Me, myself, as a person, knowing from the experience that I had with whites back here in America, I could not go over there and degrade another human being. I see a little Vietnamese in trouble, I even bend over and help him out.
One time, it was a little Vietnamese boy was crying. I just went over there and played with him. Gave him some gum. You know, showing compassion toward him.
And I stopped his tears from crying.
Colonel
Fred V. Cherry
Suffolk, Virginia
Fighter Pilot
35th Tactical Fighter Squadron
U.S. Air Force
Karot (Thailand) Air Force Base
October 1964–December 1964
Takhli (Thailand) Air Force Base
May 1965–July 1965
October 16, 1965–October 25, 1965
Various Prison Camps, Hanoi
October 25, 1965–February 12, 1973
All day long these aircraft would be flying at very low altitudes. Very slow. You could see the pilot, and we would wave to him.
There was this Navy auxiliary base near where I lived in Suffolk, Virginia. World War II had started, and the Navy was training pilots there.
I could see them do combat maneuvering, and I said that’s adventure. I was still in elementary school, but I knew I wanted to fly.
Then I heard about the Tuskegee Airmen, the black pilots being trained for the 99th Pursuit Squadron. They went over to North Africa and Italy. I was keeping real close track in The Afro-American and the Norfolk Journal & Guide, the black newspapers. Yeah, they were doing a good job. Matter of fact, when I read that Lucky Lester shot down these three Nazi planes, I thought this was great. I said to myself, I’m going to be a fighter pilot just as soon as I get old enough.
My parents were just rural people. My father was a laborer, plus he farmed truck crops. Beans and peas and potatoes. We always owned our property. He worked places like the fertilizer factory and the railroads, puttin’ in the rails and ties. My mother was a housewife that worked in the fields in the farming season. All they had was elementary school.
There were eight of us—four brothers and four sisters. But we were all kind of tough. I guess we picked it up in the family. I never saw a weakness in the family. My parents were always fair in doing things for people. And we went to church, and they taught us what the Bible says: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
My family was really respected by whites in that area—as much respect as a black could hope to get from a white at that time.
We lived in an area where there might be a white home next to a black home. Ain’t no problem there. But you go over to the white farmhouse to get some homemade butter, and you had to “Miss” and “Mister” them. You had to give the whites that master-type respect all the time. The man next door would be Mister Gregory. If it came out of your mouth any other way, they wouldn’t allow you to have whatever you wanted. They would call my mother Leola, and my father John. Whites always called blacks by their first name. It was sort of understood you had your place.
I remember one day when my older brother, James, was riding with another friend on two bicycles. He was maybe fifteen. One of those two-lane country roads. There weren’t many cars that drove down the highways back then. Well, this car pulls along, and it’s two white teenagers. I saw ’em reach out and hit James in the back of the head. The bicycle and he went end over end. They were laughing, and they probably said, “Knock that nigger over on his bike.”
I was angry, but my mother tried to smooth it over for us juniors. She said, “Well, James is all right. He’s not hurt, so don’t worry about it. You don’t know who it was, so you can’t mention it to their parents.” Nothing came of it, but it stuck in my mind.
Being in a rural area, there weren’t segregated swimming pools or recreation centers where you had to face that kind of racism. But the schools were all segregated. The whites had buses. We had no buses. So on the rainy days, the snowy days, the half-full buses would drive past us, and we would just go on walkin’ that 3 miles each way.
But East Suffolk High School, where we went, was a very good school, because back in those times, in the all-black schools, the teachers really cared. They really cared. You would learn, or you would get whacked a little bit. And which I think is great.
My father passed away when I was eleven, and I went to live with my sister Beulah and her husband, Melvin Watts. My mother wasn’t too particular in that you had to go to school, but my sister was. She pushed me. She thought I should be a doctor. I felt that also for a while. I majored in biology in college at Virginia Union. But I later decided that medicine isn’t really what I wanted to do. I couldn’t do my best in it. What I really wanted to do was fly airplanes.
In my second year of college I heard that if you qualified in all respects, you only had to have two years of college to go from civilian life straight into aviation cadet training. So I went to see this Navy recruiter in Portsmouth. I didn’t know that the Navy didn’t have any black aviators. The recruiter told me to fill out this application for enlisted service. I said, “No. I want to be a pilot.” He said, “Oh.” And he told me that the individual I would have to talk to was not in the office, and I could stop in some other day.
I went back three more times, and I was told this commander was never in. On the fourth time, I saw this door creeping close. I knew he was there and had been there every time before. I just sort of exploded. I kicked the door open. He thought I was coming across the desk. I said a few choice words to him. They were rather obscene. Then I told him I didn’t want any part of his Navy.
Two years later, just before I graduated from college, I went to Langley Air Force Base in Norfolk. I took a whole battery of mental and physical tests for flight school. There were 20 of us, and I was the only black. And this white sergeant did something that in that day he certainly didn’t have to do. He congratulated me on the highest overall score in the group. In October of 1951 I started flight school.
In Korea I flew 53 missions in the F-89G fighter-bomber, close air support and interdiction, hitting bridges, dams, railroads deep behind enemy lines. We were carrying 1,000-pound bombs, napalm, 5-inch rockets, and .50-caliber machine guns. I never encountered enemy aircraft, but I had to worry about ground fire. I was hit in the tail pipe once while carrying napalm, but I made it home. It was almost totally dark. I say we had a quarter-mile vision. And I was hit at 50 feet. That’s low. That’s low. But I climbed up, and the air got thin enough to put the fire out.
I had no problems with the orders to go to Vietnam. It was just like the people in South Vietnam wanna be free to make their own decisions, to have a democratic government. And the Commies were trying to take over. And being a serviceman, when the commander in chief says time to go, we head out.
I’m flying a F-105 by now. It was fast. Mach 2.5. Had good range. Dependable. Comfortable. Good weapons. Good navigational systems. But it was primarily a tactical bomber.
We could carry up to 16 750-pound bombs. On a normal flight, we’d have 10, and then 2.5-inch rockets, and a 20-millimeter cannon, which was a real jewel. It was a far cry from what I could load on a F-84 or F-100.
The F-4 Phantom was certainly a better aircraft for air-to-air combat. And sometimes they would give us coverage. But the F-105 could carry a bigger load, faster and farther. I really loved that airplane.
In 1964 we mainly hit the supplies going down the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos. But in 1965 it was sort of open bombing against the North. The initial targets were radar installations. Then we went after military barracks, and some bridges and roads. At the time they didn’t have the SAMs, just plain old .57-caliber antiaircraft weapons with radar control. But they were pretty accurate.
I was leading the squadron that day, the twenty-fifth of October ’65. The weather was bad. But they sent my wingman up and said you got a mission. The Ironhand. That’s the code name for the missile installations. So I
rushed down and got briefed and picked up my maps. We had snake eyes, 500-pound target bombs. And CUBs. Cluster bomb utility. A pellet bomb. This would be my fiftieth mission in this war.
We refueled over Laos, the 19th Parallel. Then just east of Dien Bien Phu, we cut down to low altitude. I mean low. We call it the deck—50 to 100 feet. Just clearing the trees and sometimes below ’em to get under the radar net. I had to keep the wingman and everybody else higher than me. You gotta watch what’s gonna be in the way of the wingman, ’cause he’s not watching. He’s watchin’ the lead, and everybody’s watchin’ him. You flying for all four other guys.
We were on the deck 34 minutes at 500 knots when we reached the IP, the predetermined point, after which you don’t make any deviations and just head for the target. And the maximum release altitude for the reference scan was 100 feet. To get the maximum effect for the bombing. Any higher, half of ’em be blowin’ themselves up before they get to the ground.
About three minutes from the target, I could see ’em shootin’ at me. Just rifle fire. Everybody carried a rifle down there. They just fired up in the air, and you run into it. Then I heard a thump. And I turned off the electrical stuff and hydraulics. I thought they hit something electrical.
I went right to the target, released my weapons, and started headin’ out to the Tonkin Gulf, where the Navy could pick me up. The last thing I said to the flight was, “Let’s get the F out of here.”
Then smoke started to boil up from behind the instrument panel. Electrical smoke. I reached over to turn off the battery and the two generators. And before my hand got to the panel, the airplane exploded. Just blew up. The smoke was so dense, I couldn’t see outside of the cockpit. I got a real jolt. Nothing like that thump. I couldn’t see whether I was upright, upside down, or what. I just pulled the nose up a few degrees to give me the best ejection altitude. I ejected instantly. At 400 feet. And I prayed.
My lap belt didn’t work automatically, so the parachute didn’t open automatically. At the speed I was going, that would have ripped my parachute apart, and I would hit the ground with no chute. The maximum speed to eject at so it won’t be fatal is 575 miles an hour. I was doing almost 700. The fact that these gadgets didn’t work is why I’m sittin’ here now.
I looked around, and I was still in the seat. I reached down and pulled my ripcord. I saw the wingman. I looked down. And boom, boom, boom. I hit the ground.
The wingman radioed back, “Our lead got out. We saw him hit the ground, but I don’t think he was conscious.”
It looked like I was lying down on the ground, but I was sitting actually. It was 11:44 A.M. I was two minutes from the coast.
I fell right into the arms of a dozen militia. They all had guns. And about a dozen kids with hoes. Now I thought they might chop me up into little pieces with all those farm tools, but they just stood back and giggled. I could hear the bullets zinging past that short time I was coming down, but once I hit the ground, they stopped shooting.
They wanted me to put up both hands. And I could only get up one hand. I didn’t realize that my left shoulder was all smashed and my left wrist was broken. It wasn’t painful at the time ’cause the nerves were dead initially. Well, I said damn. I can’t be moving around. I had my .38 butt showin’. That was what they feared most. So I sort of leaned into my battered arm and shoulder, and from above my head I pointed to my left side. About three times of that, they got the picture. So they move in very slowly, and the first thing they did was relieve me of my piece. Then they took my hunting knife, and they kinda relaxed. Then they took the parachute and my anti-G suit. And they wanted me to get out of my flight suit. It’s on very tight. And this Vietnamese wasn’t gon’ just slide it down, he wanted to cut it someplace. So he brought this knife down. And I scooted back. The knife ended up stickin’ in the ground, right between my legs, an inch from my genitals. I was able to calm ’em enough to show ’em how it all works. I took one zipper, and I opened it. They thought that was fun. So they played with the zippers for a minute or so. Up and down. Zzzzzzzz. Now the guy with the knife, he’s gonna cut my boots off. Well, I didn’t want to part with my boots. I started kicking and rolling around on the ground. After a minute, whoever was in charge told him to let me keep my boots.
Now they got me dressed the way they want me, and they are going to walk me 3 miles to this village. I didn’t know my ankle was broken, too. I was dusty, hot, sweaty, and naturally, pissed off ’cause I was shot down. Didn’t wanna be there. I’m thinkin’ about two, three, four months. I’m not thinkin’ ’bout years. I’m not even thinkin’ six months.
I was the forty-third American captured in the North. The first black. And we are 40 miles east, northeast of Hanoi.
As we got closer and closer to the village, the gongs were gongin’. And that’s callin’ out the people. So more and more people start to line up along the rice paddies. They were comin’ from everywhere. And the militia took me inside this hut in the village. And a medic came in and put something like Mercurochrome on the cuts I got on my face when the instrument panel shattered. And I sat and I sat. After a while, they took all of my paraphernalia, my pens and my pencils, my watch and my Air Force class ring. Then they tied my elbows back behind me again. And they put a black cape over my white T-shirt. My flight suit was still tied around my waist. And they started trekking me down the road again. I didn’t have any idea at the time, but I was going to walk 5 more miles to this vehicle.
My shoulder and this ankle beginnin’ to pain. And you know how somethin’s frightenin’ and your heart starts to pound. I never had that. I guess I was too ornery.
Sort of a crowd is followin’ me now. And this Vietnamese keeps runnin’ up the back of my ankles with this bicycle. I managed to get hold of the handlebars of his bicycle, and I shoved he and bicycle over the hedgerow into the rice paddy. Naturally, he was terribly angry. And he came like he was coming to get me. The honcho sends him back and wouldn’t let him go on with us.
Near this time, two jets come over the mountain really low and slow. They’re lookin’ for me. I’m sure they’re honing in on my beeper in my parachute, which is probably back at the village. And the militia shove me in the rice paddy. Luckily the jets didn’t see us, ’cause they would’ve shot us all up. They would think that I’m not there because my parachute is someplace else.
And this guy jumps on me, straddling my back. And he puts his automatic weapon right behind my ear with my nose pretty much in the dirt. And I said to myself, you know, this man might even shoot me.
When we got to the vehicle, they had a cameraman there. And he wanted to take pictures of me walkin’ towards him. I wouldn’t do it. I’d frown up and fall on my knees and turn my back. Finally, they quit. They never took any pictures. And they got me in the jeep.
And I’m tired and sleepy. My elbows are still tied, so I can’t lean back. I kept nudging this guard back there with me, tryin’ to tell ’im to loosen the nylon cord. He keep saying, “No. No. No.” I was ornery. I tried to push him out of the jeep with my shoulders. He was sort of hangin’ off the side when he yells somethin’ to the guards up front. They were just constantly talkin’ and gigglin’. Then they told him to loosen my arms. The first place they tried to interrogate me appeared to be a secondary school. And they put me in this hut. I did what I was s’posed to do. Name, rank, serial number, date of birth. And I started talking about the Geneva Convention. And they said forget it. “You a criminal.”
It was about 500 people out in this schoolyard chattin’ Vietnamese. And the interrogator said they said, “Kill the Yankee.” I said, “Well, kill me. You are going to kill me sooner or later.” So we went round and round, and they got tired of it.
When they were taking me back to the jeep, a Vietnamese reached through a little circle of people around me and rubbed my hand, as if I’m s’posed to rub off on him. Well, all the bolts went forward on the rifles. I don’t know if the militia thought he was trying to stab me or what. But he ju
st scooted down and went through the crowd like you see a snake go through the grass, just the top of the grass moving. I think if he’d been in the open, they probably would’ve shot him.
The next place I end up was Hoa Lo Prison, which we called the Hanoi Hilton. The first place Americans were brought for serious interrogation and torture. They played rough. And they took me to a room with stucco walls. We called it the Knotty Room. It was about ten o’clock, and I still hadn’t eaten since I left the base.
They interrogatin’ me all night. Asking me military questions. “Who was in your squadron?” They brought in my maps, which they found where the airplane crashed. They didn’t have my point of departure. They didn’t have my point of return. I knew what the headings were in my head. They said I killed 30 people. I told them I didn’t hurt anybody. Then I made up stuff. I told them I was flying a RF-105. A reconnaissance plane for taking pictures. We don’t have any such airplane. We had the capability, but they never made it operational.
They said, “You no have RF-105s.”
I said, “We sure do. I had one.”
“How does it work?”
“I have no idea. The pilot push the button. Leave it on to where you s’posed to be. Then turns it off. That’s all the pilot knows. Okay?”
Some time later, I saw in one of their magazines a picture of the tail of a F-105, and it was called a RF-105. I thought it had to be mine. I don’t think anybody else told them that lie.
They would kick the chair out from under me and bang my head on the table. I thought, Damn, that shit really hurts. Then, I’d just relax and think of something pleasant. I would be still flying air-to-air combat. Anything far away from this. But I was totally exhausted, and my head would go down to sleep. And they would just pull it back up and bang it down.
Just before daybreak they took me to this cell. It had the biggest rats you ever saw in your life. They would gnaw through the bottom of the wooden door. And I was sleeping on a concrete floor. No blanket. Just my flight suit. After a few days, they gave me a mosquito net. And that was God’s gift to get that mosquito net.
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