10 November 2019
Dear Phyllis,
I first went to Japan in December 1958.
I had just been there four months when I got sent for three month TDY
(temporary duty) to Korea. The 5th Air Force had need of a duty
officer for a bomb squadron in Kunsan AB in South Korea. That was a real bad
assignment that no body wanted. I was the most junior man in my fighter
squadron at Yokota and got tagged for the job. We had just started the Church
of the Open Door at Yokota, I loved flying in Japan, and it seemed like a leper
colony assignment to get consigned to go there. But that assignment was one of
the major moments of my life.
Kunsan was one of the least desirable
places to go to in the Air Force. It had only been six years since the Korean
War armistice. South Korea was as an impoverished place as there was on the
planet. Kunsan was a fairly small air base with absolutely no place to go in
town. But the Lord knew that was the best place for me.
Russ O'uinn was literally the first man
I met in Japan. I had only been there 30 hours when I decided to go to the base
chapel to see if I could find some Christians. I went to the Officers Club to
have breakfast before church, and when I walked in the dinning hall I saw a man
sitting by himself having breakfast with a wore out Bible on the table. I
walked over and asked, “May I join you?” That .began an epic phase of my life.
Russ was a civilian tech rep with Douglas Aircraft for the B-66 program, and
was the Bible teacher at the base chapel. It was love at first sight. Russ was
a world class preacher. He later went on to international acclaim in aviation.
His picture was on the cover of Life magazine with a feature article written
about his life. He has been featured on Jim Dobson's Focus on the Family
broadcast several times and he has been the speaker at numerous prestigious
occasions. And he has led several high ranking generals to Christ. Russ was
truly a world class servant of Christ. I was a jet fighter pilot, which was
about a rare as hens teeth, so we instantly became buddies. So many people were
getting saved through Russ' Bible class at the base chapel that the base
chaplain kicked us off base shortly after I arrived at Yokota. The activity was
intoxicating. And then I got sent to Korea.
There was virtually nothing to do there
but read the Bible and Christian books. One of the first ones that I read was
Watchman Nee's, The Normal Christian Life. That was a life changer. Shortly
after I arrived at Kunsan, I met a Christian Korean guard who became my best
friend and my interpreter as we were out preaching in Korean churches nearly
every Sunday in the Kunsan area.
One of the epic events that happened
while I was there was one night when there was an explosion at the base fuel dump.
Three men were badly burned. Just at that time, the only flight surgeon we had
on base was on vacation, and there was no doctor for these critically burned
men. All they had at the hospital was the dentist and a medical corpsman. They
loaded the base doctor on a plane at Osan, which was about a 45 minute flight
away, and tried to get him back.
I was the duty officer that night, and
we had a radio in our duty section that was on flight frequencies. While I was
on duty I listened to the aircraft that was bringing the base flight surgeon
back. The weather was awful and the pilot couldn't get below the clouds to land
the plane. The base commander got on line and told the pilot, “I can't order
you to break minimums but, this is a desperate situation, and if you can get
below the clouds the visibility is good enough to land.”. He tried several
times but the clouds just kept getting lower and lower until the field was
completely socked in with dense fog. I had been listening to all this on the
radio in my duty section. At one point I did something that was totally off the
books. I called the pilot and asked to speak to the doctor. We all knew each
other. I said, “Doc, this is Lieutenant Cook at Pad C. What would you think if
I went over to Chunju and got the missionary doctor at the hospital there?” I
had been over there a couple of times and knew all the missionary staff. The
doc replied, “That is not a bad idea”.
When I got off work at midnight, I went
straight to the base hospital where the dentist and corpsman were attending a
critically burned man. The base commander was there, and I asked him, “Sir, may
I have a jeep to go to Chunju to get the missionary doctor?” The base commander
replied, “No, we are doing alright here, and our base flight surgeon will be
here as soon as it clears in the morning”.
Then I did something totally against
regs. In direct violation to the base commander's specific instruction, I went
to the motor pool and checked out a jeep and a Korean driver on my own
signature. I had no authority to do that, and the sergeant shouldn't have let
me have one, but simply because I was an officer, he didn't think about it and
gave me the jeep.
What a night! It was awful. Chunju was
only about 40 km away, but the fog was terrific. I couldn't have made it by
myself, but the Korean driver knew the road and we got there about 3:00 AM. I
got Bob Phillips out of bed. He was a first class doctor, but a fairly young
man and had only been in Korea about 5 years. Bob had contracted a serious
disease and before we left he had to first go to the lab to take a blood sample
on himself. That put us back an hour and it was 4:00 AM before we got headed
back to Kunsan. We got there right around dawn at 6:00. When we walked in the
hospital, we found the corpsman in a panic. Just as we walked in the patient
had gone into deep shock. Seeing the situation, Bob grabbed two chairs and told
the corpsman to put them under the foot of the bed elevating it to keep blood
to the patients head. Then he had the corpsman lie down on a bed next to the
patient and gave him a direct blood transfer to jack up his blood pressure. Had
we arrived five minutes later the man most certainly would have died. Bob
stayed beside him to attend the patient as he gradually edged his way back from
certain death. Two hours later he was reasonably stable and by 9:30 the fog had
lifted so that the base flight surgeon got back. The two doctors discussed the
situation and at 11:00 o'clock the base gave us a helicopter to take Bob
Phillips back to Chunju. That was quite an event when we landed the helicopter
in a school yard next to the hospital. Fortunately, I didn't get in trouble for
going against the base commander's specific instructions, and he later thanked
me for saving the airman's life.
Those three months TDY to Korea were
some of the best times of my life. All Air Force pilots are required to fly
four hours a month to get special flight pay. And the Air Force is obligated to
see that they have something to fly. There were four of us who were assigned to
Kunsan for non-flying duty, so the AF gave us a T-33 to play with in order to
get our flying time. We were like school boys with a motor bike. In the 50s
Korea was like the US west frontier days; it was like there were no rules. Man
howdy, I had some of the best fun flying ever .
But spiritually, this was a rare time.
I had just been saved two years and this was a time of unparalleled maturing
and growth. The Lord gave me a wonderful friend and interpreter. I had more
opportunities to speak in different churches each Sunday than at any time
before or since. I was a rare phenomenon. As a military/missionary I had the
best of both worlds. I took some leave while I was there and traveled all over
the country. I met missionaries from all over. In the subsequent years I was
occasionally deployed to Suwon flying our F-86 fighters. But Kunsan was the
most profitable time. And for the next 60 years I have been able to say, “Yes,
I know Korea”.
Thank You Jesus,
bill
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