Kerry Whipple

Bean

The Natchez Democrat

Jack Pitchford calls himself &8220;the accidental colonel.&8221;

But if fate led him into officer training, it was something of an entirely different nature that got him through the most difficult time in his life.

Forty years ago today, Pitchford was shot down over Vietnam and spent seven years in the infamous Hanoi Hilton, a prisoner of war.

&8220;War is hell,&8221; he said. &8220;It truly is hell. There are no winners and no losers.&8221;

Bright-eyed and handsome, Pitchford seems younger than his 77 years, but he admits to some memory problems. He can&8217;t recall quite how long he&8217;s been back in Natchez, for example.

But the story of his time in the service and in Vietnam is a memory he will never forget, and it is a story he tells with such clarity you feel you are there with him again.

&8220;I had the most horrible dream (about Vietnam) about a month ago,&8221; he said. &8220;I very seldom dream about that.&8221;

&8216;Things fell into place&8217;

The Natchez native was already a World War II veteran who&8217;d been educated at Louisiana State University on the GI bill when he was invited into LSU&8217;s Reserve Officer Training Corps in 1952. A year later he was chosen for pilot training at Bartow Air Force Base in Florida &8212; the fulfillment of a lifelong wish.

&8220;I had always wanted to be a pilot. That&8217;s why I went in&8221; to the Air Force.

But still, he never dreamed he would go to pilot school or become an officer.

&8220;All of the things just fell into place,&8221; he said, smiling. &8220;I call myself the accidental colonel.&8221;

He was assigned to Japan with the 8th Fighter Bomber Squadron, barely missing service in the Korean War.

In 1965 he volunteered for the Wild Weasel program, which employed F-100 fighters that flew near ground level, below enemy radar, targeting heavily defended Vietnamese anti-aircraft sites.

Pitchford went to Vietnam in December 1965 &8212; and was shot down Dec. 20.

He was on a strike mission against targets in North Vietnam when he was hit.

He told his GIB &8212; literally &8220;guy in back&8221; &8212; Bob Trier to eject from the plane, and when Trier did that Pitchford&8217;s right arm was sucked out of the cockpit and his shoulder dislocated.

Pitchford&8217;s plane was headed nose to the ground.

&8220;In four or five more seconds I would have been part of the landscape,&8221; Pitchford said.

He had one thought: &8220;I&8217;ve got to get the hell out of here.&8221;

Trier was shot and killed, apparently in a gun battle with the North Vietnamese.

Pitchford had his own long battle ahead.

Captured

Pitchford had never ejected from his plane before &8212; &8220;You don&8217;t practice bailing out,&8221; he said &8212; but he did have training in case he was in danger of being captured.

&8220;I had gone to survivor school back in the United States, that prepared you for your ultimate capture,&8221; he said.

When he hit the ground about 15 miles north of Hanoi, he went into hiding in the foliage.

It was about two hours before he was discovered by a dozen or so Vietnamese soldiers. Injured by the shoulder dislocation, Pitchford couldn&8217;t pull his pistol out, and he was shot in the same arm by three rounds from an AK47.

&8220;When the rounds hit me, I thought my arm had been blown off.&8221;

He tumbled down the ravine where he had been hiding and into the arms of the enemy.

One of the soldiers hit him in the head with the butt of his rifle. They tried to make him walk out of the ravine, with one soldier prodding him with Pitchford&8217;s own pistol.

But Pitchford passed out.

Next thing he knew, he was being carried between two poles into a nearby village, where he was put on display for a few days in handcuffs and leg irons.

&8220;I was the &8216;bad American,&8217;&8221; he said. &8220;They called us &8216;air pirates.&8217;&8221;

Later, Pitchford was taken to the prison that would become famous as the Hanoi Hilton, where hundreds of American soldiers were held captive and tortured for information.

Monotony and torture

&8220;The one thing you&8217;re thinking is what are they going to do to me,&8221; Pitchford said. &8220;They&8217;re going to beat the hell out of you.&8221;

POWs were forbidden from communicating with each other, but that didn&8217;t stop them.

Pitchford still remembers the code the prisoners used, risking their lives to communicate with a system they devised for tapping out letters of the alphabet. Each five-letter group of the alphabet had a number. The letters A-E were in group 1, so an &8220;A&8221; would be one tap followed by another tap, &8220;B&8221; would be one tap followed by two quick taps, and so on.

&8220;They never could figure it out,&8221; Pitchford said of the Vietnamese.

When new soldiers joined the group, they were quickly taught the tap code.

&8220;The first question you&8217;d ask was how long is the war going to last. A new shoot-down was like a morning newspaper to us.&8221;

The American soldiers were bound by their code of conduct not to give more than name, rank date of birth and serial number.

Torture, though, made it impossible not to respond to the questions. So the soldiers made things up &8212; one said his commanding officer was Clark Kent, and his unit was based in Metropolis, N.Y.

&8220;That was your way of fighting the enemy,&8221; Pitchford said of their lies. &8220;But you had to remember what you lied about, because they&8217;d ask about it later.&8221;

One of the standard methods of torture was to hang the American soldiers by their feet from the ceiling.

&8220;You never knew when your time was going to come&8221; for questioning, he said.

The other days in prison were monotonous.

The soldiers were fed each day &8212; food that turned out to be nutritious, even if it tasted, as Pitchford said, &8220;lousy.&8221; They ate things like cabbage soup and some sort of greens the soldiers called sewer greens.

And each day the Vietnamese gave each prisoner three cigarettes.

Heading home

In late 1972 Pitchford and the other captives began to get an inkling they would be freed.

&8220;We were getting signs&8221; of negotiations, Pitchford said. Their captors talked of the &8220;lying Americans,&8221; but &8220;in actuality, the war was going terribly for the Vietnamese,&8221; he said.

Pitchford was released Feb. 12, 1972, exactly 373 weeks after he was captured.

He and fellow prisoners were given shirts and pants to wear, and they were loaded onto a bus. They knew their release was imminent because for once they were not blindfolded.

&8220;It&8217;s hard to explain how you felt,&8221; Pitchford said, describing the beginning of the journey home.

Exhilarated at the prospect of freedom, Pitchford and his fellow soldiers still remained quiet and respectable on their way to the airport and on the plane.

&8220;We were going to conduct ourselves as military people,&8221; he said.

But once they were in the air for the first leg of their trip to the Philippines, &8220;we all raised all kinds of hell,&8221; he said, laughing.

At Clark Air Force Base in Manila, Pitchford saw his first family member in seven years &8212; his brother Gerald, who was working in Vietnam for the State Department and had heard of his release.

From Manila, Pitchford flew to Hawaii and then California.

Back home

Because he was an officer and a POW, Pitchford&8217;s return from war was not tinged with the animosity that many U.S. soldiers felt when they came home from the controversial war.

&8220;Practically every one of us was an officer,&8221; he said of the POWs. &8220;The enlisted men &8212; they really treated them badly. &8230; But they did their job well.&8221;

Pitchford is matter-of-fact about Vietnam and its legacy.

&8220;It was a war that never should have taken place,&8221; he said.

But he believed in his duty to his country.

Pitchford&8217;s sister Judy Bartley, who has also returned to live in Natchez, clearly remembers when her brother was shot down &8212; it happened on her birthday. She went home from college for Christmas the next day and tearfully went into the house, where her mother was frying chicken at the stove.

Their mother, who had 12 children and lost two when they were very young, quickly set her straight.

&8220;Mama said, &8216;It&8217;s not if Jack comes home, it&8217;s when,&8217;&8221; Bartley remembered. &8220;She just had this incredible faith. That&8217;s what carried us through.&8221;

On his return from Vietnam, Pitchford considered leaving the Air Force. He and his wife divorced just six months after he came home, but he attended Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Ala., and later became commander of the Air Force Communications Security Center in July 1975.

&8220;It was an interesting assignment&8221; for a non-flying position, Pitchford said. &8220;It had a lot to do with homeland security.&8221;

Still bearing the physical scars of his injury and capture, Pitchford cannot raise his right arm very far, so he cannot fly. But he has never forgotten the feeling.

&8220;And every time I seen an airplane go by I wish I was flying it.&8221;