F-100

During the recent Misty Forward Air Controller reunion at the Air
Force Academy we put on a leadership seminar for the cadet wing.
We were given six minutes to tell of our war experiences. It was a
moving evening. Here are my six minute remarks :

So, you want war stories -6 minutes to describe the experiences of a
lifetime - I’ll try.

The old men you see in front of you are not terribly impressive, but
we WERE. We flew in the Vietnam War when we were in our 20s, 30s,
40s and 50s. We are now in our late 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s, like
rejects from a recruiting fair. None of ever wanted to be this old . .
until just recently.

I went to Vietnam fresh from a fighter tour in Europe where I flew
F-100s at Hahn Airbase West Germany. I sat alert on a one-way target
deep into a Soviet bloc country. I had a 1.1 megaton nuclear weapon
tucked under my wing and would have blown the world up to save it - I
doubt that me having a nuclear weapon scared the Soviets, but it would
sure have concerned the folks from Wheat Ridge, Colorado where
I grew up just north of here.

I left the US in October 1967 with a stop through the Philippines for
Jungle Survival School. Our Escape and Evasion exercise was
conducted during a typhoon with torrential rains. My buddy and I
shared a six square foot piece of high ground with every rat in the
Philippines -just me and him and 400 rats.

I reported to Bien Hoa Air Base northeast of Saigon and came under
rocket attack my first night - welcome to war, Capt. Shepperd. I flew
about 10 missions, half of them checkout, and came down with - dengue
fever- a mosquito-borne virus. If you ever get -dengue,- I recommend
you just go ahead and die, it will be easier on everyone involved.

In December I volunteered for Misty. Some of my old friends,
classmates and squadron mates were up there, Jim Mack, Chuck
Turner, Jim Fiorelli, Glenn Jones, Charlie Neel, and Gary Tompkins.
I heard it was an exciting mission. IT WAS.

I reported in just before Christmas and stopped into the squadron
where Bob Craner and Guy Gruters were just stepping to the
airplane for a mission up north.

I had known Guy (a great football player) at the Academy, shook
his hand and said, I’ll talk to you when you get back. Little did I
know that it would be almost 6 years later- welcome to Misty, Capt.
Shepperd . I then learned it was the second time Guy had been shot
down while in Misty - what have I got myself into?

My first checkout ride was with Jere Wallace. The weather was bad,
but Jere tried to provoke some gunners to shoot at us through holes in
the clouds .. so I, the green bean, could see some gunfire on my first
ride. My next ride was with Jonesy Jones.

The weather was good so he took me low level through AAA University,
first provoking 50 cal. (the Kid on the Karst) , then 37 mm, then 57
mm sites to shoot at us .. so I could learn to ID the sites - see the
color of tracers and flak bursts - and feel the concussion, BAM, BAM,
BAM of the AAA rounds as they came close to the airplane. [After the
mission] I told Jonesy, -Honest, I’ll believe you if you just
‘ brief ’ me about these things. I don’t need a demo .

Next ride was with Charlie Neel where he showed me where he and Guy
Gruters had been 'hit' and then gone down in the water just off the
beach. He was grinding his teeth, saying he would sure like to find
those *******s that shot him and attack them. I was secretly hoping he
wouldn’t.

By the time I had finished 5 rides and was 'checked out' I was pretty
much convinced that I had joined a bunch of 'madmen.' I considered
desertion, heart transplant and a sex change, but alas, a sex change
would probably have made me more desirable. I was convinced there
was no way I was going to make it out of there alive. So all fear
vanished as I became one of those 'courageous Mistys' as I calmly
awaited my own sure death.

Many missions later, many successful attacks on targets, seeing AAA,
missiles, rescues, and losses of comrades - seeing this group of guys
hang it all out every day, throwing caution to the winds when a
comrade’s life was in danger - I was 'selected' for the Great Risinger
Raid about which you have just heard. I was selected because I was
one of three guys in the vicinity when Ed Risinger went mad, stole
three airplanes and we rode off into the weather to attack a SAM site
under the clouds with napalm, high drags and CBUs - a terrible
idea.

As a young captain I was caught up in the excitement. We launched but
enroute as I looked out at my wings with high drag 500 # bombs and
CBUs, both requiring multiple passes at low level .. it struck me that
this was a really dumb idea. But, it was too late. I was already a
henchman in the crime. I was a pretty good kid and felt if anything
happened I was destined for heaven, but it all changed that day.

As we proceeded inbound, I was 'Tailend Charlie' with bullets whizzing
past my canopy. To maintain my courage I repeated my mantra, -That
goddamned Ed Risinger; that goddamned Ed Risinger; that god-- I
repeated that for almost 100 miles, so now I’m destined to hell,
courtesy of Ed Risinger.

That story and all the others are in the book -MISTY - A 602 page
book; a labor of love. I could write a book about writing this book. I
put it together, but it was the idea of Ed Risinger - why is
everything hard in my life tied to Ed Risinger? I cannot
over-emphasize the difficulty of getting stories out of a group of
155 elderly, cantankerous, renegade fighter pilots,
dealing with sensitive issues, copyrights, editing. In the final
analysis about 60% of those still alive sent between 1 and 7 stories
which you will find in the book.

As I shopped the book around to the usual suspects -the publishers-
they all told me the same thing -- We love it. We’ll buy it BUT you
must give us editorial control and the book will have to be cut by
2/3ds to make it commercially viable AND several of the authors will
have to be eliminated because their stories are somewhat repetitive,
or quite frankly, not very good.

I could not do that . . .

So we self-published the book through 1stBooks Library. The book is
not for the general public .. but for us .. our families and for
history; to let people like you know what we went through, what war is
really like in our words and who we were. The book will never go out
of print. It will be there for our great, great grandchildren and
theirs.

My greatest satisfaction has come from the children of some of our
dead comrades who have told me--I feel like I finally know something
about my Dad. With that all of the work of our authors and those who
assisted in editing and assembling this and those who flew with us to
make the stories possible, has been worth it. I hope you buy it -you
will learn something.

Finally, I have a piece of advice for you -yes, we were a special
group of guys, but the women you see with us were even more
special -they waited, they feared, they suffered, they waited for the
blue car with bad news, they buried us and accepted the flag -Here is
the advice -when you marry -MARRY WELL -marry someone of
character and strength . . like these women -you will be well served.

Let me close by reading the Postscript from the MISTY book :

One day an old, gray, bent and stooped former Misty will hold his
great grandson in his lap. The young child will be fondling a dusty
set of military medals. He will look into the eyes of his great
grandfather and ask . . "Were you a war hero ?"

The old man's eyes will mist. His mind will flood with memories. He
will see tracers passing close to his canopy and feel the shock waves
of AAA rounds beating against the fuselage. He will see black flak
exploding in the air and hear the depressing sounds of parachute
beepers. His heart rate will increase as he gets low on fuel and
warning lights flash on his instrument panel. He will feel the sharp
thump of rounds impacting his aircraft and smell acrid smoke
in the cockpit. He will look in the rear view mirror and see flames.
He will hear the voices of men on fire and in danger. He will once
again encounter the depressed feeling of landing .. after losing a
comrade .. or failing in a rescue attempt. He will wipe his eyes,
clear the lump in his throat and whisper quietly and truthfully, "No,
Son . . but I flew with men who were."

Thank you -and welcome to our great Air Force.

[From the "FIGHTER PILOT" email list]

Mike Marron wrote:


He will wipe his eyes,
clear the lump in his throat and whisper quietly and truthfully, "No,
Son . . but I flew with men who were."

Thank you -and welcome to our great Air Force.

[From the "FIGHTER PILOT" email list]

One of the better ones Mike, thank you sir.
--

-Gord.

Mike Marron wrote in message
...
During the recent Misty Forward Air Controller reunion at the Air
Force Academy we put on a leadership seminar for the cadet wing.
We were given six minutes to tell of our war experiences. It was a
moving evening. Here are my six minute remarks :


Wow! I'm no expert but, that looks like good writing to me.

--

Scott
--------
"Interestingly, we started to lose this war only after the embedded
reporters pulled out. Back when we got the news directly from Iraq,
there was victory and optimism. Now that the news is filtered through
the mainstream media here in America, all we hear is death and
destruction and quagmire..." Ann Coulter
http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2003/091703.htm

"tscottme" wrote:

Wow! I'm no expert but, that looks like good writing to me.

And it doesn't take an expert to figure out who wrote it.