Dear Editor,
During Christmas time 50 years ago in December of 1972, I was reviewing the de novo synthesis of the non-essential amino acids and reviewing the cranial nerves.
I knew that when I returned to school, I would be asked to identify them on the cadaver of the lady who had willed her body to science. I heard in the news that the Christmas bombing of North Vietnam was occurring; the B52s were now over Hanoi. A fellow F4 phantom instructor called me and told me that some of our recent students were up providing CAP (combat air patrol) for those B52s. He agreed with me that if Barry Goldwater had been president, this would have occurred seven years earlier. In 1972 Hanoi had many more surface to air missiles from Russia. Hanoi also had more advanced Mig jets. As it turns out our students and all the other American aviators were able to get the job done, and our POWs were returned home in a couple of months. I felt lucky that the military was paying for my medical education and that I was not sent TDY to fly over North Vietnam that Christmas.
I belong to the River Rats, aviators who crossed the Red River Valley of North Vietnam to get to Hanoi. A publication of this organization recently had aviators who were there tell their story. Also the River Rat of the year was a flight surgeon who had received his medical degree from Yale and was drafted under the doctor draft around 1970. When we had a draft, many of our country’s best and brightest did serve in combat. Maybe we should preserve our history. Truth is embedded in history; erase history and you erase truth!
Dr. W. David Herbert
Billings
