January 13,1966. I had been in Viet Nam for three months. Though it escaped my attention at the time, I turned 28 that day. It was also the day the war became personal.

Back in the States, people were listening to “We Can Work It Out” by the Beatles while Jerry Garcia and Phil Lesh performed for the first time under their new name, “The Grateful Dead”. As the music played on, the stock market briefly passed the 1,000 point mark. And, in his State of the Union address, President Lyndon Johnson would tell Congress and the American people that we could afford the cost of social programs (The Great Society) and an on-going war in View Nam. 

When it became clear that the bombing of military installations was not stopping the North Vietnamese government from resupplying the National Liberation Front, the number of targets was increased to include rail lines, bridges and communication systems. This only caused the Communists to increase their resolve. They fought back with anti-aircraft guns, surface-to-air missiles and newly acquired Soviet MiG 21 jet fighters causing our loses to mount. Before the war was over the combined United States and South Vietnamese loses would exceed five thousand helicopters and four thousand fixed-wing aircraft. 

That January while our B-52’s were carpet bombing Hanoi, Haiphong and the Ho Chi Minh trail, on the other side of the world, a B-52 Stratofortress carrying hydrogen bombs, each 5 times more powerful than the weapons dropped on Japan, collided with a KC-135 refueling tanker over Spain. As the planes broke up, three nuclear bombs were released into an open field and a fourth fell into the Mediterranean Sea. Fortunately, no explosions were triggered but radioactive plutonium was spread over a square mile of countryside. Unfortunately it  was not the only fatal midair collision of US military aircraft to occur that month.

When I first arrived in Nha Trang, my “dispensary” was a suite in a contract hotel close to town. The treatment area was a converted bathroom. My staff consisted of one aero-medical technician, two corpsmen and a Vietnamese secretary.

By January we were working out of a temporary facility on the flight line. The number of corpsmen had tripled. A second Flight Surgeon was on board but new troops were arriving daily and I was busier than ever.

As dispensary commander, it was my responsibility to compile a monthly flight surgeon’s report. My report addressed problems affecting mission readiness including aircraft accidents, combat losses, equipment problems and troop morale. I also included data on communicable diseases as well as illnesses specific to southeast Asia. After review in the Command Surgeon’s office it would be forwarded on to the School of Aerospace Medicine at Brooks Air Force Base in Texas.

At Brooks Air Force Base, the individual reports were edited and subjects of interest were incorporated into a newsletter which was distributed back to all bases worldwide. Once, while reading the consolidated report, I was embarrassed to find excerpts of a letter sent to the school by a senior officer who questioned a long-standing air force policy. He had visited our dispensary requesting medication to treat body lice (pthirus pubis) which he insisted were acquired from hotel bedding. Our corpsman informed him appropriately that the product was standard military issue available only through the base supply office. 

The officer complained that when he arrived at the supply depot the clerk on duty shouted to the airman in the stock room, “Get the Colonel some crab powder.” I learned later that it was not an isolated incident. Rather, it was done often to embarrass those seeking treatment, especially officers. From that point on I made sure we carried the powder in our dispensary. 

On the evening of January 13th I was working late. My monthly flight surgeon’s report needed to be in the morning mail. I would be up most of the night completing it. Around 1900 hours I decided to take a break and wandered down to the alert shack, a short distance from our dispensary. I found a C-123 crew waiting for a call to drop flares somewhere over the Central Highlands. Whenever special forces camps came under attack, the C-123 Providers would circle for hours dropping magnesium flares attached to parachutes to expose the enemy. The flares would float down slowly, lighting up the sky as bright as the day. I had previously flown on one of these missions.

The air crew consisted of two pilots, a load master and three flare kickers. One of those positions was routinely filled by volunteers from the base who were not on regular flight status. Their reward was an air medal if they completed 25 combat missions. It was an honor coveted by career military personnel. In a twist of fate, one of the volunteers had traded duty with another airmen that night. 

Much has been written about the relationship between a pilot and his Flight Surgeon. Not only were we responsible for providing medical care and determining fitness to fly, we had to be familiar with the stress of their mission and, at times, serve as advisor and confidante.

I found the pilots relaxing in comfortable quarters while the enlisted crew busily prepared for the mission in an adjoining room. While the pilot, Captain Herman Ritchie, was finishing a letter to his wife, the co-pilot, sat on the edge of his bunk and opened up as if I were his chaplain or therapist. 

He talked about the hardships of separation from his family and the knowledge that he might not survive to see them again. The missions were dangerous and he was fully aware of his mortality, knowing he could die in a crash at anytime. Pondering those circumstances he asked what, if any, were his moral constraints.

A month before he had an overnight stay at a base in Taiwan. He was still sleeping in the morning when a Chinese maid came into his room. “I didn’t ask,” he said. “She just crawled into bed with me. What was I supposed to do?” Clearly, it weighed heavily on him and he sought to unburden himself. 

Often my decision to fly with the crew was made at the last minute. During the course of the evening both pilots repeatedly asked me to join them. I begged off that night because my report was far from finished. We were still talking and Captain Ritchie had just sealed his envelope when a call came to provide flare ship support for A-1E’s from the 1st Air Commando Squadron out of Pleiku. The letter would go out in the morning mail.

We walked out onto the “ramp” together. I was standing beside the aircraft while the co-pilot warmed up the engines and the crew secured the cargo before final take-off.

As Captain Ritchie prepared to close the side door, his final words to me were, “Come on, Doc, fly with us, you can finish your report tomorrow.” His image and those words are permanently etched in my memory.  Any other night I would have been on that flight. I waved as they taxied onto the runway then watched as the plane lifted off and the running lights disappeared into the darkness. 

It was well after midnight when I finished my report so I slept in the dispensary. When I awoke the next morning, the corpsman told me the crew never returned. While the A-1E’s were attacking Viet Cong positions near Ahn Ke, one of the Skyraiders pulled off target after delivering “ordnance” and collided with the flare ship. Both aircrafts crashed. There were no survivors.