What Were They Thinking?
Part III: John Clinton’s Story
“War is hell,” Bea said. I looked at her, grateful that she was comforting our friend but knowing beyond the shadow of a doubt she was turning the conversation to me. “We all prayed for Whitney the entire time she was active. And we’re so proud of the woman she’s become. She retired from the Marines and came here to teach and coach. It’s what she always wanted to do.”
“Yes,” Janet answered. “When she returned home Dave and I decided to retire down here with the rest of you. I thought I was waiting for grandbabies, but I guess that dream went unfulfilled.”
“She miscarried three times,” Marilyn sighed. “It had to be terribly hard on her. But she found her own purpose with the kids at the high school. A State Championship for the only boys’ basketball team in the state coached by a woman. She’s remarkable.”
“Did you serve, John?” Dinita asked. “I thought I saw a pained look cross your face when we talked about Whitney’s service.”
“It was different back then,” I answered. “Maybe. It seems like so long ago that we failed to learn our lesson in Vietnam.”
17 God Is My Co-Pilot
“LORD, MY SAVIOR, if it be thy will, bring my feet safely to the ground again that I may continue to serve you. Purge my soul of hate and fear. Hold those I love in your loving care. Lord, thy will be done.”
I’d said the same prayer before each flight since the first time I took to the air at twelve years old. I loved the sky. I loved the feel of air beneath the wings. I loved to see the ground flash past beneath me. Yes, flash. I was capable of Mach 2 at altitude, though I seldom pushed my Thunderchief that hard. Fuel consumption was an issue and I had to get both in and out of enemy territory in order to refuel over Laos.
Beneath me, I had visual confirmation of the bridge that was my target for this run. Companion Phantoms had kept enemy MiGs on the run so I could stay on target with two other Thuds tight beside me. We dove to deliver our payloads. On the bridge people ran, understanding our target. A woman with a child in her arms looked up at me just before dust and debris exploded between us.
I suppose that I was a privileged child by today’s standards. We didn’t know it then. We thought we were just normal kids and that most parents were like ours—stern disciplinarians but loving and generous with both time and material possessions. My father had been too old to serve in World War II, already showing signs of weakened joints that would eventually cripple him. Nonetheless, he managed a company that supplied engines and parts for a variety of aircraft. We lived in a nice house, drove a nice car, and always ate well. We cleaned our own rooms, helped with laundry, mowed the lawn, washed the car, and studied hard, slacking off at our peril.
And on Sunday we went to church.
I can’t speak for my sisters—three older and one younger. They were always good girls from what I could tell. I doubted very much that they could get away with anything under either my mother’s or my father’s watchful eye. For my part, I can’t remember a moment that I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior. It had simply always been that way. There was no point of decision at which I turned from evil to salvation. I had believed every word of the gospel my mother read to us at night from the time I could remember.
That is not to say that I have always lived a pure life. Soon after I was permitted to join the Civil Air Patrol at twelve years old, I’d taken up smoking behind the hangar with the older cadets. My father and his company were sponsors of CAP and he owned two of the trainers that were used for our instruction and orientation. He’d never flown, himself, but was extraordinarily pleased that I wanted to learn to fly. In fact, I’d sometimes cheat on how well I maintained our yard in order to get to the airfield in time for our Tuesday night meetings. I tried to make up for it but there were so many things demanding attention.
One of those things was Emily Brown. As I reached my middle teens, she became the focus of my fantasies. I recognized them as ungodly but was unable to resist them. Emily, I suppose, recognized that I had a bright future. Her affection was given more to achieve the kind of security she assumed I could provide than because she liked me particularly.
I thought we were being quite clever when we snuck about so we could kiss. She allowed me to fondle her breasts, but no further.
“John, come to the den,” my father commanded. I was sixteen years old and his words still caused shivers to run down my spine. I had met discipline at the end of my father’s belt more than once. He didn’t remove his belt when I entered the room, though. He pointed me to a seat in one of the leather chairs where he often read the newspaper. A coffee service sat on the table between the two chairs and he poured us each a cup.
I sat and sipped the brew, wondering what was to come.
“Son, how do you plan to support your family? Emily and your unborn son?” I choked on my coffee. I knew certainly that Emily could not be pregnant. Not by me. Not unless my fantasies had betrayed me.
“I… We’re not… Father…”
“Have you thought about how your relationship is progressing?” he continued. “You have allowed your libido to take control of your good senses. Should you pursue your relationship with this young woman, I will guarantee you that you will have to get married in the next year. You will need to drop out of school in order to support a wife and child. You will not get the education you seem to be bent on. And you will certainly no longer be able to fly.”
He’d put a nail in the lid of my coffin with that last comment. I’d only just gotten my pilot’s license. I didn’t even have a driver’s license, but I could fly the little Cessnas at the airstrip alone.
“I count you as a Christian man,” my father said. “A Christian man is a man of his word and honor. He will not cause another to fall into sin. He would certainly not use another to slake his lust. Of course, you will look out into the world and find many Christian men who do just that. But I wonder if God will count them among the sheep or the goats. I know you love the Lord, John. The question is, ‘What kind of Christian will you be?’ You needn’t tell me. You need to tell yourself.”
We finished our coffee and he handed me the evening newspaper, suggesting I check out the baseball scores. There was a chance the Cubs would win a pennant this year.
Emily was not interested in slowing down. When I told her we had to, she decided that there were others who were more likely prospects than a man who couldn’t reach out and take what he wants.
My father had awakened another question in my mind, however. How did I plan to support my flying? I realized that I could not depend on my father to continue to pay for me forever. My two oldest sisters had already reached that conclusion and were married. The third, just graduated from high school, had rushed to join the Air Force. I admired her ambition. I would try to be like her. I even inquired about joining the Air Force before I graduated from high school. The recruiter had forms out and a pen in hand when I said I wanted to be a pilot.
He put the forms away.
“Son, pilots are officers. If you enlist, you will be an airman. I believe that with your rank in CAP, we could get you a stripe, but you will never be an Air Force pilot without a college degree.”
“What should I study, sir?”
“Well, with your aptitude, I would suggest aeronautics. If you know your congressman or senator, you might be able to get an apppointment to the Air Force Academy. It seems you have good eyesight but you aren’t especially fit. Remedy that. You won’t be accepted into officer training if you can’t pass the fitness tests. Lacking the Academy, any college degree will get you into Air Force Officer Training School. If you pass that, you’ll get a commission and may be allowed to enter pilot training. Again, since you already have a license, I’d say it’s a fairly safe bet. But from this point on, the better your physical condition and grades and the more hours you have in a cockpit, the better your chances of becoming an Air Force pilot.”
I thanked him and took the Air Force Physical Fitness manual he offered me. From that day, I was in training. Wouldn’t my sister, an E1 airman, be embarrassed that I outranked her!
There were a number of candidates for the Air Force Academy from my congressional district when I graduated from high school. I could have attended a more prestigious college than the local religious college but the recruiter had told me that if I wasn’t studying aeronautics, it didn’t matter what my degree was. My father encouraged me to study business and Bethel had a general studies bachelor’s program with an emphasis in business and accounting. And a required religion minor. I studied Greek so I could read the New Testament in the original. Or in what it had first been translated into.
I threw myself into my studies. And into Deborah Kline.
We were circumspect. I now considered my dating to be the search for my life partner. Deborah and I were compatible. She was also a Christian and the Bible guided her life. We… prayed together. That was how we met. We joined a group of like-minded people who were planning on ‘careers that honor Jesus.’ Deborah felt that no career could better honor her Lord than being a helpmeet for her husband and mother to her children. She also studied hard because she believed that in order to be a true helpmate, she needed to understand what her husband was involved in and be able to offer assistance and guidance. She was a leader in the Faith Society, and volunteer in mission work, and a woman I felt would be both a companion and an equal in my life and career. She supported my desire to become an Air Force pilot and I took her up in the sky for her first flight.
Little did I know what that would lead to. At a thousand feet above the ground, I offered her an engagement ring. She accepted my proposal with such enthusiasm that once I managed to get the little plane back on the ground, she welcomed me into her life and into her body. I felt no evil, nor compunction against our union, even though we acknowledged the danger of a premarital pregnancy and used condoms when we came together.
And we came together often.
At the age of twenty-one, I transferred from Civil Air Patrol cadet to senior member status and was granted the silver bar of First Lieutenant.
Our wedding was planned for one week after our college commencement.
Sadly, Deborah did not graduate. Instead of standing at the altar, I stood at Deborah’s grave. What she had never told me was that she suffered from a congenital heart condition that claimed her just ten days from our graduation.
I was devastated. If I had not already completed all the requirements for my graduation, I would never have stood, with tears in my eyes, as I accepted my degree.
I had little time to mourn. My friendly Air Force recruiter contacted me the day after graduation, just when I was ready to slink into the woods to lick my wounds and ask my God why. On what was to have been our wedding day, I stood before Deborah’s grave and begged her to bless my decision. Six months later I graduated from AFOCS with a single gold bar on my lapel and a ticket to pilot training school.
And that was what led me, three years later, to Vietnam and Operation Rolling Thunder. I piloted my single seat F-105D on one hundred missions with a seventy percent success rate. I had to defend myself, of course, but my principal duty was to drop bombs on North Vietnam to disrupt munitions transport, airbases, ground-to-air missile bases, and infrastructure.
It was on my last mission that I saw the woman and child before my bombs obliterated their lives.
Rationally, I knew there was no way I could have looked into her eyes at seven hundred miles per hour and a thousand feet above them. But as Simon and Garfunkel sang years later, ‘The vision that was planted in my brain still remains.’ I stood beside my F-105D with my hand on her nose and heard… I heard!... God’s voice.
“I have brought your feet safely to the ground again. Now serve me!”
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