Then Capt. George 'Bud' Day, in an F-84F in 1956, was later a POW in North Vietnam.
A Day for heroes
Biography gives highly decorated pilot a test flight as Vietnam-era hero
DAVID TURNER, Correspondent
History and myth often intersect and with some very interesting results. The "hero" -- the self-sacrificing soul who turns battles, alters events and provides an example for generations unborn -- is a staple in the ingredients that make for a whacking good tale. From Horatio at the bridge, to Stonewall Jackson at Manassas to the flag-raising at Iwo Jima all merge the grandiosity of history with the humility of individual fame. Every war has its noble practitioners who place their own well-being at the service of others.
Vietnam has provided few examples that have been celebrated by the public. Indeed it was during that war that the "anti-hero" became vogue. Joseph Heller and James Jones, celebrators of the lonely individualist of World War II, set the examples that pervaded in Vietnam. For veterans of Vietnam, heroic examples were often pushed by their own actions rather than easily recognized by the public.
Robert Coram has tried to remedy this by placing upfront his own example of a Vietnam-era hero. His pick -- Col. George "Bud" Day -- is not well-known, but seems worthy of the honor. Day was a prisoner of war in North Vietnam from 1967 to 1973 and because of his fortitude and bravery while in captivity he earned the Congressional Medal of Honor. Indeed he became one of the most highly decorated officers in American history. He became a champion not only of Vietnam vets, but also all veterans when he opposed Clinton-era cuts of some benefits to those who served in the armed forces.
Coram's biography "American Patriot: The Life and Wars of Colonel Bud Day" is unabashedly hagiographical. For Coram, Day represented all that is admirable: duty, honor and country. Day, born in the poorer area of Sioux Falls, Iowa, enlisted in 1942 in the Marines and later, thanks to the G.I. Bill, earned a law degree. As a husband he was exemplary, marrying his sweetheart, Doris, and adopting children. He was not the kind of Air Force (he changed services in the 1950s) pilot that slipped out of his flight-suit and into the officer's club; he went home. If character counted, Day possessed it in spades.
He made his way in the service in an unusual way. Despite the title "the wars of Colonel Bud Day," he actually saw combat in only one. As a Marine, he was often sick and did not see a day of combat in World War II. He also did not fight in Korea -- he was slated to go, but the war ended. Before Vietnam, Day's greatest claim of heroism was when his plane crashed over Woodbridge, England, in 1956. He ejected but his chute did not open. Day went down 300 feet on his seat and experienced a hard landing. As Coram puts it, he was "the American bloke who ejected from a jet with no parachute and lived to tell about it."
This accident conformed to Day's pattern of near misses good and bad. Day was denied memberships of the Sioux City Bar association, because of both his social class and the fact that he had illegally discharged a firearm in the city limits. He was met with the snobbery of the old order that was often shown returning veterans. Robert Hutchins of the University of Chicago once dismissed G.I. Bill students as "educational hoboes," implying that they brought the deficiencies of the working class into the hallowed halls of academia. However, Day was undaunted, later earning a master's degree in international relations at St. Louis University and studying under the former Austrian Chancellor Kurt Von Schuschnigg. Despite all obstacles placed before him, Day managed to complete every task with honor.
Day's greatest trial was yet to come. Up to 1967, aside from the air crash, his career had been as a fairly typical officer journeying from base to base. When he went to Vietnam, he experienced his first combat situation. He was a part of the "Misty" squadron, which went exclusively into North Vietnam to identify targets for bombers. It was a risky and dangerous assignment, as Day found out when he was shot down in August 1967. His actions afterward were extraordinary: He escaped his captors and, despite severe injuries, managed to make it back into South Vietnam. However, hours away from his base, he was recaptured and sent to an old French prison renamed Hoa Lo or the "Hanoi Hilton" to the inmates.
Indeed, Day literally went through the tortures of the damned. And he never broke, denouncing the guards as barbaric, knowing all the while he was to be severely punished as a result. During his imprisonment he met and cultivated a friendship with John McCain, a brash and profane fighter pilot. At first Day, a rather puritanical fellow, was put off by McCain's accounts of his sexual conquests. But soon Day realized that behind all that braggadocio, McCain was tough and defiant. McCain became awe-struck by an officer tougher than he was. As a fellow POW Larry Guarino put it, McCain "wanted to grow up and be Bud Day."
For the prisoners in the North, a world of horrors was opened up. One guard, nicknamed "the bug," brutalized prisoners regularly, apparently to little effect. But some American prisoners broke and collaborated with the enemy. Others suffered the stigma of early release. Norris Overly, for instance, helped to nurse both McCain and Day back to health. Yet because he was freed by the North Vietnamese in February 1968, he was branded by Day and McCain as a recipient of the "fink release program." When these prisoners tried to horn in on the celebrations for the POWs in 1973, other veterans of the "Hilton" protested.
Coram's account of Vietnam has a tendency to blur the larger conflict with the undoubted sacrifices of the Vietnam POWs. Indeed he slides into mythology. For instance, he declares that after the Tet offensive the North Vietnamese "had been virtually destroyed as a fighting force." Although the Viet Cong were damaged, the North Vietnamese regulars were able to launch major action throughout 1968. And Coram's version of the Christmas bombing in 1972 is simply at variance with the facts. Although the last day of the bombing showed no losses, in between the North Vietnamese shot down 26 aircraft, including an unprecedented 15 B-52s. And it was all in vain. As John Negroponte put it, "we bombed the North Vietnamese into accepting our concessions."
That Day and McCain suffered to no good result is impossible for Coram to accept. He falls into denouncing the Jane Fondas and the war protesters, while engaging in propagating the urban legends of how the freaks harassed the troops. This is unfortunate because the account he gives of Day's sacrifices is impressive. Of course Day was so embittered that he switched from a lifelong "yellow dog" Democrat to a Republican. He despised President Bill Clinton and persisted in believing in a betrayal of America's best efforts in Vietnam. Day lionized Richard Nixon who, along with his paladin Henry Kissinger, conceded that North Vietnam could keep troops in the South after a withdrawal of American forces. Day persists, like many of his Vietnam comrades, in believing that the war was won and victory squandered. Given his sufferings and courage, no one has more deservedly earned the right to believe what he wants. However, myth is a dangerous way to interpret history.
(David Turner is chair of the history and political science department at Davis & Elkins College in Elkins, W.Va.)
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