{"id":1551,"date":"2009-02-01T14:03:56","date_gmt":"2009-02-01T21:03:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=1551"},"modified":"2009-02-02T12:02:19","modified_gmt":"2009-02-02T19:02:19","slug":"farewell-to-bull","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=1551","title":{"rendered":"Farewell to Bull"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the men I flew with in the early 1980s, Dave Baker, died last Thursday.\u00a0 We called him Bull; I blogged about him<\/a> a few months ago.\u00a0 Bull had been a prisoner of war; captured and held after being shot down in Cambodia near the end of the war in Vietnam.\u00a0 They teach you that the best time to escape is during the initial stages of captivity; as Bull was being moved by truck shortly after being shot down he saw his chance and ran, but a Cambodian soldier shot him in the leg with an AK-47.\u00a0 He was a POW for eight months and was the only American airman to come out of Cambodia at the end of the war.\u00a0 His wound was a serious one, and even though he recovered, returned to flying duty, and had a successful career, recurring infections would dog him through the rest of his life and finally claim him.<\/p>\n

I sent news of Bull’s illness and subsequent death to a friend and squadron mate from those days, and we’ve been discussing the extraordinary men and leaders we were blessed to serve with.\u00a0 The USAF has plenty of leaders, to be sure, but generally they’re leaders by definition, competent though they may be; it’s a matter of rank and position.\u00a0 Few are natural leaders, and many USAF officers serve out their entire careers without knowing a single one.\u00a0 During a two-year stretch at the 32nd Tactical Fighter Squadron in The Netherlands, my friend and I worked and flew with three natural leaders, and Bull was one.\u00a0 He was still a young field-grader when we knew him, a mere major, but we would have followed him into any sort of engagement, outnumbered, outgunned, whatever.\u00a0 He inspired that kind of confidence, and we were better aviators for having flown with him.<\/p>\n

Bull went on to achieve the rank of brigadier general, and led a wing of Saudi Arabia-based F-15Es in Desert Storm.\u00a0 The second leader we flew with went on to three-star rank and was director of operations for United States Air Forces Europe.\u00a0 The third leader went all the way to four stars and became chief of staff of the USAF.\u00a0 I had a long career ahead of me: flying for a fighter wing in Alaska, working as a joint staff officer for two unified commands, flying for a large F-15 wing in Japan, serving as chief of flight safety for Pacific Air Forces, and managing ranges at Nellis AFB in Nevada, but I never again encountered leaders like the three I flew with at the 32nd TFS.<\/p>\n

Here’s to you, Bull!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the men I flew with in the early 1980s, Dave Baker, died last Thursday.\u00a0 We called him Bull; I blogged about him a few months ago.\u00a0 Bull had been a prisoner of war; captured and held after being shot down in Cambodia near the end of the war in Vietnam.\u00a0 They teach you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-flying","category-military"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1551"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1551\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1561,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1551\/revisions\/1561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}