War For the Hell of It: A Fighter Pilot's View of Vietnam

by Ed Cobleigh

  I shouldn't be this close to the carnage; I could easily get tagged with a wild round randomly launched by the fire even at this quarter-mile distance. But, I can't run. I have to see this tragic scene played out to its fiery end. Not only morbid curiosity holds me here. Agonized with guilt, I ask myself if Jack and I could have done more to head off the catastrophe unfolding in front of me. We alone were certain of the growing peril faced by the Spectre gunships and their crews. I can't stand not to watch. God help any men still trapped inside the Spectre.

  The firemen abandon their truck in front of the crumpled AC-130 and run for their lives toward me and away from the exploding ammunition. I can see their fleeing forms struggling in their silver turnout suits against the still-raging fire as they keep the sacrificial fire truck between them and the lead-spitting inferno. The burning fuel, with sharp flashes embedded, lights the night scene even brighter as more rounds detonate inside the black hulk. I can see through the gaping holes in the plane's fuselage to the fire burning on the other side. Dante himself couldn't have pictured anything like the death of a Spectre.

  It seems that Jack's analysis of the existence of a Firecan fire-control radar in Laos might just be more accurate than the careerists in Saigon have admitted, until now.

  The waning moon hasn't risen over Thailand yet. I drive back to the O Club bar with the jeep's lights on. I hope my steak and drink are still there at my table. If not, I won't mind waiting as my replacement meal is served and watching again as the waitress' round butt stretches and pulls her sprayed-on skirt. Watching men die makes me think I should enjoy life while I still can. Can I eat, drink, and lust after the sexy waitress so soon after seeing what I just saw and remembering my part in the tragedy? Is that cold and heartless on my part? Or am I shoving those feeling of sympathy away as an act of mental health preservation? Maybe a orgasmic interlude will stifle the still, small voice in my head saying, "You could have done more, fought harder to sound the alarm." If Jack and I had snuffed it on the runway tonight, would the Spectre crew be at the bar? Damn right they would.

  I think I'll order another steak, two more drinks (both in the same glass), and hit fast erase on my memory.

  "Waitress, Honey, what time do you get off?"

  Trouble ln Paradise

  On the shaded, screened-in veranda of the USAF Officers' Club at Clark Air Base on the Philippine island of Luzon, the living is easy; at least it's supposed to be that way. The Officers' Club occupies one corner of a rectangular green parade ground. The Visiting Officers' Quarters (the VOQ), at which I am a temporary guest, is on an adjacent corner. The flat expanse of the parade ground is carefully mowed and groomed, surrounded on all four sides by tall shade trees. These trees aren't the vertically towering oaks or the elms of more temperate climes, but are some sort of branching mangrove, shaped like inverted leafy triangles, nearly as wide at the top as they are tall. Even shade trees in the tropics are weird and different, but effective all the same.

  From my comfortable deck chair on the porch, I can see the short circular drive from the parade ground leading to the club and back; the VOQ is hidden in the trees down the perimeter street to my left. What I can't see is the waiter who is supposedly fetching my drink.

  At midday, it is already in the mid-80s, tonight, the temperature will fall all the way to the low 80s, now the ordered pina colada will hit the proverbial spot. Where is that guy?

  I am in a cranky mood for a variety of reasons, ranging in magnitude from major to minor. My airplane is broken, a good friend of mine was shot down last night in the sewer, and my drink is nowhere to be seen. So, why am I here trying to relax on the veranda?

  Clark has specialized aircraft maintenance capabilities not available at my combat base in Thailand. Our Phantom jets are flown to Clark on a periodic, routine schedule to have their vital systems, such as the fire control radar, checked out and maintained. It is an easy two-hour flight from northwest Thailand across Laos, Vietnam, and the South China Sea to the Philippines. It is unreal to think that a short flight not even requiring aerial refueling can transport my navigator, Jack, and me in one morning over a hot combat zone to the tropical paradise that is Clark. Such is the magic carpet of jet aviation. Usually a short stay at Clark is a welcome respite from the rigors and pressures of daily combat operations, but not today. Not while a buddy is on the ground in Laos. I want to be back at the war, in the air, armed to the teeth, assisting the search-and-rescue troops. I want to help get my friend up out of the jungle and safe from rotting to death in some hellhole of a prison camp in North Vietnam or worse, tortured to death by the Pateh Lao.

  At last, my frosted drink arrives cold in its wasp-waisted glass, and I tell the Filipino waiter to put the charge on my incipient tab. I'm running a tab because sitting and drinking is all I am apt to do today. I can't fly back to the war until the mechanics fix my busted bird and thus I can't help my good friend in his rescue. I realize that my buddy on the ground in Laos is even now probably sitting and wishing he were drinking as well. Undoubtedly, a swig from a hot canteen would taste as good to him as my rum-based fruit concoction does to me. One of Southeast Asia's little ironies is that there is little available drinking water in the rain forest. It is even harder to procure a drink there, where it rains 200 inches a year, than on this veranda.

  I am acutely sympathetic to my friend's thirst plight due to first­hand knowledge I gained in the local jungle surrounding Clark. This is the home of the USAF Asian Jungle Survival School. Attendance and graduation is required of all USAF pilots stationed in this theater of war. To survive in Latin American jungles, you have to go to another school in the Panama Canal Zone. I'm not sure if the requirement for two, count-'em, two, jungle survival schools is due to marked differences in flora and fauna between South American and Asian jungles. The existence of two schools is probably generated by the fact that each school is administered by a completely separate USAF organization. The difference lies in bureaucratic jungles and not in actual rain forests.

  In any case, water is very hard to find on the ground in Laos. It rains constantly, but the thirsty vegetation and the muddy soil soak up the falling water on impact. There are few streams and no lakes or ponds in the jungle highlands of Laos. The Bad Guys, hoping to nab a downed airman when he comes to cop a drink, tightly patrol what running water that does exist. It must be maddening to be dripping wet with sweat, rain, and fear in a land where the precipitation totals over 200 hundred inches a year and still not be able to find a sip of fresh water.

  The dueling USAF jungle survival school bureaucracies haven't been able to agree on the design of a canteen to provide to pilots, one suitable for carry in fighter cockpits. Thus, we all employ our own improvised water containers. The current favorite is the plastic baby bottle, mailed from the States by wives and mothers. These are filled with tap water and capped without the nipple. I carry four, in shades of pink and blue, in the ankle pockets of my flight suit. On the veranda, I take a long sip of my pina colada from its tall, curvy glass and I wonder if my friend is now sipping some of his precious and dwindling water from a baby bottle, and if so, I speculate on the color of his improvised canteen. It is either blue, pink, or yellow. I'm at the Officers' Club drinking iced rum and coconut milk from a glass shaped with a definite feminine profile and he is sipping warm water from a baby bottle in the Laotian jungle. For the life of me, I can't quite make the Freudian connection that surely exists in these parallel situations.

  At the daily Command Post briefing, I learned this morning that a Phantom with a familiar call sign was shot down while "sewer doing" over southern Laos late last night. The intelligence briefing listed the names of the two downed crewmembers. One of the guys was from my class in pilot training; I have flown on his wing and he on mine many times. I know his wife by her nickname, I have been to their house for dinner, and we exchange Christmas cards. I got on the military phone network and called my squadron in Thailand. The duty officer was prevented by security
regulations from filling me in on the details while using the unsecured phone line, but he was able to tell me that the rescue effort was under way, which I already knew, but that no pickup was imminent. He couldn't tell me if the rescue forces had made radio contact with the two guys on the ground or not. I hope so, and I hope the waiter will hurry with my second drink as I hand him the now empty first glass, after eating the fresh pineapple wedge floating in the foamy bottom. I hope my pal is remembering what he learned in survival school, that the practiced techniques and instructions are suppressing the panic and fear in his mind.

  The instruction at Clark's jungle school is dispensed by two-man teams of instructors made up of USAF enlisted troops and Negrito Pygmy warriors from the Philippine jungles. From them, I learned how to find water pooled in palm fronds, to cut jungle vines and suck the watery sap, and how to tap a "water tree" with my Bowie knife. This was all great fun here in the local jungle. I once cut a creeper vine and swung across a ravine like a clumsy Tarzan, only to crash into the anchor tree on the far side. The most fun was being winched up out of the jungle like a fish on a line by means of a cable dangling from a search and rescue helicopter.

  I wonder if my friend is using any of the knowledge shared by the Negritos. I wonder if he is able to, or are the Bad Guys too close and he can only hide from view? Is he too stressed to think clearly? Is he hurt? Are the jungle water sources as plentiful as the helpful Negritos demonstrated? Will that pineapple wedge make my tongue break out? I've had fresh pineapple in jungle school, but I can't remember if it affected me then as the Negritos cooked it in rice.

  The Pygmies here are an entirely different race from the other native Filipinos, with dark black skin and curly hair as opposed to light brown skin and straight black hair of the more numerous Filipinos. They stand about four and a half feet tall. Negrito Pygmies are some of the most quietly competent, impressive men I have ever met. They are soft spoken, polite, and dignified people with a personal knowledge of the jungle that I find staggering. They never volunteer information to us huge Americans, that would be rude, but they answer any question with great patience. Natural-born instructors, they have a long tribal tradition of passing on jungle lore using detailed demonstrations. They are proud of their know-how and are eager to transfer even a tiny fraction of it to us ignorant pilots. They are inherently proud people with a quiet reserve and, a keen sense of humor. I get the firm impression they are not easily angered, but that they would not suffer a serious affront gladly.

  Every male Negrito carries a primitive wooden sheath holding a ten-inch bolo knife with a hand-carved wooden handle. It is a rite of passage for a Pygmy warrior to forge his own knife out of a leaf spring salvaged from a junked jeep. Using his homemade knife, he can extract a splinter from your finger, skin a snake, and chop down a tree, hopefully in that order.

  Despite their competence in the tropical jungle, or perhaps because of it, the minority Negritos are much despised by the majority of Filipinos. I'm sure racial prejudice is at the bottom of the situation. There is constant friction between the two groups usually to the detriment of the Negritos. However, occasionally a Filipino will cross the fuzzy line between a verbal slight and a serious insult. That foolish individual runs the risk of disappearing into the jungle at the hands of the Pygmies.

  I don't want to know what else the Negritos can do with those razor-sharp knives. Negritos are not allowed on the main base at Clark. The top brass (or more likely, their wives) are of the opinion that the routine appearance on base of half-naked black Pygmies with big knives would disturb the tropical tranquility. Hence, the waiter scurrying forth with my next cold libation is a more familiar subservient, light skinned, taller Filipino. The service at this club needs improvement. An idyllic setting should generate impeccable service.

  If life at Clark AB, the Philippines, doesn't make you a believer in colonialism, nothing will. Clark was established as a U.S. Army base after our country took over the Philippines from Spain shortly after the turn of the current century. It was "You may fire when ready, Gridley" in Manila Bay and we had ourselves a colony. Generals Douglas MacArthur and his father, Arthur MacArthur, served here. This is the place which MacArthur fils referred to when he theatrically announced in the dark days of WWII, "I shall return." A half century of U.S. military presence here (with time out for the Japanese occupation) has slowly transformed an airfield carved out of the jungle in the middle of the island of Luzon into an idyllic wonderland of transplanted Americana.

  Unlike the combat bases in Thailand and Vietnam, dependents, wives, and children of military personnel are allowed, even encouraged, to live and live well on Clark Air Base. A posting to Clark means three to five years of easy times. In contrast, assignments to the war zone are for one year, without dependents, and the living there is not at all easy. The presence of so many women and children here at Clark has generated a weird kind of tropical suburbia, Asian colonial style. The streets near the parade ground are lined with large, square houses built on six-foot pilings allowing air, floods, and snakes to circulate freely underneath. Each house has screened porches on all four sides and a tin roof. These officers' family quarters were probably built between World Wars I and II.

  Each family has a Filipino maid, a cook, and a houseboy/gardener. The senior officers have personal drivers as well. The USAF provides most of the physical comforts of home and on the cheap to boot. A well-stocked Base Exchange and Commissary has all the food and consumer goods from back in the good ol' USA. The local produce and personal services are also very affordable. I can hear dozens of kids splashing in the Officers' Club pool behind me. Next to the pool are the tennis courts where Filipino tennis pros give lessons to officers' wives for a dollar an hour. In their immaculate white tennis outfits, the adept pros will serve, volley, or lose as many games to you as you wish.

  Which reminds me that I have no plans for tonight. My jet is awaiting replacement parts from the States and I am at loose ends. The social opportunities on base are limited. I could have dinner in the main ballroom of the club. A decent dinner there will be highlighted by the performance of a fifteen-piece orchestra right out of the big band era. They put out those Benny Goodman tunes six nights a week and do it perfectly. The lead singer is a Filipino version of Frank Sinatra without the mafia connections, but with the tux and patent leather elevator shoes. A local girl singer, gorgeous in a sprayed-on ball gown, accompanies him. She is Manila's answer to Abby Lane. This scene is very popular with the senior officers and their wives. As I am scheduled to be slightly drunk tonight, dinner in the ballroom might be a career-limiting choice. Besides, gaping at a curvy Filipina poured into a skintight dress would be damaging to my morale, if not my morals.

  In the basement of the club, there is a casual bar appealing to a younger crowd. The service in the "Pit" includes steaks, fries, burgers, beer, and booze, not necessarily in that order. The formal entertainment downstairs is provided by a rock and roll band whose lead singer sounds more like Elvis than Elvis does. Visiting airline stewardesses, the nearly grown daughters of senior officials, and the lonely wives of absent junior officers often provide the informal entertainment. But somehow, the loud, smoky bar scene doesn't fit my current mood either.

  On the hill overlooking the main base is the Clark golf club. The attendant staff serves a Mongolian barbecue on the patio of the clubhouse to the accompaniment of an authentic sounding Filipino country and western band. That will do nicely tonight. There is nothing like well-prepared barbecue washed down with a drink sporting a little umbrella on top of the glass, even if the barbecue owes more to Nanking than Nashville. In any case, I can savor my meal to sad music dripping with hillbilly despair. Songs about time in jail, dear old Mama, trains, and cheating lovers will suit my current mood just fine.

  I wonder who will be next to get shot down in combat. The wing from Da Nang lost an F-4 three days ago. The second loss was my friend who got tagged last night. The rule of three will not be denied. Fight
er pilots as a rule are not a superstitious lot. I believe in luck, both good and bad, but prefer to rely on my eyesight, reflexes, and skill rather than some nutty superstition. However, most of us believe that aircraft losses come in groups of three, despite all data to the contrary. As one of my squadron mates pithily put it, "Shit sandwiches come in three bites." Who will be next?

  On my way into the main bar to make a reservation tonight for the patio, I pass the rank of slot machines and feed in a nickel, but to no avail. I think that it is somehow fitting that the Officers' Club has these one-armed bandits readily available to instruct the casual observer on the fundamental role that luck and the odds have in determining our fate. This gaming luck that doesn't seem to respond to superstition rituals.

  I'm here in the lap of tropical luxury furnished by the US government while my friend is hiding in the jungles of Laos. Of course, his immediate predicament was also furnished by the government. Why did his airplane come unglued over the Ho Chi Minh Trail and why did mine break down at Clark? It could have just as easily been me now running for my life and hoping to stretch that life another day. He could have been here deciding between rock and roll and country and western. I guess this time, I hit the situational jackpot and he came up with snake eyes.

  At least my broken airplane can eventually get me back into the air again, as soon as the parts arrive from the States. Normally a busted jet is no big deal at an operational fighter base. If the airplane I am scheduled to fly is down for parts, I just walk down the ramp and pick out another one. However, if there is only one Phantom on the base and it belongs to you, when it's broken, it's personal. It seems that some key part of my personality, maybe even my manhood, is nonoperational. What is a fighter pilot without a fighter plane, an ordinary guy? Phantoms aren't supposed to break; they are supposed to fly me around with speed and style. That is, if the word "style" can be applied to a double-ugly F-4.