July 1950
Leaving Luzon
One of the first “axioms” any military recruit learned in the Forties and Fifties was “Never to volunteer for anything.” Volunteers could get stuck with K-P or latrine cleanup or any number of other possible “choice assignments” that were often a part of military life, whether one was a “Soldier, Sailor or Marine.”
Volunteers for new military assignments and missions could also find their decision might put their very life in danger. This was particularly true if “volunteers” were being sought for combat duty.
Lt. Duane "Bud" Biteman
On Monday evening, July 3rd, 1st Lt. Duane “Bud” Biteman was attending a meeting of the 18th Fighter-Group Headquarters Staff at Clark field on Luzon. The Korean invasion was moving into its second week and things were not going well at all, in fact, the ROK forces were being pushed down the rocky peninsula—they would soon run out of territory into which they could retreat.
Volunteers were being sought from pilots and support personnel in the Group for duty as a member of a new composite unit that would be deployed almost immediately to Korea and into combat as the U.S. began to bring its military force to bear on the invading North Korean troops that had to be stopped before the Republic of Korea ceased to exist.
The choice for the 26-year old Lieutenant, married five years and with a young daughter—to leave a relatively secure assignment, with his wife and family nearby, to fly off to some dusty, dirty, almost unknown little oriental country to kill—or perhaps to be killed?”
For Bud Biteman, “it was a quick decision, but not necessarily an easy one.”
During those few minutes of the Headquarters Staff Meeting, he was torn between his “love and loyalty” for Helen and Carol (who were with him at Clark Field, P.I. and getting ready to return to the United States after two long years in the Philippines) and his “worrying families back in the States,” and the “very strong obligation” he felt “to support what our country was doing to carry out a promise to protect a weaker nation.”
As Biteman saw it, he “had the required professional qualifications and was a qualified fighter pilot with “experience gathered over the years at the taxpayer’s expense, so that I might someday repay them by fighting on their behalf.” He wondered whether he “could live with myself, with my conscience, and the shame if I said “no” to a request for help?” 4 The wrenching decision came down to “Helen, Carol and the families on one side, the duty obligations on the other.”
Biteman determined that “both causes could be served by sending my “gals” back to the safety of the United States, while I went north to Korea for a few months. In all likelihood, with the situation that existed at the time, I would probably get back to the U.S. sooner from Korea than I would from remaining as “home guard” at Clark Field.”
Taking a very deep breath, Biteman added his name to the list of volunteers, even as he was “hoping that Helen would understand.” They had not had a chance to discuss it at the time, but he “was sure that she approved—with considerable apprehension and reluctance.”
Bud and Helen were both very sorrowful at the prospect of yet another lengthy separation, “the third in our young five years of marriage; but we had known what we were letting ourselves in for when I had come back on active Air Force duty in 1948. And I knew that, at the time, we just happened to be in the ‘wrong place at the right time!’”
The volunteers for the new Dallas Provisional Squadron whose families were at Clark Field were offered the option of having them return to the ‘States’ immediately, or to remain in their present quarters on Clark Air Force Base. Several of the officers elected to have their families remain, but under the circumstances, Biteman remembered, “with our baggage all packed, and some of it already on its way, we decided that it would be best if Helen and Carol went on ahead, and waited for me in the safety of Los Angeles with her parents. We were still uncertain how widespread the Korean thing would develop and, since I would be a couple of thousand miles north, I would feel a lot more comfortable if I knew they were safe at home.”
As soon as Biteman realized he was heading for the fight in Korea, he headed for the backrooms of the 13th Air Force Headquarters. He was on his first “mission”—searching for maps—of Korea. He managed “to drain 13th AFH stock of about a dozen sets (three charts covered the entire peninsula).”
When he arrived at Ashiya, Japan prior to heading for Taegu, Korea, he hustled a set of those charts to the photo lab and “had them make monochrome photo copies in about 100 sets” which he then “took over to Korea with us, since all issue charts had already been removed from Base Operations at Ashiya. With the b/w photo copied charts, we could find the rivers and towns—but it’s amazing how we had all come to depend upon the color gradations to help determine the mountains and valleys—of which the entire country was filled!”
On July 7th, 1950, while the men of the 24th Infantry Division were being airlifted from Japan to Suwon and Kimpo airfields in South Korea, Biteman “was standing forlornly on the dock at Manila Bay, looking through misty eyes at an equally-forlorn pair standing at the rail on the deck of the naval transport USNS Gaffey.”
It was almost two years since the family separations had been reversed.
In July 1948, he had left Helen standing on the dock at San Francisco. The band had been playing the same heart-tugging song, “Now Is The Hour, that we must say Goodbye.” It was a song he’d not soon forget.
[To his final days, Biteman still got “a lump in my throat and a faraway look in my eyes whenever I hear it played.” To him it would “always be a song of sadness, gathering up visions of a little girl, not yet quite three, holding onto her mother’s skirt and wondering why her Daddy couldn’t go along with her on the boat.]
Finally, as the ship pulled away from the dock, the band played “California Here I Come,” the tune that had become the Biteman’s private theme song in the previous several months, as they had happily anticipated their going-home journey—together—back to the United States.
A very sad Lieutenant Biteman made the long drive from Manila back to their empty quarters on Clark Field. He couldn’t help but wonder “how long it would be before we could be together again—three months—six months—or never?”
Reasoning that the “best cure for a lonely heart is intense activity,” he got busy, very busy during his few remaining days at Clark Field. Biteman was given a “double hat” assignment in Korea. He would serve as both the Dallas Squadron Intelligence Officer and its Assistant Flight Commander.
It was “a very unusual combination of duties, that perhaps typified the screwy, topsy-turvy nature of our new little war,” he explained.
“Historically, Intelligence Officers were never allowed to go on combat missions because of the possibility that their knowledge of classified plans and codes could be “extracted” by their captors in the event they were shot down. Not so, in Korea. Qualified F-51 fighter pilots were in such short supply that they couldn’t afford the luxury of having one around who couldn’t fly combat missions.”
The next few days were hectic—and productive to the farsighted Biteman who combed through offices and storerooms “collecting as many maps, charts and supplies as I could lay my hands.”
He managed to find ten complete sets of navigation charts, which he “guarded like valuable securities.”
Also high on his list of “collectibles” were Plexiglas sheets, map boards, grease pencils, paper clips, staplers, typewriters, lead pencils, pads and erasers—“all of the basic tools of the Intelligence Officer’s trade, plus a small, two-inch glass ball—a “Crystal Ball”—went into my stock of supplies.”