By Susan Johnson
Copy Editor
The Vietnam Veteran’s Honor Society is planning a special program for Memorial Day, Monday, May 30, at Midway Village, 6799 Guilford Road. The event begins at 11 a.m. with a speech by veteran Danny Russell, who was wounded in Vietnam.
At noon, Ronnie Heckler, a veteran who received a Silver Star and a Bronze Star for distinguished service in Vietnam and recently died of Agent Orange, will be remembered. His name will be added to the LZ Peace Memorial Wall. He was one of many heroes of that war.
One veteran’s story
Danny Russell was a sergeant with the U.S. Air Force Security Service, who served in Vietnam from 1969 through 1970. He grew up as a farm boy who enlisted in 1966. He took his basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas, then was sent to Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Miss., for Morse code training. There, he became skilled at copying codes. Later, after graduating from school, he received orders to report to Japan. After completing a two-year stint there, he was given the choice of where to go next, and he chose Vietnam.
“I went home on leave,” he recalled, “and they sent me through Survival School in Washington state, and they dumped us off on top of a mountain.” He was one of eight trainees who underwent World Survival School, not Jungle Survival. They were equipped with a parachute, a string, a live rabbit, and a fishhook. They had mock enemies trying to capture them. “Some were people who had been in Vietnam,” he said, “and some were NCOs that were in charge of it, and if they captured you, they treated you like dogs. They crammed you into a box maybe 3 feet tall, 2 feet wide and 2 feet deep. I had claustrophobia. It was a real problem… And the objective was to capture not only the people for the information but also the aircraft because it had so much secretive equipment on it.
“After we got out of World Survival School, they sent us to the Philippines [for] Jungle Survival, and again we were deprived of all the conveniences… The Filipinos there didn’t speak English. Their job was to capture us.” He was embarrassed to admit how easily he and his companions were captured because the Filipinos literally sniffed them out—by the scent of aftershave, food and other distinctive smells.
Once he arrived in Vietnam, that was another shock—the heat, the stench. He spent some time in Cam Ranh Bay, then went to Plekiu, in the Central Highlands. The runway was covered in red clay, as the whole area had been deforested to keep the Viet Cong from staging surprise attacks. Describing his unit, he said: “We were the 6994th Security Squadron. We copied Morse code. We were kind of the CIA of the Air Force. We went places we weren’t supposed to go and did things we weren’t supposed to do [officially].” Describing the planes, he said, “We flew EC-47s… some people call them Dakotas. It’s a very reliable aircraft. It can put up with a lot of damage, and still be airborne. We had the best crew, the best aircraft… we were invincible!”
He had injured his back in jump school in the States, but was accepted for duty because they were so short-manned. They had to fly 10 missions to be qualified. After Russell flew his 10 missions, he was sent back to Cam Ranh Bay for hernia surgery. Following that, he was sent back to Plekiu, where he was classified as DNIF—“Duty Not Including Flying.” It was a desk job, scheduling flights for others. He had a buddy there, another DNIF, and one day these two friends decided to go flying together. They assembled a crew and took off.
Russell notes the historical significance of the timing. “April 22, 1970,” he said, “President Nixon made a speech to the nation saying that ‘Cambodia will no longer be a sanctuary for the Viet Cong.’ Our mission was April 22, 1970. On April 27, 1970, we invaded Cambodia with information that our aircraft supplied, along with others… it was a whole mixture of information… because we copied the information, and when we sent it to the ground, they decoded.” He explained, “Our job was to watch the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which was kind of a fallacy.” Actually, he said, it’s a road. “It goes from North Vietnam to Saigon [but] the Ho Chi Minh Trail can be as narrow as a foot wide, and the transportation is sometimes trucks, sometimes bicycles. These bicycles are loaded so heavy that they can tear down a truck and move it across that 1-foot road and assemble it on the other side. Or they’ve got bridges under the surface of the water. So from the air, you really can’t see them. They drive these trucks across them. Well, how in the world did they get that across there?”
On this day, they were trying to copy from the radar but were having trouble getting a transmission. Russell had just asked the pilot if they had enough fuel to stay in the air, and the pilot said they did, so, as he recalls, “The navigator did his work, the radio operators all concentrated on what we’re supposed to do, and we got a line of sight… and then got a fix, and all of a sudden, ka-boom! It was just an unbelievable impact. They had shot us with a 37mm radio-controlled air burst, and it came right up through the center of the aircraft.” The radio operator was injured in his elbow but kept sending out SOS signals, and Rescue was in touch with them. The right engine was disabled enough to be dysfunctional but didn’t blow off. “We still had a good right wing. We still had a good left wing,” said Russell. “But the engine was smoking, so we were in a bit of a pickle.”
The aircraft commander wanted to put out to sea, where there was less chance of the enemy tracking them down, and they had survival gear on the plane. Unfortunately, they had lost enough power so they couldn’t get over the mountain range. Then they looked for an air strip to land on, and they found one. But when they informed Rescue where they wanted to go, they were told, “Under no circumstances go down there because that’s the A-Shau Valley.” As Russell and his crew knew, that was Charlie’s playground. “GIs not welcome,” he observed. “They would kill you in a second. So we discounted that, and our third option was to bail out.”
He made a personal observation about his buddy. Although he liked the guy, “I got so tired of this kid. All he could talk about was his beautiful wife, and they were going to have a baby. God bless the kid, but you can only put up with so much of that… I got so I didn’t like the lady because I was so tired of hearing this stuff. So we were flying that mission together, and he was sitting maybe 6 or 8 feet behind me, and I was sitting in the primary radio position, and our job during crisis was to get the door open so we could bail out. We got to the door, and we couldn’t get the damn door open. The impact of the concussion, the shell had jammed the door somehow. So we were running out of time, and we literally scratched our fingernails raw and bloody trying to get the damn door open.
“And all of a sudden, the door just blew off. So—what’s going on here? We knew we were too low. We couldn’t bail out. So the pilot looked back, and he was rather disgusted because … we were supposed to jettison all the unneeded weight for chances of picking up, recovery and also to bail out. [But] it would have been suicide, because they would have shot us up at canopy, which is against the Geneva Convention. But it didn’t make any difference.”
To be continued….
From the May 25-31, 2011 issue
Loading ...
Editorial: Greenies, 2030 Plan fail first test
Wednesday, May 25th, 2011By Frank Schier
Editor & Publisher
No matter how I hope green things seem to be changing, the more I realize they remain a pain—yes, I’m a dupe.
To put this in the proper frame of reference, let me tell you a little story. Once upon a time, a newspaper publisher (me) was invited by this group of lawyers to participate in a farce on stage, known locally as “The Legal Follies.”
Admittedly, these follies go on every day in the Winnebago County court system (like a perpetual and avid offender getting off because of a judge-and-attorney relationship), but this was an open presentation of making fun of public figures, and I agreed to participate in the “funning” at my “expense.”
This was shortly after the time we had saved Gary Kaeding’s life by getting him out of the Chester Mental Health Center (where the ax murderers are) by non-stop calls to the governor’s office because we felt then-State’s Attorney Paul Logli had been instrumental in sending him there in an outrageous miscarriage of justice. Kaeding was “different” but not “delusional,” nor was he dangerous to anyone.
As we were rehearsing in the Coronado, I marveled to myself how nice everyone was being (because Kaeding had attacked the entire legal system in the county in various ways; and although we disagreed with his presentation and some of his points, we defended his right to free speech and fair redress before the court—pro se—or without a lawyer). Then, my marveling illusion was shattered as a lawyer walked by me and said, “Yeah, that’s how we deal with the press; we co-opt them.” Well, did I feel rather dumb at that point? Yes. And I feel rather dumb “déjà vu” all over again.
When the Winnebago County Board passed the 2030 Land Resource Management Plan, I really thought we had saved 17,000 acres with the great effort put forth to move those acres from industrial or heavy residential zoning designation back to agricultural or green space for our future quality of life.
Well, after the Winnebago County Board’s recent vote to approve the “just-won’t-go-away” Cannell Farms Subdivision petition, a coming development west of Rockton, obviously the only green space considered was the area to be filled in various wallets and bank accounts.
Outrageously, this vote was taken without the minutes of the Zoning Committee meeting including testimony on this matter even being typed! No, the board members could not read them because they were not there. What kind of management incompetence is that? Oh, it could be purposeful incompetence, so testimony—like the very testimony of Rockton Township Supervisor Tom Jencius, who spoke against the petition—would not be included. This paper published his column against it, on the front page of our May 4-10 issue. But all the environmental groups were vapor on this first test of the 2030 plan. The hot air emitting from supposed conservationists about the evils of sprawl in the area is just so much bad breath from pretenders.
Since the “no-political-controversy-for-my-paycheck greenies” failed to show up and pay any attention, here’s the recap. There were really five motions on the subject in the April 12 board meeting.
First, the final plat was read in, and Zoning Committee Chairman Jim Webster (R-2) put it on the floor. Defeated by Webster, former chairman Dave Yeske asserts Webster had the authority to pull the entire matter from the agenda.
Webster said he didn’t know about that and said the whole board had informally said they wanted to close the matter. He also said State’s Attorney Joe Bruscato affirmed the vote could be taken without the minutes being published.
Second, Steve Schultz (R-2) believed there was important testimony on this issue. He made a motion the board should lay the entire matter over so everyone could read and consider that testimony once the minutes from the Zoning Committee meeting were produced. The motion was seconded. Webster said it was noted the Zoning Committee voted for the Cannell subdivision 4-2. With Angie Goral (D-7) absent for family matters, Frank Gambino (R-14), Pearl Hawks (D-6), Lynne Strathman (R-1) and Kevin Horstman (R-5) voting for the Cannell Subdivision and Schultz and Webster voting against it.
Schultz said, “We’ve been told how important it is to consider the testimony of record is at ZBA hearings, and we get the minutes in ZBA cases, and the board did not receive the minutes from the Zoning Committee case.”
Schultz said it was a “landside vote against the layover. It was pathetic.” Schultz said it has been historical protocal to honor board member requests and intention if the matter was from their district. Both he and Webster represent District 2, where the public sentiment is very much against the Cannell Subdivision.
The neighbors of the proposed subdivision formed a not-for-profit group, Winnebago Citizens for Controlled Growth, and filed a lawsuit, which they lost.
So here’s the four-part joke on the folks Webster and Schultz represent (and really the joke on the whole future of the 2030 plan for the rest of us):
1. The legal system dumped you.
2. Chairman Scott Christiansen, by not providing management to produce the minutes, dumped you (and Tom Jencius’ testimony).
3. The whole county board ignored your elected representatives (they broke historical protocol) and dumped you.
4. And by the way, Winnebago County Forest Preserve, Natural Land Institute and Winnebago County Soil and Water Conservation District (all had previously testified against the Cannell Subdivision one way or another) also dumped you, abandoned you, quit on the issue, gave up the fight and acquiesced to the sprawl.
So much for the “expertise” and “commitment” of supposed greenies and representative government. Special interests win; citizens right next door lose as to what their neighborhood will be like for them and their children, our children’s future. It gets worse.
The final plat—it passed.
Item No. 3 was the center area to be common, green space and space available for backup septic should the initial septic system fail in the long oval. (Hey, remember all the lip service to the “Principles of the Sacred Conservation Design” put forth by the 2030 Steering Committee?) No other Planned Community Development (PCD) that had been approved allowed that dual use of common space. Typically, that kind of space has to be a lot of record or an outlot; and in either case, is not allowed as a backup system.
More Sacred Conservation Design Principles were sacrificed on the altar on green dollars when Item 3, the landscape plan, was perverted, totally. The issue there is the original ordinance for this PCD required the landscaping to be consistent with the plan that was put forward by the developer. Gee, Conservation Design! Comparing the new plan Cannell submitted with the original plan, there’s not as much landscaping, trees, bushes. He reduced the plantings. He’s going on the cheap. It gets worse. Here comes the big one.
Item 4 was a request for a variation allowing the development not to be on public sewer and water. They needed the variation for this subdivision to be on private well and septic systems. Why did they do this? Because the septic was approved in the original PCD ordinance that passed for this development in 2009. Webster also cited the 2009 Village of Rockton vote to allow private well and septic within their mile-and-a-half jurisdiction from their borders.
Water Conservation District report back in 2009. But that agency did not step forward this time.Because wells and septic were back on the table, Schultz gave the argument that this land was “restricted soils” as denoted by the Winnebago County Soil and
However, the new officials on the Village of Rockton Board now may step forward. More on that in a bit. It’s going to get even worse before a remote possibility of the better may appear.
Item 5 was a variation for utility placement. Cannell asked to have the utilities, electrical services boxes on the front of properties instead of the rear. The only reason the developer wanted to make this change was again to reduce the lot sizes and increase the number of lots he could get out of that acreage.
Webster said the contention by Gambino (a Realtor) was that he could show many homes with the utility pad in front. Webster said he answered for every one Gambino could show, he could show two that were in back, and that is supposedly the code. (Boil, boil, toil and trouble, Conservation Design is a pile of rubble!) “So much for asethetics,” Webster said.
“It was common for the county board to take note of the times when both of the members from that district were against the issue,” Schultz stressed again. “Both Webster and I are against Cannell. That was my last gasp, and it didn’t work.”
As noted above, the Village of Rockton may be considering another vote on whether it will allow private well and septics for Cannell within a mile-and-a-half from village boundaries. Gee, maybe all those groups I believed in will come forward to really fight against sprawl, and fight for Conservation Design, or give some pretty teeth to all the lip service they gave the 2030 plan. But I think I’m a dupe because this is reality, not deceitful planning.
All “funning” and massive “expenses” considered, I’m not in the polite co-opt anymore. If you think this is bad, it’ll get worse. After all, we have to consider wind farms and then the Rock River.
From the May 25-31, 2011, issue
Posted in Commentary, Editorials | 1 Comment »