CHAPTER 2

NAKHON PHANOM

MARCH–SEPTEMBER 1965

INDIAN HAWTHORNS CIRCLED by liriope already showed their spring foliage, and azaleas neared peak bloom across much of the Deep South on Sunday, March 21, 1965. In Selma, Alabama, over 3,200 demonstrators began a peaceful march toward Montgomery, the state capital, to protest voter discrimination. Baptist minister Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., at the head of the enormous crowd, began the walk by asking everyone to pray for him. It was a day marked with prayer across the nation as news of the event spread.

On that same day, the Curtises drove to church together for the last time before Jerry’s departure for Thailand. A Baptist deacon, Jerry intended to solicit prayers from his church family for his own well-being. Since arriving at England Air Force Base in Louisiana two years previously, he had functioned as detachment commander for local base rescue. Horseshoe Drive Baptist in nearby Alexandria served as his family’s home church, and both Jerry and Terry found ways to serve.

Most of the congregation knew about Jerry’s orders to Southeast Asia. And on his last Sunday, many made a point to seek him out with a promise to pray. Working his way to the children’s area, he dropped off his four-year-old daughter, Lori, in the prekindergarten class and corralled his seven-year-old son, Tom, to the first graders’ classroom.

Then the thirty-two-year-old captain headed toward a group of high school students he had taught for over a year to teach his final lesson. Once he finished, he closed his Bible, purposely leaving time to share about his circumstances.

“This is my last Sunday here as your teacher for a few months. As most of you know, I’m a pilot in the Air Force. I fly helicopters, and I’ve volunteered for a TDY assignment, which means temporary duty —120 days flying search and rescue in a war zone. So I’d like to ask you to pray for my wife, Terry, and our children. I’ll need your prayers too —pray for me while I’m gone. I’ll see you when I get back in the fall.”

The teenagers listened quietly. Their teacher showed no outward anxiety, only his usual optimism.

Later, Jerry would admit he never realized what an enormous task he had relegated to them that morning, because by the time he returned to Horseshoe Drive Baptist Church in Alexandria, Louisiana —eight years later —these students had graduated from high school, finished college, found jobs, met future spouses, gotten married, and started families of their own.

Nakhon Phanom Royal Thai Air Force Base (NKP) became known as the “worst base in Thailand but the best we had in Vietnam.” The latter accolade developed primarily because of three things, as the familiar real estate adage goes: “location, location, location.” NKP sat about 5 miles from the Laotian border defined by the Mekong River, 75 miles from North Vietnam, and 230 miles, as the crow flies, from downtown Hanoi. Over its thirteen-year history, NKP would be involved in numerous major events in the war in Southeast Asia, including a variety of rescue and support missions.

But its ideal location could not overcome a quickly escalating conflict that caught the Air Force, according to respected military historian Earl H. Tilford Jr., with inadequate personnel, nonexistent doctrine, and ill-suited aircraft. Nowhere was the latter more evident than in the helicopters used for extracting downed crewmen from jungle terrain at the beginning of the war.

Built initially for US Navy at-sea rescues, the HH-43, known as the Huskie, primarily served the US Air Force in assisting firefighters, rescue crews, and personnel at crash sites. It was a serviceable machine for its original purpose. But in a war zone with a completely different type of rescue mission, it had three or four remarkable drawbacks, the most adverse being zero armor and zero armament.

Since space inside was limited, fixed machine guns couldn’t be mounted to the floor. If a downed crewman needed to be air-evaced on a litter, every inch would be required. The crews themselves began carrying AR-15s, along with their .38 pistols.

To further complicate rescue efforts, hoist cables measured 100 feet. This was usually not long enough to reach the ground through the tall, dense jungle canopy, which often averaged over 125 feet in height.

These weren’t the only limitations. The HH-43 had a top speed of about 120 knots. During a rescue attempt, however, it had to be slowed considerably throughout the entire process, mostly due to the extreme difficulty of spotting survivors in such heavily forested terrain. These helicopters became easy targets even for small-arms fire from below, and with a range radius of only seventy-five miles, the distance of missions across Laos and into Vietnam could push the helicopter’s fuel capabilities to the limit.

When Jerry arrived in April 1965, the war was already ramping up, as was the importance of the NKP base. When Jerry was tapped to act as courier for top secret material at Travis AFB on his way over —handcuffed to a briefcase and wearing a holstered .45 —it only served to emphasize he was headed to a war zone of increasing strategic importance.

As Jerry climbed out of the C-130 that had shuttled him from Bangkok to his new assignment at NKP, he walked past one of the pararescue jumpers. “Welcome to ‘Naked Fanny,’ sir,” the young airman said. He was wearing a canvas safari hat with his flight suit sleeves rolled to the elbows, and he grinned as he gave Jerry a hasty salute.

These PJs, as they were called, were known for having a bit of an attitude, which served them well due to the dangerous elements of their mission. They rode the line down into the jungle to help airmen too wounded to help themselves. These well-trained paramedics could assess a person’s condition, lend assistance, and tend to more extensive treatment once the wounded were hoisted into the choppers. The young PJ pointed Jerry toward the center of Nakhon Phanom Royal Thai Air Force Base, which was given the more memorable nickname “Naked Fanny” by previous American forces.

At this early point in the war, the outpost consisted primarily of a few dirt alleys flanked by wooden hooches with tin roofs. The door to one sported a torn piece of cardboard with a rabbit’s head dressed in a black bow tie, hand drawn with colored markers. The sign read Officers’ Club. Wooden sidewalks everywhere helped those stationed at the base to avoid mud during monsoon season. Later in the war, the base grew sizably as air traffic demands escalated.

But for now, three Huskies formed the extent of “firepower.” Jerry walked over to where the “birds” were sitting. It didn’t take much to see what the limitations were. In fact, one helicopter had a bullet hole in the Plexiglas between the rudders directly in front of the pilot’s seat, just in case someone needed a reminder. A crew before his arrival had added pieces of quarter-inch steel in an attempt to reinforce the seats themselves. There was very little between the fliers in the air and the guns on the ground.

Despite the challenges and limitations, many downed crewmen already had been pulled from the jungle floor to safety, arriving back at NKP as if nothing untoward had happened. The rescued fliers owed their good fortune primarily to the sheer skill and courage of the Combat Search and Rescue (CSAR) crews to perform these missions.

After Jerry had been there for several weeks, he was eating lunch in the mess tent one day when a C-130 flew in. A fighter pilot got off the plane, then located Jerry. Placing a hand on his shoulder, the pilot said, “Thanks for my life.” Jerry looked up to see one of the F-105 pilots he recently had rescued after the pilot had been shot down in the Savannakhet region of Laos.

“Great to see you again,” said Jerry, “this time under better circumstances!”

“If it hadn’t been for you, I might not be here now at all,” the F-105 pilot said with a grin.

Jerry remembered the day of the rescue, when a Navy A-6 had been shot down near Tchepone, an area well-defended with antiaircraft artillery. A Marine helicopter had been launched to try to locate and rescue the two men but had to fly back for refueling before finding them.

In the meantime the F-105 pilot was returning to his base from a strike when he heard about the downed crew. The fighter pilot had decided to fly in and take a look. As he was coming out of the heavy clouds, he himself got shot down. Fortunately, he had been able to eject successfully, but now he also had found himself stranded in enemy territory.

It was at this point Jerry and his crew had been launched from NKP. “Do you remember how dicey the weather was that day?” Jerry asked the fighter pilot. “A couple of Navy A-1s radioed me and said if I could fly with them in formation, they thought they could take me to where you were.”

“Yeah, I remember you told me that. I’m sure glad they got you to me,” said the fighter pilot, “or else I’d still be there!”

Jerry thought about flying into Laos to rescue the man standing in front of him now. “When we got to where they thought you were, I looked down and saw a large village. That was a gut-wrenching moment —I had no idea what to expect from that point forward,” said Jerry, remembering it had been impossible to know whether there might be antiaircraft artillery in villages or other ground fire from enemy soldiers hiding among the buildings.

“I spotted that clearing and decided to chance it. I told my crew chief just to haul you in when he got his hands on you,” laughed Jerry, who had come down to a five-foot hover, never touching the ground so they could take off as soon as the downed pilot was hustled on board.

“Man, when I saw your chopper coming down, I’ve never been so glad to see anything in my life,” said the fighter pilot. “I ran like crazy and just jumped up —your mechanic grabbed me and pulled me in!”

They both enjoyed reminiscing about the successful rescue mission. Before he left, he reached over and shook Jerry’s hand once more. “Thanks again. I’ll never forget you.”

Jerry watched the F-105 pilot exit the mess hall. Such a moment made all risk to his own life worthwhile.

Saving American lives, however, didn’t comprise the only rescue missions Jerry participated in at NKP. One day an emergency call came in from Udorn Royal Thai Air Force Base in northern Thailand. Help was needed in assisting a very wealthy Thai family who had been assaulted while traveling in their vehicle.

“We’ve got a call for assistance to some locals who’ve been robbed —and I’ll need one of the PJs to come along,” Jerry announced to his crew. He hurriedly directed them to their helicopter and then flew about twenty minutes to a deserted north-south highway. As he approached the area, he made a tricky landing between two fences on the narrow road paved with laterite pebbles. Several Thai policemen were already there.

“What have we got?” Jerry approached quickly and saw a man lying on the ground.

“Man shot. Can you take to hospital?” The policeman led Jerry over to where some family members were pacing anxiously, some kneeling beside their wounded relative. In Thailand, wealth often is displayed by gold —usually in the form of personal jewelry —and lots of it. The shine creates an enticing target.

On this particular occasion, robbers had run down the car, and during the heist, they shot the patriarch of the family for resisting. Though the man was conscious, it looked like a very serious wound judging from the amount of blood on his clothing and the pavement.

Jerry motioned immediately for his crew to carry the injured man to the chopper. In moments they were airborne again, flying the senior Thai gentleman to Udorn for medical attention. Meanwhile, Jerry’s PJ began attending the man’s wounds.

But before Jerry had left the scene, the other Thai family members expressed heartfelt thanks for his help, embracing him and touching his arms. This was not the only time Jerry experienced the gratitude of the people of Thailand.

On one assignment, he also learned how they viewed important symbols of liberty. One of Jerry’s missions in-country was to fly explosive ordinance disposal teams into remote areas to check for unexploded bombs. Usually flight surgeons went along to hold “sick calls” —a way of offering treatment to the Thai living in nearby villages. These sick calls resulted in families bringing their children for free exams.

While the surgeons tended to patients, Jerry used the time on the ground to pass out little wrapped candies to the children. On this occasion, he had numerous small American flags on wooden sticks to hand out as well.

Jerry always had enjoyed having children around him. On this day, he thought of his own kids back home, four and seven years old, and wondered what they were doing. He missed them.

The pilot was having a wonderful time passing out candy and flags when one of the older Thai men hurried up to him. He began yanking the flags out of the children’s hands. Jerry at first thought the man might object to the American symbol for some reason. But when he asked why he took away the flags, the man’s answer caught him by surprise.

“These not toys . . . these not to play with . . . these important, not toys.” The man held the small flags proudly. From then on, Jerry reserved the American flags for the adults and passed out just candy to the children.

The landscape and people in Thailand were exotic and beautiful. Jerry relished times he could participate in any way possible to either deliver assistance to the Thai or create good public relations. His trips into neighboring Laos, however, were remarkable also . . . but for completely different reasons.