Bloods (44 page)

One time I was home. My daughter was walkin’ down the country path. She was cryin’. And I never got to ask her why. I had to go back.

When I was shot down, the Air Force got my family out of Japan back to Virginia as soon as possible. Donald was twelve, Fred was ten, Debbie was eight, and Cynthia was six. Beulah sheltered them until they found a house near Langley, and they had all the facilities, Navy and Air Force, they needed within 15 minutes.

My wife got my first letter in December of 1969. My mother got to see it before she died of a stroke a few months later. She died believin’ I was comin’ home.

I got my first letter from home in May of 1970. From my sister. She had a helluva time gettin’ forms from the Air Force to write to me or to send packages. ’Cause she wasn’t the next of kin.

My wife was tellin’ the kids that I was dead. I wasn’t comin’ home.

In November ’72 I received a letter from my oldest son.

By then we knew the negotiations were going on in Paris. We could hear the B-52s. And we knew that they were going to solve it. When the bombing stopped, we knew they didn’t have any more missiles. And that the agreements were going to be signed.

The sick and wounded, the guys who had been there the longest, were the first to fly out. But the Vietnamese sorta squeezed in the guys who had gone along with them. I guess that was more payoff for being traitors.

The first meal I wanted when I got to the Philippines was sausage and eggs.

I told the dietician, “One platter of scrambled eggs. One platter of sausage patties. Laid on two plates.”

She said, “But, sir. It’s five o’clock in the afternoon.”

“I don’t care.”

She thought I had been to sleep and woke up thinking it was morning.

She brought the two plates. And I ate it. I ate it. I ate it.

Then I called Beulah.

She said, “You don’t have a very nice situation to come back to.”

I didn’t ask any questions.

I said, “I guess I understand.”

I didn’t receive a single letter or package from my wife. And I’m not crazy. She’s either dead, or she’s taken off. I was really hopin’ it was the way it was. I was hopin’ it would be that way than she died.

“How are the kids?”

She said, “They’re okay.”

Then Beulah told me the boys had dropped out of high school and were in the Army.

I thought they would have been in school, but little did I know.

General Chappie James was handling the return of POWs. We were old friends, and he knew about my situation at home. So he sent a friend of ours, Colonel Clark Price, to escort me home.

Clark told me another man was involved. A child was born in October ’69. A girl. The money was gone. My allotments. Salary. Everything. And the kids were in the Army.

I didn’t even ask him about my coins. I got depressed; the boys weren’t in school.

I wanted to be taken to Norfolk Naval Hospital in Portsmouth. That was closest to home. But Clark said Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, D.C., might be better, considering the situation I was returning to. I guess many people were afraid I might have been crazy enough to do somethin’ violent. They didn’t want to put me where the sparks might fly.

I asked to see Beulah and her husband. My sons made arrangements to get there. My daughters didn’t come at first. They were living with my wife. Even after my name appeared in the newspapers that we were being released, she still told them I wasn’t coming home. It was a mistake.

When she did come to Andrews, I told Clark I didn’t want to see her.

Clark said, “I think you should.”

“Okay.”

I wouldn’t see her with the door closed. My attorney told me not to put myself in a position where I could have the opportunity to cohabitate.

I asked her to be reasonable, to agree to an uncontested divorce so the stuff won’t come out and embarrass the kids.

She said no, she didn’t want a divorce. And she tried to fight it. I understand that, too. You been gettin’ a nice fat check all these years, and all of a sudden, you ain’t got it. Who’s gonna take care of this and that?

There was no waiting period for the divorce. ’Cause I’d been separated seven and a half years.

I sued the Air Force because they were negligent in handling my money while I was away. About $150,000. And the U.S. Court of Claims upheld me. In the services we have volunteers and active-duty people who look after families split apart like mine was. They knew every letter that went one way or the other, so they knew she wasn’t writing me. Something’s gotta be wrong. They let her take the money out of my account to have the child in a civilian hospital. They didn’t question that. The $450 a month allotment that was going to my savings bank? They gave her that, too. A form was signed on October 25, 1965, three days after I was shot down. It had to be forged. But the people handlin’ the POW families were so into keepin’ these families quiet, they’d do anything.

I hope my case sets a precedent. A serviceman who gets in a position like mine must be better looked after in the future.

They gave me an extensive battery of mental and physical tests at Andrews. They said the best thing they could give me was a little more forward movement in my arm.

I said, “No. What the hell. I’ve lived with it all these years and got used to it.”

The only time it’s aggravating is when I’m trying to do something like hang a picture. Or reach over my head. Now I can change a light bulb almost as fast with one hand as you can with two.

Physically, I can never recover totally. I still suffer muscle spasms. My eyes are not as good as they should be at this point in my life. That’s because of all the periods
of darkness. The years of darkness. And I don’t hear too well out of my left ear. That was where the right hook usually got to first. But I still feel extremely fortunate.

They gave me the Air Force Cross, two Bronze Stars, and two Purple Hearts for resisting the enemy. I had already received the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Silver Star before for action in combat.

I had reached the rank of full colonel two months before my release.

In September of ’81 I retired. Seventy percent disability. Thirty years.

I never dreamed about Vietnam. Not once since comin’ back. But I still think about how we could have won the war. It should have been planned to hit the military targets early. It was only near the end that we started. And there would have been a lot less lives lost. And with proper leadership South Vietnam would’ve lasted a hell of a lot longer than it did. The war just went the way it did because the military was not allowed to win it. That’s all.

I don’t harbor no animosities against the Vietnamese people at all. North or South. Except as individuals. Isolated cases.

I guess I would still like to get my hands on Dum Dum. I’d like to have Dum Dum. I would know Dum Dum anyplace.

There were Vietnamese who were compassionate. The ones who fed me with bananas and pieces of candy in the hospital, taking a great risk to do that. And the doctor who acted like a doctor whatever the policy was in treating a prisoner. And the guard who caught me red-handed communicatin’. And he refused to turn me in because of my health being on the low side at the time. All he said was, “No, Xu. No. No.”

After the release, I kept in touch with Hally. In 1977 he spent two weeks with me while he was doing research at the Pentagon for his master’s degree. I gave him the key to my home in Silver Spring, Maryland. I gave him the key to a car.

We talked about how we looked at each other the first time we met. We talked about what we learned from each other. We remembered certain guys and tried to track down where they were. We rehashed the whole thing.

Naturally, I thanked him again for really, really saving my life. Other guys would’ve done the same thing, okay? But they didn’t have the opportunity.

One daughter—the one who cried in my dream—lives with me now and goes to college. And back home in Suffolk there is a Colonel Fred Victor Cherry Scholarship Fund to help capable kids who run short of money get to college.

And I speak across the country for the Tuskegee Airmen’s Association—black fighter pilots of the last three wars—telling young black people to study engineering, science, and technology.

Maybe one of those young black lads that hears me will walk across a field one day, look up at an airplane, like I did so long, long ago, and say, “I’m going to fly. I’m going to be a fighter pilot.”