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Still the Noblest Calling by JD Wetterling Reprinted with
permission of The Wall Street Journal
Standing
in front of that somber wall, I tried to keep it light, reminiscing about how
things were back then. We used to
joke about the psychiatric term for a passionate love affair with inanimate
flying objects—we flew
F-100’s—and we marveled at the thought that the
taxpayers actually paid us to do this “work.”
We were not draftees, but college graduates there by choice, opting for
the cramped confines of a jet fighter cockpit over the comfort of corporate
America. In all my life I’ve not
been so passionate about any other work. If that sounds like an exaggeration,
then you’ve never danced the wild blue with a supersonic angel. I
vividly remember the Sunday afternoon, in the summer of ‘68, when we flew out
of Travis Air Force Base, California, on a troop transport headed for Vietnam.
Lynn, Lance and I crowded around the same porthole and watched the Golden
Gate Bridge disappear below broken clouds.
We had gone through fighter pilot school together and had done some
serious bonding. In an exceedingly
rare moment of youthful fighter pilot humility, I wondered if I would live to
see that bridge again. For reasons I still don’t understand, I was the only one of
the three who did. Once
in Vietnam, we passed the long, lonely off-duty hours at
Dusty’s Pub, a lounge
that we lieutenants built on the beach of the South China Sea at Tuy Hoa Air
Base. The roof at Dusty’s doubled
as a sun deck and the walls were non-existent.
The complaint heard most often around the bar, in the standard gallows
humor of a combat squadron, was that it was “...a lousy war, but it’s the
only one we have.” (I’ve
cleaned up the language a bit.) We
sang mostly raunchy songs that never seemed to end—someone was always writing
new verses—and, as an antidote to loneliness, fear in the night, and the
sadness over dead friends, we often drank too much. Vince
joined us at Dusty’s Pub halfway through my tour of duty, and since he was a
like-minded country kid from Montana, we hit it off.
He had a wide grin, slightly stooped shoulders, and his own way of
walking—he just threw his feet out and stepped on them.
But what he lacked in military bearing he made up for with the heart of a
tiger. He often flew as my wingman,
and we volunteered for the night missions on the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
One starless night, the longest, saddest night of my life, we got into a
really
nasty gun duel with some anti-aircraft artillery batteries.
I watched Vince die in a mushroom shaped fireball that for a moment
turned night into day. Lance—a
New York boy who took unmerciful grief from the rest of us because he talked
like a New Yawker—crashed into the side of a mountain in the central highlands
while attacking a target. Lynn, a
happy-go-lucky jock from Pennsylvania’s Slippery Rock College with a hound
named John the Basset, returned to his base on a stormy night in July after
weather aborted his mission. Two
miles of wet runway weren’t enough to stop an F-100 landing at 160 knots with
all it bombs still on board. He ran
off the end, flipped over, and slid through the minefield at the perimeter
fence, setting off a gruesome sound and light show. At
the wall, I told the guys only about the good parts of the last 28 years.
Lacy, one of our associates from Dusty’s Pub, became an astronaut, and
a few summers ago I watched from my back yard, near Tampa, as he blasted off.
His voice over the radio from space was at least an octave lower than it
was the day I heard him radio for help while swinging from his parachute hung up
in a tree in Laos. Another
Dusty’s patron,
Rick, is now a two-star general, and I reminded them of what
we used to say about the military promotion system—it’s like a septic tank,
only the really big chunks floated to the top. I
didn’t tell them about how ostracized Vietnam vets are, that during that same
week, one of the nation’s leading newspapers has run an article that implied
we Vietnam vets were, to quote one syndicated columnist, “either suckers or
psychos, victims or monsters.” I
didn’t tell them that the secretary of defense they fought for back then has
now declared that he was not a believer in the cause for which he assigned them
all to their destiny. I didn’t
tell them that a draft age kid from Arkansas, who hid out in England to dodge
his duty while they were fighting and dying, is now the commander-in-chief.
And I did not tell them we lost that lousy war.
I gave them the same story I’ve used since the Nixon administration:
“We were winning when I left.” I
relived that final day as I stared at the black onyx wall.
The dawn came up like thunder after a year and 268 combat missions in the
valley of the shadow. The ground
trembled as 33 F-100’s roared off the runway, across the beach, and out over
the South China Sea, climbing into the rising sun.
On the eastern horizon a line of towering deep purple clouds stood
shoulder-to-shoulder before a brilliant orange sky that slowly turned powder
blue from the top down. From
somewhere on that stage, above the
whine of spinning turbine blades, I could hear a choir singing Handel’s
“Hallelujah Chorus” in fortissimo: The
“...Lord God Omnipotent reigneth...,” and He was bringing me home, while
Lance and Lynn and Vince will remain as part of the dust of Southeast Asia until
the end of time. I
was not the only one talking to the wall through tears.
A leather-vested, bare-chested biker two panels to my left was in even
worse shape. I backed about
twenty-five yards away from the wall and sat down
on the
grass under
a clear blue sky and mid-day
sun that perfectly matched the tropical weather of the war zone.
The wall, with all 58,200 names, consumed my field of vision.
I tried to wrap my mind around the mega-tonnage of violence, carnage and
ruined lives that it represented. Then
I thought of how Vietnam was only one small war in the history of the human
race, and I was overwhelmed with a sense of mankind’s wickedness. My
heart felt like wax in the blazing sun, and I was on the verge of becoming a
spectacle in the park. I arose and
walked back up to the wall to say good-bye and ran my fingers over the engraved
names—Lance and Lynn and Vince—as if I could communicate with them in some
kind of spiritual Braille. I wanted
them to know that God, duty, honor, and country will always remain the noblest
calling. Revisionist history by the elite dodgers who are trying to justify
their actions cannot change that. I have been a productive member of society since the day I left Vietnam. I am proud of what I did there, and I am especially proud of my friends—heroes who voluntarily, enthusiastically gave their all. They demonstrated no greater love to a nation who’s highbrow opinion makers are still trying to disavow them. May their names, indelibly engraved on that memorial wall, likewise be found in the Book of Life. Copyrighted
material. Another Wall Street Journal Essay
"No one..." MY HOME: A Ridge Haven Portfolio--Words and Pictures
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