[Editor's Note: For 17 years, LTC Buck wore the MIA bracelet of LTC Mason. He presented it to Mrs. Mason when he brought home and laid to rest his brother. We are honored to be allowed to share his story.]
by LTC Brian Buck,
©2010 Uncle Buck, all rights reserved.
As a member of the military, I realize that there are times where I may be called upon to lay down my life for the defense of my country, to defend the constitution against all enemies. Some people can't understand this call to duty, they're lost in a world where these are foreign concepts best left for books or TV. This however, has always been a realization for me from the day I signed on, to the days I spent in Sarajevo as part of SFOR, through the year I spent in downtown Baghdad with MNF-I. But all that time I had a reminder with me that it's a price others have been willing to pay for my freedom and it's a duty I owe to everyone else.
That reminder was in the form of a POW/MIA bracelet commemorating Colonel William Henderson Mason. A small strip of aluminum engraved with his name and date of loss in the Vietnam war, May 22nd 1968. On that night then
Lt Col Mason and the other 8 members of his crew lifted off in a C-130 under the callsign of BLIND BAT 01. They were bound for a point of the Ho Chi Minh trail that extended into southern Laos to drop illumination flares so that other aircraft in the area could see the enemy illuminated and drop ordinance on them. It was a dangerous mission...that night they did not return. Their C-130 was lost to AAA fire over the jungle near the border of Laos and Vietnam. Search missions found no trace of their aircraft the next day. The crew of BLIND BAT 01 were listed as Missing in Action.
All of this hapened a year and a few days before I was even born. I never really knew of, much less understood, the level of sacrifice these men and others made for me. It wasn't until my time in the Air Force ROTC program at Southeast Missouri State that I really started to appreciate the gravity of what could happen in my chosen line of work. In the Fall of 1990 my girlfriend at the time, who later I had the great fortune of marrying, and I purchased POW/MIA bracelets as a fundraiser for the Arnold Air Society. I randomly pulled SSG Russel Bott from the bucket, but she being more meticulous searched the bin and found one with the last name of Mason, with her father being in the Masonic Lodge it didn't take too long for her to make her choice.
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