Woman On A Bombing Mission—And Hates It

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30953, 8 January 1966, Page 5

Woman On A Bombing Mission—And Hates It

(By

JILLIAN ROBERTSON

in the “Sydney Morning Herald.”)

Our khaki jeep speeds along over the monsoonal red mud of the roads. It is early morning, pale grey and cold. We drive past the thin exhausted faces of the Vietnamese peasants, past the rows of soldiers in steel helmets dressed in camouflage jungle green and khaki, past the guards with bayonets.

A gloom hangs over Da Nang. It is hard to believe that this city, 300 miles north of Saigon, was once the Riviera of V ietnam. Once it was called Tourannne. Once it was the smart coastal playground during the French occupation. But now it is a military base, the temporary home for 40,000 American marines.

The mud splashes up, armoured trucks with guns jutting out overtake us. We stop. I produce my identity card for the sentries but I don’t need it. My round eyes and white skin are my passport. We drive into the airbase, past the sinister fences of coiled barbed wire, past the barricades of sandbags, past the men on guard in foxholes.

Everything is vast: rows after rows of stars painted on fighter bombers, rows after rows of stars painted on freight planes, rows after rows of stars painted on helicopters, walls of steel protective revetments. It all has the endlessness of an Orson Welles’s film.

Planes taking off, planes droning overhead, and planes are landing. I put my fingers to my ears as a supersonic bomber makes the transition from earth to sky. Ten helicopters. known as the “Ugly Angels,” are air-lifting troops to a nearby battlefield. Everything in this staging Jjase for war is realistic, nothing is comforting. It is an oasis of multi-million dollar mechanism in this backward, peeling, crumbling corner of South-East Asia. Everyone stares at me. Round-eyed women are rare, especially round-eyed women dressed in jungle green pants and high black boots. We stand around. Cigarettes are passed. We wait. It is time. They put me in a blue flying suit, encase my waist in what looks like a Mae West (an inflatable rubber boat), tie a parachute on my back, put a helmet on my head, give me a pocketknife and hoist me into the cockpit. A flight engineer, a Texan with a crew cut, asks me how old I am. Twenty-five. He grins and says that he wouldn’t let his girl go into combat.

A Curiosity Someone is photographing me. I am a curiosity. Only once before has a woman gone on a strike mission with the Bth Bomb Squadron. I am here on my own volition, at my own risk. The aeroplane is a twin-engined Canberra jet, code name •‘Yellowbird two,” maximum speed 600 miles an hour. Under the wings and in the rotary bomb bay eight cans of napalm, 12 5001 b bombs, 14 2601 b fragmentation bombs are loaded. Four 20 mm. cannons are mounted to the wings.

Our mission is to bomb a Viet Copg stronghold south of Da Nang. It is part of the action called “Harvest Moon,” the biggest operation that the marines have been involved in.

The Texan flight engineer fits an oxygen mask and twoway radio over my nose and mouth.

Suddenly I feel the same way that I had when I had been six years old when I had pleaded and pleaded to go on the giant ferris wheel at the Easter Show. But once I had got my own way and climbed into the about-to-be-airborne seat I was so scared I wanted to get out. But then, like now. my pride wouldn’t let me.

A man from California climbs up and briefs me on what to do if the aircraft gets hit. “The radio signal for emergency is mayday, mayday, mayday. Ejection’s simple. Pull those two levers and you’ll float down in your parachute. Light your smokesignal equipment. A chopper will pick you up.” One minute, two minutes, three minutes . . . the transparent canopy of the jet is lowered. I am alone in the tiny navigator's compartment. A wall of steel separates me from the pilot. My only contact with him is through the radio attached to my nostrils. The engines rev. A signal man on the ground waves a flag We slowly move down the labyrinth of runways. We wait for radio instructions. A voice comes through—“Yellowbird here we go.” We speed faster, faster, faster, faster down the 10,000 feet runway. The pilot pulls back the control column. We are airborne.

Above A.A. Fire We roar into the misty sky. We are climbing at 1000 ft a minute. At last we are safe, high above the range of enemy anti-aircraft fire. The enemy only have 50 calibre machine-guns. I relax. 1 do not feel any different from when I was having flying lessons at Biggin Hill in England, or when I was co-piloting a Cessna through Central America. We leave behind the winding Tourene river, the white marble tombstones near Marble Mountain airbase, the surf pounding on the deserted white beaches, the marsh of the rice paddies. . . We are 85 miles south of the 17th parallel which separates North Vietnam from the South. "We can see the mountain range which separates Laos from Vietnam. Then we see nothing.

Leaking Napalm The clouds are thick. Visibility is nil. Complete whiteness. It is like being alone in a snow storm. Up, up, up above the cloud layer to where the sun is brilliant. We are now flying in formation with another Canberra, Yellowbird I.

The pilot of our partner plane tells us over the radio that one can of napalm under our right wing is leaking. One spark and the plane will incinerate. But it is only minutes until we drop it. We have reached our initial rendezvous.

The pilot asks me if I will call the radio operator as a female voice will surprise him. I press my left foot on a pedal: “Baron 31, this is Yellowbird one one, flight of two, ordinance load 12 5001 b GP’s, 14 2601 b frags, eight cans of napalm. Over. Over."

We are now three miles east of our position where we are going to pepper and hammer the enemy. We are alone over hostile territory.

We receive our last radio instructions from the Forward Air Control.

We start losing height. We are going down, down, down

. . . I stiffen. We are here to kill—or be killed. We manouvre. We line up our target.

Peaceful Below The landscape is peaceful. Squares of cultivation. Everything is green, English green, golf-course green. Even the mist-covered forest and hills look still and silent. “They” are in the jungle shadows. “They” are the enemy—the guerrillas, members of the Peopled Army of Vietnam, otherwise known as the Viet Cong. Suddenly we dive. No, it is like dropping. Like jumping for the first time off a skyscraper diving board. It is like falling off a cliff in a nightmare. Blood rushed to my head. We drop till we are 50 feet off the ground. We are flying at 460 miles an hour. Confusion. Terror. Nothing happens. The pilot has pressed the button to drop the leaking can of napalm and it has not released. We swoop up into the sky again. Blood rushes to my feet. Down, down, down again into the most-covered panorama. I scan the earth for Viet Cong. I wonder from which trees they will fire at us, from where they will try and kill us. Every second is made up of 60 minutes.

Cruellest Weapon We are 50 feet off the ground again. It happens. The plane reverberates. The napalm is dropped. It explodes behind us into a blazing fireball of black and red smoke and flames. Napalm burns everything—green trees, wood, human bones, blood. . . . The building behind us is no longer a structure but a furnace. I think of the people inside it, their bodies melting. Napalm does not leave a crater in the ground, just ashes and scarred earth. It is the cruellest of weapons. We climb vertically into the sky out of range of enemy fire. We are high again. We hover again. Then we swoop, snarl and fall to the level of our target. Blackness. Heat. The plane shudders. Fear. What is one supposed to think of in moments of near death? God, mother, father, home, husband, loved ones? No. I see things with enormous clarity. It must be the adrenalin.

Hate And Heat I am overcome with hate. Hate for this war. Hate for my action of riding in this vehicle of destruction. Before I had just been a reporter, a spectator of this war, but now I am part of it. I have taken an impassive role. We fly through our napalm fire. We drop another tornado. I am alone. But I don’t want

to be alone. I am terrified. I am no longer aware of the cause we are fighting for. Only one thing matters. That

I survive. That I don’t get killed. The war is down to the level of me and them. Nothing else exists except my will to live.

The fire behind us is large, fierce, merciless. I feel it will be impossible to come out of this alive. How can they miss us when we are so close? It is because speed of the plane makes us a difficult target. Because I want to live, I hate the man down there. The enemy. But the enemy are people Annihilate, destroy, kill, plunder ... we must survive.

We have made four napalm runs, now for the bomb runs. I want to go home. I am going to faint, pass out, black out.

The gravity force is taking its toll. One moment I am weightless, next moment I feel that I weigh 1000 pounds. So heavy that I can’t even raise my hand. The heat. The helmet is so heavy it is going to crash through my skull. Even my eyeballs are being pulled back. I will myself try not to pass out. If I pass out and we are hit I will have had it. I must be ready to eject.

Speechless If I die I will be another number —102 killed this week. In war people are an expendable quantity. I think of the blood-stained stretchers coming off the medevac helicopters, and the sergeant saying: “K.1.A.” Killed in action. K.1.A., K.I.A. . . . the initials go round in my head. We make one level bomb pass and drop six 5001 b bombs. Up, down again. Heat. Heaviness. I keep re-reading the ejection procedure printed in front of me: “Raise lefthand grip to unlock shoulder harness, raise right-hand grip to jettison canopy. Squeeze trigger on right-hand grip.” Boom . . . more craters in the earth. Will these bombs bring North and South Vietnam any closer? Will they alter the cause of the war? Everything is blurred. I can control myself no longer so I speak over the radio to the pilot: “Have we dropped all the bombs? I think I am going to faint.” He replies: “We just have to make four gunnery-strafing-passes.”

Prisoner Of 14 I want to go home, but we go up, up again and then dash down through the air and sky. Heat. Heaviness. I think of the Viet Cong prisoner in Voxu. We had helicopted from Saigon a week ago to where the Australians were carrying out “Operation Ricebowl.” The prisoners were being led through the clearing, blindfolded with black rags.

One boy, he could not have been more than 14, was being interrogated. He looked so young, so innocent. No, in war, the enemy is never innocent, not innocent until the politicians stop the fighting. The enemy is always bad, wicked. Then I had not hated, but then I’d only been a passive spectator.

The plane shudders and vibrates . . . our 20 mm cannons explode. We make four strafing passes. It is all over. Our score: eight structures destroyed, three structures damaged. We rise again above the clouds to where the sun is brilliant.

I take'off my oxygen mask. I am sick. It is all over. We are safe—as safe as one will ever be in Vietnam.

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