Jim Goldsworthy, Columnist
Cumberland Times-News
February 05, 2009 07:52 pm
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Now and then I run across reminders of the past lives I’ve lived in this life, and this one’s name was Frank.
Time was that he and I helped other folks in the Burlington Ruritan cook apple butter, churn homemade ice cream and put on ox roasts, but on this day we were just ordinary shoppers at the Wal-Mart.
Frank and my Keyser High School classmate Jim Bosley once collaborated to form a Boy Scout troop at New Creek, and Frank’s sons were in Vietnam the same time Jim was there. They came home alive, but he didn’t.
I’ve told you about Jim before. He’s the bright, funny, friendly, handsome guy who often walked miles when he was a kid to get to the places where he’d heard folks needed someone to work. He loved to hunt and fish, he was a high school football star and the most popular boy in our class, and he was supposed to marry the girl who today is still like my sister.
Some of our surviving male classmates and I agree that we’d have been proud to say he was our son.
Jim was an Army helicopter pilot, decorated seven times in his seven months in Vietnam.
I’ve met or heard about a number of other folks who’ve earned a living in Army helicopters, including one who waited until we were alone before telling me about the only man he’s ever killed, and another who retired as a captain in the Navy.
Bill Franklin helped develop many of the weapons systems our Navy uses today and was an usher in my church. He couldn’t see very well because of what happened to him one night over the jungles of Vietnam.
Bill was one of the “Seawolves,” Navy pilots and air crew who flew air support for ground missions and took on other harrowing tasks in helicopters the Army had decided were too clapped-out for its own pilots to fly. He made more than 990 carrier landings, and I once asked him if anyone ever wanted to know why he hadn’t made just a few more so he could say he’d broken 1,000.
We knew each other well enough for him to understand the spirit of complete irony in which I asked that question, because there are people who would ask it. He just grinned and laughed. As my English cousins might phrase it, the answer is simply, “Enough is bloody enough.”
On one of Bill’s 620 missions over Vietnam, his helicopter came under ground fire that set off a flare inside the aircraft. People who’ve never seen one of these things can’t appreciate how bright they are — and this happened to Bill and his crew at night, only a few feet away, after their eyes had become adjusted to the darkness.
Despite being unable to see his instruments or anything outside the aircraft, Bill kept it under control while his crew struggled to jettison the burning flare. He returned the aircraft and his crew safely to their base. Over the years, his sight has deteriorated to the point where he is legally blind because of this. He holds a Distinguished Flying Cross.
One of America’s most decorated helicopter pilots died recently in North Carolina. James Newman (he and I never met) was twice recommended for a Medal of Honor but did not receive it. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, America’s second-highest decoration for valor in combat.
According to the Associated Press, Newman’s first nomination for the Medal of Honor came after he rescued four crewmen from a medevac helicopter that crashed on a mountaintop in Laos, where South Vietnamese Rangers were under attack by North Vietnamese troops.
He received a Silver Star for rescuing two other downed fliers in a section of jungle that was so thick he resortede to chopping down small trees with the main rotor blade of his helicopter to in order to land.
A man who served with Newman in the 101st Airborne Division described him as “a man of immeasurable courage who made us all feel invincible.”
I was aware that Jim Bosley had rescued numerous downed aviators, wounded men and others, including a general. Frank told me one of his sons knew him in Vietnam and passed on something I didn’t know about him.
The Americans occasionally sent an unarmed helicopter — what was called a “slick” — to fly low over the jungle in an attempt to draw fire from the enemy. Those who fired at the slick revealed their positions and became targets for the heavily armed gunship helicopters that were flying above and behind the slick.
Acting as a decoy like this wasn’t something for the faint-hearted, but it eliminated people who would kill our ground troops, and Frank said Jim volunteered for it every chance he got.
“He loved it,” Frank said. “He thought he was invulnerable, and nobody could touch him.”
All that changed on Sept. 2, 1967, when Jim’s helicopter — a UH-1D “Huey” nicknamed “California Dreamer” — crashed in heavy fog while he was trying to return some senior officers to their field commands that had come under fire.
It’s impossible to know how many Americans returned alive to their families or were spared years of misery in a Prisoner of War camp because of men like Jim Bosley, Bill Franklin and Jim Newman ... and another much younger man I once met, who did his flying in Iraq.
Jim’s name is engraved on Line 81 of Panel 25 E of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, and his remains are buried near my grandparents Ernest and Nullie Jackson and Uncle Lohr and Aunt Mary Jackson.
Each time I visit them, I stop at Jim’s grave and say to anyone who might be listening that some of us who remain will not allow him to be forgotten. I also say there are many who are still grateful for what he did, including some who might never have met him or even known his name.
And I always add this ... Welcome Home.
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