In his 21-year career as a pilot for the United States Air Force, Maj. James Marrott logged more than 7,000 flying hours. During a yearlong tour in Vietnam alone, he flew 108 combat missions.
But the flight he remembers best, the one that means the most, hands down, had nothing to do with war or conflict. It was the flight that brought home the first batch of prisoners of war from Hanoi as America was exiting the Vietnam War.
“That was the highlight, it was then, it still is now,” says the 88-year-old retired major as he relaxes in an armchair in the comfortable apartment he shares with his wife of 67 years, MaryAnne, on the east side of the Salt Lake Valley.
He has never seen unallayed joy quite like what he saw as the first 40 POWs to be released, most of whom had been held captive for six years or more, were ushered onto the C-141 military transport plane he had landed in Hanoi on the foggy morning of Feb. 12, 1973.
Exactly 50 years ago this weekend.
“They were just so tremendously happy,” says Marrott, “and they were happy for days. It’s something I’ll never forget.”
In late December 1972, the United States and North Vietnamese had agreed in principle to a peace treaty, the terms of which stipulated that North Vietnam show a sign of trust by beginning the release of the 591 soldiers they had captured during the long course of the war, dating back to 1964.
In late January 1973, the phone rang in Maj. Marrott’s quarters at Norton Air Force Base in California.
“I got a call asking if I’d be interested in flying one of the planes to get them out,” he remembers. “I said, ‘Sure am.’ Of course I wanted to do it. Everybody wanted to get those guys home. There was hardly anyone who didn’t know someone there (held captive) they were close to.”
For Marrott, that included Lt. Col. William Means, a fellow pilot who Marrott had befriended years earlier at flight school. Means had been languishing in the so-called Hanoi Hilton since his airplane was hit by a missile in North Vietnam in 1966.
The 38-year-old Marrott, who joined the U.S. Air Force not long after graduating from Provo High School, quickly made his way to Clark Air Base in the Philippines to familiarize himself with the details of what had been dubbed “Operation Homecoming.”
On Friday morning, Feb. 12, he lifted off early for the 21⁄2-hour flight to Hanoi. It was his first time flying over Vietnamese airspace since his deployment in 1968, when he flew reconnaissance and electronic surveillance missions.
On any of those flights, he could have been shot down and suffered a fate like the men he was about to help rescue. Even though he was now on a mission of peace, old habits died hard and he didn’t start his steep descent until he was barely 50 miles out, because the quicker you’re in, the harder you are to hit.
In Marrott’s mind’s eye, he sees clearly the first 40 POWs, despite their injuries and emaciated conditions, march in sharp military lines to the receiving stand set up by the enemy to officially hand them over to U.S. personnel
After that, he watches the men silently march one by one across the tarmac to board the plane from the back loading ramp. No one waves or dances a jig.
It is only after he turns the big C-141 Starlifter around and lifts off that he hears a peep out of his new passengers.
“They’d been quiet and completely dignified till they realized we were off the ground,” he says. “Then those guys really started whooping it up.”
And when Marrott came on the intercom moments later to inform them they were now “feet wet,” meaning they were over the ocean and clear of all things Vietnam, “The cheering got even louder.”
Except for a brief moment when the men realized there was no champagne on board — on doctors’ orders — the celebrating continued unabated the entire flight. When they began their descent into Clark Field, they were still roaming around, enjoying their newfound freedom, almost none of them strapped in for the landing.
Marrott remembers thinking, “Well, they’ve been through worse, doesn’t matter, let ’em stay standing.” A thought quickly followed by, “This has got to be an easy touchdown, and it was, just like glass.”
Bringing those POWs home served as an exclamation point on the Provo boy’s military career. He retired a year and a half later, returned to his hometown, earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Brigham Young University and in his early 40s started a new career: teaching fifth graders.
He looks back on each of his rather disparate careers with fondness — he says he loved teaching elementary school kids equally as much as he enjoyed his time in the military — but this weekend he’ll be back at Clark Field, watching newly freed men step into sunlight.
“It’s powerful. I watched those men come off and I started to tear up,” he says 50 years later, “To this day, I tear up at the memory.”
