Two Souls Indivisible Page 2

  Many of the POWs had to cross racial, cultural, or social boundaries to exist in such close confines. But Halyburton and Cherry did more than coexist—they rescued each other. Each man credits the other with saving his life. One needed to be saved physically; the other, emotionally. In doing so, they forged a brotherhood that no enemy could shatter.

  2. One More Round

  Fred Vann Cherry was a five-foot-seven flying ace, built like a whip, whose calm demeanor and steady nerves were required in and out of the cockpit. Entering the Air Force in 1951, he was a pioneer in the military's integration, a black officer who performed with distinction in the Korean War, manned critical posts at the height of the Cold War, and now, in 1965, was leading bombing raids in Southeast Asia. Yet he was still an anomaly—the Air Force had only twenty-one hundred black officers, 1.6 percent of the total—and over the years he had faced many racial snubs, some overt, some subtle. His response was always the same: to turn the other way, to ignore them, to never jeopardize his standing in the Air Force. In short, to keep quiet.

  He had been in Japan since 1961, serving with the 35th Tactical Fighter Squadron, and had spent three years rotating into South Korea, where he had week-long assignments sitting on "nuclear alert." If ordered, he could be airborne in less than four minutes, his job to fly over enemy territory and drop a nuclear weapon. Despite the high stakes, the assignment was insufferably dull, forcing Cherry to sit in a room wearing his flight suit for days at a time, playing Ping-Pong or poker, watching movies, and waiting. When his week in Korea was over, he would return to an air base in Japan, where he continued training until he was sent back on alert.

  Cherry was supposed to return to the United States in 1963, but he asked for an extension because he wanted to fly a new jet fighter, the F-105 Thunderchief, the fastest tactical plane in the Air Force and able to fly nearly 1,800 miles without refueling. The 8th Tactical Fighter Wing, which consisted of three squadrons, including Cherry's, was grateful that Fred remained in japan. He became an expert on the Thunderchief's weapons; he was selected to write the plane's guidebook for the wing, and he also wrote a favorably reviewed article about the F-105 for a military publication, Pacaf Flyer.

  Staying in Japan suited Cherry's wife and their four children. While they often faced bigotry in America—they moved overseas before the landmark civil rights legislation of 1964—they now lived in relative harmony on American air bases. The family had a beloved mama-san, who cooked for them, washed and ironed their clothes, and bathed the children. Cherry rode his kids on a motor scooter, taking them to baseball practice and judo, karate, and swimming lessons. (The last was particularly important to Fred, who couldn't swim a stroke, even though he often flew over water.) The military's schools had excellent American teachers, and on Christmas Eve a helicopter would land in the American compound and drop off Santa Claus, bearing gifts for all the children.

  There were other benefits in Japan, whose citizens appreciated America's role in rebuilding the country after it had been conquered in World War II. Other countries, they believed, would have treated them harshly, whereas U.S. servicemen now protected them. Of course, the servicemen's money also made them popular.

  The combat pilots themselves had a cultlike following, their aerial bravado inspiring respect, even awe. Who else flew high-powered, multimillion-dollar jets through the dark skies, only to encounter Soviet MiGs or antiaircraft fire or surface-to-air missiles, before dropping their own bombs in the name of freedom and democracy. American aviators were considered "the tip of the spear" for the entire fighting force, and when they swaggered through the doors of a club or restaurant, crowds parted and eyes widened. Their uniforms alone projected a kind of macho authority: olive jumpsuits zipped up the front gripped every muscle and were creased at the crotch from parachute straps, while zippered pockets lined the legs, arms, and chests. Unshaven, their faces and hands streaked with grime and sweat from their latest mission, the airmen spoke loudly, caroused freely, and reveled in their own glory. They had a saying, most often uttered after several rounds of drinks: "A good fighter pilot can outfight, outfly, and outfuck anyone else in the world."

  Cherry enjoyed this sybaritic life. In the Korean War, he discovered that prostitution was legal there, though some "cathouses" didn't allow blacks. By 1965, prostitution had been nominally outlawed in Korea, but brothels continued to flourish. Japan had plenty of attractions as well. Bachelors in the military lived in rented mansions that accommodated raucous, glass-shattering parties, complete with drinking contests, fistfights, and attractive women.

  The womanizing was part of a military subculture, particularly in Asia, where mistresses were common and infidelity the norm; the men who risked their lives were considered entitled. As Ellsworth Bunker, a US. ambassador in Saigon during the Vietnam War, observed, "There's a lot of plain and fancy screwing going on around here, but I suppose it's all in the interest of the war effort."

  The military wives, of course, believed otherwise, and Cherry's philandering contributed to the tensions in his own marriage. But for a man whose race made him an outsider, his embrace of the military's bacchanalian customs contributed to his acceptance among his peers.

  Cherry's greatest passion was piloting jet fighters, and in this sense his decision to stay in Japan was vindicated. In 1964 the Johnson administration, seeking to thwart the Communist insurgents in Indochina, increased its military personnel in South Vietnam from 10,000 to 23,000. It also called for air raids into North Vietnam and Laos, inching America into a full-scale but undeclared war.

  Cherry had not seen combat since the Korean War, where he flew fifty-two sorties, received two air medals, and was part of the 58th Fighter Bomber Group, which received a Distinguished Unit Citation for "extraordinary heroism." He passed the succeeding years training, instructing, and simulating attacks, earning top marks for gunnery and bombing, and receiving promotions and praise. In the middle 1950s, at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Great Falls, Montana, the wing commander was a broad-shouldered colonel named Murray Bywater. When he flew himself to air bases across country, he had to be accompanied by a second aircraft, its pilot responsible for the flight plan. Bywater chose Fred Cherry, surprising many that he would pick a black man for such a highly visible job. But as he recalled years later, Cherry "was the best pilot in the wing."

  By 1964 Cherry was a flight leader, who exercised significant control on a mission. A single flight consists of four aircraft in staggered formation, with two leads followed by two wingmen. This synchronization provides maximum support and protection for the entire flight, but it also places the power in the hands of the lead pilots: where they go, their wingmen go.

  Cherry's race increased his pressures to perform. Before 1948, the military had segregated blacks for many reasons; not least was the belief that they were unfit to lead whites into battle. In 1964 the dearth of black officers ensured that it rarely happened. Cherry was an exception, and he gladly defied the racist stereotypes of black commanders. Not only did he lead whites into bat tie, whites pleaded to be in his flight, just as white students asked to be in his gunnery classes. Cherry's nickname, Chief, connoted his authority and respect. He also dazzled his commanders—one said he moved through the air "like an eel." Major Bobby J. Mead, in an evaluation, wrote on March 6, 1964: "I consider Captain Cherry one of the most effective officers of his rank that I have worked with during my entire Air Force career." As Ed Kenny, one of his early gunnery instructors, said, "Fred always had that little man in him that kept wanting him to do better."

  For Cherry's part, social statements were incidental to his ambition. What motivated him was the excitement of airborne combat, in which do-or-die engagements were the ultimate test of skill, daring, and courage. Like all great fighter pilots, he never had any qualms about his work. He believed that if a pilot couldn't pull the trigger, he should fly cargo planes. Cherry otherwise had few hobbies, pastimes, or interests. Flying combat missions was what he did best, and Vietnam
gave him one more chance.

  While the U.S. Navy could send jets from carriers off the coast of Vietnam, the Air Force could not do the same from distant Japan. It needed cooperation from Thailand, where in 1964 the Americans turned primitive air fields in Korat and Takhli into crude bases. Air Force personnel built wooden hooches on stilts to avoid the cobras, waded through six-inch puddles that formed in minutes from fierce downpours, brought in air-conditioned trailer homes for senior officers, and cut through the thick vegetation that covered the runway lights. The work was difficult and sometimes hazardous, but it put American aircraft within striking distance of Vietnam.

  The initial bombing runs sought to destroy supply lines on the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos. Then, in February 1965, after an attack on an American compound and helicopter base in South Vietnam, the targets moved to North Vietnam. The next month, the Johnson administration launched the bombing campaign Operation Rolling Thunder, its name derived from a hymn; it would continue, with incremental expansions and occasional pauses, for three years. By April, the Air Force and Navy were flying 1,500 sorties a month against the North, which increased to 4,000 in September. In June, the United States had 75,000 combat troops in South Vietnam. By the end of the next month, that number had increased to 125,000.

  Cherry knew little about the conflict except that he was fighting the Communists, that the South Vietnamese had a right to choose their own form of government, and that initially everything was very secret. The bombings were categorized as "classified missions," so classified that he didn't tell his wife, Shirley, who assumed he was still sitting on alert in Korea. (He eventually told her the truth.)

  At the outset, using intelligence information, the squadron leaders identified a slew of targets, such as ammunition dumps, radar sites, airfields, bridges, industrial centers, power plants, and the flood control system of the Red River Delta. They mapped their routes and determined what bombs to use, but the plans were never implemented. Instead, they were ordered to blow up roads or mountainsides, sometimes to start a rockslide that would bury a passage. They were allowed to hit early detection radars, but those sites were soon removed from the target list. Cherry assumed the country's civilian leaders were choosing low-impact targets to avoid unnecessary destruction, but he also knew that this was no way to fight a war. During the Korean War, he bombed the Toksan Dam, flooding a valley to destroy bridges, highways, railroads, shelters, and an airfield. Civilians as well as combatants were drowned. It was horrible, but such attacks helped bring an end to the fighting.

  In the early stages of the Vietnam War, Cherry knew the attacks were not crippling the enemy, and some of the assignments had a bizarre bureaucratic quality. In one case, the airmen were ordered to destroy a military complex near the city of Vinh, which it did by flying sixteen sorties (one sortie is one plane attacking one site). But Washington demanded that eighty sorties be flown, so the pilots had to fly another sixty-four—with nothing to bomb except rubble—to satisfy the order.

  If the bombings seemed to produce meager results, they were by no means without risk. The enemy, Cherry discovered, had developed a sophisticated air defense system, which was shooting down American aircraft at alarming rates. The system itself featured surface-to-air missiles, antiaircraft cannons, a complex radar system, and computerized control centers, all provided by the Soviet Union. The city of Hanoi had the most formidable air defense in the history of warfare, though no place in the North was truly safe. Automatic and semiautomatic weapons were passed out to anyone in the countryside who could shoot at a plane. After Rolling Thunder's first six months, more than thirty airmen had been killed or were presumed missing; a dozen had been captured. Fred Cherry was almost among them. On one treetop attack, he encountered a barrage of small-arms fire. With his eyes closed and sweating through his flight suit, he somehow pulled up safely. He knew he was lucky to have survived, but for now he retained that special feeling, that mojo, that emboldens every fighter pilot. He was still invincible.

  Using air power in driblets was part of America's strategy of fighting a "limited war." The attacks were meant to prod the North to the negotiating table, where U.S. interests—the preservation of South Vietnam's anti-Communist government—would be ensured. They were also meant to weaken the morale of the North's leaders, who might then call off the Southern insurgents. Fearing a broader conflict against China, U.S. officials believed they could win a "limited war" through a "graduated response" of military force.

  But they underestimated the resilience of the North Vietnamese, who for two thousand years had been fighting foreign invaders—the Chinese, the French, the Japanese—as well as North Vietnam's willingness to endure devastating losses (three million people were killed in the war). To the Communists, the battle against the United States was a continuation of their battle against French imperialism—both were wars of attrition that the outsiders could not win. As Ho Chi Minh, who led the crusade, told the French on the eve of their colonial war in 1946: "You can kill ten of my men for every one I kill of yours, but even at those odds, I will win and you will lose." Whatever the outcome of the American war, U.S. casualties would be significant, and pilots were among the most vulnerable.

  Cherry completed forty-six combat missions after three tours in Thailand. He was then told that his time in Asia was over as part of the normal rotation of pilots. In October 1965 he was given two weeks to return to the United States, where he would instruct pilots on the F-105 at McConnell Air Force Base in Wichita, Kansas. Cherry enjoyed teaching—it maximized his time in the air—but did not want to leave Asia. He was still optimistic that the war would be won and that the bombing missions, however hamstrung, were damaging the enemy. He also assumed that, at the age of thirty-seven, if he returned to the United States, he would never see combat again.

  Cherry wanted to accompany his squadron on its next tour to Thailand, which was to leave on October 18. The night before its departure, he drove across the Yokota Air Base, near Tokyo, and stopped at the Yokota Officers' Club. He had one night to convince his commander that he should stay.

  The club itself, a one-story building, was once an American serviceman's paradise. In the 1950s, a lighted porte-cochere welcomed visitors, banquettes were covered in silk, and rattan furniture filled the Samurai Ballroom, scented with cigar smoke, perfume, filet mignons, and spiced red apple rings. By the middle 1960s, the club had lost some of its glamour. Gone were the exotic appointments, replaced by molded plastic furniture and Formica tables. The rugs were worn, the paint faded, the jukebox old. But the club was still the social hub for the entire complex of American operations officers, "ground pounders," paper pushers, and desk jockeys, while slot machines, live music, and rivers of Scotch provided the entertainment.

  Cherry knew that his commander, Lieutenant Colonel William Peters, would be there. A ruddy-faced officer nicknamed Napoleon, Peters thought highly of Cherry, having recently recommended him for an air medal for his Vietnam missions. He also endorsed Cherry's promotion from captain to major. But when Cherry found him at the bar and asked to prolong his stay in Japan, Peters waved him off.

  "Fred, you've done your job in Southeast Asia," he said, fingers wrapped around his glass. "Get your ass back home. You've got a job to do there."

  Cherry pressed his case, arguing that he might never fly in combat again. "This is my last chance," he said.

  They argued for several minutes until Peters finally relented. "Oh, goddamn it, Fred, go ahead," he said. "But get your damn ass back here in two weeks."

  Cherry celebrated the news by meeting up with a close friend, Marvin Walls, a captain for the Reconnaissance Technical Squadron, which identified targets in photographs. Sitting at the L-shaped counter in the main bar, a mirrored wall lined with beer bottles, Cherry and Walls drank Scotch and toasted Fred's good fortune until the bar closed at 2 A.M. Then they headed outside, and when Walls began walking down the steps, Cherry reached out and tapped his shoulder. Walls, five inches taller, stood
several steps down from him, looked into his eyes, and saw something odd—not fear, but resignation. "I don't know," Cherry said. "I have a funny feeling about this. I don't know if I'm going to make it."

  Walls had always known Cherry as cocksure; now, speechless, he embraced his friend.

  Cherry didn't know what caused his sudden reversal of confidence or why he would even disclose his premonition. The moment would haunt him for years to come, but he had no time for fears. His wish for one more round of combat had been granted.

  3. On Target

  On the morning of October 22, Fred Cherry, his flight suit unzipped, attended a predawn briefing at the Tactical Operation Center of the Takhli air base. It was overcast and warm, and a fan hummed quietly. Cherry sat with four or five other airmen in what would be a highly unusual briefing. On a typical flight, Cherry would be assigned a target and be given at least half a day for preparation, learning the correct compass headings, air speeds, altitudes, the call signs of other planes, and a dozen other details. He would be responsible for drawing his own map, sketching in rivers, mountain ranges, railroads, and other navigation markers and creating the actual route. He would also have multiple photographs of the target, each from a different angle and distance, which would help him chart his route. Finally, he would typically fly in good weather.

  None of those conditions existed that morning. Intelligence officers handed him his map and his route and said he'd be leaving in several hours. He was given only one photograph of the target, taken immediately above the site. The expected rain had canceled all other flights. The hastily conceived attack was formed after the discovery of a surface-to-air missile installation fifteen miles northeast of Hanoi.