Free Two Souls Indivisible by James S. Hirsch Page B

down by enemy ground fire while on a strike deep in enemy territory north of Hanoi on 17 October 1965.
    The mission itself failed to destroy the bridge at Thai Nguyen. A1 Carpenter wrote in his log: "BDA [bomb damage assessment] showed the bridge heavily damaged but still standing. No spans knocked down." Meanwhile, the antiaircraft site that Olmstead and Halyburton were to hit was instead targeted by Ralph Gaither, a young F-4 pilot who saw their jet crash. Gaither was also supposed to fire his rockets at an antiaircraft site near the bridge, but he couldn't find it. So he sought out the Olmstead-Halyburton target instead. When he drew near, however, the site was quiet—there was no gunfire. It was, Gaither concluded, nonoperational, a decoy, adding a painful coda to the mission: Halyburton and Olmstead were shot down trying to destroy a target that didn't exist. Gaither, for his part, was no luckier than Halyburton. He piloted one of the two other planes shot down on the Alpha strike, and he and his RIO, Lieutenant (j.g.) Rodney Knutson, were captured.
    Despite the loss of three planes and six men (three captured, two killed, plus Halyburton) and the failure to knock out the bridge, the attack was heralded as a success. When the
Independence
returned to Norfolk on December 13, a front-page article in the
Virginian-Pilot
noted that the enemy had suffered mightily from 10,309 sorties that had dropped or fired more than nine million pounds of steel or explosives. Only one mission received specific praise—that of October 17, in which pilots "were credited with the first destruction of an active, mobile surface-to-air missile site in North Viet Nam."

    The peasants surrounding Halyburton spoke no English, but he could usually figure out what they wanted. They stripped him of his flight vest, pistol, Winston cigarettes, anti-g suit, and boots. Tying his arms behind his back, they began marching him through low, rolling hills toward their village, almost two miles away. At the outset, he heard the fighter jets from his mission flying over the valley. The peasants pushed him face down on the side of the road and sat on him, but he could still hear the antiaircraft fire that would shoot two of the planes down. After the jets were gone, the group stood up and walked the rest of the way to the village.
    Halyburton didn't know its name, but his treatment there was relatively benign. A large crowd met him, strained to get a better look, and followed him to a hut with mud walls. He figured he was the only white man who wasn't French that the villagers had ever seen, and he felt as though he were from another planet. With his hands still tied, he was a source of curiosity. As the villagers peered inside, he sat in a corner, had his hands untied—one was still bleeding from the cut in the plane—and was offered one of his own cigarettes. He pulled out a Zippo lighter, which was promptly confiscated. They feared he was going to ignite the thatched roof.
    Desperate for water, Halyburton kept motioning that he needed to drink. The villagers initially brought some rice and soup, which Halyburton tasted out of respect; finally he was given water. The Vietnamese jammed inside the hut and poked through his belongings, which were fascinating but also dangerous. A farmer who picked up his pistol inadvertently fired it, sending a tracer through the hut. No one was hurt, though Halyburton feared that had anyone been shot, he would have been blamed. Such a mishap could have easily caused his execution. Meanwhile, his seat pan contained an inflatable eight-foot raft, and he was afraid the villagers toying with it would activate it. Anticipating pneumatic turmoil, Halyburton persuaded them to drop the device.
    Shortly, some militiamen arrived and placed Halyburton in a Jeep, his gear in back. They drove through rugged country and eventually stopped at a stream. A soldier untied Halyburton's hands and gave him a canteen cup. But when he