| Darkness Fell |
| The postman never delivered
another letter from my brother. The December 25th correspondence
was the last any of us received from him. The 1973 Merry
Christmas of which he spoke was not to be.
On December 29th the doorbells
ominously sounded at Jana and Karoni's home and, shortly
thereafter, at Mom and Dad's house. When they opened the door to
the sight of two Marine officers in dress uniform, that told the
tale. Darkness filled the faces of my loved ones. We were in for
heartache and the trials of Job.
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| His Last Mission |
| Colonel Wilson and an
associate informed us that Ron was listed as missing in action.
He had been so since December 27th. They didn't know if he was
alive or dead.
Details were sketchy. On
December 27, Ron and frequent flying companion Captain Jim
Chipman, the Mormon missionary from Utah, were assigned a night
bombing mission north of the twentieth parallel in North Vietnam.
They were to reconnoiter a road and drop their lethal payload on
any target they deemed worthy of destruction. A secondary target
was assigned should reconnaissance fail to identify anything of
military significance.
Few other facts could be
ascertains. At 7:44 in the evening, the A6A, designated as Tiny
05, lifted off from the Royal Thai Air Force base in Nam Phong.
At 8:20 p.m., Tiny 05 radioed Moonbeam, which was the code for
Ground Control. Tiny 05 informed Moonbeam that they were on site
and were going tactical. That meant that maneuvers were to
commence. They had flown into the danger zone.
That was it. Moonbeam had no
other contact with Tiny 05. Since the mission was of the standard
sortie variety, no other aircraft had visual contact. Fuel
exhaustion for Tiny 05 was estimated at 10:44 p.m. When the
aircraft did not return, both men were listed as Missing. Thus
far, efforts at location had born no fruit.
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| In God's Hands |
| Military consensus was clearly
that Ron could handle captivity. We knew he could too. We had
long known the stuff of which he was made, and it was the right
stuff.
The problem was that we didn't
even know if he was in the land of the living. If he was, we knew
he was in a living hell. Needless to say, we preferred that to
the alternative.
Solid information was
unavailable. All we knew for sure was that our boy, a mighty
warrior, had flown into harm's way. He had not returned to the
nest. Ron was missing in action. That was it. That was the extent
of our knowledge.
The saddest part about the
situation was that we had no power to change it. We worried, we
prayed, and we hoped, but Uncle Sam's boy was in God's hands and
God's hands alone.
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