Introduction:
Coping with War

Just the act of flying in the military can be a dangerous job, especially during a night carrier landing in rain and fog. When combat missions are added to the mix, casualties are a certainty and not all the casualties are on the battlefield. I was one of the lucky ones. I came back home relatively unscarred physically or emotionally. However, not all of my fellow airmen were so fortunate.

Although it has become more difficult to put names with those faces from a half century ago, the faces of my flying companions of the past are still vivid. One is that of the first marine pilot to be shot down and captured in Korea. He became almost the last prisoner of war to be released after the shooting stopped. Tha physical strain and trauma of a year in the POW camps left its mark. Some of the released POWs never fully regained their flying ability. Also engraved in my brain are the names of those friends who still rest in the red soil of that sad country. And only the Almighty knows the final destination of others who crashed during missions deep in enemy territory, or just disappeared.

I recall one marine friend, always a quiet, stoic man, who spent several months in the hospital undergoing treatment for his many ills. He was finally examined and certified fit for the actual control of aircraft in flight. Given his choice of duty after his release from the hospital, he chose to be trained in jet fighters and was sent to the transition unit flying F9F Panther jets.

A year after he returned from his captivity, his squadron was deployed to MCAS Mojave for gunnery exercises. One morning while flying at twenty thousand feet above the desert, the marine radioed his flight leader that he felt ill and was returning to base. Five minutes after that call, his F9F Panther crashed into the desert near Mojave, California.

One of my best friends served out his commitment to the U.S. Marine Corps in 1953 and went to work flying for American Airlines. I was flying to Nashville to visit my daughter one day when I recognized the name of the airline captain. We spent two hours after the flight over beer and sausages. I got a message one sad morning that he had died suddenly of a stroke while on a layover in London.

Another pilot was discharged on some disability, the cause of which I never heard and never asked. He opened a flight school in Harlingen, Texas, and flew a Corsair for the Confederate Air Force unit in that small Texas town. In 1964, something went wong with that now ancient Corsair he was flying at an air show at Burnet, Texas. He bailed out but struck the horizontal stabilizer and fell to the earth without pulling his ripcord.

There were other delayed casualties of a different sort. Not long after that war was beginning to fade from our memories, as wars are wont to do, there were occasions of sadness and feelings of loss when some good friends decided to end their marriages. Only a few divorces rippled through our ranks, but these seemed to have an effect on our unity. Those of us who had to face this latest storm didn't seem to know how to remain friends with either member of the shattered couple. My wife and I visited both, talked around everything important, avoided subjects we perceived to be painful, and went home unfulfilled. The "head" doctors told us these breaks were an almost natural result of the doubts and suspicions that often arise between husbands and wives after long enforced separations. Doctors always seem to have an easy explanation of tough problems, but casualties of war do not always bleed, and love does not always conquer all.

The event that changed the lives of all of us began on a rainy Sunday morning on June 25, 1950, when, without warning, the North Korean Peoples Army began firing artillery and mortar shells on the Republic of Korea Army positions south of the 38th Parallel, the line then serving as the border between the two countries.

John J. Fischer

Author
John J. Fischer
with James V. Lee

Table of Contents
1. Attacked
2. Navy Cruise
3. Scut Work
4. The Flight Deck
5. The 0318 Breakfast
6. Pilot Briefing
7. Mission of No Return
8. Shot Down
9. Captured
10. Interrogation
11. Liberated
12. On the Run
13. Carnage
14. Scavenging
15. Kill or Be Killed
16. Spotted
17. Up Close with the Enemy
18. Return to the Fold
19. Aftermath