Mike Scruggs
March 31, 2012, was a day that will live forever large in my memory. It was a day for which I shall be tremendously grateful as long as I live. Yesterday, I was one of more than 170 Vietnam Veterans and family members from Henderson County who were bussed to the Vietnam Veterans Homecoming Celebration at the Charlotte Motor Speedway by HonorAir. There we were joined by 65,000 other Vietnam Veterans and their families for as warm a welcome as any veterans have ever received from their country. It was the start of a welcome home movement for Vietnam Veterans that while delayed for more than 40 years was deeply appreciated by the veterans and their families.
Forty-five years ago I was a young Air Force Captain recovering from wounds received as a result of an air-to-ground battle with North Vietnamese anti-aircraft batteries along the border between Laos and North Vietnam. Both crewmembers of our A-26 attack-bomber narrowly survived a low altitude bailout from our burning aircraft just before it burst into a bright ball of flame that lit up the night sky seconds later. Unfortunately, the debris from our exploding aircraft hit another A-26 that had come in close to us to advise us on our battle damage. That holocaust of fire and debris killed our two best friends and seared the night of February 22, 1967, in my memory forever. We would lose many more friends in the 606th Air Commando squadron and other units in the coming months and years.
I spent the next five months in Air Force hospitals and did not get back on flying status for nearly a year. The first few months I dreamed about the February 22 incident and the death of my two friends almost every night. But the time in the hospital and physical therapy also gave me time to read and think. I did not feel deserving of such a miraculous survival, but it strengthened my Christian faith. I knew that whatever came up in life, no matter how desperate the situation, I was still in God’s hands. Just before I bailed out of the barely flyable burning A-26, I recalled a favorite Bible verse of many aviators, (Matthew 10: 29): “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny. Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father.” As I hurled myself from the cockpit to the burning right wing of the aircraft, I prayed: “Lord, into to your hands I commit my spirit.” (See Psalm 31: 5.) For many months I considered what purposes God had in snatching me from that fire in the night sky. This gradually changed my way of thinking about everything.
Yesterday, I heard another Vietnam Veteran say, “Ever since Vietnam, I consider almost every problem small in comparison.” That is the way I feel, too. It has guided me through many hardships and problems.
I left the Air Force to go to graduate school at Stanford in California in 1969. Although I was glad to be alive, to have a wife and young son, and to have a potentially prosperous future ahead of me, the anti-war, anti-military, and anti-patriotic attitudes that prevailed in the San Francisco Bay area kept my stomach in knots. I had moved from the war front in Southeast Asia to the American Front, and that was almost as hard for me as the constant dangers of combat missions.
On an almost daily basis, I heard the propaganda of Hanoi and Moscow preached as truth by misinformed students and leftist activists on college campuses. Most of academia and the media allied themselves with the Left. It was a gut-wrenching experience for me. .
The late Harry G. Summers Jr., Colonel of Infantry, and distinguished faculty member of the Army War College, often called people’s attention to the fact that considerable differences in the treatment of the Vietnam War can be seen in the literature published in academia and that published by the veterans of the war. The veterans fought bravely for what most of them believed was a noble cause. I still believe it was a noble cause.
A majority of the American people never sided with the Left, but somehow the Left’s continuous propaganda became the unchallenged wisdom of academia and the media. Millions finally accepted this misinformed and distorted view of the war. This was a punishing blow to its veterans. Many began to believe the worst about their country and themselves. But truth trampled to the ground and spat upon by its enemies is still the truth. In God’s time, it will rise again in triumph.
When I saw the fire trucks and American flags and scores of people cheering as the busses filled with Vietnam Veterans and their families passed under the overpasses on U.S. Highway 74 in Shelby and other towns on the way to Charlotte, I could not hold back my tears. There were more teary-eyed veterans and family members as we arrived back in Hendersonville to scores of flags and hundreds of cheering people. It was a great day for Vietnam Veterans, but it was a great day for America, too.
Thank you, HonorAir and Jeff Miller. Thank you, Charlotte Speedway; USO; Patriot Guard Riders; and Rolling Thunder. Thank you, Fire and Rescue Teams; Police; and Sheriff’s deputies. Thank you, wonderful and patriotic Henderson County. Thank you, America!
Mike Scruggs is the author of Lessons from the Vietnam War: Truths the Media Never Told You.
