FREE
Rolling Thunder
(Wings of War Book 1)
by Mark
Berent
Rolling Thunder, the first book in Mark Berent's Wings
of War series, is FREE. The author joins me today to share an excerpt from
the book. Also available: Steel Tiger, Phantom Leader, Eagle Station, and Storm Flight.
Description
Rolling Thunder is an historical novel about the decisive role politics played during
the Vietnam war. Its characters range from men in the field to the Pentagon and
the White House. Fighter pilots and Special Forces warriors try to do their
best but are hampered by President Johnson, Secretary of Defense McNamara, and
their staff members who despise the military. Only one aging USAF general, who
fought in Korea and WWII, is on their side. His clashes with his Commander in
Chief, Lyndon Johnson, are epic in proportion and startling in content.
In Rolling Thunder, the time is late 1965 and 1966 in war zone places such as Saigon,
Hanoi, Bien Hoa, Da Nang, and Tahkli. While back in Washington, LBJ sits over
lunch and personally picks bombing targets in an attempt to fight a limited
war. In Vietnam the war knows no limits
There, as the hostilities escalate, the fates of three men intertwine:
USAF Captain Court Bannister, overshadowed by a famous movie star father who
fought in WWII as a B-17 gunner, driven to confront missiles, MiGs, and
nerve-grinding bombing raids in order to prove his worth to his comrades - and
to himself ... Air Force First Lieutenant Toby Parker, fresh from the States,
who hooks up with an intelligence unit for a lark, and quickly finds his
innocence buried away by the lessons of war ... and Special Forces Colonel Wolf
Lochert, who ventures deep into the jungle to rescue a downed pilot - only to
discover a face of the enemy for which he is unprepared.
Airline stewardesses come under attack when they are forced to spend the
night on a fighter base in Vietnam after their airliner develops a problem.
Through their eyes, and those of many others - pilots, soldiers, lovers,
enemy agents, commanders, politicians, profiteers - Rolling Thunder shows us
Vietnam as few other books have, or can. Berent captures all the intensity and
drama of that searing war, and more, penetrates to the heart and soul of those
who fought it. Rolling Thunder rings with authenticity.
Excerpt
Chapter One
1320 Hours Local,
17 December 1965
Airborne in an F-100D near
Bien Hoa Air Base, Republic of Vietnam
Airborne in an F-100D near
Bien Hoa Air Base, Republic of Vietnam
Precisely how a
crashing jet fighter breaks up is a function of its speed, of its angle of
impact, and of the topography of the ground it strikes. A high speed impact at
a ninety degree angle ensures small pieces mashed into a neat circular hole
with narrow wing trenches extending from each side. Depending on soil
consistency, the engine can burrow down 30 feet and be compressed from twelve
feet in length to three. Lesser angles of impact splash the wreckage in the
direction of flight. A near-zero glide angle on smooth terrain is another
matter entirely. Unless the aircraft cartwheels, which it often does if one of
the landing gear collapses, the wings will usually remain intact although
probably separate from the aircraft. Large sections of the tail assembly and
fuselage usually remain. If the pilot is not killed upon impact, he may survive
if the wreck doesn't burn. Usually they burn.
USAF Captain
Courtland EdM. Bannister knew all this as he delicately babied his shotup
F-100D Super Sabre jet fighter toward his home base of Bien Hoa located 15
miles northeast of Saigon in III Corps, South Vietnam. There were six half-inch
holes in his airplane, two nearly lethal.
Less than an hour
earlier, Bannister and his flight leader, Paul Austin, had been scrambled from
runway Alert to aid an American Special Forces unit in trouble up near Loc Ninh
in War Zone C. In pairs, Bien Hoa F-100 pilots pulled three types of Alert:
runway, cockpit, and standby. Each flight of two could be airborne streaking
toward a target in one minute, five minutes, or 20 minutes.
Almost all Bien Hoa
missions, whether scrambled from or scheduled the night before on the Frag
Order, were air-to-ground doing what the USAF had been sent to Vietnam to do;
support U.S. or Vietnamese troops in battle. The weapons hung under their wings
were a mixture of bombs, rockets, napalm, and cluster bomb units known as CBU.
Each carried 800 rounds of ammo for the four 20mm cannons mounted internally
under the scoop nose of the fighter.
A radar controller
in a small dark room had Bannister on his scope.
"Ramrod Four
One, I have you twelve miles out on the 275 radial of Tacan Channel 73. Squawk
Three Four, acknowledge, Bien Hoa." To ‘squawk,’ a pilot toggled a switch
to send a burst of energy to the radar scope.
"Bien Hoa,
Four One, squawking Three Four. I have a situation here. I need a straight-in.
I'm leaking bad; gas and, ah, hydraulic fluid. Get me down quick, you copy Four
One?"
"Roger, Four
One, GCA copies."
The Ground Control
Approach controller had picked up Ramrod Four One from Bien Hoa Approach
Control who advised him the pilot had declared an emergency due to battle
damage and low fuel. Bannister had not mentioned he was bleeding. Approach
Control also said they had no contact with Ramrod Four Zero, Bannister's flight
leader.
As the controller
prepared to transmit, another voice broke in. It was neither as low pitched as
that of the GCA controller nor as calm.
"Four One,
this is Ramrod Two speaking, Ramrod Two. You got gear? You got three good ones
down? How about flaps? You got flaps? Where's your flight leader?" Ramrod
Two, Bannister's operations officer and immediate commander, had channeled into
the conversation using the squadron radio.
Bannister didn't
have time to answer his nearly hysterical operations officer. He was busy
keeping his crippled airplane aloft. Suddenly, a red warning signal lit up
drawing his attention to a small hydraulic gauge on a lower panel in his
cockpit. The needle of the gauge bobbled twice, then yielded up the few
remaining pounds of utility hydraulic pressure as the main pump ground to a
halt, then violently broke up deep inside the big fighter. Bannister thought he
could feel the grinding. He quickly raised his eyes out of the cockpit to see
if he could spot the runway. He had to squint and to blink away blood. All he
could see was the jungle canopy a thousand feet below stretching out for miles
into a reddish haze.
Several slugs from
a big quad-barrel Russian ZSU-4 12.7mm antiaircraft gun had stitched his Super
Sabre from scoop shovel nose to just short of the tail section. They had
punctured and ripped tubing and control lines causing a loss of hydraulic fluid
which required Bannister to engage his emergency flight control system. That
system was powered by a Ram Air Turbine called RAT by its acronym. The engine
itself was untouched. One slug, however, had ripped a small hole in the belly
fuel cell allowing fuel to stream out behind the F-100 like a smoke trail.
Another slug had
crashed through the starboard quarter panel glass of the windscreen, smashing
the gunsight, zinging fragments of metal and glass into Bannister's face. His helmet
and oxygen mask protected all but the area around his eyes and forehead. He
wore no sunglasses and had not lowered either the sun visor or the clear
plastic visor mounted on his helmet. The fragments had etched a few minor
lacerations above Bannister's right eye. While neither particularly painful nor
disabling, the wounds produced prodigious capillary bleeding effectively
causing Bannister to lose the sight of his right eye. Wiping with his gloved
hand smeared it worse. Bannister unhooked his blood-filled oxygen mask and let
it dangle. Pooled blood splashed down the front of his parachute harness and
survival vest and mingled with his sweat. He heard the measured cadence of the
controller through the headset in his helmet.
"Ramrod Four
One, check gear down. Prepare for descent in one mile."
Bannister cupped
the mask to his face with his right hand, bracketed the control stick with his
knees, and pushed the transmit button on the throttle with his left hand. He
countered a right wing drop with a leftward motion of his knees pressing on the
stick.
"Bien Hoa, my
situation is a bit worse. No Utility pressure, Flight One is out, Flight Two is
going, and I'm not getting much RAT pressure, flight controls stiffening. Yeah,
and I only got about 100 pounds of fuel." Bannister still didn't mention
the blood. He did not consider himself wounded, merely inconvenienced at a
rather harrowing time.
"Where's your
leader, where's Four Zero? Ramrod Four One answer me."
"Get off the
air, Ramrod Two," the GCA controller broke in, "there's an emergency
in progress and I've got it." His voice was brittle, not the calming one
he used with Ramrod Four One.
Bannister shoved
down a lever with a replica of a wheel on it. The lever released the lock pins
allowing the gear doors to open and the heavy wheels and struts to fall free.
Then he pulled the lanyard that shunted emergency hydraulic fluid into the last
two feet of hydraulic lines locking the nose and left main gear into place. The
right main didn't lock causing its cockpit indicator light to remain red.
Bannister pushed to test the green indicator bulb. It worked. He already knew
his flaps wouldn't go down; he had tried them at a higher altitude doing a
damage check. His flight leader was not there to assist him and report whatever
damage Bannister could not see.
"Ah, Bien Hoa,
the right main is still red. I don't think it's locked in place. And this will
be a no-flap landing. Put the barrier up, I've got to make an approach-end
engagement." Without flaps he had to bring his plane in fifteen knots
faster. Bannister didn't intend to eject unless the engine quit.
He punched a button
activating a solenoid that released a heavy steel bar with a hook on the end
which extended under the aft section of his plane. If he touched down in the
right place, the hook would snatch the cable stretched across the approach end
of the runway and yank him to a stop in a few hundred feet, exactly the way a
Navy fighter engages a cable during an aircraft carrier landing.
"Roger, Ramrod
Four One, Bien Hoa copies. Barrier crew notified. This is your final
controller, how do you read?"
"Loud and
clear," Bannister yelled into his dangling mask. From here on he needed
his right hand on the control stick, his left on the throttle.
"Ramrod Four
One, you need not acknowledge further transmissions. Steer right Two Six Five
degrees and start your descent...now."
The controller
frequently released his mike button for an instant in case Ramrod Four One had
to make a transmission that his emergency was worsening.
Bannister
concentrated on his heading, but did not start the standard 600 feet per minute
rate of descent that would give him a smooth 3 degree descent angle to the
runway. He needed to hold his altitude until the last minute in case his engine
quit from fuel starvation. Then he would decide if he was close enough to glide
in or if he would be forced to eject. He rapidly blinked his eyes as he scanned
his instruments every few seconds while simultaneously searching forward for
the runway. His right eye cleared. When he finally spotted the white concrete
landing strip he started to breathe more rapidly as he estimated altitude and
distance to the point of touchdown. His airspeed gauge indicated two hundred
knots. He was flying into a five knot headwind giving him a speed over the
ground of 230 miles per hour or 338 feet per second. In 23 seconds he would be
on the ground, one way or another.
The controller's
voice faded for Bannister as he concentrated on aligning his craft and deciding
when to start his last minute descent. If he was too late, his steep descent
angle would cause him to overshoot the runway which would force him to bailout
or crash, since he did not have enough fuel to go-around and try again. If he
started too soon and the engine quit, he would also have to bail out or crash
short of the runway.
One mile from the
runway Bannister decided it looked right and started an abnormally high rate of
descent. He could see the crash crew lined up along the side of the runway; red
foam trucks, a yellow wrecker, and a blue ambulance. At 800 feet above the
ground and 4000 feet from the end of the runway his engine sucked up the last
drops of JP-4 jet fuel and quickly unwound.
"Flameout,"
Bannister yelled into his mask.
The big plane
wanted to quit flying but Bannister held his speed by shoving the control stick
forward which forced the nose down more. His rate of descent increased to 1000
feet per minute. Airspeed had to be high to spin the RAT and give him hydraulic
pressure to work the flight controls. He would need a lot of control response
to break the glide and flare for touchdown. Though Bannister's heart rate went
up another notch, he felt confident he could make it. All the numbers were
right. He calculated he had enough altitude to trade for airspeed to make the
touchdown point where his hook would grab the cable. The camouflaged airplane
plunged closer to the jungle, barely topped the palm trees, streaked across the
half-mile clearing before the concrete, then flared smoothly as Bannister
applied enough back pressure on the control stick to break the rapid descent
but still make a firm touchdown so the hook wouldn't bounce over the barrier.
It all worked. The
hook snatched the cable with the immense force generated by 17 tons of mass in
motion at 300 feet per second. The four-foot brake drums on each side of the
runway feeding out cable screamed and smoked, absorbing kinetic energy as they
decelerated the big fighter. The jet slewed sharply left, then, at 100 knots,
the right main gear collapsed, slamming the right wing to the ground and
starting a cartwheel.
Bannister's head
banged against the canopy as the wing hit the ground. He grunted as he pushed
without results on the now frozen control stick and rudder pedal to counter the
violent movement that would end in a fireball. Of the three remaining forces acting
on the plane, forward momentum, right roll, and hook deceleration, the
hold-back by the hook was the most powerful and won out. The left wing rose ten
feet off the ground, the plane pivoted thirty degrees on the crushed right wing
tip, the hook held and slammed the flat-bottomed airplane back onto the
concrete runway. Bannister's seat survival pack absorbed most of the impact for
him but his head, weighted by the three-pound helmet, thudded down on his chest
harness so hard the metal snap gashed his chin. The violent impact dazed him.
For an instant he was on the edge of consciousness.
The fire trucks and
crash crew surrounded the wreck almost before it settled. They shot great
streams of sticky white foam over and under the plane, around the hot engine and
aft section. Without fuel there was little chance of a fire. Four firemen in
aluminum suits, looking like bulky astronauts, ran to the airplane, two to each
side. One jerked the external lanyard blowing the canopy off while the others
positioned a ladder and ran up to get Bannister, who was rapidly coming around
and able to undo his own helmet, harness, G-suit, and oxygen connections. The
years of programming himself to instinctively perform all the ground emergency
egress actions were paying off.
The fireman at the
top of the ladder on the right side thought so much blood in the cockpit was
unusual. Usually a guy hit this bad wouldn't make it back. He passed
Bannister's helmet to another fireman, who, facing aft toward the open cockpit,
was straddling the nose of the aircraft like a horseback rider. "Are you
okay, Sir?" the closest fireman asked through his helmet faceplate.
"Yeah, Chief,
fine, thanks. How about fire? We got any fire?" Bannister, thinking the
plane would blow up, was struggling to get out.
"No, no fire.
No sweat, Sir, just hang on a minute." The firemen gently placed his
gloved hand on Bannister's shoulder. He held the groggy pilot down until the
Flight Surgeon from the ambulance could climb up the ladder and check his
condition.
"Hey Court,
how ya doing? Where ya hit?" Major Conrad Russell, MD, asked as he leaned
over Bannister to wipe away blood and assess damage. He saw the facial rips and
tears where the blood had already clotted. He thumbed up Bannister's right
eyelid and noted that the eyeball looked intact and functional. The nick in the
chin was barely oozing.
"No place. I'm
not hit. Just some junk in my face. Is my right eye okay?" Bannister
asked. He looked up at Russell, squinting his gray-blue eyes as much from the
residual blood as from the sun behind Russell's back. Bannister's brown hair,
released from the confines of his helmet, soaked with sweat and plastered
against his head, was trimmed almost to crew-cut length. His close-shaved
sideburns ended at mid-ear. His face was square, his jaw line strong. Bannister
was six foot two and normally trimmed out at 190. Vietnam heat and O’ Club food
had dropped him to a dehydrated 170. He was 30 and had been a USAF fighter
pilot for ten years. This was his first crash.
Major Russell, his
preliminary check complete, said, "Come on, let's get out of here. We
gotta clear the runway. Other guys want to land too, you know. Your eye will be
fine." He tugged at Bannister to get up and climb down the ladder.
The Flight Surgeon
started to smile and hum as he moved his bulky figure down the ladder,
accepting the helping hand of a nearby fireman. Doc Russell was doing what he
loved best. He wore standard Shade 45 USAF blue two-piece fatigues which were
now smelly and stained badly by the foam. His name, rank, and Flight Surgeon
wings were embossed on a piece of leather stitched to his left breast. Russell
was overweight, rotund in fact. His round, young-looking face vaguely resembled
that of Baby Huey, the cartoon character. The fighter pilots at Bien Hoa,
particularly those of the 531st, the squadron he was responsible for, quickly
gave him that nickname. Russell, a 34 year old major, would have been a pilot
were it not for optic problems so bad that his eyes tended to cross whenever he
was tired.
He walked Bannister
to the ambulance. The letters and devices on the leather nametag on the pilot's
left breast stated he was Courtland EdM. Bannister, Capt., USAF. A star above
his pilot's wings indicated he had flown at least seven years and had amassed
2000 flying hours and was rated a senior pilot. Below his pilot's wings were
the parachutist's wings he had been awarded after training with the Special
Forces in Germany. Bannister still wore his G-suit and survival vest, and
carried an olive-green bag stuffed with his helmet, kneeboard, and maps. On his
feet he wore Army issue jungle boots which were perfectly suited for tropical
wear but would provide no ankle support in a parachute landing.
Standing next to
the squadron jeep edged up to the blue USAF ambulance, watching them approach,
was Ramrod Two, Major Harold Rawson, five-ten, black hair combed straight back,
a pencil-thin mustache over his thin upper lip. He looked the type who missed
the days of puttees and riding britches. He wore, instead, the standard K-2B
cotton one-piece green flight suit with the standard thirteen zippers. On his
head was a regulation USAF blue flight cap with silver officer piping on the
rim and the gold oak leaves of a major pinned front right. Rawson was the
operations officer of the 531st Tactical Fighter Squadron, second in command to
the squadron commander and responsible for day-to-day fighter operation. The
commander, Lieutenant Colonel Peter Warton, was back in the States on emergency
furlough leaving Rawson in charge. He felt burdened with the unexpected
responsibility.
Rawson watched
Bannister and Russell approach, barely resisting the temptation to run up to
Bannister crying "What in hell did you do?" Instead he waited until
the two men drew closer.
"Where's Four Zero?"
he asked. Then, unable to contain himself, "How could you lose your
leader?"
Before Bannister
could answer, Russell shoved him toward the ambulance and said to Rawson,
"Look, Harry, I've got to check this guy out before you or anybody from
Intel gets to talk to him. Now back off."
Bannister's face
colored. He seriously considered slamming his fist into Rawson's small, turned
down mouth which seemed to perpetually sneer whenever its owner spoke.
"I didn't lose anybody, Goddammit. Austin got hit
and went straight in," Bannister said in a tight voice over his shoulder
as he climbed into the back of the ambulance. As the double doors swung shut he
turned to see Rawson struggling with only limited success to control himself.
In the coolness of
one of the nested trailers that served as a hospital on the Bien Hoa Air Base,
Russell remained silent until he had finished swabbing the cuts on Bannister's
face. They would not require stitching and would heal quickly if kept clean.
"Well," he
said straightening up, "all that blood and these cuts are worth a Purple
Heart."
Bannister stood up
and walked to one of the small sliding windows that looked out. He had taken
off his G-suit and dark green net survival vest. The sweat beneath was crusted
white with salt and starting to dry on his flight suit. He dug a crushed pack
of Luckies from his zippered left sleeve pocket and lit one before he answered.
The Zippo he used had a thick rubber band around it. He had learned that trick
from his Special Forces buddies at Bien Hoa to both keep the lighter from
slipping out of a pocket as well as prevent it from clicking on another metal
object.
"Forget
it." He inhaled deeply, held it, and blew the smoke out in a long sigh. He
could still see the fireball that Major Paul Austin's plane made after it hit
the ground.
"Why?"
Russell asked after a minute.
"Too
piddly."
"Well,"
Doc Russell said, "I guess I understand that." He stood up. "At
any rate, Paul Austin will get one." He was silent for a moment.
"Hell of a way to earn it, though."
After another pause
he added, "Isn't his dad a general in the Pentagon?" He nodded to
himself. "Sure he is, a three-star. So that's why Harry Rawson is so
distraught." He looked at Bannister for corroboration.
"That's the
one," Bannister said. He hoisted his gear and started for the door.
"I've got to go debrief. There's big stuff going on up there near Loc
Ninh. We stumbled into something hot and I don't mean just gun barrels."
"Okay,"
Russell said, nodding. "Keep your dirty mitts off those cuts. Maybe I'll
see you tonight at the club."
Bannister walked
out the door thinking about the intelligence debriefing session he was about to
face in the wing headquarters building. He knew he could convince the lower
ranking Intel people that something was up at Loc Ninh, but he wasn't at all
sure whether the high level ones at Saigon would agree. They had their own
concepts and didn't like input that upset them. That was one problem he could
probably deal with. He wasn't so sure about the other.
What weighed on
Bannister's mind far more than the Loc Ninh buildup was the lie he planned to
tell the Flying Safety Officer about why Paul Austin crashed.
Praise for the Book
"A taut, exciting tale of good men in a bad war. Berent is the real
thing." ~ Tom Clancy
"Rolling Thunder is
terrific - a novel of exceptional authenticity that hits like a thunderclap. A
decorated Vietnam pilot, Mark Berent knows planes and men and battle, and he
whirls them around in a story of uncommon strength." ~ W.E.B Griffin
"If you don't know much about the war in Vietnam or the Air Force
read these books. They are a good education and entertaining." ~ S. G. Spires
"Berent makes you feel like you are there along with those guys that
busted their butts to fight a war that they were not allowed to win. He has a
way of creating characters and other things that are truly realistic, flight
line up cards, Frag order etc. IT is very hard to start one of his novels and
put it down. The only bad thing is that you realize that you are almost done
reading before long. His knowledge of airplanes and creating a scene for the
reader is unmatched by any writer that I know of. I've read all of the books I
own several times." ~ A Customer
"The author puts you in the cockpit experiencing the dangers,
anxiety and exhilaration of war time combat. The military jargon and alphabet
soup of acroynms were presented in an understandable way for those of us never
in the armed forces. The main characters were believable and the scenarios
authentic. I found this an entertaining and compelling book and learned a lot
about the time period." ~ Amazon
Customer
About the Author
Lt. Col. Mark E. Berent, USAF (Ret.), was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
He graduated from Cretin High School in St. Paul, Minnesota, attended St.
Thomas College and later graduated from Arizona State University under the Air
Force Institute of Technology program with a BSME.
Berent began his Air Force career as an enlisted man, then entered the
aviation cadet program. He attended pilot training at Columbus Air Force Base,
Mississippi and Laredo Air Force Base, Texas flying the T-6, T-28, and T-33
aircraft. He moved on to F-86 Sabre Jet at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada. He
served on active duty for 23 years until retirement in 1974. He began his
operational flying career in the F-86 and F-100 flying at various posts
throughout the United States and Europe. He later served three combat tours,
completing 452 combat sorties flying the F-100 at Bien Hoa Air Base, South
Vietnam, next the F-4 at Ubon Royal Thai Air Base, Thailand. After those tours,
he was stationed in Phnom Penh, Cambodia for two years to fly things with
propellers on them and through a fluke in communications timing, to personally
run the air war for a few weeks from a most unusual place.
He has also served two tours at the United States Space and Missile
System Organization (SAMSO) at Los Angeles, California working first in the
Satellites Control Facility and later as a staff developmental engineer for the
space shuttle. In his expansive career he has seen service as an Air Attaché to
the United States Embassy, Phnom Penh, Cambodia and also as Chief of Test
Control Branch at the Air Development and Test Center at Eglin Air Force Base,
Florida. He also served as an instructor at the Air Force's Squadron Officer
School.
During his flying career he has logged over 4300 hours of flying time,
1084 of those in combat missions in the F-100, F-4, C-47 and U-10 over North
and South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. He has flown 30 different aircraft.
His decorations include the Silver Star, Legion of Merit, Distinguished
Flying Cross with one oak leaf cluster, Bronze Star, Air Medal with twenty four
oak leaf clusters, Vietnam Cross of Gallantry, Cambodian Divisional Medal, and
numerous Vietnam Campaign ribbons. He completed jump school with the Special
Forces. Later, he jumped with and was awarded Cambodian paratrooper wings. He
also flew with and received Cambodian pilot wings.
After leaving the Air Force he lived in Europe to establish and direct
international operations for the sale of spares for military aircraft. He has
flown many foreign aircraft such as the Swedish Viggen and Royal Air Force
Jaguar and Hawk. He also established Berent and Woods Inc, a firm that managed
many aviation related activities.
Over the years he had published numerous articles for such publications
as Air Force Magazine and the Washington Times, and for 18 years wrote
a monthly pilot/reporter column for the Asian
Defense Journal. Under the name Berent Sandberg he and Peter Sandberg
collaborated on three novels. He now has five Vietnam air war historical
fiction novels in print, Rolling Thunder, Steel Tiger, Phantom Leader, Eagle Station, and Storm Flight (the Wings of War series).
Berent states it is never too late for any endeavor: he published the
first of his five book Wings of War
series at age 58, ran his first Marathon at 59, bought a T-6 warbird and flew
in airshows at 64, and rode in his first cattle roundup in Montana at 74. He
was inducted into the Arizona Aviation Hall of Fame in 2012.
Berent says: "There is the dark side of why I am a military writer.
The dark side that surfaces in untoward moments when bad memories spring
unbidden from a well I try to keep capped. Moments when others, not of the sky,
hear my harsh laughter and see the frost in my eyes. It is the side that bears
extreme malice and near-consuming rage toward those who wasted the lives of my
fellow airmen on missions that accomplished little except strengthen the
enemy's resolve. Missions that gratified only the arrogant civilian Caesars
who, at White House luncheons, picked not only the targets but the bomb loads
and the ingress and egress routes as well. It is the side that detests those
members of the media who trivialized and scorned our efforts; it is the side
that despises that wretched movie female who sat at an enemy antiaircraft gun,
made broadcasts from Hanoi, and called our tortured POWs liars; it is the side
that bears hard anger toward some of our own men in uniform who saw war only as
a career enhancing program. It is also of these contemptible people I am
compelled to write."
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