit. After landing, I counted the flak holes for a total of 129. For this mission my pilot, Lt. Wilson, received the Distinguished Flying Cross and the 323rd Group received the Group Citation.

On his copy of his pilot’s “Flying Cross” memorandum, Chuck wrote: “At this time of this award, Lt. Wilson was missing in action. His plane had been shot down in a raid. His crew were taken prisoners. Lt. Wilson sustained fatal injuries in this crash and died three days later. The crew remained prisoners until the end of the war. Lt. Wilson’s body was returned home in 1950.”

A Fly In A Coffee Cup

What happens when a fly falls into a coffee cup?

The Italian throws the cup and walks away in a fit of rage.

The Frenchman takes out the fly and drinks the coffee.

The Chinese eats the fly and throws away the coffee.

The Russian drinks the coffee with the fly, as it was included at no extra charge.

The Israeli sells the coffee to the Frenchman, the fly to the Chinese, buys himself a new cup of coffee, uses the extra money to invent a device that prevents flies from falling into coffee.

The Palestinian blames Israel for the fly falling into his coffee, protests the act of aggression to the UN, takes a loan from the European Union to buy a new cup of coffee, but uses the money to purchase explosives, and then blows up the coffee house where the Italian, the Frenchman, the Chinese and the Russian are all trying to explain to the Israeli that he should give away his cup of coffee to the Palestinian.

What's Wrong WIth Us?

What has happened to our country? Why do we have a president who is unqualified? His resumé includes instructing in the socialist tactic (community organizer, a la Saul Alinsky). His socialist backing goes back at least to 1996, when he received the endorsement of the Chicago branch of the Democratic Socialists of America [which describes itself as the largest socialist organization in the United States and the principal U.S. affiliate of the Socialist International] for an Illinois state senate seat.

Why do we have a president who is a racist? Obama -- along with such notables as Al Sharpton and Jeremiah Wright -- helped organize the October 1995 Million Man March in Washington, DC, which featuredNation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. Said Obama in the immediate aftermath of the March:

"What I saw was a powerful demonstration of an impulse and need for African-American men to come together to recognize each other and affirm our rightful place in the society…. Historically, African-Americans have turned inward and towards black nationalism whenever they have a sense, as we do now, that the mainstream has rebuffed us, and that white Americans couldn't care less about the profound problems African-Americans are facing."

In this century, we are experiencing a sequence of human behavior which not only affects nations, but churches, businesses and other long term entities where founding generations pass on, replaced by those who are unaware of the sacrifices of their progenitors.

A certain zeal and a willingness to sacrifice one's self for a movement or activity characterizes the founders. They are replaced by those who saw from a safe place the formation of the institution; then come those who have only heard about the fight. They develop a certain apathy about it, they are in turn succeeded by a generation whose main characteristic is some sense of entitlement. We are seeing a generation coming up whose whole world view is characterized by "me first". All you have to do is read about what goes on on the college campus. You can see how dissenters from the "new norms" are treated with rudeness and even violence.

Thank God there are men and women who have not been deceived. They are the remnant which will restore the Republic.

Alexis de Tocqueville accurately described the dilemma which now faces our beloved Nation, "The Christian nations of our age seem to me to present a most alarming spectacle; the impulse which is bearing them along is so strong that it cannot be stopped, but it is not yet so rapid that it cannot be guided: their fate is in their hands; yet a little while and it may be no longer."

"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." Edmund Burke.

Must Read, honest!

If you have a minute left in your day, take time to read my friend's commentary and send it on to folks who love this Nation.

It is important that people understand what's happening. I am not one to go off half cocked, I am methodical and thorough. I believe the Alan Caruba has put our situation down in an understandable way. Please read it as a favor to me.

The Perfect Storm

Thanks.