By John Hamilton

     It was a warm day in the summer of 1972 when my evening meal was interrupted by a phone call.  I was a bachelor, living in a small, three-room apartment outside the gates of Fort Knox where I was serving as a troop commander. Anytime you are commanding troops and the phone rings, your first thought is one of dread that one of your soldiers has gotten himself in trouble or been in an accident. I was pleasantly relieved to hear my mother’s voice on the line. She shared the bad news with me right away. “Woody’s plane has been shot down over North Vietnam. It was a cloudy day, and no parachutes were seen by the accompanying aircraft. Woody is missing in action. Vernita wants you to call her.”

     Ernest Sherwood Clark, who went by the name of “Woody”, was my closest friend. The same age, we had grown up together in the same neighborhood, and attended school together, often in the same class. We had been members of the same church and Boy Scout Troop. Upon graduation from high school, we both had gone to military academies, Woody attending the Air Force Academy and myself West Point.

      While singing in the Academy glee club, Woody had met Vernita, a beautiful young lady from Everett, Washington. After graduation, they had married, and Woody had trained to be a navigator on reconnaissance aircraft. Shortly after I had returned from Vietnam, I had heard that Woody was being deployed to Thailand. It did not cause me much concern, seeming much safer than ground combat in Vietnam. What I did not appreciate was that from Thailand, Woody would be flying daily reconnaissance missions over North Vietnam.

     I had only met Vernita once and did not know her well. My mother told me that she and their one-year-old daughter were temporarily living in my hometown near Woody’s parents. Grieving myself about likely having lost such a close friend, I was feeling very inadequate and uncertain about my phone call to her. I had learned from my own experience that war does not discriminate, it kills good people as well as bad.  Furthermore, the term “missing in action” was used much too often in Vietnam to describe someone who was likely “killed-in-action.” I felt the best case for Woody would be that he somehow had made it safely to the ground, had been captured, and was facing an uncertain future in a Hanoi prisoner of war facility. After much thought, I decided that when I called Vernita I would be hopeful in suggesting that Woody was probably a prisoner of war and would eventually be coming home safely.

     After I settled my emotions and collected my thoughts, I called Vernita.  As expected, she was very emotional, and our first few minutes of conversation were interrupted by sobs and occasional periods of silence. She shared with me what few details the Air Force had provided her which were more encouraging than my mother’s report. The Air Force had evidence that two parachutes had opened and reached the ground, although they had not had any communication from either pilot or their locating beacons. Both factors suggested that they were either injured or had been immediately captured.

     Before I had the opportunity to share my “hope speech” with Vernita, her own emotions took control of our call. “Woody is too smart to get killed or captured. He is too good a person for God to take from us. He is going to be coming home to me and our daughter.” I was concerned with her unrealistic optimism and worried that the outcome would be even more crushing for her than it needed to be. I tried to push back with “he probably was captured and will be a prisoner of war,” but she would have none of it. I finally gave-in with a simple “Ok” and let her have the only hope that was comforting to her. As I hung up the phone, I thought of the many families that surely prayed for the safe return of their loved one from Vietnam and had been disappointed. I could not help but feel that there would be disappointment here too, but I was wrong.

      I would later learn that on the day Woody was shot down, he was serving as a navigator in an RF4 Phantom aircraft on his 108^th combat mission. The aircraft was fifty miles north of the DMZ when it was hit by a surface-to-air missile. Both Woody and the pilot ejected and landed in the jungle without serious injury but separated by almost a mile. The pilot was quickly captured, but Woody would evade capture for seven days as North Vietnamese soldiers searched for him. On one occasion a soldier got within an arm’s reach but did not see him. On another, a sudden heavy downpour caused the search dogs on his trail to lose the scent and allowed him to slip away. After days of exhaustive movement with little food and water, Woody decided to take the risk of using his rescue beacon. An aircraft from his unit in Thailand, on its final day of searching for him, picked up his signal.

     A daring and dangerous rescue was launched the next day.  As a helicopter hovered and lowered its jungle penetrator to Woody, two escort aircraft laid down cannon fire to suppress the North Vietnamese soldiers engaging the helicopter with small arms and hand-held surface-to-air missiles. Woody was extracted safely, and all three aircraft returned to Thailand with no casualties. As Woody stepped off the helicopter, filthy and unshaven, he was handed a bouquet of roses by a young lady from the Red Cross. The Associated Press took a picture which would be on the front page of the Stars & Stripes the next day and later appear in many stateside publications. Woody’s successful evasion and rescue from North Vietnam would be one of few highlights for the American military during the final years of the Vietnam War.

     Woody returned home to his family and was welcomed as a hero by his Air Force brothers. He would later be reunited with his pilot, who after three months of extensive interrogation, had been released from a Hanoi prisoner of war camp With a growing family, he resigned from the Air Force a few years later and joined the Air National Guard as an active-duty officer. He and I were both assigned to the Pentagon in 1985 and enjoyed bringing our families together and renewing our personal friendship. Woody and his family later move to Reno, Nevada, where he served as the National Guard Air Base Commander. In 1991 he led his unit’s deployment to Bahrain during Operation Desert Storm and flew 18 combat missions, one of the only pilots to fly combat missions in both Vietnam and Iraq. He retired in Reno shortly after. I did not see him for many years, until one day fate brought us back together again.

      In January 2005 I lost my two business partners in a tragic plane crash during a time when our business, a supplier to the Department of Defense, was experiencing tremendous growth. The next year would be the most stressful and demanding of my life as I struggled with a grieving staff and monumental business challenges. In April I called Woody to discuss my situation and he invited me to come to Reno for a long weekend to go skiing. I flew out early on a Thursday morning and we headed straight to the ski slope.

      I stayed at Woody’s home where I had the opportunity to renew my friendship with Vernita with whom I had always felt a special relationship because of that phone call. We never discussed that call, or what happened to Woody in Vietnam, preferring to keep these painful memories behind us. Sometimes, however when we were enjoying Woody’s company, our eyes would lock on each other and we would smile, bonded with the realization of how special these moments were. These visits were incredibly therapeutic for me, like rubbing a cool salve over a severe flesh burn. I would continue to visit during ski season for the next five years.

      On my last visit in 2009, I felt the need to close this chapter of our lives. I did not know when I would see Woody again, and I wanted him to know about that phone call. I also wanted to hear Vernita’s side of the story. On my last day there, we retired to their den after supper and sat by the warm fire enjoying hot cider. In a quiet moment in our conversation, I looked at Vernita who was sitting across for me, and asked “Do you remember when I called you about Woody being shot down?” The room became deathly quiet, as Vernita and I stared into each other’s eyes and time seemed to stand still. Suddenly, Vernita’s eyes were flooded with tears as her head fell in her lap and she began sobbing. Tears filled my own eyes as her wave of pain hit me. The wound that Vietnam had inflicted on us had suddenly opened itself up forty years later. Woody walked over to Vernita’s chair, kneeled on one knee by her side and clasped her hands in his own. For the first time, he heard the story of that phone call and the faith that his young wife had in him that day. How nothing I could say would shake her confidence that he was coming home soon to her and their daughter.

       My experience with Woody and Vernita that evening made me realize that some of the most painful wounds in war are inflicted upon family members and friends, more so than those of us serving in the war zone. In Vietnam, 58,148 Americans lost their lives, and 304,000 more were wounded, but these numbers pale to the suffering the war cost their loved ones at home.

     My first memory of Vietnam was the pilot announcing, “we are approaching the coastline of Vietnam.”  I was still half asleep, suffering from two days of travel from North Carolina to McChord Air Force Base in Washington State before finally arriving at Tan Son Nhut Air Base near Saigon. My Pan Am flight looked like any other Pan Am flight that I had taken, a commercial aircraft with attractive young flight attendants, which was the norm at that time. The primary exception was that almost all the passengers on the plane were wearing a uniform.  Most were in Army khakis, others in Navy and Air Force blue, and a few in civilian clothes, Department of the Army civilians and contractors. As I looked out the window and saw the coastline coming up and the rice paddies and mountains in the distance, I expected to see artillery and bomb explosions or tracers streaming into the air, but it was utterly peaceful. There was no sign that this was a country at war. Our plane landed at Tan Son Nhut, and we started deboarding down the portable stairs onto the tarmac. As I stepped out of the air-conditioned plane, I was struck by a tremendous wave of hot, humid air. It was my welcome to Vietnam and the climate I would be living in for the next year.

     My journey to Vietnam had started in March 1969. My class of 800 West Point cadets had gathered in Thayer Hall to select our first assignments. The selection process was based on class rank, and although there were hundreds of classmates in front of me, assignments in Europe, stateside, or Vietnam were still open to me when my name was called. Many of my classmates planned to get married or were engaged and wanted to avoid service in Vietnam as their initial assignment. Others did not feel ready to serve in a combat zone and preferred to go to Europe or a stateside location to gain experience. I selected Vietnam. There were many reasons. I had received a free education paid for by my country and felt an obligation to serve. My father had served in World War II, as had many of my uncles. The war was not going well, and there was a shortage of good junior leaders, and I felt like I could make a positive contribution in a difficult situation. Lastly, I did not have a fiancé nor steady girlfriend at the time, so I had only myself to consider.

     When I deployed to Vietnam in August 1970, the war that began in 1965 was not going well for the US side. The Vietcong had demonstrated during the Tet offensive of 1968 that they could still control the countryside. Many Americans no longer supported the war, and daily antiwar demonstrations were the norm in the states.  By 1970, 40% of the junior enlisted soldiers serving in Vietnam were draftees, the vast majority of which were disproportionally serving in ground combat units. Most were good soldiers, but they were young and inexperienced. The average age of the 2.7 million veterans who served in Vietnam was 22 years old, versus 26 years old for those who served in WWII. Unlike in WWII, drugs and racial strife were common problems in most American units, especially among support troops.

     I had requested an assignment in the 11th Armored Cavalry Squadron, a prestigious unit near Saigon. When I arrived in Vietnam, however, this unit had all the lieutenants it needed. Hence, the Army assigned me to A Troop, 3rd Squadron, 4th Cavalry Regiment of the 25th Infantry Division, located in a large US base camp at Chu Chi. This unit was

operating about 60 miles northwest of Saigon in what was called the “Fishhook” as the border of Vietnam with Cambodia curved like a fishhook in that area. The entire area of operations consisted of flat terrain made up of miles and miles of rice paddies and jungle with small Vietnamese villages scattered throughout.

     The chief terrain feature in the area my unit had to protect was an inactive volcanic mountain several thousand feet high, called Nui Ba Den, or “Black Virgin Mountain”.

The Army had a radio relay station on the summit, which came under regular attack from the VC. Consequently, the mountains’ sides had been bombed and hit by artillery so often that almost no trees were left standing. The most significant benefit of the mountain was to help those of us on the flat terrain surrounding it to navigate. By taking a compass reading from our location to the mountain, and another reading from an airburst of US artillery, we could use triangulation to determine our position on the flat rice paddies and

high grass. This primitive method of determining location was not without error and sometimes resulted in artillery fire missing the enemy, or even worse, falling on friendly positions. On the road from Saigon to Cu Chi Base Camp, we passed through the city of Tay Ninh, which is the home of a small Buddhist religion called Caodaism. As we passed by the beautiful Cao Dai temple, dozens of young monks in their orange robes moved around outside and in the neighborhood. The Cao Dai faithful believe that there are 36 levels of Heaven and 72 planets having intelligent life. The first planet is closest to Heaven, while number 72 is closest to Hell. Earth, sadly, is close to Hell at number 68. Maybe it was because the land they inhabited had been at war for more than 25 years.

     When I arrived, I found that my unit had just come in from field operations on weeklong maintenance and rest stand-down. It was an ideal time to arrive in that I had a chance to meet my platoon and fellow officers in an environment other than combat operations. My troop commander was serving his second tour in Vietnam and was shortly due to return to the states. He was a senior captain and an experienced leader and went by the radio callsign “Alpha six.” I was assigned as the first platoon leader and went by the radio call sign “Alpha-One-Six.”  Steve, the second platoon leader, “Alpha-Two-Six,” was an ROTC, 1st lieutenant who had been drafted to serve in Vietnam and was not happy about being there. Frank, the third platoon leader, “Alpha-Three-Six,” had arrived in Vietnam about a month before I did.  Although we were fellow armor officers, we had not previously known each other.  He was friendly and welcomed me to the unit.

     I had been a tank platoon leader at Fort Riley, with five M60 tanks and crews.  In Vietnam, I would lead a reconnaissance platoon equipped with six M113 armored personnel carriers (APCs), each of which carried a crew of four or five soldiers and was armed with a 50-caliber machinegun. These APCs had tracks instead of wheels and could navigate through rice paddies and light jungle. The platoon also had three Sheridan Armored Reconnaissance Vehicles (ARVs) or light tanks. Each was armed with a 152mm

cannon capable of firing a Beehive round against ground infantry or conventional tank rounds against bunkers. Each Sheridan had a four-person crew and was equipped with a 50-caliber and 7.62mm coaxial machine gun. 

     My platoon was authorized fifty-one men, but there were always positions unfilled, soldiers processing in or out of the country, sick, or recovering from wounds. Consequently, fewer than forty soldiers were available on most days. Almost every noncommissioned officer qualified to serve in a tank or cavalry unit had already had a Vietnam tour by 1970, so there was a significant shortage of qualified NCOs in all platoons. My platoon sergeant, a staff sergeant, was assigned in the position usually held by a sergeant first class. He was not experienced and was not enthusiastic about the job placed upon him because of his seniority. He commanded the three Sheridan tanks as they could not navigate rice paddies and had to remain mainly on the roads. Consequently, my platoon often acted as two units rather than one. The APCs under my control conducted reconnaissance while the Sheridan light tanks under my platoon sergeant’s control escorted supply convoys or provided road security.

     With my platoon sergeant frequently absent, I depended upon a less experienced staff sergeant who normally was only responsible for a five-man APC crew. He did a respectable job under the conditions but was little help to me in my first combat leadership role. As the platoon leader, I did not command a track vehicle but instead focused on the entire platoon. Specialist Carson was my M113 carrier commander, responsible for its maintenance and care and supervising the crew. He was a tall, lean soldier who was always professional and knowledgeable and greatly benefited me.

     Sgt. Hancock was the leader of my infantry squad and looked the part. Physically fit, striking in appearance, and a natural leader, he was my most reliable noncommissioned officer. Any time we were in a situation where there was danger, he was always the one I wanted with me on the ground. “Doc” was our platoon medic.  One of only four minority soldiers in the platoon, he was well trained, highly motivated, and much respected by the other soldiers. Doc enjoyed his job and the prestige that went with it. PFC Campbell, one of my favorites, was a short, baby-faced infantry soldier who loved to tangle with danger and embraced every opportunity to disarm a mine in the road or plant an explosive charge. Another colorful character in my platoon was Private Johnson, an American Indian, who wore a headband and looked like an Apache warrior.

     My father served in the same Marine unit for three years in the Pacific during WW II, where he developed life-long friendships. My experience in Vietnam would be different. My fellow soldiers and I would be respectful and cordial with each other, but there was little to bind us in our short time together except getting about the business of war. With one exception, I would never see any of these officers or soldiers again after our unit was deactivated four months later.