A Legacy Carried on Silver Wings

My grandson Ronen helped pin aviator wings on his father’s uniform.

On October 1, my wife, Deborah, and I watched our son-in-law, Second Lieutenant John Timmer, graduate from Army flight school at Fort Rucker, Alabama. Our daughter Jacqueline, John’s wife, and their young son Ronen stepped forward to pin on his wings.

As I watched Ronen’s hands, with the help of his mother, position the wings on John’s uniform, I felt an emotion well up in me I had not anticipated.

Certainly, there was pride. John had completed a demanding course of training and had become an Army aviator, a Black Hawk pilot.

But those wings represented something more than mastery of a remarkable and complex machine. They represented a solemn, sacred promise to carry on the legacy of men who had worn those same wings before him.

One of those men was Major Bruce Crandall. On November 14, 1965, a 32-year-old Crandall was piloting a Huey helicopter at the foot of the jungle-covered Chu Pong Massif in South Vietnam. Below him, several hundred American soldiers were fighting for their lives against overwhelming odds in a small patch of grass called Landing Zone X-Ray.

Smoke rose from the battlefield. Enemy soldiers were closing around the American position. One American platoon had already been cut off. The wounded were mounting. Ammunition was dwindling.

To reach the men on the ground, Crandall could not remain safely above the battle. He would have to descend into it.

Major Crandall already knew what awaited him below. His flight of sixteen helicopters had been ferrying soldiers into X-Ray throughout the morning. By the fourth troop lift, the enemy had the landing zone targeted. On the fifth, Crandall led the first eight Hueys down. The enemy fire became so intense that the commander on the ground ordered the second group of eight helicopters to abort. The Hueys were unarmed. Crandall dropped off more soldiers and ammunition and then flew back to the American base of operations in Plei Me—out of the fire, away from the danger. He carried with him no orders to return to Landing Zone X-Ray – it was too dangerous. But Major Crandall did carry with him the weight of his promise.

The men left behind needed ammunition. Many were wounded and needed evacuation. Major Crandall ordered the helicopters under his command to move closer to X-Ray, establishing their base at Artillery Firebase Falcon, and asked for volunteers to join him in flying back into danger. Captain Ed “Too Tall” Freeman volunteered at once.

The enemy had now closed within yards of the landing zone, encircling the soldiers on a patch of ground roughly the size of a football field. The helicopters were forced to descend through a wall of gunfire. Machine-gun fire raked the Hueys, chewing through their thin metal skin.

Major Crandall slowed his helicopter, easing into the landing zone, dropped off ammunition, held steady as the wounded were loaded, and left for Firebase Falcon.

And then he returned, repeated the same daunting run through enemy fire, and then returned again. By the time that terrible day ended, Major Bruce Crandall had flown 22 flights under intense enemy assault, bringing ammunition and supplies to the soldiers fighting below and carrying the wounded American soldiers out of danger. In total, he evacuated more than 70 soldiers.

Years later, the nation would award Bruce Crandall – by then a lieutenant colonel – the Medal of Honor. But medals only commemorate courage, they do not create it. Long before a president placed that medal around Crandall’s neck, the character it honored had already been revealed in a helicopter descending into Landing Zone X-Ray. Major Crandall was trained with the skills to fly into that maelstrom, but his character is what made him turn back to danger. He had made a promise. And so, he would fulfill that promise. Men were in danger – and his promise was that so long as they were in danger, he was on his way.

Bruce Crandall, who was promoted to full colonel in 2010, died on May 31 of this year. He was 93. His death closed a remarkable life that stretched from the infancy of Army Aviation – graduating in the first class of Army aviators from Fort Rucker – through Vietnam and into a very different American military. But the promise he carried into Landing Zone X-Ray survives his death.

As Deborah and I sat at Fort Rucker and watched our grandson pin a new pair of aviator wings on his father, I couldn’t help but think of Bruce Crandall. That, I now realize, was the source of the emotion that surprised me that day.

Ronen is too young to understand the promise embodied in those wings. Someday, he will. And when he does, he will understand more than the tradition his father joined. He will understand something about the character of the man who made that promise.

In truth, John and Jacqueline are already teaching Ronen what that means. He is growing up in a home surrounded by the unconditional love of his father and mother. Every day, in a thousand ways too ordinary to attract notice, they are teaching that love is more than affection. It is fidelity. It is presence. It is the confidence that when you fall, someone will reach for you; when you are frightened, someone will stand beside you; and when you are in trouble, someone will come.

Ronen cannot yet put that promise into words. He simply lives within its security. Someday, he will understand. When he does, I believe the pride he feels in the character of his father will resemble the emotion that welled up within me as I watched those small hands pin silver wings on John’s uniform.

It was gratitude.

Gratitude to God that the man who made that promise to his fellow soldiers is the same man who has made the promise to my daughter and grandson. Gratitude to those who have made that promise to me. And gratitude to the countless men and women who quietly carry the weight of that promise every day, in our families, our communities, in our nation.

Major Bruce Crandall carried that promise into Landing Zone X-Ray. John carries it today. And Ronen is growing up in a home where he is learning what it means.

It is the promise that when someone entrusted to us is wounded and alone, we will not turn away.

Someone is on the way!