By the summer of 1965, just months after the 9th Marine Expeditionary Brigade landed at Da Nang, the intensity of the Vietnam War was surging. Ramping up, too, were the rules of engagement.
President Lyndon B. Johnson was reportedly quoted as saying American pilots could not bomb an outhouse without his approval. Frustrated pilots found themselves “flying into heavily defended areas on predictable flight paths that exposed them to great risk while yielding often token results,” Stuart I. Rochester wrote in “The Battle Behind Bars.”
It was in this environment that then-Capt. Harlan Page Chapman and his fellow Marines of Fighter Squadron 212 found themselves during the opening months of the war. More than 30 American aviators had already been killed or presumed missing in action, while more than a dozen were captured.
After six frustrating and challenging months, Chapman was soon to discover that Johnson’s outhouse quip was, in reality, all too real.
-Alemaster
