Pre-med and becoming a doctor seemed like a good option—prestige, respect, and a stable occupation with good pay—but I was not really dedicated to this aspiration. After two years of pre-med courses, it became apparent that I was not destined for this career path.
Without the possibility of a medical deferment upon graduation, I now faced the reality that my career choices were going to be made by “Uncle Sam.” Up until then, I was little concerned about what was going on in Vietnam because I knew I would be protected by a medical deferment for four years after graduation.
Around me I saw my peers responding to the omnipresent Vietnam war in diametrically opposed ways. These were men whose convictions and opinions I highly respected. It confused me that some were marching in direct opposition to the war, while others were volunteering for military service through the on-campus ROTC program and other avenues. I had little or no understanding of the Vietnam situation, and didn't even know the country existed until the latter part of my high school years. Now I would be conscripted to go and serve in a war halfway around the world, in a country I knew nothing about. I would be asked to kill people and possibly lose my life for this cause. My country was asking me to make the ultimate sacrifice; and yet, for some unknown reason, they were calling it a “firefight,” not a war. Hence, those being captured were not being protected by the prisoner of war rules set out by the Geneva Convention. Downed pilots who stayed in the “Hanoi Hilton,” sometimes for as many as seven years, were not privy to “five-star accommodations.” I could not make peace with this, and I believe this was the beginning of my unconscious doubts about the war.
I decided senior year that the United States government and those in power were better informed about the situation in Vietnam than I was going to be, no matter how much research I did, so I was going to trust their judgement. Maybe this was just an easy way out of my state of consternation caused by all the turmoil and debate about the war around me on the campus at Bowdoin and in the news.
Watching Walter Cronkite in the lobby of the Senior Center after dinner had become a ritual. Here we watched the war live, the war that would perhaps take our lives in a short while.
I had always believed that I had a patriotic duty to my country to defend the freedom that it bestowed upon me and the wonderful and privileged life that it had afforded me. I wanted to contribute to the war effort to the fullest of my ability, so I made the decision during our senior year to volunteer for the United States Air Force undergraduate pilot training program, which entailed a service commitment of five years. I believed that by being a front-line fighter pilot in the USAF I could make a significant contribution to the war effort.
I found that I loved flying and that I had a talent for it, which led me to graduate from training at the top of my class. From there I was assigned to advanced training at an F-100 tactical fighter squadron at Luke AFB in Phoenix, Arizona.
Here, at F-100 combat training, I was awakened to the real war going on in Vietnam and the untruthful US government that was directing it. My ideals about our country, the USAF, the US military establishment, and the president and his entourage of inept men who were running the war from behind their desks began, at a subconscious level, destroying my illusionary view of the war.
I was putting my life on the line every day in training. I could not afford to confront these awakenings at a conscious level for fear they would distract me from the flying at hand, which required split-second decisions made with perfection. Somewhere in my inner brain, what I saw and the stories I was privy to were eating at my soul. My heart was no longer in my flying, and I began to realize it was causing me to make small mistakes in my flying that I could not afford to make. On a strafing run, at 500 knots, fifty feet above the ground, any slight hiccup and you will be a ball of flames.
When one joins the military to fight for freedom, paradoxically, one gives up his personal freedoms and becomes the property of the United States military; they own you and can order you to do anything they choose. If you speak out in public in opposition to your commander-in-chief, the president of the United States, you expose yourself to possible court martial charges.
The war effort that our president was portraying in the news was not the reality of combat in Vietnam being told to me by the hardened fighter jocks in my squadron. In the spring of 1970, when I entered combat training, according to Washington the following things were “true” about the war in Vietnam:
- the US strategy to win the war in Vietnam was working
- everything possible was being done to support and protect our pilots in combat
- “rules of engagement” from Washington caused pilots to die everyday
- captured pilots suffered in the Hanoi Hilton partly because of an undeclared war
- pilots were morally dedicated to the war effort
- the US was not fighting in Laos.
In war there are no rules, and it is simple: if you want to win, you need to defeat the enemy.
It was common knowledge among the pilots in the squadron who had come back from Vietnam tours that the US strategy was not winning the war and that many of their air strikes were only killing innocent people and monkeys. Every time there was a ceasefire, reconnaissance aircraft revealed the North rearming, yet no bombing was allowed.
Little was being done to protect our pilots being sent on high-risk missions. Their hands were tied behind their backs by the “rules of engagement.” Rules of engagement, which were created by the higher-ups in Washington with no war experience, determined what was acceptable for a pilot to do in Vietnam. When fired upon by SAM missiles, designed to destroy your aircraft, you were not allowed to bomb the launch site because it might be in a “friendly” village.
If a Russian MiG jumped you, you were only allowed to fight him in the air. If he turned tail and returned and landed at his base, you were not allowed to bomb him on the ground; hence, pilots would encounter the same MiG pilots day after day.
Bombing missions often followed the exact same flight paths over the North because they were determined by people in Washington. These orders were then passed to the front-line pilots. Needless to say, same route, same altitude, made the pilots easy targets for the North Vietnamese radar-guided antiaircraft gunners. They were ready and waiting.
Hundreds of SAM missiles, with some poor pilot’s name on them, were known to be stored in downtown Hanoi; however, bombing missions to destroy these SAMS were not allowed.
To win a war, pilots and other combatants must be allowed to operate at 100 percent. A team never wins a game if this strategy is not employed. Hanoi was always intent on a military victory. Those in the theater knew this, as did the politicians in Washington. The peace tables and cease fires were a ruse that worked! To support combatants fully in war, the war must be declared by Congress and have the majority of American people behind it. This was never the case in Vietnam.
Most of the fighter pilots I encountered liked war: they liked the excitement, they liked the killing, they liked that it enhanced their careers, and they liked the combat time because it led to promotions. They were professional military pilots; and, as such, they were the most highly trained and proficient killers on the face of the earth. Most spent little if any time thinking about whether the war was morally just or not. They focused only on carrying out their duty and ensuring the success of each combat mission they were sent on. America has to be proud of these men. If deployed in a justified war, these are the men who will win that war for you.
These were the men I was surrounded by, and it became disturbing. One major who had been in ’Nam held a barbeque for the other pilots and their wives. For entertainment, he showed combat gun pod film footage taken from a camera in the rear of the plane. It showed the damage done on a bombing or napalm run by taking pictures rearward out of the plane. Not what wives want to see before their husbands are sent into combat.
Another major wanted to return for a second tour in a fighter, even though he had a family with five young kids. He said on his first tour he was a FAC pilot who marked ground targets with smoke rockets, so that the fighters could “roll in” on their bombing runs and wreak havoc. Once the fighters were done, he would fly low and shoot the flaming napalm victims running around on the ground with an AK-47 automatic assault rifle he carried in the cockpit of his Cessna 172 prop plane—according to him, it took more skill and was more fun than deer hunting, especially at dusk.
According to the news, we were told by the President that we were not fighting a war in Laos. On the contrary, my instructor pilot was shot down on one of his many bombing missions over Laos. In addition, he had spent time in Laos training Laotian pilots to fly the USAF A-37 attack plane.
My best friend in pilot training was assigned to the CH-53, a heavy-lift helicopter capable of carrying ninety troops into combat. Air America, fighting as mercenaries in Laos, had no such choppers. He was stationed in Laos, USAF incognito, where his mission in “the war that did not exist” was to carry Laotian soldiers into combat, many of whom were young boys, little more than fourteen years old. Nine choppers would take them in, and, two weeks later, it was only necessary to send in three choppers to pick up the remains. Alcohol became his refuge for the guilt that he suffered.
I was gradually coming to the conclusion that the war in Vietnam was immoral, that it could not be won. Washington already knew at this time that it was a lost cause and had reached this conclusion well before me.
I was brought up to be honest and truthful, so it was difficult for me to listen to the president lie to the American people on a regular basis. Serving and taking orders from such a commander-in-chief was not something I had volunteered for while at Bowdoin senior year.
The US government was not in full support of the pilots in Vietnam, and yet were asking us to make the ultimate sacrifice. They were asking us to go into combat and fight according to artificial rules, made by them, which put us at a distinct disadvantage. I had always been taught that if you do get into a fight, then the only thing that matters is winning. Being ordered to possibly sacrifice my life for an unjust and morally wrong cause, in an otherwise unwinnable war, was something I was no longer was willing to do.
I realize now that deciding to leave for Canada was not a conscious process. In a moment of cognitive dissonance, as I was returning home from the base one day, I had an epiphany and knew in that moment that I would never go back. God had reached down to me in my MG and touched my soul. I could no longer be part of the dishonesty and lies being perpetrated by the US government.
That Memorial Day Weekend in 1970, I took “the road less traveled,” and headed to Canada to start a new chapter in my life.
This reflection is part of a series written by members of the Class of 1968. Read more in For Conscience and Country
This story first appears in the Fall 2018 issue of Bowdoin Magazine.
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