News-Info-Alerts

Re: SAR - Tempting Death to Preserve Life

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: July 09, 2002

"Tempting death to preserve lives

By Mark Melady
Telegram & Gazette Staff

WORCESTER-- In Air Force boot camp in 1967, the two lean visitors in the snappy crimson berets and bloused trousers of the Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Service impressed enlisted man Douglas Horka, who until then expected to spend the Vietnam War pushing paper at a Nebraska Air base.

     “They were the most elite of the special forces -- there were only 270 in the world -- and they were looking for volunteers to train in parachute jumping, scuba diving, mountaineering, jungle survival, astronaut rescue,” Mr. Horka recalled. “We would almost definitely go to Vietnam, but the testosterone was stirred up. At 19, I had enough to make John Wayne blush.”

     He would need it. For two years, on 576 sorties, Mr. Horka rode Jolly Green Giants, the HH3 and HH53 helicopters used to pluck downed pilots out of the jungle, often in places where the U.S. forces officially didn't operate, and participated in what remains the largest single successful rescue mission ever conducted by the American military.

     Vietnam was the incubator for combat air rescue techniques.

     “There were no rules,” said Mr. Horka, who grew up in Natick and lived in Northboro for 19 years before moving to Worcester a year ago. “Every rescue was different. You made it up as you went along.”

     Mr. Horka was a University of Massachusetts zoology major dropout when he passed a series of physical fitness tests and was admitted to rescue school at the former Orlando Air Force Base on the site of what is now Walt Disney World.

     A year later he was stationed on a U.S. military base in Nakon Phanom, Thailand.

     “We liked to call it the extreme Western DMZ,” he said.
     His first rescue mission came in October 1968 -- an A1 down in Laos. After a 3 a.m. briefing, Mr. Horka was riding in a seat next to the chopper's window. By his side was an M60 machine gun he described as good mostly for making noise.

     If the downed pilot's injuries prevented him from getting onto a hoist lowered from the chopper, Mr. Horka would ride it down from the hovering Jolly, through the canopy to the jungle floor. He would then locate the pilot, treat any injuries, and strap the pilot and himself onto what is called a “penetrator” for the return trip to the helicopter.

     Rescue efforts often came under enemy fire. At least 70 rescuers were killed in Vietnam. Another 15 Skyraider pilots, who flew close support for rescue missions in planes that Mr. Horka said didn't appear capable of flight, were also killed.

     Even on that first mission, Mr. Horka was ready.

     “I wanted it,” he remembered. “This is what I had trained so hard for, but I was anxious, too. Doing it in Laos wasn't like a training exercise in the hills of Tennessee. There wasn't any welcome wagon waiting below.”

     He carried with him a rudimentary medical kit with intravenous solution, morphine, bandages, anti-bacterial salves and pneumatic splints.

     “This was pretty simple stuff by today's standards, where the rescuers are real EMTs and carry things like whole blood,” Mr. Horka said. “I could stop the bleeding, clean the wound, immobilize a broken bone. I wasn't going down to do surgery.”

     He also carried a snub-nose version of the M16 infantry rifle, a two-way radio, flares, water, a bulletproof helmet and additional morphine and other medicine in his socks. He had a “pointy-talky” with promises of payment in several local languages for helping American soldiers as well as ingots of gold or silver and a wad of the local currency.

     The latter was not official Air Force issue.

     “If we got left behind, which happened sometimes, we figured we could buy our way out,” Mr. Horka said.

     He later added a flask of Chivas Regal scotch and a pack of cigarettes.
     “It's amazing how many non-smokers will ask for a cigarette after being rescued or how many non-drinkers will want a drink,” Mr. Horka said.

     His first rescue mission was textbook perfect, Mr. Horka said. The pilot, Bill Bagwell, was unhurt and able to guide the helicopter to him. When the hoist was lowered, he hopped on and strapped himself in. All was done without drawing enemy fire.

     “The pilot was very calm. I had the heartbeat of a hummingbird,” he said.
     Once aboard the chopper, Mr. Bagwell “could barely contain his smile within the confines of the helicopter,” Mr. Horka said.

     The two men met a couple of years ago at a reunion and caught up with each other's lives.

     “He misplaced a second plane later in the war,” Mr. Horka said, “and was picked up by the CIA.”

     After a year and several rescue missions, Mr. Horka decided to do a second tour.
     “It was rewarding to me and, plus, they offered me a bag of money to stay on, so I did,” he said.

     On Dec. 5, 1969, in a valley at Ban Phanop, Laos, an F4 with the call sign Boxer 22 was dropping anti-personnel mines when it was hit by anti-aircraft fire. The pilot and the navigator successfully ejected, parachuting to opposite sides of a river in a small canyon.

     The terrain made flying operations treacherous. The surrounding hills were loaded with anti-aircraft guns.

     “When the first call came to scramble the Jollies, I was on a medivac run to Bangkok bringing in a guy who got a fork stuck in his liver during a poker game dispute,” Mr. Horka said.

     Over the next 51 hours, attempt after attempt was made to rescue the crewmen through heavy anti-aircraft fire. A rescuer aboard a helicopter was shot dead by ground fire. In all, 430 missions involving 750 air crews and 20 different types of aircraft were deployed.

     The downed pilot was shot by the Pathet Lao, the communist movement that originally was financed by the North Vietnamese and Soviet Union and assumed control of Laos in 1975. The navigator, Woodrow Bergeron, was allowed to remain on the other side of the river as bait to draw American aircraft into what was a shooting gallery.

     During the mission, 12 A1s and 12 helicopters sustained damage.

     “Five helicopters were rendered unusable forever,” Mr. Horka said.

     His helicopter, the second one in, took 30 hits but managed to return to base without injury.

     Finally, tear gas was used to smoke the canyon and keep the enemies' heads down long enough for a Jolly Green to be guided in by Mr. Bergeron. Before strapping himself into the hoist, he took a sample of the river water he'd been drinking to have it tested.

     “Having gone through all of that for the rescue, Woody didn't want to end up with dysentery from the water,” Mr. Horka said.

     The rescue, known as Boxer 22, has been a learning laboratory for future combat rescues, Mr. Horka said.

     During his two years in Laos and Vietnam, Mr. Horka had eight live pickups, none of which required him to lower himself to the ground.

     At the end of his second tour, he was shipped to Honolulu to complete his active duty. During that time, he was assigned to the rescue crew that would go after the Apollo 14 capsule if it strayed far off course in its return from the moon.

     But Cmdr. Alan B. Shepard Jr. brought the capsule in right on target in the Pacific. Mr. Horka was at 30,000 feet in a C130, watching as it splashed down and Navy divers attached the flotation collar, which would have been his job.

     “As much as you'd like to be part of it, you really can't hope that it goes off course either,” Mr. Horka said. “It was incredibly accurate.”

     Mr. Horka decided against a third tour.

     “I didn't want to go back to Vietnam. I had lost too many friends. I knew I would be thinking, 'Is it my time?' I'd be thinking about the Golden BB -- the one you don't see.”

     He also had become disenchanted with America's conduct in the war.

     “By the end of my second tour, I was absolutely against us being in Vietnam,” he said. “We had to decide to either win or get out and stop the senseless death and destruction. We weren't permitted to win it.”

     Out of the service, Mr. Horka returned to the University of Massachusetts and graduated with a degree in zoology, “which I've never used for a moment,” he said. He travels the world evaluating new medical technologies.

     A few years ago, he made contact with groups who served in the rescue unit.

     “We get together at reunions, throw back a few beers and see if we can't win it this time,” he said.

     The rescue unit remains the most elite special force in the world, Mr. Horka said.
     “There's still only about 170 in it,” he said.

     Mr. Horka said there is no comparison between his generation of rescuers and today's.

     “In all ways they are far better, in their training, their skills, what they can do,” he said. “But I still take a lot of pride in what I did. The motto of the unit is: 'These things we do that others may live.' I tried to live up to that.”
©2002 Worcester Telegram & Gazette Corp."