Editor’s Note: This story is being reprinted with permission from Lake Media. It was originally published for Veterans Day last month. Jacque (Jack) Jeffords graduated from Mullen High School in 1947 and now resides in Lake Ozark, Missouri.
by Eric Davis
There was a welcome home parade down Broadway in New York City in June of 1991. Puzzled New Yorkers didn’t know quite what to make of it.
The confetti was measured by the sanitation department as “small stuff.”
While it might not have meant much to the usually blasé population of the Big Apple, it did mean a lot to the surviving veterans of America’s Forgotten War in Korea, 1950–1953.
For one of those veterans, a retired United States Air Force Lt. Colonel and resident of Lake Ozark, the recognition was only 38 years late.
Jacque (Jack) Jeffords is 86 years young today and fondly counts his 28 years with the Air Force, starting out as an enlisted man from tiny Mullen, Nebraska, to his retirement as a Lt. Colonel.
In between those years was a fateful mission as Crew Chief aboard a B-26 medium bomber over North Korea on Nov. 11, 1950. It was Jeffords’ 17th flight over the north.
He remembers the three man crew were checking bridges at Mopo, North Korea, along the Yalu River, near the Manchurian-Russian-North Korean border.
“We were flying at about 6,000 feet. There was flack ahead,” Jeffords said he felt the sudden hammer of an enemy shell hitting the right side engine. “We had heard that the Russians had provided the North Koreans with radar-directed anti-aircraft guns.”
And this rumor proved to be true.
A fire quickly developed and the cockpit was filling with smoke and the smell of oil.
“I knew we had to jump or go down with the airplane.”
A second shell had hit the side of the airplane, rupturing hydraulic lines. Returning his gaze forward, Jeffords observed the right wing begin to weaken.
The third member of the tiny crew, a gunner, was the first out, escaping through the bomb bay doors, past the four 500 pound bombs still on board.
Next, seated in the left seat, the captain went out through the overhead escape hatch. The open hatch created a vacuum and, moments later, literally sucked Jeffords up and out.
Away from the cacophony of a dying airplane, “It was very quiet. I had no sense of falling.”
Pulling the D-handle to release the parachute had snapped Jeffords’ head sharply forward. “I thought I broke my neck but I recovered quickly enough.”
The fact that he had no parachute training didn’t occur to him until later. But like other events in his young life, it was a skill he picked up fast.
Meanwhile, the mortally wounded B-26 had crashed and the exploding ordinance on board had started a fire in the dry underbrush, right where Jeffords was about to land.
A pull on the parachute strap at the last moment of his decent proved to be the second act of self-preservation that day. Jeffords’ parachute moved him a dozen yards away from the fire.
“I don’t know where I learned how to do that. I think I read it in Popular Mechanics. Anyway, I just did it.
“72 miles from American lines in an Air Force flight suit.”
It was as inhospitable a place as anyone could find, Jeffords said.
For the next three days, Jeffords worked his way south, dodging Chinese troops moving in the same direction. Searching for food, he came to a Korean house that had a large earthen jug near the entry. Jeffords reached in and made his first acquaintance with kimchi, Korean fermented cabbage.
“It smelled really bad,” so it went back in the pot.
Another house had ducks and some other farm animals.
“One of the ducks made the first real food I’d had in three days.”
The next day was his last day of relative freedom as Jeffords was confronted by a pair of North Korean Army soldiers, both teenagers.
“They had one rifle between them and seemed to be arguing over who would get it to shoot me.
“When you surrender, you lose something you never get back. It’s part of your spirit; it’s like something left your body. You’ve given yourself up. I’ve always believed it was how Jesus felt when he gave himself up for crucifixion. Other veterans, POWs have said the same thing.”
Jeffords was taken to what was called, “Bean Camp,” a series of barracks built by the Japanese Army when they controlled Korea years earlier. He joined some two thousand Americans and captured soldiers from the United Nations force.
“We got a handful of boiled corn to eat every day.”
“There were 25 of us to one small room. There was just room enough for all of us to sleep lying on our side. When one man would roll over, all of us had to roll over. It was very crowded.”
This had went on for several weeks when it was announced all the prisoners would be marched to another prison camp at Pyuktong on the Yalu River. The Chinese, who ran the camp and the North Korean guards didn’t realize it but thousands of feet above the camp was what became known as “MIG Alley.” American Air Force fighters were going toe to toe with Chinese jets and were scoring more victories than losses. This series of dog fights raised moral amongst the prisoners but they never allowed the authorities to understand this development.
Two years into his capture, Jeffords found out he had been designated a “reactionary,” and would be sent to another location, known as “Camp 3.”
Curiously in this camp, there was a Korean interrogator who had worked for the US Army in Japan and spoke English. But it turned out he was no friend of Jeffords’ or anyone else.
In the Communist fashion of the era, prisoners who violated any camp rule were forced to write confessions of their sins. A man with several of these confessions faced time exiled from others in an isolation cell.
The English speaking Korean apparently took delight in striking terror into prisoners he particularly disliked. In Jeffords’ case, he was ordered to dig a grave and get in it.
He was then told to recite the Lord’s Prayer and then told when he repeated “Amen,” he would be shot in the head.
After standing, awaiting the bullet for a few minutes, he would be released, back to the company of fellow prisoners. This happened multiple times while in Camp 3, but Jeffords said, “I never broke.”
Following one of his last torture sessions, Jeffords observed a pair of non-Asian men in heavy coats. Both wore large brimmed hats with red stars attached.
One fellow looked at Jeffords and said, “Americanski?”
Jeffords shook his head and pointed back, “Rooski?”
In an odd bit of prison camp comradery, the two Russians laughed and shared their cigarettes.
As the war began to wind down, there were rumors of a prisoner release and within a week, the last 40 or 50 men were trucked down to Panmunjom, the South Korean border and “Freedom Village,” operated by the 8th Army and the 1st Marines.
Jeffords said he weighed 175 pounds when captured. Three years of captivity had reduced him to 129 pounds.
Out of the hospital and following a 30 day leave, Jeffords was offered a reassignment to any Air Force base he wanted.
“West Palm Beach sounded awful good, so I was assigned as a crew chief on a SA-16 amphibious air/sea rescue squadron.”
With the wind down of the Korean conflict and retirements by Air Force pilots of that and earlier wars, a call went out to recruit new aviation cadets. Jacque’s commanding officer picked him and another enlisted airman to take the training at Macon, Georgia.
Jeffords had initially opposed the idea, thinking he would retire as an Air Force Tech Sergeant or Master Sergeant.
“My thinking quickly changed when it was revealed that passing this pilots training could lead to a commission as a Second Lieutenant.”
At Macon, Jeffords found himself in a room full of college graduates including a few Georgia Tech and MIT grads.
“And there I was with a high school education.”
No one in the C.O.’s office was surprised when he passed and moved on to a new round of basic training and then pilot training at Malden, Missouri.
It was while he was at Malden that Jeffords came to meet his future wife, JoAnn Massingham. They were married in August of 1955 after Jeffords graduated as a Second Lieutenant.
A new world of flying and increased responsibility opened for Jacque after assignment to the 11th Strategic Air Command where he flew mid-air refueling tankers. “We refueled B-52s with two other tanker aircraft. It took three of us to fill the B-52 with 30,000 gallons.”
Now a Lt. Colonel, next came reassignment to Beale Air Force Base in California, which became the most remarkable step in Jacque’s career.
“Oh, man, that is some airplane.”
It was the SR-71 high-flying reconnaissance jet. “While at Beale, I got to meet Lockheed Skunk Works Director Kelly Johnson and I said this airplane looks fast while it’s standing still. How fast will it go?”
“Three thousand miles per hour and six miles up,” was the reply.
For the next few years, Jeffords was part of the elite SAC Inspector General Team. This was a demanding job with sometimes unfortunate outcomes for the base commander who was caught ill prepared for a middle of the night visit from the team.
“Our 40 member team would arrive unannounced and examine everything from the base hospital to the base preparations for war. We all lived with the same rules and there were some officers who had their careers negatively affected.”
Jacque Jeffords’ last assignment was at the Logistics Staff at SAC Headquarters near Omaha. “We drafted and revised rules for maintenance of all our aircraft, adopting new features and techniques as they were tested and came available.”
After serving in the United States Air Force for 28 years, Jeffords retired in 1976. “My next hop would have been to the Pentagon and I didn’t want that.”
Jacque and JoAnn chose retirement at the Lake of the Ozarks as a close friend had written about living here. The Jeffords had considered California but found the Lake of the Ozarks to their liking and the couple built their retirement home in Lake Ozark. Sadly, JoAnn Jeffords passed away in January of this year.
“The Air Force was my family and I do sometimes miss the great group of people. I don’t miss the criticism of the military from some who don’t or can’t appreciate the sacrifices that military families endure.”
Those who fought in Korea have said that, at heavy cost, they accomplished their objective and this is without dispute. It had been described in the United Nations declaration of June 1950 and President Truman’s statements at the time when he authorized the use of American troops.
As the president put it, America and the UN would respond to the North Korean invasion of the south by securing “a complete withdrawal of invading forces to positions north of the 38th parallel.”
In the final weeks of the war, the US Army fought the Chinese for a spot on a map called Pork Chop Hill. Ironically, an armistice agreement was reached, ending a 37 months long war, costing some 53,000 total casualties. Negotiators had been discussing the agreement for 25 of those months in 158 separate meetings.
Jacque Jeffords was one of nearly 1.8 million Americans who served in Korea. They achieved peace but without a clear victory. That peace, for the most part, still holds.
Source:
Hooker County Tribune
December 10, 2015
