wet dog

Thanks. This subject has been on my mind lately. I was visiting with my old man in Wyoming who served as a AF airmen during the Korean War. All my life, he has been soft spoken and reserved, must be a generational thing. His older half brothers served in the OSS/WWII, I met them before they died when I was just a kid. Perhaps it was these men and my father who provided the basics in me developing my own opinions on the subject of medals.

Finally, after so many years of trying to pull out of my father a few stories I could share with his grandchildren, did I learn that my father went down over the sea of Japan. While flying medical troop transport carrier of wounded US Army Infantry soldiers, flying from Korea to Japan for additional medical services. The pilot informing that all must bail out before crashing, my father aided the other airmen with parachutes, and a few patients that could jump. Having to leave the majority to die with the wreckage. My father was the last to leave, just prior to exiting the aircraft, he noticed a friend kneeling beside a litter offering a humble prayer to a wounded soldier. My dad said it was time to go. The Airmen said he was not leaving, that these wounded should not die alone. My father informed me that he considered staying himself, but only for a moment. An engine exploded, the aircraft rocked and my father fell out the door. The pilot, lone airmen and wounded went down.

By chance, a Swedish fishing ship recovered all who jumped. Water temperatures were so low, that life expectency was under 5 minutes. The pilot had plotted a ship by radar and kept the plane aloft for as long as he could.

According to my mother, my father had spent all these remaining years trying to locate the manifest for that flight: flight crew, airmen and wounded. He finally gave up only speculating that a manifest was never submitted by ground crews.

Heros, all of them.