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Overview
This award-winning Vietnam War memoir from an Air Force flight surgeon is “a superb, first-hand account of combat flying” (Dan Hampton, New York Times–bestselling author of Viper Pilot)
In 1971, United States Air Force flight surgeon John Pendergrass spent much of his time in the backseat of an F-4 Phantom, racing across the skies of Vietnam.
Forty-five years later, he boards an altogether different type of aircraft and heads back to Vietnam for an altogether different kind of race—an IRONMAN® triathlon.
A veteran of IRONMAN triathlons on six continents, Racing Back to Vietnam follows John’s year in combat and his return to Vietnam, revisiting a country that, for him, is bound up in history, memory and emotion. A memoir of war as seen from the skies and a reflection on life’s high adventure, John tries to reconcile the Vietnam he saw from the backseat of a fighter jet with today’s modern Vietnam.
Thought-provoking, heartfelt and gripping, Racing Back to Vietnam is one man’s trip back through time on a journey of rediscovery.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781578266999 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Hatherleigh Press |
| Publication date: | 10/24/2017 |
| Pages: | 256 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 8.70(h) x 0.90(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Have you ever been to an air show or a football game and watched fighter jets fly over the field in perfect formation? Three or four planes, barely a hundred feet above the ground, wings only a few feet apart. The aircraft arrive almost unexpectedly and quickly disappear into the distant horizon, leaving only the ear-splitting, deafening roar of jet engines hard at work. The whole thing happens in just a few seconds and nearly takes your breath away. The crowd’s normal response is to stand awe-struck and break into applause. It’s speed and power, sound and fury, the likes of which you’ve rarely seen before. You wish you could capture the moment, experience the thrill one more time.
I’ve had that feeling, and then some. For a year, I served as a United States Air Force flight surgeon at Da Nang Air Base, flying in the backseat of the workhorse fighter of the Vietnam War: the F-4 Phantom. The backseater served as the Weapon Systems Officer (WSO) and got an occasional chance to fly the aircraft. He was a junior partner in the F-4, a sidekick in the rear cockpit. The plane-driving, gun-shooting, bomb-dropping pilot in the front seat was the man in charge—the Aircraft Commander (AC). When it came to being shot down or killed, the two share the risk equally, true partners in every sense of the word.
Flying fighters is exhilarating. You are strapped into what seems like the fastest, most powerful machine ever made by man—the top aircraft in the Air Force’s pecking order. Move the throttles far enough forward, and you can travel faster than the speed of sound. That authority and control are right there at your fingertips.
I learned on the job. I never went to pilot training and never attended navigator school; but I was able to come along for the ride in a Mach-2 fighter, a bit player in one of history’s most intense and dangerous air wars.
I lived and flew with some of the best people in the world—the 390th Tactical Fighter Squadron, part of the 366th Tactical Fighter Wing. I knew next to nothing about flying, but my squadron welcomed me in and took me along. Thanks to their generosity, I experienced the adrenaline-rich, life-affirming euphoria of flying fighters in combat.
And what a ride it was. I flew 54 combat missions over South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia; we even dipped into North Vietnam on a few sorties. I survived anti-aircraft fire on multiple occasions, returning to base feeling more alive than when I took off, anxious to go again. It was the great adventure of my life.
On other occasions, I laid helpless and afraid in my barracks, subject to the whims of chance as the Viet Cong launched nighttime rocket attacks on our base. When the rockets came, there was little you could do except hunker down and hope that it wasn’t your time. It was the capriciousness and unpredictability of the rocket attacks that were the most unsettling. Sometimes, a few incoming rounds were fired, and that was it; it was over. Other times, the attack seemed to go on for half the night. At Da Nang, it was known as “rolling dice with the Devil.” You were at the mercy of the Viet Cong, and the best you could hope for was to break even.
Flying was just one part of my Vietnam experience. Most of my time was spent in my primary role as a physician, taking care of injured soldiers, healthy pilots, enlisted men with venereal disease, airmen addicted to heroin, people with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and anyone else who walked through the doors of our medical dispensary.
It seemed as though I lived in two different worlds. In one, I flew fighters; in the other, I took care of sick people. I had friends and colleagues in both places, but the worlds rarely intersected.
I spent enough time in Vietnam to see the war as one of random deaths and hollow victories; a place where victory seemed indistinguishable from defeat. But I had learned long ago that this was often the nature of war. I was glad to have served and happy to depart with my honor intact, full of gratitude and relief.
I came home in late April 1972, just as Operation Linebacker, the final air assault on North Vietnam, was beginning. For most of my tour, the rules of engagement had kept North Vietnam off limits. The U.S.’s goal was no longer one of total victory; now, it was simply peace with honor. Everything changed in May 1972, when my squadron mates began flying over North Vietnam, the most heavily defended country in the world. While they were “going Downtown” (as flying over Hanoi was known), I was going back to the USA.
Like most of America, I was anxious to put the Vietnam War behind me. Since President Nixon had assured us that he was turning things over to the South Vietnamese, most of our country had long since quit paying attention to Vietnam. I jumped back into civilian life, quick to let things go. With a wife, a son, and a residency in ophthalmology, I had little time for reflection. I cried when the American prisoners of war (POWs) came home in early 1973. These were men I identified with: the vast majority of them were pilots and backseaters captured when their fighter aircraft were shot down over North Vietnam. These POWs were my heroes, and their fate was always on my mind.
The end, when it came, came very quickly. In 1975, the South Vietnamese government collapsed, and the war was over. I tried not to think of the men in my squadron who died, or of the more than fifty-eight thousand Americans who lost their life in the war, or of the hundreds of thousands of our South Vietnamese allies whose fates were now in the hands of the North Vietnamese. I tried not to dwell on the tragedy, the heroism, the absurdity of war. Like most of America, I was anxious to put it behind me.
* * *
Forty-five years after I first arrived, I’ll be returning to Vietnam in order to participate in the Ironman 70.3 triathlon held at Da Nang. The idea seems appealing—a new challenge for an old man. At the time of my service in Vietnam, the sport of triathlon hadn’t even been invented. It wasn’t until 1974 that someone thought of linking swimming, biking, and running—in that order—to create a single event; it was another four years before the Ironman brand was created.
This is my chance to return to Southeast Asia under more idyllic conditions. There would be no rocket attacks, no anti-aircraft fire; I’ll be able to relax in the sunshine and swim in the sea; a septuagenarian’s spring break, of sorts.
In reality, the triathlon idea is just an excuse to return to Vietnam; to go back into my youth, to touch the past. These journeys back in time seem much more attractive when you reach retirement age. When you are in your thirties or forties, you are living in “real time;” there’s little to go back to. Life is lived forward and understood backwards. Besides, I had already completed six Ironman triathlons on six continents in my sixties, and truthfully, I felt like I had ridden that horse as far as it could go.
Plus, the number of Ironman triathlons has only increased over the last decade, with races now being held in every corner of the globe. When enough people have done something, the value of it changes. Ironman had lost its capacity to inspire me; it was no longer special, it was just another endurance event.
At least, that’s what I told myself. In truth, my lack of enthusiasm was probably due to the fact that my ideal window for doing a triathlon had closed over thirty years ago. Nowadays, I still have grand goals—the mind never quits dreaming—but my schemes are based more on wishful thinking than on reality. My body refuses to cooperate. I’m in my eighth decade of life, and nothing physical comes easy at this age. My aches and pains can usually be held in check by a fistful of medications, but there are many days that I feel like an old man who made a wrong turn on his way to the nursing home.
* * *
My journey to Vietnam is inspired by a mixture of nostalgia and reflection. Since memories can get lost in the clutter of time, I’ve made a concerted effort to recapture my year in Southeast Asia. I’ve read through the over one hundred and fifty letters that I wrote my wife and mother from Vietnam; I’ve studied my flight records searching for clues; I know the date and duration of each mission and the tail number of the aircraft (though little else, admittedly). I’ve attended several recent reunions of my fighter wing and skimmed through dozens of history books giving various takes on the Vietnam War. In truth, I feel I know more about Vietnam now than I did during my tour.
I’m anxious to return to Da Nang, the country’s third largest city. I’ll be landing on the very same runway I departed from forty-five years ago. During the war, it was the busiest airport in the world. I can still clearly remember leaving Da Nang at the end of my tour; it was one of the greatest moments of my life. I’ll never forget the joy, the exhilaration, the applause when our “freedom bird” took off in April 1972.
It has been nearly forty-five years. I saw Vietnam in wartime, and I was happy to leave it behind. But I know the country has changed dramatically nearly half a century. I am anxious to go back to Southeast Asia. Most of all, I want to talk to the people of Vietnam. Even though the vast majority were born after the war’s end, surely there must be a few who have a direct memory of the conflict.
What do today’s Vietnamese really think of that era they call the “American War”? This is a voyage of rediscovery that I’m eager to begin.
—Excerpt from the Introduction by John Pendergrass
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Racing Back to Vietnam"
by .
Copyright © 2017 John Pendergrass.
Excerpted by permission of Hatherleigh Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Introduction vii
Part I Life in Danang
Ahead Of Schedule 3
Why Vietnam? 17
Getting My Feet on the Ground 23
Into the Sky 33
Life in the Backseat 49
Party Suits 65
Anti-Aircraft Fire 71
Lost in Action 79
Life in a Fighter Squadron 85
Air-To-Air Refueling 97
Doom Club 101
Night Moves 107
Prisoners of War 115
I Corps Medical Society 121
The Rescue of Covey 219 125
Operation Golden Flow 133
Final Mission 141
Part II Back to Vietnam
Finding a Reason to Return 151
Da Nang from a Bicycle 159
At the Starting Line 169
Race Day 175
Travels Around Danang 179
Ho Chi Minh Trail, Laos 189
Hanoi 203
Traveling with the Marines 215
Ho Chi Minh City 225
Looking Back 235
Acknowledgments 241