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  Racing Back to Vietnam

  Text Copyright © 2017 John Pendergrass

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

  ISBN: 978-1-57826-699-9

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

  Printed in the United States

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For the Americans

  Killed, Wounded, or

  Imprisoned during the

  Vietnam War

  “Each of us carried in his heart a separate war which in many ways was totally different, despite our common cause. We had different memories of people we’d known and the war itself, and we had different destinies in the postwar years.”

  “The Sorrow of War,” Bao Ninh

  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  Part I: LIFE IN DANANG

  AHEAD OF SCHEDULE

  WHY VIETNAM?

  GETTING MY FEET ON THE GROUND

  INTO THE SKY

  LIFE IN THE BACKSEAT

  PARTY SUITS

  ANTI-AIRCRAFT FIRE

  LOST IN ACTION

  LIFE IN A FIGHTER SQUADRON

  AIR-TO-AIR REFUELING

  DOOM CLUB

  NIGHT MOVES

  PRISONERS OF WAR

  I CORPS MEDICAL SOCIETY

  THE RESCUE OF COVEY 219

  OPERATION GOLDEN FLOW

  FINAL MISSION

  PART II: BACK TO VIETNAM

  FINDING A REASON TO RETURN

  DA NANG FROM A BICYCLE

  AT THE STARTING LINE

  RACE DAY

  TRAVELS AROUND DANANG

  HO CHI MINH TRAIL, LAOS

  HANOI

  TRAVELING WITH THE MARINES

  HO CHI MINH CITY

  LOOKING BACK

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  Have you ever been to an air show or a football game and watched fighter jets fly over the field in perfect formation? Three or four planes, barely a hundred feet above the ground, wings only a few feet apart. The aircraft arrive almost unexpectedly and quickly disappear into the distant horizon, leaving only the ear-splitting, deafening roar of jet engines hard at work. The whole thing happens in just a few seconds and nearly takes your breath away. The crowd’s normal response is to stand awe-struck and break into applause. It’s speed and power, sound and fury, the likes of which you’ve rarely seen before. You wish you could capture the moment, experience the thrill one more time.

  I’ve had that feeling, and then some. For a year, I served as a United States Air Force flight surgeon at Da Nang Air Base, flying in the backseat of the workhorse fighter of the Vietnam War: the F-4 Phantom. The backseater served as the Weapon Systems Officer (WSO) and got an occasional chance to fly the aircraft. He was a junior partner in the F-4, a sidekick in the rear cockpit. The plane-driving, gun-shooting, bomb-dropping pilot in the front seat was the man in charge—the Aircraft Commander (AC). When it came to being shot down or killed, the two share the risk equally, true partners in every sense of the word.

  Flying fighters is exhilarating. You are strapped into what seems like the fastest, most powerful machine ever made by man—the top aircraft in the Air Force’s pecking order. Move the throttles far enough forward, and you can travel faster than the speed of sound. That authority and control are right there at your fingertips.

  I learned on the job. I never went to pilot training and never attended navigator school; but I was able to come along for the ride in a Mach-2 fighter, a bit player in one of history’s most intense and dangerous air wars.

  I lived and flew with some of the best people in the world—the 390th Tactical Fighter Squadron, part of the 366th Tactical Fighter Wing. I knew next to nothing about flying, but my squadron welcomed me in and took me along. Thanks to their generosity, I experienced the adrenaline-rich, life-affirming euphoria of flying fighters in combat.

  And what a ride it was. I flew 54 combat missions over South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia; we even dipped into North Vietnam on a few sorties. I survived anti-aircraft fire on multiple occasions, returning to base feeling more alive than when I took off, anxious to go again. It was the great adventure of my life.

  On other occasions, I laid helpless and afraid in my barracks, subject to the whims of chance as the Viet Cong launched nighttime rocket attacks on our base. When the rockets came, there was little you could do except hunker down and hope that it wasn’t your time. It was the capriciousness and unpredictability of the rocket attacks that were the most unsettling. Sometimes, a few incoming rounds were fired, and that was it; it was over. Other times, the attack seemed to go on for half the night. At Da Nang, it was known as “rolling dice with the Devil.” You were at the mercy of the Viet Cong, and the best you could hope for was to break even.

  Flying was just one part of my Vietnam experience. Most of my time was spent in my primary role as a physician, taking care of injured soldiers, healthy pilots, enlisted men with venereal disease, airmen addicted to heroin, people with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and anyone else who walked through the doors of our medical dispensary.

  It seemed as though I lived in two different worlds. In one, I flew fighters; in the other, I took care of sick people. I had friends and colleagues in both places, but the worlds rarely intersected.

  I spent enough time in Vietnam to see the war as one of random deaths and hollow victories; a place where victory seemed indistinguishable from defeat. But I had learned long ago that this was often the nature of war. I was glad to have served and happy to depart with my honor intact, full of gratitude and relief.

  I came home in late April 1972, just as Operation Linebacker, the final air assault on North Vietnam, was beginning. For most of my tour, the rules of engagement had kept North Vietnam off limits. The U.S.’s goal was no longer one of total victory; now, it was simply peace with honor. Everything changed in May 1972, when my squadron mates began flying over North Vietnam, the most heavily defended country in the world. While they were “going Downtown” (as flying over Hanoi was known), I was going back to the USA.

  Like most of America, I was anxious to put the Vietnam War behind me. Since President Nixon had assured us that he was turning things over to the South Vietnamese, most of our country had long since quit paying attention to Vietnam. I jumped back into civilian life, quick to let things go. With a wife, a son, and a residency in ophthalmology, I had little time for reflection. I cried when the American prisoners of war (POWs) came home in early 1973. These were men I identified with: the vast majority of them were pilots and backseaters captured when their fighter aircraft were shot down over North Vietnam. These POWs were my heroes, and their fate was always on my mind.

  The end, when it came, came very quickly. In 1975, the South Vietnamese government collapsed, and the war was over. I tried not to think of the men in my squadron who died, or of the more than fifty-eight thousand Americans who lost their life in the war, or of the hundreds of thousands of our South Vietnamese allies whose fates were now in the hands of the North Vietnamese. I tried not to dwell on the tragedy, the heroism, the absurdity of war. Like most of America, I was anxious to put it behind me.

  Forty-five years after I first arrived, I’ll be returning to Vietnam in order t
o participate in the Ironman 70.3 triathlon held at Da Nang. The idea seems appealing—a new challenge for an old man. At the time of my service in Vietnam, the sport of triathlon hadn’t even been invented. It wasn’t until 1974 that someone thought of linking swimming, biking, and running—in that order—to create a single event; it was another four years before the Ironman brand was created.

  This is my chance to return to Southeast Asia under more idyllic conditions. There will be no rocket attacks, no anti-aircraft fire; I’ll be able to relax in the sunshine and swim in the sea; a septuagenarian’s spring break, of sorts.

  In reality, the triathlon idea is just an excuse to return to Vietnam; to go back into my youth, to touch the past. These journeys back in time seem much more attractive when you reach retirement age. When you are in your thirties or forties, you are living in “real time;” there’s little to go back to. Life is lived forward and understood backwards. Besides, I had already completed six Ironman triathlons on six continents in my sixties, and truthfully, I felt like I had ridden that horse as far as it could go.

  Plus, the number of Ironman triathlons has only increased over the last decade, with races now being held in every corner of the globe. When enough people have done something, the value of it changes. Ironman had lost its capacity to inspire me; it was no longer special, it was just another endurance event.

  At least, that’s what I told myself. In truth, my lack of enthusiasm was probably due to the fact that my ideal window for doing a triathlon had closed over thirty years ago. Nowadays, I still have grand goals—the mind never quits dreaming—but my schemes are based more on wishful thinking than on reality. My body refuses to cooperate. I’m in my eighth decade of life, and nothing physical comes easy at this age. My aches and pains can usually be held in check by a fistful of medications, but there are many days that I feel like an old man who made a wrong turn on his way to the nursing home.

  My journey to Vietnam is inspired by a mixture of nostalgia and reflection. Since memories can get lost in the clutter of time, I’ve made a concerted effort to recapture my year in Southeast Asia. I’ve read through the over one hundred and fifty letters that I wrote my wife and mother from Vietnam; I’ve studied my flight records searching for clues; I know the date and duration of each mission and the tail number of the aircraft (though little else, admittedly). I’ve attended several recent reunions of my fighter wing and skimmed through dozens of history books giving various takes on the Vietnam War. In truth, I feel I know more about Vietnam now than I did during my tour.

  I’m anxious to return to Da Nang, the country’s third largest city. I’ll be landing on the very same runway I departed from forty-five years ago. During the war, it was the busiest airport in the world. I can still clearly remember leaving Da Nang at the end of my tour; it was one of the greatest moments of my life. I’ll never forget the joy, the exhilaration, the applause when our “freedom bird” took off in April 1972.

  It has been nearly forty-five years. I saw Vietnam in wartime, and I was happy to leave it behind. But I know the country has changed dramatically nearly half a century. I am anxious to go back to Southeast Asia. Most of all, I want to talk to the people of Vietnam. Even though the vast majority were born after the war’s end, surely there must be a few who have a direct memory of the conflict.

  What do today’s Vietnamese really think of that era they call the “American War”? This is a voyage of rediscovery that I’m eager to begin.

  I

  LIFE IN DANANG

  ONE

  AHEAD OF SCHEDULE

  May 30, 1971

  My first day in Vietnam was one of the worst days of my life.

  After begging, scheming, and conspiring, I’d somehow managed to get my boots on the ground on the very last day of the month, two days ahead of my scheduled arrival. As a result, I was able to avoid paying federal income tax on most of my salary for the entire month of May.

  I made a bad choice. I managed to beat the Internal Revenue Service out of few dollars of taxes in exchange for surviving a Viet Cong attack on my very first day at war.

  At the time, arriving in Vietnam a few days early seemed like a rational move. Uncle Sam had decided that any officer who spent a single day a month “in country” could exclude roughly $500 of his pay from federal income tax; enlisted personnel could exempt their entire paycheck for that month. Not only that, a single day in country earned you a full month of combat pay. Slipping into a combat zone on the final day of the month became a well-established strategy during the war. Many of the big brass stationed all over the Far East would fly to Vietnam on the last day of the month, have a few drinks at the officer’s club, and fly out the next day, all the while exempting two months of pay from federal taxes—as well as qualifying for combat pay.

  I’d finished Jungle Survival School (JSS) at Clark Air Base in the Philippines around May 27, and had a few days to burn before I was scheduled to arrive at Da Nang. Tom, my medical school roommate, was serving as a flight surgeon at Clark and offered to show me the country. We discussed spending a couple of days in Manila, relaxing and seeing the sights before I headed off to the war. But I was poor and knew that money is hard to come by, so I decided to skip the tour of the Philippines and try to get to Vietnam by May 30 in order to get my income tax exemption and combat pay.

  Only two years out of medical school, I was just a few dollars shy of broke. I had a young family, a load of debt, and a growing dislike of the IRS. For most of my life I had been too poor to notice, but the last couple of Aprils I had been forced to pay up for taxes due, and I was none too happy about it.

  Now, as a captain in the Air Force, I was making more money than I ever had in my life. My monthly paycheck, which included flight pay, medical pay, and combat pay, topped out around $1,000. I was doing my best to get my financial feet on the ground and was anxious to hold on to every single dollar that I could.

  Arriving in Vietnam ahead of schedule was one of the easiest things I’d ever done. I hustled over to the air terminal at Clark to plead my case. While there were numerous flights daily between the Philippines and Vietnam, all with plenty of empty seats, my request was a little confusing for the sergeant at the scheduling desk. After all, I was trying to leave the Philippines early to go to Vietnam, while most folks were trying to get out of Vietnam and spend a few days in the Philippines. I showed him my orders, explained that they really needed me at Da Nang, and told him that I was ready to serve my country. He smiled, shook his head, shuffled some papers, and the next morning I was in the air and on the way to my new home in Southeast Asia.

  On the flight over, I thought of my wife and eight-month-old son back in Mississippi. I was starting a twelve-month tour on the other side of the planet, far away from the people I loved, fighting a war I had largely ignored as I worked my way through college, medical school, and an internship. I had always supported the war in principle but, until now, had had little skin in the game.

  By and large, the people of the South, even in 1971, were pro-military. There were relatively few anti-war demonstrations and even fewer draft dodgers. My local newspaper listed servicemen and casualties from our area, but only a few of my friends had served in Vietnam. Most had muddled their way through college and grad school; some profited from a bad knee or fallen arches; a few managed to join the National Guard.

  All of that changed for me in the spring of 1971. Not only was I destined to spend a full year away from my family and home, I had drawn the worst assignment in the U.S. Air Force. Everyone told me the same thing—if you have to go on an unaccompanied tour of Southeast Asia, make sure it’s one of the bases in Thailand. It’s a warm and welcoming country, with wonderful food and lovely women. Many of the combat missions in Vietnam flew out of Thai air bases. Udorn, Ubon, Takhli, Korat, Nakhon Phanom—even today, the names have a musical, mythical ring; a hint of the tropics. Granted, the combat missions were just as dangerous if you flew from Thailand, but you were returning to the
beautiful, peaceful Thai countryside instead of war-torn South Vietnam. Plus, none of the bases in Thailand ever got attacked by Viet Cong. The difference in assignments was obvious; a lot of civilians paid good money to go on holiday in Thailand, but no one vacationed in Vietnam.

  Of course, if you had to be stationed in Vietnam, Tan Son Nhut Air Base was the place to be. The base is next door to Saigon, the “Paris of the Orient,” the dynamic cultural center of Vietnam—a city where every sin was available for a price. Saigon was the headquarters for the U.S. war effort, meaning that everyone from generals to civilian contractors to journalists, do-gooders, and other big shots called the city home. None of them were accustomed to doing without.

  The same could not be said of Da Nang.

  My previous nine months in the Air Force were spent with the 1st Special Operations Wing at Hurlburt Field in Fort Walton Beach, a pleasant Florida community full of white beaches, seafood restaurants, and military retirees pursuing the good life. No one worked hard at Hurlburt; the base pretty much shut down on the weekend. My family had finally gotten a spot with on-base housing; our hardest job was deciding which seafood restaurant to eat at.

  One day, while I was seeing patients at the dispensary (and planning my next SCUBA diving trip), I received a call from a sergeant in personnel. I knew him as a patient, and he was very apologetic, almost contrite, as he gave me the grim news: “Sir, I’ve just received your orders for a permanent change of assignment to Da Nang Air Base, Republic of Vietnam.”

  I felt like I had been punched in the gut. I had hoped to exit the military unscathed, but a month later I was gone from Florida. After a too-quick farewell week in San Francisco with my wife, Polly, I was on a military charter out of Travis Air Force Base in California, headed to Jungle Survival School (JSS) in the Philippines.

  Everyone in the USAF who flew in combat in Southeast Asia attended JSS. For nearly a week, you would focus on learning how to survive and be rescued if you’re shot down. At the time, I had no idea how much I would be able to fly during my year at Da Nang, but I knew the world of fighters was a risky one.