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CAPTAIN RICHARD C. LEE, 35, a stocky, crew-cut blond from Excelsior, Minn., serves as adviser to a South Vietnamese Air Force squadron at Bienhoa Airbase. He likes to fly combat missions, and occasionally he gets a chance. Three weeks ago, at the controls of an A-1H Skyraider, he accompanied Vietnamese planes on a strike against North Viet Nam; last week Lee took part in a raid against a Viet Cong installation.
But much as he enjoyed them, these were distractions from his primary assignment: helping train South Vietnamese pilots. That job gives him a real sense of accomplishment. Says he: "Not since the days of Spaatz has anyone as low-ranking as a captain been able to play an important part in building a whole air force from the ground up. It's a great job, and I was lucky enough to draw it. When you consider that it was only a few years ago that the entire Vietnamese air force consisted of 20 ancient Bearcats and a couple of A-1s, they've come a remarkably long way in an awful hurry."
Before too long, Lee's tour of duty will end, and he will be free to leave Viet Nam and return to his wife and three daughters. But, he says, "I'd stay on for five years if the people here wanted me to." As he sees it, "We can't afford to lose another one like we lost Korea."
The Unblooded
CORPORAL GERALD NECAISE, 20, of New Orleans, is a squad leader in the 8,400-man 9th Marine Expeditionary Brigade, most of which is assigned to help protect the Danang airfield. The marines are perhaps the most frustrated outfit in South Viet Nam: eager for battle, they are restricted to patrolling the Danang perimeter, and so far they have not been blooded. Last week, returning from an uneventful patrol, Necaise expressed his impatience. "Look at it this way," he said. "If you're in the engineers, you train to build roads and you get a chance to build roads. If you're in communications, you train to communicate and you get a chance to communicate. When you're a rifleman, you train to kill, but . . ." At that point he disgustedly waved a hand toward the quiet hills surrounding Danang.
The marines spend much of their time filling sandbags for bunkers. The heat is oppressive, the mosquitoes abundant. The only place to go on liberty is Danang, a dreary city with a 10 p.m. curfew and varieties of venereal disease for which U.S. medical science has not yet come up with a cure.
The Truck Bluffer
15T LIEUT. JOHN G. DODSON, 25, from El Paso, Texas, is an RF8 Marine photo-reconnaissance pilot on the carrier Coral Sea. His maintenance crew proudly records each of his missions by painting a small camera on the side of his jet. As of last week there were twelve cameras in a row — and a little yellow truck.
Dodson's plane is unarmed. How, then, did he manage to chalk a Communist truck up to his credit? One day recently, while photographing the results of a bomb strike near Vinh, Dodson was flat-hatting along Highway 1, only 100 ft. off the deck, at 500 m.p.h.
From the opposite direction came a North Vietnamese truck. The driver obviously did not know that Dodson shot only film. Recalls Dodson: "As we raced toward each other, I could see the front end of the truck beginning to skid and zigzag as the driver tried to halt.