White, Arthur (Phil) P.
Upon graduation from 68E, classmate Ken Grice and I drove to Spokane, WA for Survival School, then on to Castle AFB, CA for KC-135 school. Lucky for me, I got an airplane with “many engines” which pulled “few G’s”. Never did like pulling those “G’s”! Out of Castle, they sent me to Offutt AFB, NE doing the EC-135 “Looking Glass” missions – flying Airborne Command Post. After nearly four years and 3,000 hours of “circles” around the plains states, I was assigned to the RC-135 squadron for global recon. With only two months in this unit, orders came down on Friday afternoon for an A-37 to Cam Rahm Bay. Not a fighter, I thought since I liked straight and level and no G’s. On Monday morning, Personnel called to say a mistake had been made. The RC-135 guys had “a one-year duty and travel restriction” prohibiting a war zone assignment. Instead, I had 45 days to be in Osan, Korea, for 13 months. Got there in Jan ’72. The O-6 began talking about “oblique photos and high resolution”, to which I said “duh”. He said you came from RF-4’s didn’t you. I said, NO, RC-135’s. He replied, “What in the F–K did they send you here for?” No problem, though. Two months later our nine-man unit was disbanded and I became a General’s Aide-de-Camp. Must have been my golfing experience. He liked golf. Unfortunately, being an Aide obviously did not help my career, or maybe I was just a bad Officer. Anyway, out of Korea I got stuck with one of those “Rated Sup” jobs as a Squadron Section Commander at Kelly AFB, TX in Security Service, a non-flying command. Three years here, a “Dream Sheet” showing the West Coast, and MPC came down with a C-5 assignment to Dover AFB, DE. Had to look it up on a map having only known it was on the “East” coast and not where I wanted. Four years and another 2,000 hours in the C-5 and MPC beckoned once again – Scott AFB, IL to build the C-5 Flying Hour Program. Ended up after 4 years there as the Chief, Capabilities Branch, responsible for all the MAC Flying Hour Programs. Now, having climbed to O-5 at a time the AF was beginning to assign only AF Academy graduates in responsible command positions, I “saw the light” and found the most rewarding job I ever had – the Civil Air Patrol Liaison Officer for the state of Delaware flying C-182’s throughout a seven-state region with NO “O-6 launches” as we had in the C-5 (someone always looking over your shoulder to “get the plane airborne” even when it probably should not have). Spent about seven years doing this “nothing”, yet rewarding, job and loved it. The career finally came to an end when the first Gulf War ended in ’91 and Bush 41 mandated that 40% manpower reduction. I was the first wave, being in a “non-critical” job to get the “nice-to-have-had-you letter”, more commonly known as a RIF. Were it not for the RIF, I would have stayed forever had they let me. However, I had spent the past 24 years and 9 months associating and working with America’s finest – guys like ALL OF YOU! As we age and at some point in life, all we have to live on are MEMORIES. Some folks have few at best. All of us have MANY, thanks to having defended our country.
After retiring in Aug ’91, I was a substitute teacher for nearly three years. Then, taught Aviation Courses at Wilmington College for another three. Got a chance to work in the State Office of Aeronautics and ended up managing two State-owned airports in the Dover area before coming into some “big bucks” – Social Security in late ’02. With that “added income”, I said it was time to retire/retire, so I did. Am now enjoying life with my lovely wife of 25 years, Anne. However, some serious medical issues have put an end to our travels.
THE STORY BEHIND THE
COLUMN:
The op-ed article to the right
appeared in the Wall Street
Journal on the Friday before
Memorial Day, 1996, and
generated over 300 phone calls
to my home and office the day it
appeared, even though the
footer to the piece did not
include my telephone number.
Not one was negative, even
though the subject matter
remains a major controversy in
America. Over the following
days I received many more calls
and even more letters. The
article has been reprinted in
many other periodicals over the
years. The picture of 4 USAF
Lieutenants, above, appeared
with the article, a nearly
unheard of occurrence on the
WSJ editorial page. I had
submitted the story, unsolicited,to the WSJ, and by God’s grace
it opened the door to my writing
career.
Still the Noblest Calling
I visited with three old friends recently at a park in my
town. It seems like only yesterday that we were all
together, but actually it had been 28 years. There was a
crowd at the park that day, and it took us awhile to
connect, but with the aid of a computer we made it. I
found Lance at Panel 54W, line 037, Lynn over at Panel
51W, line 032, and Vince down at line 103 on Panel 27W.
We were gung-ho young fighter pilots in Vietnam, the
cream of the crop of the US Air Force pilot training
system, and now their names are on that 250-foot-long,
half-size model of the Vietnam Memorial that moves
around the country. I had intentionally avoided visiting
the wall when it came to town in years past, because I
did not trust myself to behave in a composed manner, but
after nearly three decades it was time to try for some
closure on this issue. I told my wife that I preferred to go
alone, if that was all right, and, truth be known, I nearly
backed out at that.
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 (Willett) 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 antiaircraft
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-golucky
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 (Goddard), 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.