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The Story of a Pilot and Prisoner During the Vietnam War Interviewer

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The Story of a Pilot and Prisoner During the Vietnam War Interviewer “A Temporary Ordeal”- The Story of a Pilot and Prisoner During the Vietnam War Interviewer: Jack Nelson Interviewee: General David E. Baker, USAF (Ret.) Instructor: Alex Haight Final Submission: 2/13/08 Table of Contents Release Form………………………………………………………………...Pg.2 Statement of Purpose……………………………………………………………………….Pg.3 Biography……………………………………………………………………..Pg.4 Historical Contextualization- “Vietnam: The Causes, the Air War, and Treatment of American Prisoners”...Pg.6-26 Interview Transcription……………………………………………………….Pg.27-46 Recording Log…………………………………………………………………Pg.47 Interview Analysis……………………………………………………………Pg.48-53 Appendix……………………………………………………………………...Pg.54-56 Works Consulted……………………………………………………………...Pg. 57 Nelson 3 Statement of Purpose As time goes on, events such as World War II and the Vietnam War are being forgotten. The only way that most people find out about them is from textbooks, which do not successfully convey the emotions and thoughts of the ordinary people who were directly affected by the event. This information is necessary in order to fully understand events like World War II or Vietnam. The people who took part in these events are becoming fewer and fewer as time passes, and eventually there will be none left. It is imperative that their stories are recorded while there is still time to get them down on paper. If we do not do this, then no one will ever know the things that they went through, and how they were feeling at a certain moment, and our knowledge of these events will be incomplete. Nelson 4 Biography of David E. Baker Jack Nelson General David. E “Bull” Baker was born on September 30, 1946, in New Hampshire. His father was a career officer in the Navy, and his childhood was very mobile. After graduating from Hofstra University, he joined the Air Force. After one year of flight training, General Baker volunteered to go to Vietnam in early 1972. He flew as a Forward Air Controller in missions mostly over Cambodia. On June 27, 1972, during his fiftieth mission over Cambodia, General Baker’s O2 reconnaissance plane was hit by two SA-7 Surface- to Air missiles, and he was captured by the Viet Cong. While being transported to his prison camp, he attempted to escape, and was shot twice in the leg by an AK-47. The guards then proceeded to smash both of his feet with rifle butts. Severely wounded and held in the very dense Cambodian jungle, General Baker’s camp was never visited by the Red Cross, and he received no treatment for any of his injuries during his captivity. On February 12, 1973, General Baker was released from captivity. He is the only Air Force prisoner to have been released from Cambodia. Following his Nelson 5 liberation, General Baker decided to remain in the Air Force, and flew the F-15E Fighter during Operation Desert Storm. By now a full Colonel, he was the lead fighter on the so- called “Highway of Death,” during the Iraqi retreat from Kuwait, and was the only Vietnam Prisoner of War to have flown in Desert Storm. He later served in the Pentagon as Vice Director for Operational Plans and Joint Forces Development with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. General Baker retired from the Air Force in October 1997, having risen to the rank of Brigadier General. He is currently Senior Vice President for the Stanford Research Group, a banking and research group based out of Washington, DC. He and his Wife Carol live in Woodmore, Maryland. They have one son, David Baker, Jr. Nelson 6 Vietnam: The Causes, the Air War, and Treatment of American Prisoners Jack Nelson As the United States continued to build up troop strength in the newly partitioned Vietnam, President Lyndon Johnson continually assured the American public that he was “Not about to send American boys nine or 10, 000 miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.” (www.brainyquotes.com) This statement would prove tragically false. American involvement in Vietnam cost the United States almost 60,000 lives, more than any other war America has been involved in save World War II and the Civil War. During the war, though, the fighting was not confined to the jungles and rivers of the country: The airpower of the United States played a great role in the American strategy of the Vietnam War, either bombing Vietnamese camps and supply lines or providing close air support in the heat of battle. The policy of the US military, however, placed extreme restrictions on their greatest tactical advantage, and this helped lead to the American defeat in Vietnam. In order to fully understand why this happened, one must study the rules of engagement that the aircraft were forced to follow, as well as to understand the threats that they faced and the risks that these men took. Also, most of the Americans that were captured by the Vietnamese were downed pilots. It is necessary to realize how they were treated in order to further one’s understanding of the Vietnam War. Vietnam is a small country in Southeast Asia that most Americans would have needed a map to locate prior to 1965. The first foreigners to colonize Vietnam were the French, who first came to the country in an attempt to match the territorial gains made by the British in China. By 1862, they had taken most of the southern region of the country, as well as all of Cambodia. China, which was viewed as a protector to Vietnam, was Nelson 7 defeated by France in 1884-1885, assuring French domination of the rest of the country. The French then established colonial rule for the country. The ancient emperors of the Nguyen Dynasty were allowed to remain in power, but these were merely figureheads; in reality, the French Colonial Administration held all the real power. (Harrison, 36) From the outset, the Vietnamese fiercely resented French dominion over their country. James Pickney Harrison writes “From 1885-1897, a ‘scholar’s movement to support the emperor’… bitterly fought the French, and there were almost continuous smaller revolts and terrorist actions thereafter.” (Harrison, 37) This undoubtedly influenced the great Vietnamese revolutionary leader, Ho Chi Minh. Born in 1890, Minh left the country in 1912, and did not return to Vietnam for 30 years, eventually working his way to Paris. Paris was, ironically, the center of the Vietnamese patriot movement, and this was where he met many of the most influential members of the Vietnamese Communist Party. (Harrison, 38-39) An avid reader of Lenin, it became increasingly clear to him that Communism was the only thing that could save his country. He wrote that Lenin’s Theses on National and Colonial Questions greatly influenced him as a thinker and wrote that “‘by studying Marxism-Leninism parallel in participation with practical activities, I gradually came up with the fact that only Socialism and Communism can liberate the oppressed nations and the working people throughout the world from slavery.’” (Harrison, 39) In 1924, after a short period in Moscow, Minh was appointed the assistant to the Soviet representative to China. It was during this time that he would fully begin to develop the Vietnamese Communist party. At the beginning of World War II, the Japanese Army overthrew the French Colonial Administration. Ho Chi Minh and the rest of the Communist leadership saw Nelson 8 this as a golden opportunity to achieve complete independence from European powers. A party document from April 1944 wrote “Zero hour is near. Germany is almost beaten, and her defeat will lead to Japan’s. Then…Indochina will be reduced to Anarchy. We shall not even need to seize power, for there will be no power.” (Harrison, 92) The military branch of the Communist Party, the Viet Minh, was formed to resist these new occupiers. The Communists eagerly fought against the Japanese troops, and openly helped the allies, with Minh even going so far as to call for “‘unrestrained affection for all Americans.’” (Harrison, 91) The Vietnamese fought the Japanese the same way that they would fight the French, and later the Americans, by using guerilla tactics, which entailed hit and run attacks against small detachments of enemy troops. With the Japanese defeat and expulsion from Indochina in August 1945, Vietnam was divided up into different occupation zones for the allied powers. Howard Zinn writes “At the end of the war, the British controlled southern Indochina, and gave it back to France. The Chinese, under Chiang-Kai Shek, occupied Northern Indochina, and the U.S convinced them to give it back to France as well.” (Zinn, 348) Even before this, Communist forces had been fighting the Japanese in order to gain power in the country. The French, though, had no intention of giving up their colonial dominion of the region. At the end of the war, the Communists had some influence in almost all parts of the country. The start of the Vietnamese’s war with France (The First Indochina war) can be pinpointed to the bombardment of the city of Haiphong in November 1946. When French demands for the occupation of the city were not met, French warships bombarded the city. The French claimed that 6,000 people were killed in the attack. The Viet Minh Nelson 9 claimed that it was closer to 20,000. After this, both sides rapidly accelerated military preparations, though Ho Chi Minh and the French Government desperately tried to avoid war. Minh said “‘this war is something we wish to avoid at all cost…war doesn’t pay.’” (Harrison, 112-13) It was too late, however, and the war began. The war started with French demands for the Viet Minh in Hanoi to lay down their arms.
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