God, Country, Forgiveness

In the spring of 1969, two young friends, F-100 pilots, battled the late night traffic on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The missions were not a walk in the park, and thus were voluntary. The older jocks with families all believed that if God had wanted man to fly at night, he would have been born with a flashing red beacon on his butt. Vince and Jerry, young gung-ho sons of the heartland, driven by God, duty, honor and country, volunteered. Bill, who was about their age, opted for graduate school out of the country.

Why would Vince and Jerry take such risks over the trail? War is about busting assets, and at night there were more assets on display; trucks were bumper-to-bumper. Someone had to do it. And the swept-winged seraph just seemed more responsive at night. The cramped cockpit was cozier, with the warm red glow of the instrument panel, the smell of hot hydraulic fluid and the muffled whine of spinning turbine blades deep in its belly. When they slipped the surly bonds, man and machine were one, dancing in and out of the dark with devastating effect. Meanwhile, Bill demonstrated on foreign soil against his government and wrote evasive letters to his draft board.

The strike was directed by a C-130 flying high over the trail with a see-in-the-dark device. It saw a truck convoy on a mountain road and told the pilots where to drop their bombs relative to flares being dropped on the ground. Jerry dive-bombed the convoy first, setting the lead truck afire. Its load of mortars cooked like a popcorn popper with the lid off. Vince made scrap metal out of the tail-end truck. Jerry blew another off the road. It cartwheeled down the mountainside in a series of spectacular explosions. It was a midnight massacre.

Suddenly, from off to the east in that inky sea, a neon geyser of anti-aircraft fire erupted. Jerry pounced on those guns with special bombs carried for such occasions. There were no indications that the guns were radar-guided; they could only be shooting blindly at the sound of the planes. As Jerry dove on the guns, the tracer fire looked like someone was throwing bucketfuls of multicolored Christmas tree lights in his face, but adrenaline anesthetized the terror and rapture of being shot at and missed. Jerry dropped his last bomb and the shooting stopped. Then Vince rolled in, his voice calm on the radio. Another gun site began to shoot. A split-second after Vince’s bomb hit the target, a mushroom-shaped fireball lit up the mountaintop. Jerry thought it was the ammo stockpile, but there was no radio call from Vince. The silence screamed in his ears. He had just watched Vince die.

Jerry’s plane found its way home, he knew not how. Every colonel on the base was waiting for him. When he stepped off the boarding ladder, his legs would not support his body. Someone put an arm around his waist, and then he did the most ungallant thing a fighter pilot can do. He cried.

Search-and-rescue never found the wreckage or any sign of life. The record says MIA, missing in action. The term torments the soul so much more than KIA.

In Washington today, Robert Vince Willet’s name appears at panel 27W, Line 103, on the Vietnam War Memorial, one of 58,200 noblest patriots of a generation. I live with the onus of a decision that led my best friend to die a grisly death before my eyes. That other young man now resides in the White House, still pushing the edge of the ethical envelope. We who never quit believing in God, duty, honor and country, find it an egregious affront.

I’ve forgiven those flawed national leaders Vince and I served, my Asian enemies and even myself for tragic youthful hubris. God willing, I will one day find it in my heart to forgive Bill.