LANCASTER – Veterans from across north Los Angeles and Kern counties gathered to honor a Korean War combat air crewman who has been one of the steadfast proponents of flying older veterans to Washington D.C. to honor them.
Fred Barthe turned 90 recently, which coincidentally is just about the age reached by many of the surviving veterans of what has often been dubbed America’s “Forgotten War.”
Veterans in the communities of the Antelope Valley wanted to ensure they did not forget Barthe’s big “Nine-Oh” birthday, so they lit up a cake in a celebration hosted at one of the Antelope Valley’s familiar veteran gathering spots, the pub at Bravery Brewing.
Outside of military history enthusiasts it may be hard for succeeding generations to either know, or remember, that the Korean War —waged from 1950 until the Korean War Armistice in 1953 — erupted just five years after the end of World War II. About 30,000 Americans were killed repelling North Korean and Chinese communist forces.
Seventy years after that non-quite forgotten war, Barthe is a relentless advocate for enrolling veterans of World War II, the Korean and Vietnam wars for a program called Honor Flight Kern County.
Part of the national Honor Flight non-profit program, volunteers charter big passenger jets to carry older military veterans for an all-expense paid trip to the military memorials in Washington D.C. and to visit Arlington National Cemetery and the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
“I think it was one of the greatest trips of my life,” said Anthony Kitson, who turned 90 last year, and who served during the Korean and Vietnam war eras.
“It was such an honor, and a privilege to be in such honorable company,” Kitson said.
Michael Bertell, a Vietnam War combat veteran, is another testimonial to the journey that Barthe promotes as a volunteer scout for Honor Flight Kern County.
“It is unbelievable how well treated you are,” said Bertell, a draftee who remembered getting nothing in the way of a “Welcome Home” when he first returned from Vietnam in the early 1970s.
Since the early years after 9/11, chapters of the national non-profit have been bringing thousands of veterans, starting with the oldest World War II veterans on the pilgrimage to the nation’s capital. Once there, the groups make a lightning round of visits to the Vietnam and Korean war memorials, also the Marine Corps, Navy, and Air Force Memorials, and to see the Army’s “Old Guard” detail at the Tomb of the Unknowns.
“It is a life-changing experience,” said Barthe, who recruits prospective older veterans for placement in the Honor Flight Kern County program based out of Bakersfield. Veterans from Kern and Los Angeles counties are eligible.
Of his birthday, he said, “It’s nice to be here. It is nice to be anywhere.”
Barthe, one of life’s optimists, can recall his own brush with death, and it wasn’t a communist human wave assault, it was a carrier deck landing.
Barthe was a Navy man just out of his teens who wanted to fly. Trained in radio and electronics, he was told a fast way to get in the air was to volunteer as electronics systems crew aboard a carrier-based, propeller driven beast called the Skyraider.
The Skyraider could bomb, strafe, fire rockets and do search and rescue.
Often, with veterans, it is the hat that can tell you about the warrior and the war. In Barthe’s case, his Korean War veteran ball cap has a distinctive, winged badge that signifies “combat air crew.”
On a day of choppy seas and daunting skies in 1953, Barthe’s aircraft was the last plane to return to the carrier, so low on fuel another go-around would have plunged their aircraft into the Taiwan Strait.
The heaving carrier deck of the USS Yorktown was home base and also the last barrier between Barthe’s crew of three and a watery grave. They came in high and fast. Too high, and too fast, sometimes called “coming in hot.”
Barthe was belted into the radar operator’s cubby hole with only a tiny port hole for visibility. He could see the deck flashing past as the ungainly, single-engine propeller aircraft swooped beyond tail hooks to arrest the landing.
He could hear and feel the nine tons of steel and aluminum of the AD4 Skyraider tearing through the safety net, and through the port hole, Fred could see “The Island,” which is, in effect, the enormous control tower for an aircraft carrier. The aircraft, with a will of its own, was swerving.
“We are going over the side,” the 20-year-old Navy air crewman recalled, vividly as yesterday, the events of nearly 70 years gone by.
At the last possible instant, with the aircraft nose buried in the deck, he heard the “Hot Papa,” an aircraft carrier deck chief getting his hatch open.
“I’m OK. Check on the pilot,” Fred said, clambering out of the up-ended crate. He wanted to kiss the pilot, because they were on the deck, not in the drink.
“It was a combat mission,” Fred remembers. “We were covering evacuation of Nationalist Troops from China in the vicinity of Quemoy.”
The man is about more than his hat. And what he told the “Hot Papa” on the Yorktown sums up Fred’s approach to life. Make sure the other guy gets helped.
Spend enough time in community civics and you grasp the reason that unsung heroes are unsung is because they are not singing their own praises.
So, volunteers from most of the active veteran service organizations turned out for a 90th birthday bash the night after Valentine’s Day. Non-profit volunteers who showed up came from Vets4Veterans service organization, and Coffee4Vets, which hosts Barthe’s weekly recruitment pitch for Honor Flights. Also Pointman of the Antelope Valley, and the Antelope Valley Vietnam Memorial Committee.
Many of the veterans he sponsored turned out, including Bertell who chairs the Antelope Valley Vietnam Memorial Committee.
“We just love Fred,” Carol Rice, Secretary of Vets4Veterans said. “He just turns up anywhere and everywhere and helps out without having to be asked. He’s a wonderful man.”
If there’s a veteran to help, Barthe, a retired Coast Guard Reserve lieutenant commander, is likely to be there. Ten years ago he was volunteer driving a van for Disabled American Veterans. He didn’t consider himself to be a disabled vet, but Navy aviation will crash your hearing, even if you don’t crash. Crash landing on an aircraft carrier in a rough sea is trauma defined. In wartime, it is combat trauma.
And it looks like at the age of 90, he is just about to be approved for some veterans benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs. At 90, with his combat airtime 70 years behind, it is not too late yet.
Dennis Anderson is an Army veteran and licensed clinical social worker at High Desert Medical Group who is Supervisor Kathryn Barger’s representative on the Los Angeles County Veterans Advisory Commission. He works on veteran and community public health initiatives.
