Reflections On War

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

By PJH Staff

Jackson, Wyoming-The impulse to fight with others is as hard-wired into our human brains as the impulse to love and care for our families. That makes sense. After all, up until not very long ago, it was quite literally a jungle out there. Humanity evolved in a world fraught with peril. One took risks acquiring even the most basic resources needed to survive another day. If there were others out there trying to steal the nuts and berries you relied on to feed your family or tribe, you might find yourself pushed to resorting to violence to defend every precious calorie.

If you found your source of clean water suddenly fouled – by a woolly mammoth laying down and dying somewhere upstream, perhaps – you might need to pack up and invade some one else’s green valley. And if there were no available mates to carry your genes on to a new generation, you might just have to sneak into the encampment over the hill and carry one away.

Thank the gods those days are over, eh? And yet, here we are, still fighting with others. Of course, today we go to war for different reasons – to fight for freedom, to liberate the people from their oppressors, to depose tyrants, to de-claw the overly aggressive and overly ambitious, to preserve our high ideals and our civilized way of life – but fight we must, apparently. Or so we’re told by the wealthy men in suits and ties who sequester themselves in super-secure chambers, hidden behind serene edifices of marble and granite, and debate about how many lives it would be acceptable to lose on the battlegrounds half a world away.

For as long as we are human, we seem bound to have war. And for as long as we have war, we seem bound to have war dead, war wounded, war scarred, war heroes, war stories. Is that part of the tragic nature of the human condition? I suppose so. Are there worse things? Most certainly.


A Wing & A Prayer
Bob LaLonde’s grandmother used to tell people her grandson was going off to be an agitator. “She meant ‘aviator,’ I think, and that’s all I ever wanted to be since I was knee high,” the 84-year-old veteran of three wars said. LaLonde racked up close to 10,000 hours flying missions in World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. He retired from the service as a Colonel after nearly 30 years.

The enigmatic LaLonde later became a Wyoming state senator and currently sells real estate for Art Hazen Realty.

LaLonde joined the WWII theatre in 1943 and flew B-25s – medium-sized bombers that flew in low and hammered the enemy in support of ground troops. During the Korean conflict he flew primarily propaganda missions. “I was involved mainly in a psychological war aspect,” LaLonde said. “We’d fly over our target area and at 10,000 feet we’d release a ‘bomb’ that would have about 5,000 leaflets of propaganda. You know, telling them they were fighting an evil war and crap like that.”

Occasionally, LaLonde’s missions were much more covert. He remembered sometimes flying guerrillas deep into enemy lines. “When we ran those missions our airplanes would have no markings on them,” LaLonde said. “We would take these spies, so to speak, people nobody knew, and we would drop them wherever; land or sea.”
Even though LaLonde had been shot at plenty – “It was something to see a big black puff over here and a big puff over there,” he said – it was a 12-hour mission out of the Philippines during the Korean War that spooked him the most.

“One stormy night in the Philippines I was flying a B-29 through a terrible lightning storm,” LaLonde began. “It was doing what they call St. Elmo’s fire. At one point I looked at the engine on the left and there was a big ball of lightning in front of it. The engine on the right had the same thing.

The right wing gunner had lightning strike right between his legs. Then it became an eerie blue and we knew something was going to happen. And it did. There was an explosion at the tail end – the wire cable off the back with the ball that we hung on the end for long range radio communications. It blew up. Smoke was pouring into the cabin and the co-pilot was panicking. So I had to smack him.

Thank God our engineer kept his head. He went through the smoke elimination checklist and I tried all the controls, everything was responding properly. We finally got it worked out but I decided to turn around and go back.”

LaLonde sees yesteryear’s conflicts and technology as simpler than today’s. “We are in an entirely different war today,” LaLonde said, of the Iraq conflict, “where you can’t see your enemy. You have to go dig him out. When we were shooting each other – in the air or on the ground or at sea – you knew who your enemy was; he wore a uniform, and you shot at him. Today, it’s an international situation. We have Jihadists in all of Southeast Asia and really all over the world.”

LaLonde also marveled at how well trained and equipped today’s soldiers are. After a recent chat with Vice President Dick Cheney – a personal friend – LaLonde was awestruck at the capabilities of the B-2 bombers. “The bomb capacity and the pinpoint accuracy of some of those smart bombs [is incredible],” he said. “You could put them through a specific window on, say, the second floor with the GPS capability they have today.”

But too often, he sees soldiers today, and in his time, handcuffed by politics. “We didn’t have the right kind of equipment and people in Korea,” LaLonde said. “The same thing happened in Vietnam, basically, because of the antiwar people. We lost both of those wars in Congress. In Vietnam, they cut off all funding and we had to withdraw our troops. That’s what they’re trying to do now in Iraq.”

LaLonde fears he is in the minority when he says he believes we must finish the job in Iraq, calling the alternative nothing but a cut-and-run option. People think things will be all peachy keen if we get our troops out of there but the place will fall apart and we will eventually pay for it, he said.

LaLonde’s last service was in Alaska from 1967 to 1970 as a strategic air command wing at Eielson Air Force Base. His main job was to refuel B-52s, which he said flew 10 to 12-hour perpetual circular patterns, loaded with nuclear weapons, waiting for possible deployment to the Soviet Union during the tail end of the Cold War.

LaLonde says he doesn’t like to talk much about the action he saw during his military life. He was in some tight spots but admits he always felt well-protected.

He remembers one particularly dangerous mission over the Yellow River in China. His wing commander approached him just before takeoff and told the young pilot to take the night off, enjoy himself, he would fly it himself. “So he flew it,” LaLonde paused. “And it got shot down. I never knew why I was taken off that flight.”
-Jake Nichols

Jackson Hole’s top gun
Your attention may be drawn to all the TVs and beer taps, but if you look over your head at Sidewinders Tavern and Sports Grill, you’ll find models of historical warplanes in the middle of air-to-air combat.
 
It’s no mistake that the F4 Phantom is the most modern and powerful airplane in the mix. That’s what Sidewinders owner and operator Joe Rice flew from 1985-1993 for the U.S. Marine Corps.

Stationed out of Hawaii in the late ’80s, Rice would deploy to the Far East, where he would typically fly escort missions in his fighter-bomber aircraft. Although he never had to engage in live combat during the Cold War era, he had the honor of attending the Top Gun fighter-weapons school in San Diego in 1987 (the same year the famous film debuted).

Rice might not agree with our current policymakers regarding the war in Iraq, but for the U.S. military, he hasn’t lost that lovin’ feelin’. 

“What people have to realize,” he said, “the guys in the military are just serving their country. They love their country and they’re serving their country because they love it. They’re not political.”

During the eight years that Rice served in the Marines, he ascended to the rank of major and flew as a Radar Intercept Officer (RIO) in the back seat of the F4 (like Goose to Maverick in the film). Despite the showboating of Mav, RIOs call the shots in the dogfight when an enemy is encountered.

“It’s like calling out plays in a huddle at a football game,” Rice said. “You got all kinds of plans going, and it’s got to be quick-quick when you’re maneuvering and you’re leading like that. You have the radar, so you see everything that’s going on – you’ve got to figure out the tactics of how you’re going to attack.”

Once in close visual range with the enemy, the front guys take over, then it’s a back-and-forth team effort to defeat the enemy.

Rice is modest of his military accomplishments. “I don’t want to compare anything I did to what’s going on right now. I think what’s going on right now … you’re talking apples and oranges. I mean, we trained, but those guys that are serving right now, they’re true heroes.

“We should really be thankful for the girls and guys that are putting their lives on the line,” he continued, “whether you agree or disagree with the war. They’re over there doing it, and they should be commended for it.”

But sitting in the back of Sidewinders, talking war and military, it’s impossible not to bring up politics. Just because Rice was in the Marines doesn’t make him a gung-ho warmonger. Quite the opposite. He said the war in Iraq is failing due to poor leadership on all sides.

“The troops are being over-extended. It’s not a good situation,” he said. “A lot of the guys in the military aren’t happy about it. You’re seeing even Marine Corps generals coming out and saying, you know ‘It’s not being done the right way.’ I think there’s been a lot of mistakes made.”

The biggest mistake made may have been invading Iraq in the first place, he said. When we initially invaded Afghanistan, the country was united. We were going after Bin Laden, that guy who blew up the World Trade Center.

The mission was focused and almost everyone could get behind it. Then the political rhetoric changed, a vote was cast, and we invaded Iraq. We were able to capture Saddam Hussein – an enemy of the United States, yes – but Bin Laden remains at large. Mission accomplished? Rice doesn’t think so. But he looks at the realities of the current situation. 

“With everything we had at the time, we thought it was the right thing to do,” he said. “Looking back, it wasn’t. I don’t know why we have politicians that can’t admit it, on any side.”

Nonetheless, Rice is wary of pulling out too soon, for fear of another situation like the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, where millions died after the U.S. left the area. Some say pulling out of Iraq could make a bad situation worse.

“The only way I can see it getting better is if the Middle Eastern countries step up to the plate and help,” he said. “I think that was a major mistake that we haven’t had them helping us, because it’s their part of the world. … I don’t think it’s going to ever get better until the Muslim community starts taking more responsibility for the radicals in their religion.”

But even if that happens, Rice isn’t optimistic that peace will reign for long.
“People think [war] will go away,” Rice said, “but it just doesn’t. These tyrants are going to kill you, and sometimes they have to be stopped. That’s what I reflect on Memorial Day or when I hear the national anthem. I think that’s a good time to think about all the people who have served and given their lives for their country.”
-Sam Petri

An age of war as seen from operating rooms
“Ours not to question why;
ours not to let them die.”
– Capt. Hawkeye Pierce

Dr. Al Forbes is an orthopedic surgeon who came to Jackson in 1989. The 56-year-old native of Yakima, Wash., was involved with Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corp at Washington State University during Vietnam when knee surgery ended his dream of flight school after graduation. While still an undergraduate, he switched to Army ROTC and pre-med, moves that would define the course of Forbes’ professional life as an officer in the Army and, later, as a private practitioner.

After finishing medical school, Forbes took an officer’s commission as a 2nd lieutenant and “trained”  – doctor parlance for completing a residency and internship – within the Army, spending almost 10 years on active duty. In ’87 he got out of the Army and went to California for a couple of years before landing in Jackson, his home ever since.

Though now 20 years removed from full active duty, Forbes, through his status as a Army reservist turned National Guardsmen, has been to Middle Eastern hotspots three times – twice to Iraq with a deployment to Afghanstan between. The man who promises his wife he won’t do anything like venture off of a base that borders remote rugged Afghan mountains is likely to return to the Middle East in the coming years for at least one more tour.

Wyoming’s National Guard boasts only five physicians statewide, with those medical personnel using Cheyenne as an operations hub.  Physicians – especially general and orthopedic surgeons – have become a rare commodity in the military, Forbes said, due in part to what he described as “a huge pay differential” that makes the salaries of active reserve service less appealing to many of those higher-income specialists.
As an army reservist, Forbes was called up in January of 1991 to serve in a MASH unit deployed to southern Iraq in Operation Desert Storm, what is now sometimes called Iraq I.

“There were not many U.S. casualties,” said Col. Forbes from his office at Orthopaedic Associates of Jackson Hole, located next to Sidewinders Tavern on Broadway.
Southern Iraq then, as now, was home primarily to the country’s Shiite Muslim minority, a group that at times was violently oppressed under Saddam’s regime.

After coalition forces made quick work of the Iraqi military without lingering as occupiers, Shi’a uprisings around southern Iraq led to attacks on government buildings and vengeful deaths of Saddam’s Baath party officials and collaborators.

The Republican Guard, Saddam’s elite corps of troops, was quick to put down the rebellions and exact retribution against the Shi’a – or whoever else was unlucky enough to catch the business end of bullet, knife or mortar round.

“We treated a bunch of civilians that the Republican Guard bombed,” Forbes said of casualties in a town some couple hundred miles from where he was located. The Republican Guard “just lobbed rockets into the town indiscriminately because they felt it to be an anti-Saddam town.”

Forbes returned from Iraq in April ’91 and, apart from a few weekends a year and one week in the summer fulfilling his Guard obligations, he was able to focus on his own practice and amass “good years” toward military retirement benefits.

In the post 9/11 ousting of Taliban rulers in Afghanstan by U.S. and NATO forces, Forbes was again activated in November 2003 and sent to Bagram Air Base, near the border with Pakistan controlled by Soviet invaders in 1980, and later fought over in an Afghan civil war. The hospital at Bagram is the main military hospital in Afghanstan, and though its main objective is to treat service personnel, it also treats Afghans needing medical care, too often as part of an unfortunate Soviet legacy.

“Assuming the hospital wasn’t full, we [saw] a lot of civilian accidents,” Forbes said. “There were a lot of kids stepping on land mines left over from the Soviet era.”

A landmine removal unit from the former Yugoslavia worked full time to clear the many minefields surrounding the air base, a tactic the Soviets used to fortify the area. Still, at that time, Afghanistan had “somewhere in the vicinity of 16 million landmines,” said Forbes, who saw two to three landmine casualties every week during the four months he was there.

“It was really sad. Mainly it was just young people. Just out playing.”

The typical wounds for these “popper” mines, the Colonel explained, would “usually blow off the foot, and you’d be picking shrapnel out of the groin and other three extremities.”
Because of Forbes experience and rank, he remained mainly at the base hospital, rather than attaching to the smaller, more mobile Forward Surgical Teams that have supplanted MASH units to keep up with today’s more mobile combat units.

In May 2005, it was back to Iraq, this time for six months in Kirkuk, a northern Iraqi town in the relatively quiet Kurdistan region. There, Forbes was primarily assigned to a clinic, where he did “a lot of standard clinic stuff, sorting out [which soldiers] needed to go home” for further orthopedic treatment.

Though removed from the much more active insurgency occurring in the so-called Sunni Triangle south of Kirkuk, Forbes said he was nonetheless working in a “pretty regular IED [Improvised Explosive Device] area.”

“We saw a little bit of trauma, bad burns,” Forbes recounted. “There were a lot of IEDs, but we only lost two or three people during that four months.”

In this era of combat technology, with advances in body armor more and more accessible to U.S. service men and women, Forbes said that the demand for orthopedic surgeons to mend and salvage injured troops “with their vital organs intact” will continue to increase.

“If someone lives to get off of the field, about 80 percent have orthopedic injuries,” he said.

Although he’s eligible to retire with full benefits, Forbes intends to remain involved with the Guard until he is 61. That would put him back up for deployment in fall 2008.
“It didn’t feel right to plan on leaving before … because they actually need the support now, medical care for our troops. Whether I agree or disagree with our conflict has nothing to do with it.”
-Ben Cannon

Courtesy Photo
Portrait of a young airforce officer: Bob LaLonde

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