MEMORIES OF VIETNAM

Preston Hollow resident Col. James Gilliland has an office full of awards and a box brimming with medals. Perhaps his most prestigious decoration is the Silver Star, which he earned for his service in Vietnam. As part of the 11th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron, he flew an RF4C over the northern part of the country. He was charged with photographing the destruction about 10 minutes after each air raid.

“We had no weapons,” he says. “We were unarmed … We’d brief ourselves on what we would do if one [of us] was shot down.”

In addition to these missions, Gilliland was involved in a then highly classified attempt by the U.S. government to induce rain in Southeast Asia.

“I was controlling the weather,” he explains. “I would take pictures of the flooding and I was seeding the clouds.”

Back home, his wife, Neva, cared for their four children.

“We’d just get letters once in a while,” she says. “We just had to spend a lot of time praying on our knees and just getting through each day and trusting that the Lord would take care of him.”

Gilliland knew his time in Vietnam would be perilous. Before his deployment, he underwent intensive prisoner of war training in Nevada.

“They treated us like we were prisoners,” he remembers. “They had men that were dressed as if they were the enemy and they gave us — I think it was 2 pounds of meat, two potatoes, just a few things … so we had to scavenge for our food.”

Because he was “the little guy” and “could get low enough in the sage brush,” Gilliland was chosen to “escape.” The desert dust dirtied his uniform and hurt his eyes, so he found an empty barracks. There, he took a shower, dried off with a bed sheet and called a friend to pick him up.

“If you had escaped, you had to be back at a certain time,” he explains.

Gilliland hopped in his friend’s trunk and they sped toward the POW camp, where the headquarters people were.

“[My friend] opened the trunk, so I got out and ran in,” Gilliand says, sounding surprised and amused that they pulled it off.

North Vietnam was so dangerous, the Air Force typically sent pilots home after their 100th mission. But, at the end of his combat tour, Gilliland was sent to Saigon, where he found himself in the midst of the Tet Offensive. He says the extreme violence he witnessed there is difficult to discuss.

When he finally returned to the States, Gilliland completed his master’s degree in management and then moved to Honolulu where he worked at Hickam Air Force Base. In 1972 he returned to Thailand and helped “establish a new satellite tracking facility for North American Aerospace Defense Command’s (NORAD) world surveillance system.” Eventually, he and his family moved to England. He worked first in Oxford, as the Deputy Base Commander of the 20th Fighter Wing, and then in London, helping the United States close down operations at the Royal Air Force base. Ironically, it was in the United Kingdom that Gilliland had his most memorable Fourth of July.

“Neva and I went to the event early because they were going to have dignitaries there, and so forth,” he remembers. “I must have been looking down or something, because I saw black shoes in front of me. I looked up and it was Jimmy Stewart. He said, ‘Move over.’ He wanted to sit between us.”

After three decades of harrowing flights and run-ins with movie stars, Gilliland retired. But the colonel remains an active member of our community. For years, he was part of the Institute Review Board at Presbyterian Hospital and sat on the Preston Hollow Neighborhood Association’s board of directors. He now chairs the wellness committee at Edgemere senior living and enjoys relaxing with Neva, who is glad to finally have him settled at home.

“We just live,” she says. “We just live together.”