CHAPTER 5

Coming Home

Trans-Pac

On September 1, 1970, I was one of a flight of three A-6s to leave Da Nang in route to Cubi Point, Philippines, our first leg of the trans-pac ferry flight and an epic journey of two weeks that was full of memorable moments.

Jim Jurjevich was my BN on this half-way around the world flight going back home after one year in Vietnam.

We were to ferry three A-6s from Da Nang, island hop across the Pacific to Whidbey Island, Washington State, and then continue across country to NAS Norfolk, Virginia. The flight from Da Nang to Cubi Point Naval Air Station at Subic Bay took about two hours and was non-eventful. We landed, taxied in to the transit flight area, shut down our birds, did all the paper work and went to meet with our ferry flight leader from the Navy’s Ferry Squadron.

The three crews included Lieutenant Ted Lyons and his BN in the lead plane, which had the only good and complete navigation equipment. The other two birds were less than complete system-wise since VMA 242’s maintenance department kept the other two aircrafts’ good systems for the aircraft that remained in Da Nang. Lieutenant John Halleran was the pilot and Lieutenant Carl Monk, his BN, were in the number two plane, and Lieutenant Jim Jurjevich and I were in the number three plane. Our aircraft was the worst of the bunch, having a degraded navigation system with basically only a wet compass for navigation, plus no auto pilot. This meant I had to hand fly my aircraft the whole way which wasn’t usually a problem since our flights were normally about three hours long. But this would become a problem later on our five and a half hour leg from Hawaii to Whidbey Island when I had to fight to stay awake.

We meet up with the Navy crew from the Ferry Squadron that would lead us on the trans-pac flight. They would take over the bird that Ted Lyons and his BN flew to Cubi Point and Ted and his BN would then catch a C-130 back to Da Nang. The entire squadron would leave in another few weeks, but these three birds had to be delivered to the air rework facility in Norfolk, Virginia, on a certain date and before the squadron was to leave Vietnam.

That Navy Ferry Crew consisted of Commander Diz Laird and his BN, a Navy Lieutenant whose name I can’t remember. Commander Laird was a legendary Navy fighter pilot who was an ACE in World War II and the only Navy pilot to shoot down both a German aircraft in the North Atlantic and a Japanese aircraft in the Pacific theater.

Commander Laird flew the Brewster Buffalo, then the F4F Wildcat and the F6F Hellcat in WW II. In the Korean War, he flew the Phantom 1 Banshee and the F-86 in the Air Force Exchange Program.

Commander Laird had retired, but the Navy brought him back to active service to fly these ferry flights during Vietnam. He flew seventy-two trans-pac flights leading F-8 Crusaders and A-6 Intruders across the Pacific Ocean. Diz Laird was said to be type-rated in ninety-nine different aircraft and was lead pilot of the Japanese Naval Fleet of converted T-6s and BT-13s in the Movie Tora Tora Tora.

Commander Laird was a hell of a fighter pilot and also one hell of a character who drank us young Lieutenants under the table in the bar at night after each leg of the flight. (Source: Golden Gate Wing — Prop Talk — Guest speaker article.)

When we arrived in Cubi Point on September 1, 1970, there was a typhoon heading towards the Philippines and this would cause us a couple of days delay waiting for the storm to pass. Then when it did, I had a mechanical problem with my A-6. The Rat Generator (Ram Air Turbine) was bad and had to be replaced. This, we were told, would take several more days to get one from Da Nang.

As I was at my plane getting something out of the cockpit, I noticed a Navy mechanic working on a Navy A-6 parked nearby on the ramp. I asked what was wrong with the Navy bird and he said it had an engine problem and a light went on in my head.

I said, “We have been waiting to leave for a few days and we have to deliver these three Intruders to Norfolk, Virginia.”

I then asked him if I could swap my bad Rat generator for the one in the Navy A-6 since it was down anyway. He said he’d see what he could do. Then later he said he would swap them out and my bird would be ready to go by the following day. I thanked him and gave him twenty dollars.

So finally after waiting in Cubi Point for three days for the storm to pass and my aircraft to get fixed, we were ready to go on September 5, but Commander Laird had a policy that he wouldn’t take off with crews that he had not flown with before unless it was VFR (Visual Flight Rules) conditions. That morning we went to the operations room, briefed our mission, filed our flight plan, went out to our aircraft and loaded all our stuff into the “bird cages” of the A-6s. The bird cage was a platform that could be lowered down from the fuselage for access to the electronic equipment, but also a place where we could stow our clothing bags and any other stuff you wanted to carry on a flight. In this case it was all the goodies that we had bought in Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines.

The Trans-Pac BNs at Cubi Point

After our pre-flight inspection, we climbed into our aircraft, went through our pre-start procedures, started our engines and then waited for the weather to clear up and turn VFR. We waited on the ramp for about an hour, but the weather wasn’t getting any better, so finally Commander Laird called it off, told us to shut them down and said we would try it again the next day.

The next day, September 6, we went through the same procedure, got into our aircraft, cranked up and waited for the weather to break. Finally, after an hour’s wait, we started to see the clouds break up a little, so we called the tower and got clearance to taxi to and hold short of the runway. Just as we anticipated clearance onto the runway for a takeoff, we saw a flight of A-7s from one of the aircraft carriers that was coming into the Port of Subic Bay doing touch and goes. One after another they came in touched down and took off again from the opposite end of the runway, the direction that we were to take off.

So here we were having waited for five days to take off and now the clouds closing in again as we had to wait for these A-7s to do their repeated touch and goes. Commander Laird called the tower and demanded clearance onto the runway and permission to take off, only to have the tower tell us to hold short.

We waited a little while longer and then Commander Laird taxied onto the runway without clearance. John Halleran in the number two bird looked over to Jim and me, lifted his hands and shrugged his shoulders as if to say, “Oh well” and followed the lead onto the runway. I looked at Jim and said, “This isn’t good,” and followed number two onto the runway. Then the lead started to roll, followed by number two and then Jim and me.

We were rolling down the runway headed right at the A-7s coming in for a landing in the opposite direction. It looked like some kind of weird air show as the A-7s broke hard to avoid us headed right at them. As we got airborne with gear up we followed lead climbing out and on a course that took us right through Clark Air Force Base’s restricted area without clearance. We got only to about three thousand feet when John Halleran said that he was having difficulty with his flight controls. So Commander Laird said, “Let’s head back to Cubi Point.” We turned around and headed back to Cubi, landed and as we were taxiing in, a Follow Me truck and Shore Patrol jeep came up and said to follow them. As we shut down and climbed out of our aircraft, the SPs told us to follow them to the Base Operations Officer’s Office.

We were escorted up to the Base Ops Officer’s office and as soon as we entered his office he lit into us with some very harsh verbiage, “You son-of-a-bitches went onto the runway and took off without clearance and then violated Clark’s airspace. You almost caused a mid-air disaster flying into the A-7s who were landing. I’ll have your wings and you will never fly again. You will be Lieutenants for the rest of your service life and you’re lucky I don’t put you in the brig.” This was the best ass chewing I had ever received, better than OCS, even better than the Marine Major Ops Officer with 1/7 that grabbed me by the collar at LZ Baldy.

Just then, as the five of us were standing at attention and getting a major ass chewing from this Navy Captain, Commander Laird walked in. The Base Ops Officer looked at him and said, “Diz, are these your guys?”

“Yeah,” Commander Laird replied. “What’s the problem?”

The Ops Officer said, “You guys are dismissed. Commander Laird and I need to talk.”

As it turned out, Diz Laird and the Base Ops Officer were old friends and former squadron and shipmates.

Commander Laird took care of that situation and Halleran’s aircraft troubles turned out to be that they had stuffed too much crap in the bird cage. The clothing bags were pressing up against the horizontal stabilizer bar that ran down through the fuselage to the horizontal stabilizer in the tail causing the difficulty in moving the control stick and the vertical movement of the aircraft.

Guam

The next day, September 7, we were back on the flight line and ready to go with VFR weather conditions and our flight plan to Guam in the Marianas Islands. As we took off and got gear up somebody came over the air and said “Hurrah” and that summed up everyone’s feelings and I’m sure the people at NAS Cubi Point, too.

Finally we were on our way after all that waiting at Cubi, the storm, my aircraft’s rat generator problem, the takeoff comedy of errors, flight violation and Halleran and Monk’s over-stuffed bird cage. We climbed out on a beautiful day, heading east. We leveled off at about thirty-one thousand feet in a loose cruise flight formation and finally relaxed and enjoyed the flight over the large expanse of beautiful Pacific Ocean.

After a three and one-half hour flight, we landed in Guam at NAS Agana which was built originally by the Japanese in 1943 and then captured by the US in 1944. It was used by the US 7th Air Force flying B24 Liberator bombers until they moved to Okinawa. Then it was used by long range reconnaissance aircraft and also as a fighter base. It was turned over to and operated by the US Navy in 1947 until it was closed in 1993. (Source: Wikipedia)

The flight to NAS Agana was uneventful, and after shutting down our birds and checking into the BOQ, we all relaxed a bit and then met in the Officer’s Club for dinner and drinks. True to his style, Commander Diz Laird asked the bartender for the dice and another round of Ship, Captain and Crew was begun, along with the shots of whisky and Afterburners. All us younger guys, being twenty-five to maybe twenty-eight years old were getting out done by this WWII veteran fighter pilot who was probably about fifty-five at the time. To us he was an old man, but none of us could match him in flying or drinking. He was a legend to us even then.

It seems like through that whole trans-Pacific flight we started off each morning hung over and looking forward to putting our oxygen mask on.

A funny thing to watch at Agana was the gooney birds (albatrosses) lining up and taking off on the runway. I guess they thought they were airplanes; actually they have very long wing spans made for gliding and it took them a long run to get off the ground so what better place to take off than a runway. As you can imagine, they could be a problem for aircraft operations. Birds and jet intakes don’t mix very well. Bird strikes to a windscreen or up an intake can be disastrous. But we had no problems with them.

Wake Island

The next day, September 8, we had breakfast, filed our flight plan and headed out to our aircraft for our next leg to Wake Island. The flight to Wake was about three hours, cruising at an altitude of about thirty-one thousand feet over a very large and beautiful Pacific Ocean.

Wake Island is actually a triangle-shaped coral atoll consisting of three islands. It was discovered in 1568 by a Spanish explorer and later named for Captain William Wake of the British trading schooner Prince William Henry who visited the island in 1796.

The island was annexed by the United States on January 17, 1899. Pan Am Airways used it as a stopover for its flights to China and in 1941 in a military buildup in WW II the U.S. Navy constructed a military base there. The base was garrisoned by elements of the 1st Marine Defense Battalion consisting of 449 officers and men.

The Battle of Wake started with Japanese bombers attacking the island on December 8, the same day as the attack on Pearl Harbor, which was on the other side of the International Date Line. Twelve F4F Wildcat fighters of VMF 211 were on the ground. The island defenders repulsed the first amphibious assault on December 11 but the greatly outnumbered defenders were overwhelmed on December 23. U.S. casualties were numbered at fifty-two Navy and Marines and seventy-two civilians. The Japanese lost seven hundred to one thousand dead, two destroyers and one submarine sunk plus twenty-four aircraft shot down.

The Marines took the island back on September 4, 1945. (Source: Wikipedia)

The flight to Wake Island was almost uneventful except for one thing. As our three-plane flight was in loose cruise formation over the blue ocean below and the almost cloudless sky above, the lead aircraft radioed for us, the other two birds, to come in tighter. As I pulled in closer on the starboard side of Commander Laird’s A-6, I saw Commander Laird, the pilot, with his mask off waving at me from the BN’s right side seat.

I told Jim, my BN, to look over at the other aircraft, and asked, “Is that Commander Laird?”

“Oh shit, they changed seats in midair” was Jim’s response.

I then came up on our frequency and said some smart ass remark like “I hope you know how to fly that thing,” or something like that.

The A-6 has a big cockpit, but how in the hell they could swap seats in flight was pretty amazing, but then Diz Laird was pretty amazing. The whole trans-pac flight was one amazing or crazy thing after another.

After landing and securing our aircraft, and checking into the BOQ, I took a walk down the beach and visited two small memorials, one for the American defenders and the other for the Japanese soldiers who fought and died in the battle for Wake. After that, I did a little snorkeling in the crystal clear water of the lagoon.

Later on in the “O” Club, we were laughing about the trading of places with more drinks and Ship, Captain and Crew dice rolling.

Johnston Island

The next morning, September 9, I was slightly hungover again as we filed our flight plan for our next 3.1 hour leg to Johnston Island.

Johnston Island is part of Johnston Atoll and is about seven hundred fifty miles west of Hawaii. It is only about 1.03 square miles in size. I was told that it was operated by the U.S. Atomic Energy Agency at that time. The runway filled most of the island which ran from one end of the island to the other and it looked like if you ran off the end of the runway you were in the ocean.

The Island was used as an airbase during WWII and nuclear weapons test site in the 1950s and ‘60s then as an airbase and as a Naval refueling station later on.

The island was discovered when the U.S. brig Sally ran aground on a shoal near it in September 1796, but was not officially named until Captain Charles J. Johnston of the Royal Navy ship HMS Cornwallis sighted the islands on December 14, 1807. (Source: Wikipedia)

So as we began this beautiful Pacific day on the tarmac at Wake Island, we cranked up our Intruders, got our taxi clearance to the end of the runway and watched briefly as a couple Gooney birds made their takeoff run down the runway and took off before us. Then it was our turn, following our now normal procedure of number one taxiing onto the runway centerline, number two on the port side of number one, and Jim and I in the number three aircraft to the starboard side. Then we were rolling down the runway and lifting off into the blue Pacific sky.

I never got tired of that feeling of taxiing onto a runway, pushing the throttle forward and seeing the center strips passing underneath the nose, and then climbing up into the heavens; it just thrills me every time.

We climbed out and leveled off at our cruising altitude and spread out again into a loose cruise formation. Since I didn’t have a working autopilot, I trimmed the aircraft up as best as I could so I could relax a bit. As I had said earlier, our A-6 had very little navigation equipment; all the good electronics black boxes were left behind with the squadron in Vietnam, since these planes were going to be overhauled at the rework facility in Norfolk, Virginia. I had a wet compass and just the basic flight instruments. The lead aircraft had a fully operational system and would provide the navigation for the flight.

About a little more than halfway to Johnston Island we crossed the International Dateline and it became September 8 again. As we approached Johnston Island, we started our let down from our cruising altitude, but with Commander Laird it wasn’t “pull the throttle back and coast down.” No, he just pushed the nose down for a high speed let down. I was just off of his starboard wing, not in real tight, but with about twenty foot separation between the aircraft and I was watching the compression wave cloud forming over his canopy and wings. We were smoking hot for an A-6 anyway.

As the Island came into sight, we were lined up for a straight in approach to the runway. We pulled the throttles back, lowered our flaps and dropped our landing gear. But then lead said that he didn’t have a down and locked indication for his right main gear, so I pulled underneath his aircraft to do a visual inspection and confirmed that his right main gear was not fully down and locked. Commander Laird did an up and down porpoise-like motion with the A-6 to get the gear down, but to no avail. He then tried to blow the gear down with the pneumatic system, but that didn’t work either. He then told us, Number two and Number three to land and he would follow after burning and dumping some fuel.

We did as instructed and landed our aircraft and waited for him to land. By this time all the thirty or so people on the island including some crewmen from a Navy Seagoing tug had heard of the emergency going on and had come out to watch. There wasn’t a lot of excitement on Johnston Island I guess, so this was the big event at the time.

I was already very impressed with Commander Laird’s flying skills and this event confirmed that. As he came in for a landing with his right main gear visibly not fully down and locked, he rolled the aircraft slightly to the port side and bounced the A-6 on its left main gear once, then twice and the right gear popped down and locked. He then set the right gear onto the runway and rolled out to the end of the runway which was very close to the ocean’s edge. They turned around and taxied back to the ramp where we were waiting. As he and his BN taxied in with their canopy open all the people who had watched this great demonstration of flying skill were cheering and clapping like it was a parade or something. Matter of fact, so were we cheering; John, Carl, Jim and I were cheering and waving our arms. It was a great show. Diz Laird was our hero and he acted like it was just another day at the office. That’s what heroes do.

Stopover To Refuel and on to Hawaii

Johnston Island was to be just a stopover to refuel and then we were on our way to NAS Barber’s Point, Hawaii. We were all concerned about the right landing gear on Commander Cmdr. Laird’s bird and how it would operate when we tried to land in Hawaii, but there was no fixing it here on Johnston Island. It had operated OK up to that landing on Johnston, so Cmdr. Commander Laird said we would proceed to Barber’s Point.

We went off to get a bite to eat at the mess hall, then planned for the flight for our next leg. While we were being refueled, we got in a conversation with some of the crew of a Navy tug that was stopping over on its way to the U.S. mainland. The crew member asked us how long our flight was to the mainland and I told him it was about a couple of hours to Hawaii and then a long six-hour hop from Hawaii to Whidbey Island. He then said he wished he could go with us for it would take his boat two weeks to get to San Diego.

On to Hawaii

As we climbed into our aircraft again and began the routine of our preflight procedures for our next leg to NAS Barber’s Point on the Island of Oahu, I had the thought that we were better than half way home to the U.S. mainland.

The flight to Barber’s Point was short, only about 1.7 hours and uneventful. We had good weather and Commander Laird’s landing gear worked OK upon our approach and landing at Barber’s Point. It was just another glorious day of flying over the beautiful Pacific Ocean.

When we landed in Hawaii we were officially in the U.S. now, so we had to go through customs and get our aircraft sprayed to kill any bugs we might be carrying from Vietnam or the various islands where we had stopped.

It was going to be a nice three day stopover near beautiful Honolulu and Waikiki Beach because we were not to leave until September 11 for our flight to Whidbey Island in Washington State. We had to get Commander Laird’s landing gear inspected and fixed. It turned out that the problem was caused by a slightly tapered bushing in the landing gear mechanism that was installed backwards and caused the gear to bind up upon extension.

We spent a leisurely two days in Hawaii, dined at the “O” Club and of course had some drinks and rolled the dice at the bar. I went to the beach one day and tried to body surf in the ten-foot waves. Some surf guy loaned me one of his flippers and convinced me to try to body surf in what I thought were huge waves. After almost drowning—not really but it seemed like it—I just went back and lay on the beach. As I watched the ocean and the people on the beach, it hit me when I saw a pretty Hawaiian girl walking on the beach, that I was back in the “real world” and this was the first “round eye” (non-Asian) woman I’d seen in about half a year. Well, except for the two fat Air Force Nurses Roger De Jean and I sparred with at the Air Force “O” Club in Da Nang, but I didn’t count them. Man, it was great to be almost home. I had thoughts of seeing Eileen and my new daughter Laura Lee.

Flight to Whidbey Island —
In-Flight Refuel and Take a Piss

On September 11, we repeated our now familiar routine of checking the weather, filing our flight plan, pre-flighting our aircraft, starting up, getting our clearance and taxiing out to the runway. But this leg of our trip half around the world would be different from the previous legs. For one thing, it was a lot longer, about six hours, twice as long as the other legs of the trip, and we would have to aerial refuel. As I had mentioned earlier I had not done that in over a year and had missed two opportunities to practice back in Da Nang.

We took off and climbed out to our cruising altitude, passing in and out of the clouds and had to adjust our heading to get around some thunderstorms. It was such an awesome sight to fly right next to the edge of one of these huge thunderstorms and witness the cloud mass boiling and growing ever bigger and higher. You feel so small and weak compared to this monstrous but beautiful cumulus nimbus cloud.

I remember one time flying under the anvil of a mature thunderstorm and being pelted with hail even though we were quite some distance away from the storm. They can be very dangerous and can tear the wings off a plane or stall out engines. I had heard a story about an F-8 pilot who had punched out in a thunder storm and spent about a half of an hour being circulated up and down in the storm and seeing his parachute open, then collapse, only to open again. He survived, but he was beaten up pretty badly.

USMC Lieutenant Colonel William Rankin told his amazing story about ejecting at 47,000 feet in a thunderstrom in his book, The man Who rode Thunder.

In telling this story it reminded me of verse from a poem that I wrote while on a flight to Costa Rica and flying past one of these beautiful clouds.

“Now thunderous clouds boiling as they rise to great height,
Displaying their power and grandiose might.
We soar along within their view,
Passersby, passing through.”

After about two and a half hours into our flight we made contact with our refueling tanker, an A-3 Skywarrior, nicknamed “The Whale.” The A-3 was a large carrier-based aircraft that was originally designed for the Navy as a strategic bomber and came into service in the mid-1950s then retired in 1991. Used as an air refueling tanker, it utilized the Navy’s system of a long hose coming from the tanker aircraft with a circular basket at the end.

The refueling procedure was to fly up to the basket, momentarily stop with the A-6 refueling probe about three feet in back of the basket, then edge forward, pushing the probe into the basket and making the connection. You would then take on fuel you needed. After you received fuel, you backed out and the next plane in the formation would then plug in.

Our flight descended to a lower altitude and joined up with the A-3. The lead plane was first to tank, then John Halleran was next. After they both tanked, it was my turn to plug in. I moved over into a position just behind the basket which was oscillating about three feet up and down. The trick is to time the oscillation and put the probe in the basket. I moved the throttle forward a bit and the refueling probe went just under the basket. “Damn, a miss.” So I backed off and got into position behind the basket again, pushed the throttle forward a bit and this time the probe went over the basket. Two misses. Did I mention that we were out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with no hope of landing anywhere as we ran out of fuel?

So I backed off again and went through the same procedure. I pushed the throttle forward and the probe once again bounced off of the basket, miss number three. My asshole was now getting a little tight and Jim, my BN, was looking at me with that “Come on Ron, get it in there” look on his face. Then I heard Commander Laird, his BN, and the number two crew mocking me.

Someone said, “Just picture hair around it; that should help you to put it in.”

They were laughing, but I wasn’t seeing the humor right then. I thought about the two missed opportunities to practice refueling back in Da Nang and how much I wished I would have done it.

I thought to myself, “OK, let’s get back to the basics: fly formation on the aircraft, not the basket. Don’t chase the basket: get into position about three feet behind and move forward slowly.” So I did that and hallelujah the refueling probe went straight into the basket. I pushed it forward a bit, turned on the refueling switch and told the A-3 guys I was ready to take on fuel. My ass relaxed a bit as I heard clapping and cheering over the radio coming from the other guys.

I’ve Got to Take a Leak

So now we had enough fuel to make it to Whidbey Island; we had passed the point of no return and it was now on to the U.S. mainland. After about four hours into the flight we were back up at altitude of about thirty-one thousand feet and in the clouds so I pulled into a tighter formation on the starboard side of the lead plane. But now I had to go to the bathroom. I tried holding but finally I had to piss so bad that I told Jim that I was going to use the relief tube for my first time ever.

The A-6 was one of the only fighter/attack type aircraft to have a relief tube, but I had never used it before. The relief tube is a funnel with a trigger that is attached on the end of a hose which is stored under the instrument panel. Using it is easier said than done. I didn’t have an auto pilot, so I had to fly the plane holding the control stick in my right hand and hold the funnel in my left hand with my finger on the trigger that emptied the tube. But first you had to get your dick out of your Jockey shorts, your flight suit, past your G-suit and torso harness which tended to choke your private equipment. Then after you got your little man out, cold air was blowing directly on him from the air vent tending to shrink him up even more, plus there is a guy sitting next to you, laughing. This was almost as much pressure as the aerial refueling deal. Oh yes, and we were flying formation in the clouds at the time. Damn, I really had to go bad, and so being in the clouds flying in a tight formation with the other aircraft I decided to get some separation. I took a thirty degree heading change away from our course heading for one minute to clear us from the flight than turned back onto our original heading. I told the flight leader what I was going to do and that I was going to take a leak. I couldn’t get the little man out sitting down so I un-hooked my parachute harness straps from the ejection seat and stood up in the cockpit. Being only five feet, six, I think I was the only guy in the squadron that could accomplish this feat of standing up in the cockpit; maybe Roger DeJean or Dave Clary could also. But being short did have its advantages this time.

So now I was standing up in the cockpit holding the stick with one hand, the relief tube and my little guy with the other hand, while trying to fly, using the instruments in the clouds. I finally got my pissing equipment going but it was very difficult to fly instruments while standing up and taking a piss.

Jim told me we were in a thirty degree bank, but I just said, “OK” and continued relieving myself. The flow was going good and I wasn’t about to stop now.

Jim then said, “We’re losing altitude,” with a slight concern in his voice.

I said, “I’ll be finished in a bit,” and continued with my task in hand. Pardon the pun.

Jim then said with much concern this time, “We’re going through twenty-five thousand feet.”

I said, “Let me know when we get to fifteen thousand feet,” and continued peeing.

I had my finger pulling the trigger on the funnel which opened the relief tube and created a vacuum effect that just sucked the piss out of you.

Jim was now getting panicky but I leveled off at about eighteen thousand feet. However, now we had lost the flight, and were in the clouds, thirteen thousand feet below them and without our sophisticated navigation gear. So we now had to find the rest of the flight.

I called the lead plane to give me a radio transmission which would make the radio direction finder needle point to the transmission source. I then took that heading while climbing back up to altitude. I did this several times until we finally got the flight in sight and joined up. That is the most memorable piss I have ever taken.

One hour Out, Can’t Stay Awake

This was a long flight by our normal standards and about one hour out from Whidbey Island I had trouble keeping my eyes open. You know the feeling while driving when your head bobs and you catch yourself nodding off. But in this case I couldn’t pull over to the side of the road and catch a wink or two; I was flying an airplane over the ocean with no auto pilot. Even though I had the A-6 trimmed up good, the plane wasn’t going to hold heading and altitude by itself for long.

Normally, with a good operating system and auto pilot, the BN could maintain heading and altitude by using his computer, but of course, we didn’t have either one of those. Finally, I told Jim that I just had to close my eyes for a few minutes and asked him to reach over and fly the aircraft with his left hand. We did this for about five minutes or so and then I opened my eyes and took control of the aircraft again. Jim informed me that we were only about a few hundred miles out from Whidbey and soon we picked up the Whidbey area TACAN navigation station and then Whidbey’s approach control. We were then getting steering to the airfield.

This woke me up and we were in communication with the air controller. As we approached NAS Whidbey Island we set up to enter the break instead of a mundane straight-in approach. It was great to get sight of the airfield because this meant we were home in the U.S. of A. We came in smoking hot over the end of the runway and lead started his break followed by Number two and then Jim and me. I was in a ninety degree bank pulling hard, throttling back, lowering flaps and landing gear then turning final and lining up for touchdown. I didn’t drive it into the runway like a good Navy landing but greased my A6A onto the runway, then rolled out and followed lead and Number two to the parking area. As we were taxiing in, I reached over to Jim and gave him a high five. Wow! We were in the U.S. after a year away in combat and having the adventure of a lifetime. We had made it, one year in combat and over one hundred combat missions. What a great feeling to be back in the U.S.A.

We shut down our birds and climbed out, and as I put my feet on the ground, I literally got down on my hands and knees and kissed the ground, thankful for making it.

NAS Whidbey Island is near Oak Harbor, Washington, in the Puget Sound and was the center for the Navy’s A6 training and operations on the West Coast. It was also a seaplane base until the late 1960s and the legendary PBY Catalina flying boats operated out of there during WWII.

We checked into the BOQ, got cleaned up, went to dinner and then celebrated our trans-Pacific crossing at the “O” Club with more dice and more shots. I think we had at least one round of “Afterburners” which was a shot of some high octane alcohol that is set afire and tossed down while still burning. You had to be careful if you had a mustache like me; it could set it on fire or burn your nose hairs.

The next day, September 12, 1970, was the last leg of our trans-pac flight. We would be flying from Whidbey to NAS Norfolk, Virginia, where we would turn over our A6s to the Air Rework Facility. When we got the aircraft signed over to the facility, we were officially finished with our tour in Vietnam and on leave.

After the previous day’s long and arduous flight from Hawaii to Whidbey Island, I was mentally drained, and on this the last leg of our journey we all decided to break up into individual flights and not fly as a three plane flight. We were all carrying two drop tanks under our wings for extra fuel and greater distance so the other two crews decided they were going to go non-stop across country to Norfolk, approximately a five-hour flight, but I didn’t want to go through another day like yesterday. However, Jim really had “get home-ictus” and wanted to go no-stop so I finally acquiesced and said that if we had a certain amount of fuel when we reached St. Louis, which was about halfway, we would continue on to Norfolk, but if not, then we would land and refuel at St. Louis.

So we all launched off separately, but were fairly close to each other in time and distance as we crossed the western part of the country. As Jim and I approached St. Louis, I checked our fuel status and we had enough fuel to make it to Norfolk so we pushed on. Somewhere over Kentucky or West Virginia the Flight Control Center came up on the radio and said that he had two other flights of A6As all going to NAS Norfolk (NGU) and asked if he could join us up as he directed us on to Norfolk. We all said “Roger that” and got joined up for the final part of our flight.

As we were getting close to Norfolk over the West Virginia / Virginia border we got into some weather and requested to get vectored around some thunderstorms but ended up running right through one and got bumped around pretty much. At one point, the clouds were so thick that I pulled in very tight to the leads’ wingtip and all I could see was his green wingtip light, but it was very rough and bumpy so I told the other crews that I was going underneath lead to the rear and began flying off of his tail pipes. Finally we broke out of the clouds and after that Halleran told us he was very low on fuel and Commander Laird declared a low fuel emergency. Atlanta Center handed us off to Norfolk Approach Control and they said they acknowledged our fuel situation and would bring us straight in to final approach.

On final approach, Commander Laird told Halleran to take the lead and we would follow. We got some separation and John crossed the end of the runway and touched down and we all gave a sigh of relief. Commander Laird then touched down and finally Jim and I landed and rolled out. As we turned off the runway onto the taxiway, we saw Hallaeran and Monk parked on the side of the taxiway waving to us as we passed by; they had flamed out taxiing in. Out of fuel and barely off the runway, how close was that.

We continued to taxi and got directions to the Air Rework Facility’s ramp, parked our aircraft and went inside. We signed our aircraft over to the facility and were officially on leave and our one year tour of duty in Vietnam was over.

Now I was in a rush to make a flight at the commercial airport to New Orleans. I changed out of my flight suit into my uniform in the rest room and caught a cab to the airport. I had to pinch myself to make sure it was real.

About a month after my three-plane flight left Da Nang, Vietnam for our trans-pac flight back to the U.S. the last two A6 squadrons VMA (AW) 242 and VMA (AW) 225 ended combat air operations and departed for home in the U.S.A.

VMA (AW) 242’s last combat mission in Vietnam

VMA (AW) 225 our sister squadron end of Vietnam Tour photos

Back Home with Eileen and My Daughter Laura

Iarrived home in New Orleans and Eileen, along with my “new” baby daughter, Laura, who was only seven days old when I left for Vietnam, picked me up at the airport. Now she was one year old and looked at me like “Who is this strange man?” But that would change and Laura and I would become very close and she would become, like most little girls, “daddy’s little girl.”

I had thirty days leave and soon got used to the leisure time and being with my family again. My orders read thirty days leave and then I was to report to VT-7 at NAS Meridian in Mississippi to train to be a flight instructor in the T-2 Buckeye, which was the Navy’s primary jet trainer then. I was looking forward to this billet because even though I had one year’s combat flying experience I knew that I still had a lot to learn to become a really good pilot. We were so green when we were sent to Vietnam that for all practical purposes we had learned to fly there in combat. It was in being a flight instructor that you also learned to be a better pilot by practicing and demonstrating your skills every day.

About two weeks into my leave, I got a telegram on September 23, 1970, from CG Third MAW (Marine Air Wing) informing me that I was to report to MCAS EL Toro in Orange County, California, to rejoin my squadron VMA (AW) 242. It was supposed to be disbanded, but they changed their minds and reformed it as part of MAG 13 (Marine Air Group) in California. El Toro was a great duty station, but as I said, I was looking forward to being an instructor.

When my leave was up, Eileen and I packed up our household belongings for the moving company to haul them to El Toro and then we packed the rest of our stuff into our 1965 Volvo and headed off to California.

This was our first time to go to California and we planned our trip to go through and visit along the way Abilene, Albuquerque, the Petrified Forest, Flagstaff, and The Grand Canyon, then cross over into California at Needles and finally to Santa Ana, California. I reported to MCAS El Toro on October 19, 1970.

We stayed with a bachelor friend and squadron mate, Ken Paulsen, for a couple of weeks until we could get our own place in base housing. Our base housing rent house was quite nice and had plenty enough space for the three of us. It was on the edge of the hills on the base and about five minutes away from our squadron’s hangar.

Santa Ana in Orange County back in 1970 was not as crowded as it is now and was covered with citrus orchards. During the springtime a drive through the orchards would overwhelm you with the fragrance of the lemon and grapefruit blossoms. It was like going into a perfume shop and smelling the wonderful fragrance of the blossoms.

At that time just about all of the squadron’s aircraft were being refurbished at the rework facility after being in combat conditions for so long, so I think that we didn’t fly very much for about four or five months. We tried to keep busy, but things were pretty slow and Eileen and I took advantage of the time and did a lot of sightseeing with our infant daughter Laura in tow.

Eileen was a big McDonald’s hamburger fan and that was passed on to Laura who loved their French fries. If we just passed by a McDonald’s and she saw the Golden Arches she would start saying “yum, yum, yum,” smacking her lips as if she were eating fries. Too cute.

One Week’s Training at NAS Whidbey Island

At that time, the Marine Corps, and for that matter all the U.S. forces in Vietnam, were drawing down. As for our Squadron VMA (AW) 242, Vietnam was over and now we were going to prepare for a different mission, that of nuclear delivery. A number of us were sent up to NAS Whidbey Island for A-6 training in the delivery of nuclear weapons. This was different from our standard mission of low level interdiction missions to attack an enemy target with five hundred to two thousand pound bombs. This was to deliver a nuke in a manner that gave us a chance to escape the bomb blast after releasing the weapon. It was called LABS IP.

The LABS IP maneuver was an over-the-top technique for delivering a nuke and getting away as fast and as far as possible in the opposite direction from which you had released the bomb. In this procedure, you came low to the ground to stay under the radar, pulled up as if starting a loop as you approached the target and released the bomb at a certain point in your pull up to loft it high and down range. The idea was to strike the target while you did an Immelman-type aerobatic maneuver and headed in the opposite direction before the nuke exploded.

If nothing else, it was fun to practice with our little blue practice bombs. As you can image, accuracy wasn’t the biggest thing in the world when it came to dropping a nuke. “Close” is good enough I would think when you are dropping a nuke on somebody. As the training proceeded we were told that we would be assigned target cities in China to be pre-assigned in case of the U.S. going to war with China.

Just considering the math, I figured that those missions were a bend over and kiss your ass good-by operation; you were not coming home. But then you probably would not have a home to come home to if we got into a nuclear war with China or Russia.

On this particular occasion, the squadron had deployed to Fallon, Nevada, for practice in the Chocolate Mountain Bombing Range. Here we practiced our deliveries which included low level flights across the desert into the target range and then practiced our LABS IP delivery, throwing the blue practice bombs down range hopefully on to the target. The range control tower would then score your hits. We were supposed to make our runs five hundred feet above the ground, but if five hundred feet was OK, then fifty feet was a lot more fun. So here we were screaming across the desert floor at just above cactus height making our target runs and doing this about six times a day.

I was the Duty Officer one afternoon when the telephone rang and I picked up the phone to hear a rancher on the other end screaming at me about the noise from the jets flying over his ranch and that his horse was so frightened that it had kicked down the barn door, injured itself and he had to put it down. Then right in the middle of the conversation he shouts, “Here the son-of-a-bitch comes again,” and all you could hear was this very, very loud aircraft roaring overhead. It was deafening over the phone so I can image how it must have sounded to the poor rancher and his horse. All I could say was that I would pass it on to the Ops Officer and someone would get back with him.

I couldn’t help but remember when we had deployed to Roosevelt Roads in Puerto Rico before going to Vietnam and Jack Rippy had napalmed a farmer’s goat and the squadron had to pay the farmer for it. I don’t remember how this particular incident worked out, but it made for some insensitive laughs at the “O” Club that night. Of course it wasn’t at all funny to the rancher.

Fallon, Nevada, was about an hour’s drive to Reno so some of us made the trip to the casinos, but I never had much money for gambling so my stint at the casinos was short and I would rather spend my money at the bar than in a slot machine. For some of the bachelors, they decided to make a trip to the infamous Mustang Ranch which was in Fallon. I felt rather naive when some of the guys spoke of it and I asked what kind of a ranch it was. I had never heard of it before. It was like when some of the guys in Vietnam were making a big deal about buying a Rolex Watch at a bargain price in Thailand. I had never heard of a Rolex watch before. I was from a meager background and no one in my family probably heard of one either.

T-28

Having gone through the Air Force Flight School, my only prop time at that time was in the Cessna 172, but the guys that went through Pensacola and the helicopter pipeline got to fly the radial engine T-28. So at NAS Fallon I came across a pilot of a T-28 spotter plane and he invited me to go up with him on one of his spotter missions and I gladly accepted the offer. It was fun flying something different, especially a propeller plane. That was a pretty big prop plane with a big ass engine and a bunch of torque when you gave it the throttle.

It reminded me of the story about a student pilot in Pensacola flying the T-28 who had inadvertently rolled the aircraft on takeoff due to the torque but recovered, barely missing a crash and going into the Flight Ops Officer’s office and turned in his wings. The Ops Officer said, “Anyone who would get himself into a situation like that, should DOR (Drop On Request), but anyone who could get himself out of that situation should continue to fly.”

Ken Ptack (Our Milo Minderbinder) —
Whidbey Island Pick Up

Ken Ptack was our squadron’s embarkation officer for leaving Vietnam. He was also our squadron’s own Milo Minderbinder, Joseph Heller’s fictional character in his novel Catch-22. 1st Lieutenant Milo Minderbinder was the Mess Officer in Yossarian’s squadron and was a genius as an entrepreneur. He was a wheeler—dealer and cornered the Egyptian cotton market only to find he couldn’t unload the cotton. He even coated the cotton with chocolate to try to market it. (Source: Wikipedia)

Ken Ptack, while we were in Vietnam, was always trying to make some sort of deal, like trading a Naval leather flight jacket to some Air Force guy for an AK-47, which you could not bring back home to the U.S. because it was an automatic weapon. But Ken was always figuring a deal.

When we got back from Vietnam to the MCAS El Toro in California, on one occasion I had a flight to NAS Whidbey Island to pick up some A-6 parts and bring them back to El Toro. Ken heard that I was flying up there and asked me to pick up a flight bag with some of his stuff that a Navy pilot friend of his had brought back from Nam.

When I arrived at Whidbey Island, I asked at Flight Ops if there was something to pick up for Captain Ptack and I was handed a flight bag. As I picked it up, the bag made a clank sound and it felt like a bag of rifles, but I didn’t open it up because I didn’t want to know what was in it. I just thought Milo was at work again.

On the way back from Whidbey Island we flew down from Washington state through Oregon and northern California, and as we did we passed over a number of the snow-capped high mountains in the Cascade Range of the Pacific Northwest. We flew past Mount Rainier at 14,410 feet just outside of Tacoma, then past Mount St. Helens in south Washington which was 9,677 feet before it blew up on May 18, 1980, on to Mount Hood at 11,235 feet east of Portland, Oregon, the Three Sisters (North 10,085 feet, Middle 10,063 feet, and South 10,354 feet) and on down to Mount Shasta in northern California at 14,162 feet. (Source: Rand McNally US Road Atlas 1973)

In flight school, we were warned to be wary of lenticular-shaped clouds or mountain-wave clouds that form over the peaks of mountains. They are called lenticular because they are shaped like a lens. They look smooth and harmless but are caused by the wind rushing over the mountain top much like the pressure wave over the wing or canopy of an aircraft. They are very dangerous and can tear apart an aircraft if it gets too close.

As we flew over Mt. Shasta at about twenty-five thousand feet, I had just commented to my BN about the fact that that was a lenticular cloud or mountain—wave cloud over the mountain just like what we heard about in flight school. And then we experienced a rather strong and quick movement to the aircraft, like some giant hand had grabbed it and gave the A-6 a strong shake. Wow! I looked at my BN and all he could say was, “Son-of-a-bitch.” I was a true believer after that. Never fly low over a mountain, especially if it has a smooth cloud sitting on top of it.

As we were coming back to El Toro and approaching Los Angeles, night had fallen and I thought to myself, we haven’t heard from LA Center in a while and I gave them a call. I could tell from his response that he had forgotten about us.

He then came back and said, “Marine Alpha 6 can you be at eleven thousand feet by such and such intersection?”

We were currently level at about thirty- thousand feet and the intersection the controller was talking about was only a few air miles away.

I replied, “Roger that” and put my Intruder over on its back and did Split S maneuver pulling some serious Gs, rolled out at eleven thousand feet, keyed the mike and said, “Level 1-1 thousand.”

The controller replied with a surprised sound in his voice, “Good job Alpha-6.” We were then handed off to El Toro Approach Control for a straight-in approach to the airport.

When you flew down the coast of California from San Francisco to LA it looked like one continuous city of lights set next to the blackness of the ocean, very pretty.

The next day I handed the flight bag of “stuff” to Ken Ptack and told him that I didn’t know what was in the bag and I didn’t want to know even if it looked like and sounded like a bag of guns.

Twentynine Palms Air — Ground Combat Center

Ed Kenney Killed

In continuation of our regular mission of supporting the ground forces with close air support, the squadron was doing Air/Ground coordination exercises at the Marine Base at Twentynine Palms, California. We were running several missions a day for about a week in support of the grunts: we were running both systems drops and even got in some visual bomb drops.

One of the things probably every pilot did at least once in Vietnam was to give the troops on the ground an “antenna check” after making a successful bombing mission. In this show-off maneuver, the pilot would come back over the troops at a very low height i.e. “antenna check” pull up and he might even do a victory roll to the thrill of the grunts.

Captain Ed Kenney was a pilot just back from Vietnam like most of the guys in the squadron and had just completed an Air/Ground support mission and came back at the request of the ALO (Air Liaison Officer) on the ground for an “antenna check” which they did. However, he mis-judged his descent and as he pulled up and started a banking turn, his wing tip caught the ground and the A-6 cart wheeled and exploded into a ball of flames, killing Ed and his BN.

It was a pretty sad day for everyone. I don’t remember if any of the troops on the ground were injured or killed, but it was a real tragedy. But I had learned back in Nam that if you were doing any hot dog stuff like that you had better make sure you are on the way up as you come over the site and had plenty of clearance before you make a turn or a roll. When you made a bomb run, it was according to the charts as for dive angle, airspeed, roll-in altitude and release altitude. When you did a hot dog maneuver it was by visual judgment or seat of the pants and since it wasn’t something you did everyday it was subject to errors in judgment, and those errors were deadly.

It was a very sad mistake for Ed and his BN.

Party on My Friend’s Boat

Back at El Toro, I had met a fellow Marine pilot around the area who was a CH-46 helicopter driver and was stationed just up the road a MCAS Santa Ana. He had a sailboat and asked me if I would like to go sailing sometime. I said that I had always wanted to sail and I would jump at the chance to go with him. We became friends and I did go sailing with him several times.

On one occasion, my friend asked me if I would like to try sailing in foul weather and I said, “Hell, yes.” We set out from Newport Beach harbor, sailed out into the Pacific in the rain and wind and were soon sailing in foul weather on a Pacific Ocean that was not very peaceful. We had ten-foot waves breaking over the bowl, rain pouring down on us and the boat leaning over from the strong wind. My buddy asked me what I thought of sailing in that kind of weather and I said without a thought, “I love it.” It was an adrenalin rush. After you had flown aircraft in combat, few things could match that sort of rush, but that activity was good.

After we were finished sailing one day my friend said that he was having a small party later on and asked me if I wanted to stay for it. I said, “OK, I’ll stay for a while.” There were about a dozen people on the boat in his slip at Newport Beach and we were making homemade sangria wine. Every time I hear Jimmy Buffet’s song Sangria Wine I think of that party.

I was standing next to an attractive young girl in her early twenties and she asked me if I were a Marine. It was pretty obvious, I thought, since I had the Marine’s high and tight haircut with skin on the side of my head.

I told her, “Yes, I was a Marine pilot.”

She then asked me if I had served in Vietnam.

And I again replied in the affirmative that I had just got back from Vietnam.

She then asked me if I had killed anyone.

I told her that I had dropped over one million pounds of bombs and that I hope to hell that I had killed somebody.

She looked me in the eye and said, “You are a criminal and you disgust me.”

The words were like a knife piercing my heart. I thought to myself, “This girl never faced the draft or had to go to war. No, her daddy sent her to college and everything was easy for her.”

But I didn’t say a word. I just turned around and left without say good bye or anything to anyone. It really hurt me, but I was like many other returning Vietnam vets who all had their own negative encounters with an unsympathetic public. Some guys were spit upon, others cursed and others called “baby killers.” Many guys didn’t wear their uniforms while traveling so as not to draw attention.

I was very proud to be a Marine and to have served my country. I was very proud to be an officer and a pilot and although not a hero, I did my job and I faced fire and death with courage and honor. And now this girl was calling me a criminal. This conflict of being proud of the job I did in combat and what the public and media said about the Vietnam War would come to the surface ten years later as it did for many vets. I would get it resolved for me one evening sitting in a bar in Houston by writing a poem in which I laid out my emotions and feeling about the war in a poem called “Young Men to War.”

Young Men to War

This poem is dedicated to my comrades who fought, and especially to those who died, in the Vietnam War.

The young knight on his charger, indestructible.
The Captain in his fighter, invincible.
The Lieutenant in lead of his platoon, unbeatable.
Young men off to war,
Visions of glory,
Tales of valor,
Dreams of adventure,
An ancient ritual into manhood.

A wounded steed!
A shattered cockpit!
The chaos of an ambush.
Instincts of the warrior carry him through.

Look at the blood!
He was my friend,
So were we all, the best they could send.
The few that rule, the many that die,
A few in the multitude think to ask why.

“He fought through, though his mount be dead.”
“He nursed his battered craft back to safety.”
“Though nearly overrun, he pulled his men through.”
With 20% KIA, 40% WIA and the others will carry the scars.

Gallant men them all,
Those standing and those that fall.
But I made it through,
And my friend is the hero,
God rest his soul.

© Ronald H. Boehm — 11/20/78 (One of The Boys of ‘67 )

Air Medal Awards Ceremony

Ithink it was about March of 1971 that we had a squadron formation for presenting awards and promotions. When the squadron formation was called to attention, the CO or XO began reading the awards which all sounded very heroic and some like a Medal of Honor from the way it was worded. This one particular award the speaker started reading with, “The President of the United States takes pleasure in presenting the Air Medal (Bronze Star for the First Award).” I was thinking to myself “Who is this hero going to be?”

The citation read: “For heroic achievement in aerial flight while serving with Marine All Weather Attack Squadron 242, Marine Aircraft Group Eleven, First Marine Aircraft Wing in connection with combat operation against the enemy in the Republic of Vietnam. On the night of 4 February, 1970, First Lieutenant Boehm launched as Pilot aboard an A-6 Intruder aircraft assigned an interdiction mission along a heavily defended enemy supply route.”

“Holy shit, that’s me,” I thought to myself.

I didn’t even know that I was ever written up for an award.

And as the reader continued with the description of the event the guy standing at attention next to me said, “Isn’t that the one when you left your lights on?”

And I realized to my embarrassment that was the mission that Jim Ewing and I got our asses hosed down by about a dozen guns while flying through the Mu Gia Pass on the infamous Ho Chi Minh Trail. As we pulled off the target I noticed that my wing tip lights still were on, but I never told Jim and I guess he wrote us up for the award.

I can still remember that flight every clearly, the red glowing thirty-seven millimeter anti-aircraft rounds arching up towards us in five round burst and the twenty-three mm looking like a garden hose pouring tracers into the sky around us. It was barrage fire and all you could do was just fly through it and hope for the best. It was all around us. Then as we approached the North Vietnam border, the missile warning light and horn came on notifying us that a SAM missile site was tracking us. It was pretty tense and my ass didn’t stop puckering until we pulled off target, turning back away from the border and climbing out of gun range at about twenty thousand feet.

Jim made some smart-ass remark as I had mentioned before, like “Those guys couldn’t hit their ass with a baseball bat,” breaking the tension a little bit. Sometimes heroics are simply a matter of dumb luck.

MAG 13 Maintenance and Headquarters Formation

Sometime around February of 1971, I received temporary duty orders for Maintenance Officers School at NAS Memphis in Millington, Tennessee. It was a several-month school and when I returned to El Toro it wasn’t long thereafter that I was being transferred to Group (Marine Air Group 13) for duty as a maintenance officer.

After my transfer I became the Groups Maintenance Officer and by rank, I had made Captain in December of 1970, I was third in command behind the CO, a Lieutenant Colonel and the Major who was the XO.

We had a Headquarters Squadron formation scheduled at a time when the CO was to be on leave and the XO was off for some other reason, which left me as a Captain to be the acting squadron commander at the time that we were to have a Squadron Formation. The formation was to be held in the morning in the parking lot in front of Squadron Headquarters. The procedure was set up that the whole Squadron was to be in formation standing “at ease” when I would enter the parking lot and walk towards the formation; at that time the “Top,” the Sergeant Major would call the formation to attention, I would walk up and we would salute and then proceed to inspect the troops.

Eileen, my wife, who had a caustic sense of humor was to drop me off at the edge of the parking lot and then I would proceed to the formation. I had been really pumped up for this and had spit-shined my shoes, the brim of my cover (hat) and shined my belt buckle. I was squared away as we say in the Corps. I reviewed my every step in my mind and even practiced my salute at home to Eileen’s amusement.

So the big day came and Eileen dropped me off at the edge of the parking lot and as I got to about half way across the lot and all the formation was called to attention, Eileen blew the horn in our Volvo and with the whole world watching, shot me the bird out of the driver’s window. I couldn’t believe it. She had a propensity of doing shit like that at the most inopportune time and mostly to me. I guess it was her way of keeping me humble.

Well, as the Top and I made it through the formation and I would step in front of each Marine and exchanged salutes they were having a tough time hiding their smirks and smiles. She was a very big hit with the troops though.

The next day when I would see one of the troops, he would say, “Captain, you wife is really cool.”

“Yeah,” I responded. “At my expense.”

Getting Short

My friend Fred Bonati and I were both getting short coming to the end of our time in the Corps and I was debating whether to stay in and re-up for another four years or get out. Flying time was hard to come by and that had a bearing on my decision, but I loved the Corps. I think Eileen was ready to get out and that had a big part in my decision making.

Just about that same time my CO called me into his office and asked me if I was going to stay in. I told him I had not made up my mind yet, but I was leaning towards getting out. He told me that I was a fine officer and he would like to see me stay in and if I did he could get me an assignment to the new AV-8 Harriers. They were the so called Jump Jets or vertical takeoff attack aircraft that were just coming into use by the Marine Corps.

This was an enticing offer and I thought about it a whole lot but finally came to the conclusion that another career as a civilian was the way to go. Now, when I look back, my feelings are that I wish I would have stayed in at least a little bit longer and flown some more airplanes.

But for my buddy Fred, getting short was also getting salty. His hair cut looked more like the Navy pilot than that of a Marine and his attitude was, I guess from hearing him tell about it, less than ideal. This came into focus when a senior officer told him to shape up and get a haircut or that it would reflect on his fitness report. Fred then told the officer, a Major as I remember, that the only way he could hurt him with that fitness report was to wrap it around a brick and hit him in the head with it. Now that is salty, but not very good for your career. But, of course, Fred was getting out in a few months.

My other buddy Rick Spitz had a similar attitude, but he wasn’t a short timer. He was a flight instructor in the Navy training command. He also had a haircut problem and a less than desirable attitude. It seemed like his duties were interfering with his time on the base softball team. Rick was a very good athlete. His senior Marine Officer told him also to get a haircut and he had just come back from the barber. It must have been a Navy barber I guess. Rick had a bunch of run-ins with his senior officers and as you can imagine, he wasn’t going to make general and he got out a few years later than Fred and I and went on to fly for the airlines.

Not Much Flying Time, Close to Getting Out

Ifinally made up my mind to get out of the Corps and started looking around for a job when I got out. Just before getting out I was offered a job with a freight forwarding company as salesman in Houston, Texas, which I accepted.

On November 15, 1972, I was released from active duty and transferred to the United States Marine Corps Reserve.

So ended a wonderful and most eventful episode in my life so far. I am very proud to have been a Marine, an officer, combat pilot, and to have had the opportunity to serve my country. I am also very happy for the great friendships I made while in the military; many of them are still friends today.

Several years ago we had our fortieth reunion of my Marine Corps Basic School Class of 5/67. The wonderful feelings I had in seeing these guys again after such a long time and hearing the stories of their experience in combat, plus the feeling of pride I had in being part of such an incredible group and that of being a Marine was overwhelming. It inspired me to write another poem, this one about the pride of the United States Marine Corps. The poem is called Always Faithful which is the Marine Corps motto, “Semper Fidelis.”

Always Faithful

They called for the best of us.

They called for the best from us.

They called us to every war and every conflict, to every battle that had to be won;

And to every situation that had to be handled.

They called us to desert sands, to far away islands and to frozen grounds.

We went by land, sea and air.

We fought on beaches, in forests and in rice paddies, in every clime.

They called us since 1775 and we answered—always faithful.

They will call us for a long time to come, whenever freedom is to be protected.

They called us fathers and sons, generation to generation.

They called us warriors and heroes.

They called us Leathernecks and Devil Dogs, the very best.

They call us MARINES.

Ron Boehm, Capt. USMCR ’67 - ’72.

The Boys on Cherry Street

(Young Men of the Vietnam Generation)

These are some of my friends who served in Vietnam, the guys that played such a big part in my life and who helped to make my life so rich with such fine memories. And to the many more that are not mentioned here I say thanks for being a part of my life:

From the Lakeview Neighborhood of New Orleans:

• Charlie de Gruy — Captain USN Retired, Flew combat in Vietnam as a F-4J pilot, VF 96, Air Medal, Navy Commendation w Combat V, CO (F-14) VF-211, CO (F-4) VF 101, XO USS America CV 66, CO USS Austin (LPD4), CO USS Saipan (LHA2), US Navy Test Pilot School, US Navy Test Pilot, Chief of Staff — Naval Doctrine Command.

Classmates from Holy Cross High School:

• Dr. Tom Crais — Major US Army, Walter Reed Hospital, William Beaumont Army Hospital, 279th Station Hospital Berlin, Germany, Flight Surgeon.

• Arlan Hanle — Captain USMC, Pilot F-4 VMFA 542. 182 combat missions, 12 Air Medals, Forward Air Controller 2nd Battalion 4th Marines.

• Danny Phillips — Lieutenant Commander USN, Radar Intercept Officer F-4, VA 33, USS America CV 66. 160 Combat missions, 9 Air Medals, (2) Navy Commendation Medal.

From Southeastern Louisiana University:

My Roommates:

• Pat Reith — Owner of an Oil Field Supply Business.

• Malcolm Bech — Life long career in the Oil Field.

• Jerry Leblanc “Seagull” — Major USAF Retired. Flew in Vietnam as a pilot in EC-121, C-141 aircraft. 186 Combat Missions, Air Medal, Air Force Commendation Medal, pilot in the 89th Military Airlift Squadron, Deceased.

• Ronnie Radelat — Tax Lawyer, died way too early.

• Richie Cerise “Leg” — Accountant, Deceased.

• Corky Barris — Owner of a printing company.

Friends:

• Dan DeBlanc — Captain USMC, Pilot UH-1E Hueys, AH-1G Cobras, VMO-2. 575 Combat missions, Silver Star, Navy Commendation, 23 Air Medals, 3 Single Mission Air Medals, Pilot Air America. Owner — South Side Cafe, Slidell, La.

• Jimmy De Moss — Photography Studio.

• Hans Neilsen — Retired.

USMC:

• Dave Anderson — 1st Lieutenant USMC, Platoon Commander 2nd Platoon, Bravo Company 1st Battalion 1st Marine Regiment, Purple Heart, Combat Action Medal.

• Pete Barber — Captain USMC, Pilot F-4, VMFA 232, 134 Combat Missions, Air Medal.

• Steve Benckenstein — Captain USMC, Pilot CH-46, HMM 265. 600 Combat Missions, 30 Air Medals, USS Tripoli.

• Fred Bonati — Captain USMC, Pilot F-4, VMFA 314. 200 Combat Missions, Air Metals, Meritorious Unit Citation, Forward Air Controller 1st Mar. Div.

• Tom Broderick — Major USMC (Ret.), Pilot UH-IE, HML 167. 225 Combat Missions, 17 Air Medals.

• Dave Clary — Captain USMC, Pilot A6A, VMA (AW) 242.

• Dave Cummings — Lieutenant Colonel (Deceased.) USMC, Two tours in Vietnam, Platoon Commander, Pilot AH-IG Cobra, HMA 367, Distinguished Flying Cross, 4 Single Mission Air medals, Bronze Star w Combat V, Purple Heart.

• Dave Noyes — Captain USMC, Platoon Commander Mike Company 3/7, XO Lima Company 3/7. Silver Star, Combat Action Medal, President’s Unit Citation, Meritorious Unit Commendation, Vietnamese Gallantry Cross.

• Les Palm — Major. General. USMC, Artillery Officer 1st Battalion 13 Marines. Legion of Merit w/Valor Device, Meritorious Service Medal, Navy & Marine Corps Commendation Medal w/2 award stars and Valor Device, Combat Action Ribbon, Navy Presidential Unit citation, Navy Unit Commendation Medal, Navy Meritorious Unit Commendation Medal.

• Jack Rippy — Colonel USMC, Pilot A6A, VMA (AW) 242. 212 Combat Missions, Navy Commendation w Combat V, 14 Air Medals, Joint Meritorious Service Medal, Legion of Merit for Chief of Staff, XO, CO VMA (AW) 121. Attorney.

• Ray Smith — Major General USMC, Infantry Officer Alpha Co. 1/1. Advisor to The Vietnamese Marines. Navy Cross, (2) Silver Stars, Bronze Star, Defense Distinguished Service Medal, Navy Distinguished Service Medal, the Legion of Merit, Defense Meritorious Service Medal, Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal, Combat Action Ribbon, (3) Purple Hearts.

• Rick Spitz — Captain USMC, Pilot A6A, VMA (AW) 242. 144 Combat Missions, Distinguished Flying Cross, 8 Air Medals, Navy & Marine Corps Commendation Medal.

• Marty Steele — Lieutenant General USMC, Corporal 1st Tank Battalion 1966. Defense Distinguished Service Medal, Navy Distinguished Service Medal, Defense Superior Service Medal, Legion of Merit.

• Mike Sommers — Captain USMC, Platoon Commander, Company Commander Echo Company 2nd Battalion 26th Marines, Inspector Instructor, Staff Officer, AWS, Navy Commendation Medal w Combat V, Combat Action Ribbon.

• Phil Vannoy — Captain USMC, CO Golf & Hotel Companies 2nd Battalion 7th Marines. Bronze Star, Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry.

• Ron Boehm (The Author) Captain USMC, Pilot A6A, VMA (AW) 242, Forward Air Controller 1st Battalion 7th Marine Regiment. 124 Combat Missions, 7 Air Medals, 1 Single Mission Air Medal w/Bronze Star, Combat Action Ribbon, Navy Commendation w Combat V.

From Ron

So that’s the story as I remember it. I hope you enjoyed it. And to all those guys listed above and all those guys that served in Vietnam that are not listed above and all those who gave the ultimate sacrifice for their country thank you for your service and God bless you. To all those that contributed to make my life so rich in memories thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Ron Boehm

Aliases: Little Man,

Boomer,

Low Beam,

Daddy Ronnie,

Uron,

Walking on Hands,

Capt. Ron

THE END