{"product_id":"bury-us-upside-down-isbn-9780345465382","title":"Bury Us Upside Down","description":"They had the most dangerous job n the Air Force. Now Bury Us Upside Down reveals the never-before-told story of the Vietnam War’s top-secret jet-fighter outfit–an all-volunteer unit composed of truly extraordinary men who flew missions from which heroes are made.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn today’s wars, computers, targeting pods, lasers, and precision-guided bombs help FAC (forward air controller) pilots identify and destroy targets from safe distances. But in the search for enemy traffic on the elusive Ho Chi Minh Trail, always risking enemy fire, capture, and death, pilots had to drop low enough to glimpse the telltale signs of movement such as suspicious dust on treetops or disappearing tire marks on a dirt road (indicating a hidden truck park). Written by an accomplished journalist and veteran, Bury Us Upside Down is the stunning story of these brave Americans, the men who flew in the covert Operation Commando Sabre–or “Misty”–the most innovative air operation of the war.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn missions that lasted for hours, the pilots of Misty flew zigzag patterns searching for enemy troops, vehicles, and weapons, without benefit of night-vision goggles, infrared devices, or other now common sensors. What they gained in exhilarating autonomy also cost them: of 157 pilots, 34 were shot down, 3 captured, and 7 killed. Here is a firsthand account of courage and technical mastery under fire. Here, too, is a tale of forbearance and loss, including the experience of the family of a missing Misty flier–Howard K. Williams–as they learn, after twenty-three years, that his remains have been found.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNow that bombs are smart and remote sensors are even smarter, the missions that the Mistys flew would now be considered no less than suicidal. Bury Us Upside Down reminds us that for some, such dangers simply came with the territory.Praise for Bury Us Upside Down\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"The stories . . . are vivid and timeless: : the North Vietnamese gunner who was so inept that the Mistys had a standing order not to shoot him; the pilot who dissuaded his new commander from launching night Misty missions by taking him on a night flight and surreptitiously switching on the outboard lights over heavy ground fire; the Misty custom of igniting their afterburners over POW sites, sending out a familiar booming noise that told the downed airmen they were not forgotten.  [A] gripping narrative. . . . It's a fabulous read.\"\u003cbr\u003e–The Washington Post\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“This is a true story about real warriors–both those who came home and those who did not–and the legacy they left. The story of the Misty pilots fills a gap in our understanding of the Vietnam War, and reminds armchair tacticians what the true cost of war is, and who pays the price.”\u003cbr\u003e–Joseph Galloway, co-author of We Were Soldiers Once . . . and Young\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Rip that Nintendo out of your kid’s hands and hand him Bury Us Upside Down! This outstanding book will give him insight into what real aerial combat, flown by real heroes, is like. Undoubtedly the best book of its type,\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003eBury Us Upside Down is the truth writ bold and simple–the story of the men who fought the war flying the toughest missions imaginable, and their families. It is a book of heroes, and just reading it gives you insight into what a true hero feels.”\u003cbr\u003e–Walter J. Boyne, former director, National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“With its great in-the-cockpit stories of the first jet-fighter combat forward air controllers, Bury Us Upside Down is an incredible account of how it all started. The reader will feel the G forces, the strain of avoiding ground fire, the satisfaction of a completed rescue, the black humor of combat-hardened pilots, and the effects on the families of those who didn’t return. But most of all the reader will feel proud America can produce such men.”\u003cbr\u003e–Mark Berent, author of the Rolling Thunder series\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“[A] thoroughly readable, absorbing history . . . a distinguished addition to Vietnam War aviation literature.”\u003cbr\u003e–Publishers WeeklyRick Newman is a writer and editor at U.S. News \u0026amp; World Report who covered the Pentagon for seven years, including U.S. missions in Bosnia, Kosovo, and the Persian Gulf. He has written hundreds of stories on the military, including dozens of exclusives, and more than twenty cover stories.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDon Shepperd (Misty 34) reported for duty at Phu Cat Air Base on December 19, 1967, and flew fifty-eight missions as a Misty during his four-month tour. With a total of 247 combat missions in Vietnam, he retired from the Air Force in 1998 as a two-star general and head of the Air National Guard. In 2001 he joined CNN as one of their principal military analysts.Chapter one\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “MISSING MAN”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The casket seemed like overkill. But it was too awkward for anybody to   mention.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    As seventy-five guests sat anxiously in the chapel at Arlington   National Cemetery, the organist softly playing “Amazing Grace,” a   military caisson clanked to a stop outside the gates. Pallbearers from   the Air Force Honor Guard, every thread of their uniforms neatly in   place, lowered a flag-draped coffin from the horse-drawn carriage. The   men carried it up the steps and methodically marched it down the aisle,   then set it before the small altar at the front of the chapel. The   stiff, practiced precision of the pallbearers’ movements, their   reverential bearing, all of the military formality—it was impressive,   to be sure. Yet it was starkly at odds with what was inside the casket:   practically nothing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    In the second pew, Jean Kahoon grew uncomfortable as she listened to   friends and colleagues eulogize Howard Keith Williams, her big brother.   He had been shot down while flying an F-100 fighter jet over North   Vietnam twenty-four years earlier and never heard from again. John   Buckmelter, a childhood friend, described how Howard had fallen in love   with flying when he was just a boy hanging out at the Jefferson County   airfield near Steubenville, Ohio. Roger Williams, Howard’s younger   brother, described how pleased he had been to be able to go to Vietnam   as an Army soldier at the same time Howard, his hero, had gone over to   fly jets. Fellow pilots Roger Wise and Chuck O’Connor told stories of   going to flight school and learning how to be fighter jocks with   “Willy.” “He was always a little more focused, a little more mature,”   O’Connor recalled.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    But there was so much more to him, thought Jean, than his military   career and his fascination with flying. There was the neighborhood   sled-riding hill where she and her brother and dozens of other kids   would go careening over rocks and bushes and have to jump off their   sleds to avoid landing in the creek at the bottom. There were all the   jobs Howard worked as a kid to pick up spending money and add to the   family clothing fund: the paper routes, the lawns he mowed, the summer   labor at their grandfather’s farm in West Virginia where they’d bale   hay and plow up potatoes and milk cows. Best of all was the three-man   band Howard helped form. He played trumpet and was good enough to get   paying gigs at local nightclubs on weekends. In her mind, Jean could   still see the drum majorette her brother had dated for a while in high   school, the one with the great legs who wore her skirt so short it   barely covered her panties.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Then there were all the special things between Jean and Howard, born   two years apart and the oldest of eight children. Jean helped Howard   deliver the papers and took over the route when he moved on to bigger   jobs. She was with Howard at the farm in West Virginia when he tried   chewing tobacco for the first time—a short-lived habit. And all the   nights they spent together hiding in the attic, talking and drawing,   came cascading back. Their dad had been a carpenter for U.S. Steel, and   he had been injured and out of work for a while. The family could   afford just one upstairs bedroom for the girls, and one for the boys.   But the setup had its charms. Each bedroom had a closet that led to a   crawl space at the top of the house. That’s where the family kept its   supply of drawing paper—blank newsprint that occasionally came bundled   with the morning news. Jean and Howard would sneak up there once the   younger kids were asleep and spend hours drawing cartoons and planning   out the future. They’d clamber back down to their beds once they heard   their mom climbing the steps to check on the kids. Not once did they   ever get caught—not surprising, since Mom knew what they were up to all   along.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    And there, in a box twenty feet in front of her, Jean’s big brother   Howard, who caused her profound heartache when he left home and giddy   joy whenever he came back to visit, had been literally reduced to   shards: a bone fragment, one tooth, a sliver from a signal mirror that   was part of his survival gear, and a piece of a plastic Ace comb. The   remains, recovered by American investigators a year earlier, in 1991,   were so sparse that Jean wondered, what’s the point of putting them in   a casket? She even had her doubts about whether they were actually   Howard’s. There had been so much that didn’t make sense, so many fishy   explanations, that it was hard to believe anything the government said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Was it just coincidence that Howard had told her, in the last letter   she ever got from him in Vietnam, that he was flying reconnaissance   missions up north, taking pictures and getting shot at, and that he   feared he might not make it home? Or that he wanted her to listen to a   song that he said was about siblings like them—“Bang Bang, My Baby Shot   Me Down”? And how could the U.S. government not have known for   twenty-three years what happened to Howard? That coffin, which   contained her brother’s so-called remains, was about as hollow as   everything else the government had offered about her brother in the   years since she had last heard from him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Jean wasn’t the only person in the chapel bothered by the contents of   the casket. In the front row, Keith Williams—Howard’s son, who was six   when his dad disappeared over North Vietnam—had his own reservations.   It was Keith who had flown to Travis Air Force Base near San Francisco   when the remains were first returned to the United States, to “escort”   them to the San Francisco airport. It seemed ridiculous to him that the   Air Force had put a handful of body parts into a full-sized coffin. And   he began wondering all over again how his father had died, and how much   pain he had gone through. As Keith had gotten older, people who seemed   to know such things had whispered to him horror stories about American   pilots who had gone down in that part of North Vietnam, close to the   border with Laos. Often they were murdered the moment they were   discovered by local Vietnamese militias. Other times they were captured   and tortured, only to die miserably before they ever made it to   infamous prisons like the Hanoi Hilton. They were even shot at in their   parachutes while descending. Those who got tangled in trees could be   wounded and left hanging until they bled to death.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    On the flight out to Travis, Keith had begun writing a eulogy on   three-by-five-inch note cards, a eulogy he stood to give in the chapel   at Arlington. Most of his recollections were the vaguest of sketches,   filled in over the years by the stories he heard from friends and   relatives and colleagues who had flown with his dad. So Keith described   his dad largely as others had to him. He was “a man whose love of life   and family propelled him to excel in all of life’s endeavors . . . As a   self-taught artist, he shared with us his aesthetic ideal. . . . Music   was another pastime my father pursued with dedication and   single-mindedness. With a few songbooks, a tuning pipe, and hours of   devotion, he brought laughter and joy to those who heard him play.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    His true passion, however, had been flying: “Diving, turning, zooming,   and rolling amid the clouds allowed my father to push himself and his   aircraft to the limits. Covering a mile every six seconds, my father   was privy to a view of the world reserved for very few individuals. A   world with no lines or boundaries between people or nations, with a   crisp blue sky surrounding him, just on the edge of heaven.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Of those who spoke at the chapel that day, Keith Williams had known the   man represented by the empty casket least of all. Yet the mere   appearance of the son did more to animate the memory of the father than   any words could have. Keith’s lanky six-foot-two frame, his mannerisms   and voice, his gentle face and slightly crooked smile—almost everything   about him, except the ponytail that hung over the collar of his dark   suit—made it seem as if Howard himself were standing at the lectern   delivering his own eulogy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e     From the fourth row of the chapel, Dick Rutan was struck by the   resemblance. Competitive, excitable, and unflinchingly self-confident,   Rutan fit the stereotype of a fighter pilot much better than the calm   and studious man he was there to honor. In Commando Sabre, the top   secret unit he and Howard had belonged to when Howard was shot down,   Rutan was considered one of the most aggressive pilots—and all of the   pilots were aggressive. After Vietnam, Rutan had achieved aviation   exploits that made him a legitimate celebrity, especially among the   flight buffs in the pews around him. In December 1986 he and a female   pilot, Jeana Yeager, had flown the Voyager aircraft completely around   the world without ever stopping—the first time anyone had made such an   unrefueled, nonstop flight. The Voyager hung for the world to see just   a few miles away, across the Potomac River, in the Smithsonian   Institution’s National Air and Space Museum.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Now, the fearless flight pioneer was uncharacteristically reserved.   Rutan had been to dozens of funerals for colleagues killed in combat,   yet this one punctured his emotional armor. He had last seen the lean   young man at the lectern as a four- or five-year old, back when he and   Howard were in training together. And now it was as if his old flying   buddy were reincarnated and standing before him once again. If you have   to leave the way Howie did, Rutan thought, it’s good you can leave   something like that behind.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    But the vacant casket represented more to Rutan than just a lost flying   buddy. It had been Rutan who had urged Howie, back in 1968, to join   Commando Sabre, known informally by the radio call sign the unit   used—“Misty.” That came from the famous song by Johnny Mathis, which   had been a favorite of the unit’s first commander. Rutan and Howie had   both been sent to Vietnam in 1967 to fly F-100 fighter-bombers on   conventional missions in the South. Rutan had heard about Misty through   back channels, and begged to join. The pilots would fly long missions   over North Vietnam, looking for supply trucks and supplies and   surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) and other matériel being shipped down   the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The pilots couldn’t say much about the mission,   which was just as well, because in one respect Misty sounded like   suicide. To be able to find and direct strikes on targets that were   expertly camouflaged, in mountainous jungle, the pilots had to fly so   low they were fat targets for the North’s antiaircraft guns. It was   dangerous and exhausting work—and probably the most exciting flying a   fighter pilot could find in Vietnam.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Rutan got in and insisted that his friend Howie join the unit. Misty   needed a hotshot like Howie, Rutan argued. His trademark calm in the   cockpit was the perfect demeanor for the unit’s stressful missions. And   Howie’s flight skills were unsurpassed. Howie had won the coveted “Top   Gun” trophy in his F-100 class at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona,   nailing the highest scores in gunnery and bombing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The allure was irresistible, and Howie volunteerd. Misty was happy to   have him. He and Rutan both loved the freedom of flying with the unit.   Unlike the tightly regimented operations in conventional squadrons, the   Misty pilots flew as they saw fit in order to complete their missions,   often making up their own rules. The outfit had renegade status and   ruffled a lot of brass feathers. But it was a favorite of Gen. William   “Spike” Momyer, the top Air Force general in Saigon, and the pilots   pretty much got what they wanted. To Rutan, Misty was what war was   supposed to be about: courageous men taking extraordinary risks, and   receiving a few extraordinary privileges in return.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Dick Rutan and Howard Williams never got to fly together. Howie was   shot down on his ninth mission. When Howie didn’t return and was   declared missing in action, the Misty commander appointed Rutan as   summary courts officer, responsible for packing up Howie’s stuff,   paying his accounts at the officers club, and getting his other affairs   and records squared away. That was always a devastating responsibility,   made even tougher when Rutan later got a letter from Howie’s wife,   Monalee, back in Columbus, complaining that somebody had stolen Howie’s   Leica camera. The Air Force had told him to expect an angry letter like   that—“anger transference,” they called it—but it was damned hard all   the same.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Sitting in the chapel at Arlington, Rutan still felt guilty. But it had   helped to see Monalee again, his first encounter with her since they   had both been at Luke back in 1967. The hostility was long gone. She   was now Monalee Meyers, and she sat in the front row of the chapel next   to her husband Fritz, whom she had married in 1982. What she had gone   through getting to that point, how tough it had been not knowing for   years whether her husband was dead or alive while trying to explain to   a growing boy what had happened to his dad, Rutan didn’t know. He was   simply relieved to see that she seemed stable and healthy and had   everything under control.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Rutan also met Chuck O’Connor and Roger Wise and some of Howie’s other   friends and family members. Another Misty pilot was there, too—Brian   Williams, known as “B. Willy.” He had been Howard’s crewmate on March   18, 1968, when their plane went down. They all talked about what had   happened. For some of the people at the ceremony, it was the first time   they had heard the story of Howie’s disappearance firsthand.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    B. Willy had been in the back of the two-seat F-100, with Howie in the   front, flying the jet, on a typical Misty mission scouting for targets   along the Trail. It was about 11:30 in the morning on a clear day. They   had just spotted what they thought was a North Vietnamese supply area   and were turning around to go back for another look when they heard a   loud thud and felt something hit the belly of the aircraft. A moment   later B. Willy saw flames in his rearview mirror. Fire was spreading   rapidly throughout the back of the plane and the pilots knew they’d   have to bail out. Howie aimed the plane toward high terrain, where   there would be fewer enemy soldiers on the ground. Then they prepared   to eject. “We better get out!” B. Willy had shouted. “I’m right behind   you,” Howie responded.Foreword by Senator John McCain [quote]--The Washington Post","brand":"Presidio Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46302138499301,"sku":"NP9780345465382","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780345465382.jpg?v=1767723212","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/bury-us-upside-down-isbn-9780345465382","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}