Bear Taylor 
RIPPLE SALVO… #747… ON THIS DAY FIFTY YEARS AGO LIEUTENANT COLONEL TED GUY BECAME A POW OF THE NORTH VIETNAMESE WHEN HIS F-4 PHANTOM WENT DOWN IN LAOS… From 22 March 1968 to 16 March 1973 (Operation Home Coming) Colonel Guy was one of the most senior of American POWs. He commanded all the POWs downed in Laos, Cambodia and South Vietnam held at “Plantation Gardens.” His oral history is an inspiring record of fortitude:
http://www.pownetwork.org/bios/g/g065.htm
From 1991 until he was laid to rest in Arlington Cemetery in June 1999 he was the leader and commanding voice for “those we left behind.” Humble Host is honored to focus this post on the extraordinary service of Ted Guy on the 50th anniversary of an event that so changed his life and service for others… I quote from his oral testimony…
“Until 1991 , I was a firm supporter of the US Government’s position that all Vietnam POWs were home and were released during Operation Homecoming. In fact, I spoke at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery on Memorial Day 1991, expressing my support for the USG position… My message was always the same. There are no more POWs…. The reason that I felt so strongly about the MIAs and POWs and that no more were alive was simple. As a combat veteran of two wars–Korea and Vietnam and 26 years of service, many of which were in key command positions, I was certain that my government would not lie to me. I knew that we would never abandon any fighting man or woman if there was any doubt what so ever that he or she might be alive and missing as a result of combat. The thought that anyone was left behind was inconceivable to me. I could spend an hour telling you why I changed my mind, but let it suffice to say that I did in the summer of 1991. I changed it 180-degrees and believe me, it was extremely difficult to do. But the evidence to me was overwhelming. Men were left behind.”…. Continued in RIPPLE SALVO below…
GOOD MORNING: Day SEVEN HUNDRED FORTY-SEVEN of a remembrance of an air war fought by brave men fifty years ago called ROLLING THUNDER…
HEAD LINES from The New York Times on a rainy Friday, 22 MARCH 1968…
GROUND WAR & KHE SANH: Page 1: “TOTAL AMERICANS KILLED-IN-ACTION EXCEEDS 20,000–FOE SHELLS ALLIED BASE–338 AMERICANS ARE KILLED IN SOUTH IN WEEK–LOWEST TOLL SINCE ENEMY DRIVE”… “…The Vietcong fired several 122-mmrockets into the Bienhoa air base 20 miles northeast of Saigon early today, but there was little damage and casualties were light. They also shelled Binh Thuy air field 95 miles to the southwest in the Mekong Delta with similar results. Bienhoa is one of the largest bases for United States jets and cargo planes in South Vietnam. At the daily briefing on military affairs a United States military spokesman reported that 336 Americans died on the battlefield last week, bringing the total killed-in-action in the war to 20,096. The number of American deaths was down from the 509 reported the previous week. For the first time since the enemy Lunar New Year offensive began January 30, the total has dropped below 400. The decrease in deaths reflected the lessened fighting throughout the country since the peak weeks in February. On the battlefield yesterday American infantrymen operated on the coastal plains near Hoian, 360 miles northeast of Saigon, reported having killed 112 enemy soldiers. There were no American casualties. Meanwhile, 10 miles north of Hue, armed helicopters swept in on a group of North Vietnamese soldiers and reported having killed 45 of them. In the Central Highlands 15 miles south of Dakto, American paratroops discovered an enemy cache containing 50 122mm mortar shells and 24 122mmrockets…In the operation to clear the Vietcong out of the areas surrounding Saigon, armed helicopters sank 27 sampans and killed 14 of the enemy on a canal four miles south of the capital. To the north, enemy gunners shot down a Marine helicopter 13 miles southwest of Danang killing the four men aboard.”…
Page 1: “ROCKEFELLER NOT TO RUN, BUT WOULD ACCEPT A DRAFT–Will Speak Out On Issues–G.O.P. Surprised–Saddened Supporters stay Uncommitted For The President–Decision Leaves Nixon A Only Active G.O.P. Aspirant”… Page 1: McCarthy Strives To Bolster Staff–Seeks Professional Aides–Kennedy Men Attempt To Raid His Organization”… Page 1: Robert F. Kennedy Charges Johnson Is Divisive”… Page 1: “60% In Los Angles War Poll Oppose U.S. Policies”… Page 7: “JOHNSON AFFIRMS VIETNAM RESOLVE–DECLARES WE’LL OF U.S. WON’T BREAK UNDER FRUSTRATION”… Page 3: “Peace Corps Recruiters Find Most college Student Apathetic–Draft Dodgers Mix With Altruistics In Seeking Posts”…
22 MARCH 1968…THE PRESIDENT’s DAILY BRIEF (CIA/TS-SI declas in part) VIETNAM: Intercepts suggest at least 14 and perhaps as many as 16 infiltration groups passes through the Thanh Hoa area of North Vietnam in the fist two weeks of March. Four of these units reported strengths to higher headquarters which averaged out to about a battalion apiece. If the others were of roughly the dame size, we would guess that close to the equivalent of two divisions came through Thanh Hoa… ISRAEL-JORDAN: The border is quiet. Israeli troops have withdrawn after the most serious military operational since the June 1967 war. Casualties seem to have been fairly heavy on both sides although accurate figures are hard to come by. The Israelis claim they killed 150 saboteurs and inflicted substantial losses on regular Jordanian Army units. In addition to one aircraft and several armored vehicles, Tel Aviv admits to losing 21 killed and 70 wounded… In the United Nations, the odds are that the Security council will not go along with Jordan’s demand for punitive measures against Israel… CZECHOSLOVAKIA: President Novtny is all but out. He has indicated he is ready to resign, and the Central Committee has announced it is ready to allow him to shed the burdens of office...NORTH VIETNAM… Swedish Soundings in Hanoi. Recent Swedish probings of North Vietnam’s position on negotiations evidently turned up nothing new. Ambassador Petri, Sweden’s envoy to Peking, visited Hanoi as part of this effort in late February and early March. Petri was told by the North Vietnamese a year and a half ago that if the bombing is stopped, “we know what we will have to do.” He says this ambiguous statement still characterizes the basic North Vietnamese position. The leaders in North Vietnam firmly rejected the concept of reciprocity and said the President’s San Antonio formula is unacceptable because it would be “capitulation.”… NORTH VIETNAM: Hanoi May Be Intensifying Effort To Influence American Opinion. (Influence our elections???) In recent weeks North Vietnam has influential correspondents…Writer Mary McCarthy and Professor Franz Schurmann are now in Hanoi, and American newsmen William Baggs and Harry Ashmore have been given permission to make another trip. Walter Cronkite has also apparently received permission to enter North Vietnam….
STATE DEPARTMENT, Office of the Historian, Historical Documents, Foreign Affairs, 1964-68, Vietnam, Volume VI: Two documents dated 22 March 1968 are linked…. Document 149 is a “Note of Meeting” that included many of the Wise Men to continue discussions sharpening the President’s upcoming speech to the nation delivered on 31 March… Three Stars on the HH’s rating scale… Document 150 is a lengthy recording of a 22 March telephone conversation between the President and his old friend Senator Richard Russell. It opens: “Dick, I was giving some thought to some decisions here and I wanted to see if you thought they were all right.”… A rare look at two men in frank and honest conversation. FIVE Stars…
Document 149 https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v06/d149
Document 150 https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v06/d150
22 MARCH 1968… OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER…New York Times (23 Mar reporting 22 Mar ops) … Page 1: “U.S. JETS BOMB RAIL YARDS AND SUPPLY LINES IN NORTH”... “United States fighter-bomber pilots carried out more than 100 raids on North Vietnam on Thursday for the second consecutive day and continued to batter their supply lines. They also attacked three air fields and raised the two-day total of trucks damaged or destroyed to 165. In further bombings yesterday, the pilots attacked a railroad yard 18 miles from the China, two other yards and a siding on the two principal rail lines that run northeast and northwest from Hanoi into China.
“PILOTS USE RADAR… Clouds as low as 1,000 feet and haze have reduced visibility to two to five miles prevented an accurate assessment of the damage that resulted from the 118 missions in North Vietnam, a United States, military spokesman said. American pilots made 119 raids on the North the previous day. Because of the weather or because they struck at night, many of the pilots dropped their bombs by radar guidance. Air Force pilots used radar to bomb the Langgiai railroad yard on the line northeast of Hanoi, 18 miles from China American spokesman said it was impossible for them to assess the damage. The pilots who attacked the trucks were operating visually, anything moving on the roads leading to South Vietnam. Navy pilots reported having knocked out 25 trucks and an armored car south of the coastal city of Vinh. Air Force fliers attacked trucks in twos and threes north of the Mugia Pass near the Laotian border, and just above the demilitarized zone that straddles the border between North and South Vietnam. Air Force F-4 Phantoms struck the Langdaing railroad yard 64 miles northeast of Hanoi with 500-pound bombs and F-105s dropped 750-pound bombs open the Dongcuong siding and the Somtra yard on the line to the northwest, 102 and 94 miles from the North Vietnamese capital. There was no report on the damage in these strikes.
RUNWAY IS CUT… Navy pilots cut the main runway and taxiway at the Biathoung airfield 22 miles northwest of the coastal city of Thanhoa…The amount of damage to Kienan airfield six miles southwest of Haiphong, the major North Vietnamese port, and the Vinh airfield, 60 miles south of Thanh Hoa was not known.
“Vietnam: Air Losses” (Chris Hobson) There was one fixed wing aircraft lost in Southeast Asia on 22 March 1968…
(1) LCOL THEODORE WILSON GUY and MAJOR DONAVAN LOREN LYON were flying an F-4C of the 559th TFS and 12th TFW out of Cam Ranh Bay on a Steel Tiger mission to strike a gun position located on Route 9 between Khe Sanh and Tchepone. They were downed on their third ordnance delivery pass on the target by an explosion that their Phantom to disintegrate. MAJOR LYON was probably killed immediately as LCOL GUY was ejected clear of the debris by the explosion to parachute into the target area. LCOL GUY spent the remainder of the war as a Prisoner of War, and that’s another story.
MAJOR LYON’s body was never found and the Secretary of the Air Force made a “presumptive finding of death”–Killed-in-Action. Left behind, on the battlefield… and remembered with admiration and respect on the 50th anniversary of his last flight…
RIPPLE SALVO… #747… AMONG THE BRAVE… COLONEL THEODORE WILSON GUY, USAF… EXTRAORDINARY HEROISM… the AIR FORCE CROSS… 25 JANUARY 1972 TO 25 MAY 1972… NORTH VIETNAM…
“On 22 March 1968, then Lieutenant Colonel Te Guy was shot down in Laos and taken prisoner–but not before killing two North Vietnamese soldiers. Described as ‘a real tough nut…lean and mean…sort of short, maybe five foot eight, thin with a lantern jaw and brown hair neatly combed and parted,’ Colonel Guy was the senior responsible officer in several smaller camps where most of the other prisoners were enlisted men. (re: Honor Bound, p. 565) This leadership role made him a target and he suffered severely at the hands of the North Vietnamese. In January 1972, for example, Guy was ‘stripped of his clothes and flogged and beaten over a period of five days to force information from him on organization and communication methods’ in the camp. He finally agreed to write an apology for his transgressions and to record an oral statement for the camp radio. Ted Guy returned home on 16 March 1973. He died on 23 May 1999 and was interred at Arlington national Cemetery.”…
COLONEL GUY WAS AWARDED THE AIR FORCE CROSS for “… extraordinary heroism in military operations against an opposing armed force as a Prisoner of War in North Vietnam from 25 January 1972 to 25 May 1972. During the period, Colonel Guy was subjected to maximum punishment and torture by Vietnamese guards to obtain a detailed confession of escape plans, policies, and orders that he had issued as the senior ranking officer in the prisoner of war camp which he was the commander, and the communications methods used by the Americans interned in the camp. He withstood punishment and gave nothing of value to the Vietnamese while sustaining many wounds to his body.” (The Air Force Cross: A History of Extraordinary Heroism, Borch and Floyd, p. 55)
Colonel Guy logged 287 combat missions, including 101 F-84 missions in the Korean conflict…
Among Colonel Guy’s other awards: two Distinguished Service Medals, two Silver Stars, the Legion of Merit, six Distinguished Flying Crosses, two Bronze Stars for Valor, ten Air Medals and two Purple Hearts…. oohrah…
In a statement Colonel guy submitted in conjunction with Congressional Testimony in 1995, Humble host has pulled the following…
“Anyone that can add, subtract, and figure percentages should be shocked by the great dissimilarity between the number missing and the number returned that were captured in Laos versus those captured in North Vietnam. I am certain that many can argue with my figures, but they were extracted from official listings. For simplicity’s sake, I will deal just with Laos and North Vietnam from the time of our OFFICIAL involvement–the Gulf of Tonkin Incident (4 August 1964) until the completion of Operation Homecoming. Rather than analyze the various categories (1 through 5), I looked at the total number that have been listed as missing in Laos and the total number listed as missing in North Vietnam. The first American missing in Laos was Charles J. Duffy, and this incident was 13 January 1961. The first American missing in North Vietnam was Everett Alvarez and the date of his incident was 5 August 1965. Between 4 August 1963 and the completion of Operation Homecoming, my records indicate that a total of 587 were listed as missing in Laos and 1,281 were listed as missing in North Vietnam. If one looks at the number returned during Operation Homecoming, it must raise the question, why the difference?
“Total missing in Laos: 587… Total returned during operation homecoming: 11 (Does not include Capt. Robert White, who was released 1 April 1973. The 11 includes one Canadian. The 11 also includes myself, listed as released by the NFL). 21 were listed missing in Laos prior to 4 August 1964. Percentage of missing vs. returned= 1.98%…
“Total missing in North Vietnam 1,281 … Total returned during Operation Homecoming 472 … Percentage of missing vs. returned= 36.8%… “
Colonel Guy also testified that “based on the large number of NVA regulars I observed in Laos, I submit that many, many more were captured by North Vietnamese forces.”… “I also believe their forces were dominant in Laos.” He concludes the POWs were under total control of the North Vietnamese, not just the 11, but many, many more, and the POWs were “tokens” “that were in their long-range plans to be released only if pressured. Colonel Guy also makes a strong case for the “will and ability of POWs to survive for a “very long time under the harsh conditions.” “I am convinced that with high morale and determination, the American fighting man can survive indefinitely: even under the most austere atmosphere.”… Colonel Guy’s concluding comment: “It is possible to survive for long periods of time under the most severe conditions. I am convinced that the majority of my command (more than 50 POWs) could still be alive today (1995) if we had not been released.”…
Colonel Ted Guy worked relentlessly on behalf of “those left behind” and leaves a legacy in the organization he established to enable any and all to participate in keeping the missing and POW issues alive. Humble Host encourages readers to check out “OPERATION JUST CAUSE: For as long as it takes”…
On this 50th anniversary of Colonel Guy’s capture, RTR offers a tribute to a gallant warrior, now gone, “glory gained and duty done,” is this poem written by Dennis Johnson to honor “Colonel Ted Guy, Retired, Senior Ranking Officer POW/MIA…”
HAWK
“A long time ago, in a land far away,
There was a war that nobody won.
Among the losers were truth, honor and decency.
There were individual losses and gains
Amidst the napalm and chemical rains.
But the column racking up the points
Was the one that was labeled ‘Shame.’
We turned our backs on our soldiers
Blaming them to ‘policy’
When all they did was fight the fight
We sent them to across the sea.
It was the first war fought with cameras rolling
‘Students protest,’
‘Soldiers die’
It was enough to make a grown man cry.
In all this carnage there were heroes
Living to a simple creed
Of ‘Duty, Honor, Country’
Who knew freedom isn’t free.
Some made it home.
Some made it home in boxes.
Some never made it home.
None made it home unchanged.
For some were POW.
And some were MIA.
And some were MIA.
And Some may well be waiting
Unto this very day. Abandoned.
Hawk was a man.
More easily said than done.
For he met every challenge head-on
And never let us down.
He led by example,
He did not falter.
He helped those around him
Understand the words ‘Stand Tall.’
For years he was a POW,
He lived it, ate it, slept it, endured it!
Hanoi Hilton, General Delivery.
After coming home, he wanted to believe his country
Would not betray it’s soldiers.
He argued for years
Against there being POW/MIA left behind,
But the mass of evidence convinced him
Of something that ripped at his soul,
Until he became a leader in the fight to
Bring them home.
He is legend.
For he is Truth,
He is Honor,
He is decency.
He is Warrior still.”
“We are in mourning for a Hero died today.” (23 May 1999) Dennis Johnson…
Lest we forget… Bear
