If you don't read anything else on this page, please visit the following websites, and you will have all the information you want about John Kerry and the bogus "Band of Bums" who misnamed themselves "Vietnam Veterans Against the War". Most were neither veterans nor Vietnam veterans, and the few that were actual veterans lied about their rank and their service, including the Executive Secretary of the VVAW, Al Hubbard, who claimed to be a wounded Air Force Captain and pilot but was actually a SSgt who had never been assigned to Vietnam. Many were Communists, some were deserters, many falsified the IDs of actual veterans and gave false testimony before the US Senate using those falsified IDs. All of them lied about atrocities being committed. They even plotted to assassinate 7 US Senators, and John Kerry was present at the debate and final vote. John Kerry presided over this gang and to this day will not repudiate them or their false message. You will find audio and video of John Kerry's own testimony as well as links to documents and even a link to the Swift Boaters who served with Kerry and who consider him unfit to serve as Commander in Chief.
Why is John Kerry trying to ban these two books?
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Senator covered up evidence of P.O.W.s left behind
When John Kerry's Courage Went M.I.A.
Did America Abandon Vietnam War P.O.W.s? Part 1
Did America Abandon Vietnam War P.O.W.s? Part 2
Now, for my story,...
The rehashing of the Vietnam War as political fodder has brought a lot of Vietnam veterans out of the woodwork and has been very painful for many. It has been especially painful for the families whose loved ones never returned, considering how much damage was done to their reputations by the anti-war movement and is being recycled against those now serving in Iraq. I was stationed at Richards Gebaur Air Force Base in Kansas City, Missouri, at the time Navy Lt. John F. Kerry presented a speech before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 22, 1971. That speech, written for him by Robert Kennedy's speech writer Adam Walinsky, which is one of the best-known moments of his life, was given while he was involved with Vietnam Veterans Against the War. [In November of that year, the VVAW voted down a plan to assassinate seven U.S. Senators who supported the Vietnam war. One of those senators was my senator, John Tower. John Kerry was at that meeting. Oddly, no one reported the plot to the authorities.] In his speech before the Senate, Lt. John Kerry asked: "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" History has shown that our involvement in the war was not a mistake and that the Communists were on the verge of collapse before the anti-war movement reinvigorated them to hold out. By early to mid 1972, the Viet Cong units we faced had been all but destroyed, and their ranks had to be filled with North Vietnamese Regulars. They were working on terms of surrender. We could have won. Sadly, that is history now. Perhaps someday the truth will come out.
I have been corresponding over the past few months with several of my comrades as well as members of the families of some of my comrades shot down over Laos February 5, 1973 on one of our EC-47s, callsign "Baron 52". The three pilots were killed, but the fate of the other five crewmembers is still not known with certainty to this day. They were simply "written off" by the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA affairs, co-chaired by Senator John F. Kerry. The shootdown was controversial enough to earn a spot on the TV program "Unsolved Mysteries". If any of the crew managed to bail out and were captured, the hearings sealed their fate never to be returned. With that said, and having written to the mother of one of those men, my question to John Kerry would have been, "Senator Kerry, what do you say to a mother whose son you just abandoned in Vietnam?"
Neither John Kerry nor GW Bush nor I, for that matter, had any say in whether we would be assigned duty in Vietnam unless we volunteered. Some of us did volunteer. Of course one could petition for four educational deferments and a fifth to spend a year in Paris studying French, as John Forbes Kerry did, being rich and a prodigy of John F. Kennedy. If one received 3 Purple Hearts, he could ask to come home, even after just 3 or 4 months, and even if the wounds didn't cost him any downtime, as John Kerry did. The only ways to guarantee we would not be assigned to Vietnam would be to desert or dodge the draft, like Bill Clinton and many of the "Vietnam Veterans Against the War", or petition for status change to "Conscientious Objector" prior to receiving orders, or obtain an educational or family deferment, as millions of Americans did. During my 12 month tour (actually 366 days), more than half the pilots with whom I flew my 100+ missions in Vietnam were Reservists, like me, and Air Guardsmen. John Kerry equated Guardsmen with draft dodgers. The majority of members of the Guard and Reserves are former Active Duty military. I often wondered how many names on the Vietnam Memorial Wall are of National Guardsmen and Reservists. One hundred and forty Medal of Honor recipients were in the National Guard. Six thousand seventy-seven members of the National Guard or Reserves died in Vietnam.
Prior to assignment to Vietnam, I flew missions throughout the USA and Canada in support of Air Guard units. Who knows, I may even have visited with GW Bush in the Day Room on one of my trips to the Alabama or Texas Guard units. I can't even remember who the Squadron Commander was, so please don't expect me to name everyone I ever served with. Their courage, professionalism, skill, and deportment were second to none. I wonder if the "Happy Hooligans" are still flying these days. The next time you fly on a commercial flight, chances are a Reservist or Guardsman will be at the controls. Being a wounded, decorated hero is not a license to return to the safety and comfort of the United States and promote the enemy's propaganda while your buddies are still on the battlefield or in the enemy's POW dungeons. Benedict Arnold was also a wounded "war hero" before he changed sides and gave aid and comfort to the enemy.
If you run out of things to read, you might take a look at the EC-47 History site. These were the men I served with and about whom I would like to offer some insight. We were just like every other unit serving in Vietnam and those serving now in the war against terrorism.
The EC-47 History Site
Our Mission was to locate enemy units throughout Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia by airborne radio direction finding and to intercept and decode their transmissions. Intelligence gathered was passed to higher headquarters for further action. That portion of the mission was conducted by highly trained radio operators and linguists aided by a highly trained Navigator who plotted the positions of the enemy transmitters. The job of the pilots was simply to fly the airplane, but our concentration was focused at all times to maintain airspeed, heading, altitude control, and situational awareness. The aircraft carried no armament or armor or self defenses, and we flew moderately low and slow. We did our best to avoid enemy antiaircraft gun positions, but the shoulder-fired missiles and the antiaircraft guns were mobile, and avoidance was not always possible, even with the best of planning. The lives of troops on the ground depended on our providing timely and accurate information, and we always treated this somber responsibility as paramount, even above our own safety. It might be interesting to declassify the intelligence we gathered during 1971 through 1973 to see just what the status of the war was at that time. I believe it would show us on the verge of victory.
Very little has been reported about the Vietnam War that provides a true insight into how American military members conducted themselves, especially during our off-duty time. We were, and are, a brotherhood of unique individuals, melded together in the crucible of wars past and present, and bonded by duty, honor, sacrifice, blood, and love of country. More so than through any other fraternity, the associations and friendships formed through the military are lifelong, and we mourn the loss of our comrades until we rejoin them again someday in formation in Heaven. Sadly, politicians and historians do not share our code of ethics.
I learned a great deal about honor and service from my late father-in-law. He quit High School during WW II to join the Navy and serve to the end of the war on a destroyer (DD-757, USS Putnam) in the Pacific and then served the entire Korean War with his 45th Division Oklahoma Army National Guard unit. My wife was three years old when he left for Korea. Our son was two weeks old, and our daughter was three years old when I left for Vietnam. Some of my father-in-law's accounts were just like those I experienced myself in the Air Force.
I entered the Air Force through the AFROTC program at North Texas State University and served as a pilot from 1969 until 1979. My father, a pilot in World War I, died five days after I graduated from college and received my commission as a Second Lieutenant. I thank God he lived long enough for me to graduate as my final gift to him. While one of our most famous alumni, "Mean" Joe Green, was making headlines in the NFL, I entered the pipeline for service in Vietnam. I was an aircraft commander in the C-119. As members of Aerospace Defense Command, we supported mostly National Guard and Reserve units throughout the United States, like the ones in Texas and in Alabama where G.W. Bush flew interceptors. We flew that old airplane primarily as training for our eventual assignment in gunships at Da Nang, South Vietnam, but the C119s were given to the South Vietnamese and replaced with C-130 gunships. I was diverted to unarmed EC-47s, where I served as an aircraft commander and instructor pilot in the Vietnam War.
I completed C-47 flight training at England Air Force Base in Alexandria, Louisiana, in October 1972, along with one of the copilots who was killed February 5, 1973, less than a week after the "cease fire" in Vietnam. His wife and mine were both pregnant at the time we completed C-47 training, but since mine was two weeks away from delivering our son at the end of October (he was born November 1), I was granted a 30 day delay before deploying. The rest of the class departed for Jungle Survival School in the Philippines enroute to Vietnam. I followed them a month later in mid November, 1972. We were assigned to the 360th, the 362nd, and eventually the 361st Tactical Electronic Warfare Squadron at Da Nang, South Vietnam. We were transferred to Nahkon Phanom (NKP), Thailand, and then to Ubon, Thailand. I was at NKP watching the B-52 cells fly over our base enroute to Hanoi and Haiphong during Linebacker II in December 1972. The man with whom I now share a cubicle at work, an OU graduate who played football under Bud Wilkinson, led some of those cells. Victory was in our grasp. Why didn't we complete the job? Ask John Kerry and Jane Fonda.
Many of us spent our free time helping the "God Squad" (our Base Chaplains) work with local and foreign missionaries. My undergraduate degree is in physics, and we shared our expertise and taught skills to adults and children alike. We often worked with orphans and tried to share some semblance of family with them, being "Big Brothers" or substitute dads and telling them about our families waiting for us back home. We often entertained them with music and by reading stories to them. We even provided housing, food, clothing, and school money out of our own pockets for as many of the children as we could, and one boy even lived right in our hooch while he attended school downtown. We called him "Joey". My wife and I still have the audio tape of our three year old daughter reciting the 23rd Psalm from memory that she sent to me during that year. I still have an audio tape of religious songs several of us made during our free time. I missed the taping session because I was flying a mission the day they recorded it, but they made sure I got a copy. Ordinary airmen, marines, sailors, and soldiers, not "monsters created to kill wantonly" as John Kerry and the "Vietnam Veterans Against the War" tried to label us, were the driving force behind that effort.
Many of the locals with whom we worked thanked us for our "sacrifice" and for spending time with them that we could have spent relaxing. We were humbled to be allowed to minister to them, and it was great therapy for us as well as them. The thought of mistreating them in any way never crossed our minds -- hurt or show any disrespect to "Mamasan" or "Papasan"? --- NEVER! If anything, it buttressed our resolve to protect them and free them from the oppression of the Communists. Where were the correspondents to record this aspect of the history? The most common observation or concern we shared with each other was "those could be our own kids, and these could be our own towns someday". Our maids would even warn us not to go out on nights when rocket or mortar attacks were planned for our base. Some days they would simply leave early and tell us we ought to stay inside that night. They knew because some of their family members had been impressed into the forces launching the attacks with the demand either to launch mortars and rockets, or the Communists would kill their family members. Why didn't the historians report on that? One of my favorite missionaries, his wife, and his four year old son were the only survivors of a mission group slaughtered in Laos by the Pathet Lao. Why didn't historians and news correspondents report the atrocities committed by the Communists? Politicians and peace activists, including John Kerry, met with the leaders of the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong and the Pathet Lao and the other Communist groups while helping to sell out the MIAs and POWs in the planning for the Paris Peace Accords. John Kerry pushed the Viet Cong's "Seven Point" plan and wanted us to sign the accords BEFORE we began negotiations to have our POWs returned. Thank God we did not listen to him then. We should not now, either.
Although a few rare incidents are documented, and they were quickly and severely dealt with, I never witnessed a single atrocity committed by an American, but I saw the results of the atrocities committed by the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese and the Khmer Rouge and the Pathet Lao. Self-proclaimed "War hero" Navy Lt. John F. Kerry had already returned to the safety and security of the USA to perjure himself before the U.S. Senate and slander us by the time I was flying missions over Cambodia. It sickened us to watch Communist gunners zero in on the huge Red Crosses painted on the Theater in downtown Phnom Penh, Cambodia, that was used as a hospital and orphanage. Flying unarmed intel-gathering missions, we were helpless to intervene yet forced to watch as they would let the supply barge convoys come within sight of the city and then sink them and blow them away as added sadistic torture to the starving and wounded expecting relief. I didn't have to see any movies about "The Killing Fields", I saw them firsthand from the air. Maybe Lt. Kerry left too soon to learn the truth about atrocities. Instead of speeding past and leveling innocent villages as he claimed he did, maybe he would have better served his country and the people of Southeast Asia by providing escort for these convoys with his swift boat. None of this appeared in the 8mm home movie reenactments recorded by Lt. Kerry, either.
Just as surely as a poem I was inspired to write tells my own story, the poem and the website where I placed it honor those who did not return. "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His Saints."
I dare say you probably know a Vietnam veteran. Perhaps you are a veteran. I know a lot of them, too. I hope you know me now. I am your neighbor, your son, your brother, your cousin, your nephew, your uncle, your father, your grandfather -- your friend. I am no different from every American who ever served in Vietnam -- except one: John Forbes Kerry.
Still have questions about John Kerry and his "Loyalty"?
...John Kerry even betrayed his campaign workers and field supporters during his "cut and run" presidential campaign...are you surprised?
Are you aware of how John Kerry and his wife treated the good folks who rolled out the red carpet for them at Sun Valley during his vacation in March of 2004? Read it in their own words. These are the Democrat volunteers and elected officials that he snubbed.
"Kerry Leaves Local Dems Hanging"
Author: Tracy Lotz and Mary Fauth
Tuesday, March 23, 2004
http://www.sunvalleyonline.com/news/article.asp?ID_Article=22
From the Editor: "Kerry Volunteers Deserved Better"
Wednesday, March 24, 2004
http://www.sunvalleyonline.com/opinions/opinion.asp?ID_Opinion=28
...but this was nothing compared to the betrayal of his country and his comrades in arms during the Vietnam war and his current betrayal today. I guess if we have a future war, he will go for the Traitor "Hat Trick".
Neal Boortz calls him "The Poodle" (aren't poodles pets kept by rich women?), but he is more like a snake or a rat or a ......
Still have questions about John Kerry and his "Band of Brothers"? Stop by
"Swift Vets and POWs for Truth"
If you have read this far, perhaps you understand why John Kerry is trying to ban the two books shown above to hide the truth about his past. If you contact me, I will be pleased to answer any questions you have.
May God Bless You,
With Respects, I am
Bruce Obermeyer, former Captain, USAF
361st Tactical Electronic Warfare Squadron, EC-47s
Vietnam veteran
This is my webpage, dedicated to Vietnam veterans
The Promise Kept