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Delivering Community News to Eagle, Star & W. Ada County Volume 6 • Issue 6 The Independent News (TIN) thanks you for our continuing circulation growth Now 16,000 Households
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Jack Doerty, far left, with fellow pilots
JUNE 2015
www.theindnews.com
EVERYONE HAS A STORY: Eagle Veteran Spent 28-months as Korean Prisoner of War
By Philip A. Janquart It doesn’t seem that, after 62 years, Jack Doerty is any closer to forgetting that day in 1951 when the South Korean army division he was attached to was overrun by the Chinese. The Eagle resident, a former U.S. Air Force fighter pilot, was assigned to the Republic of Korea’s (ROK) 3rd Corps, 9th Division as a ground-based Forward Air Controller (FAC) during the Korean War. It was a duty required of all pilots and intended to provide guidance to aircraft for close ground support, ensuring the attacks hit the intended target and not friendly troops. Inoperable radios, the language barrier and a quickly advancing Chinese offensive, however, prevented him from conducting a single air strike. “We’d been in a fire fight for five days, just trying to evade and escape because there was a small group of us,” he explained. “We had a plan, but we got split up. We got mortar fire on our position that took all the leaves off the plants where we thought we were hiding under. We tried to run and escape, but there was just a hillside full of the enemy.” Doerty, 88, says he remembers the moment he realized he was captured, recalling a tornado of emotions as the enemy surrounded him. “The feelings I had were both, ‘I’ll probably get killed in all of this, because I don’t have any ammunition left,’” he said, explaining the experience six decades later, with wide eyes. “But, I was also very shameful to have to surrender. It was a dual feeling that came over you. It comes over you like a flash; it’s not the way a fighter pilot, or any other soldier, wants to end up, putting his hands in the air. The awefulness and shame of being captured is impossible for me to relate.” Doerty spent his 23rd, 24th and 25th birthdays as a prisoner of war (POW), living in squalid conditions, forced to march long distances, starved and often suffering from dysentery that left him looking “like a skeleton.” “They treated us terrible and the starva-
tion started immediately,” he said. “The first meal was after two or three days. They took some form of boiled corn and dumped it on the ground for us, so we had to scoop it up out of the dirt, to eat it.” Unlike the nightmare stories of some former Vietnam POWs, Doerty, who made two unsuccessful attempts to escape, was not personally subjected to physical torture, but said that it did happen. “I had a close friend who ejected from his F-86 and the vertical stabilizer took his leg off at the knee,” he said. “He was captured and put with a group of Brits. They escaped, but he was left there and they (North Koreans) beat on his stump with a heavy stick, to make him tell where they had gone; he never told anyone, anything. He passed out time after time.” Coming Home An armistice, signed on July 27, 1953, ended the Korean War, but there was no excitement for Doerty who says he became increasingly anxious as his release date inched closer. “There was no jubilation,” he explained. “I wondered if this was really going to happen, but it did and we made it across. My father was on Gen. (Douglas) MacArthur’s staff in Japan at the time – he rode a motorcycle as a dispatch rider for Gen. (John “Black Jack”) Pershing in World War I. I was laying in a bed in an infirmary when he walked in. He heard that I had been released and
Honoring our Veterans at Eagle's Field of Honor
Mayors' Awards to Youth recipient, Coey Collard
Carolyn and Jack Doerty at home in Eagle
came over from Japan. It was a pretty great surprise.” Doerty stayed in the Air Force, eventually marrying his high school sweetheart, Carolyn, whose father was the storied aviator Tex Rankin. Rankin, in part, inspired Doerty to become a pilot in the first place. He attempted to get into the action as a fighter pilot during World War II, just after his high school graduation in Tulare, Calif., but his pilot training, first with the Air Force and then with the U.S. Navy, was cut short due to VE Day and VJ Day, depriving him of the opportunity. He spent a total of 28 years in the Air Force, playing a role in world events such as the Berlin airlift and the Cuban missile crises. He flew a variety of planes, including the AT-6 advanced trainer, the P-51 and the F-80, all during his third try at flight training, an unusual and coveted credential at the time. He docked one flight in the F-86 and flew an F-4 Phantom as a squadron commander during the 1960’s. He flew combat missions in Vietnam for one year, in 1966, before coming home and being assigned, for a time, to a desk job at the Pentagon. Doerty says he is proud of his service; that he fought for his country to preserve every American's right to live free and to be heard. "We really do live in the greatest country in the world, and we need to study the past to learn from its lessons," he said. "It's easy to forget what other people sacrificed but we should always keep that in mind."
Doerty poses outside the cockpit of his F-4 Phantom
Jack Doerty at age 7
PRSRT STD U.S. POSTAGE PAID EAGLE, IDAHO PERMIT NO. 60
ECRWSS
POSTAL PATRON LOCAL
pg. 2
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Boys and Girls Rugby Wrap-up pg. 18
Happy Father's Day from all of us at T he Independent News!