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THE HERO'S SON
TERRY ASLA WAS A 6-YEAR-OLD BOY WHEN HIS
FATHER WENT TO WAR IN 1951. DAD NEVER RETURNED. IT WOULD BE ALMOST HALF
A CENTURY BEFORE TERRY WOULD LEARN WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM.
Sunday, September 17, 2000
BY ROY WENZL, The Wichita Eagle
Mist fell gray through the glare of depot
lights. In the passenger shelter the family huddled close - Dad, Mom and
their two "little stinkers," as Dad called them. Terry could
feel the Oregon damp on his face. In the hard shadows, Dad hugged Mom
for long moments, then scooped up 4-year-old Merrilee, who teased him.
"I'll kiss you only one!" she
said. Daddy laughed.
Dad didn't hug Terry. He bent to one knee
to talk to his 6-year-old son face to face.
"You're the man of the house
now," Dad said. "Take care of your mother while I'm
away."
Terry's lip trembled.
Dad tried to console him, but Terry was
solemn by nature. The boy began to cry.
Time to go.
Dad picked up his suitcase and walked up
the steps of the train car, the visor of his officer's cap gleaming in
the depot lights as he turned to look at them.
His coat hung lightly over his Air Force
uniform. His face split open with that lopsided grin. He was still
waving to them from the back of the train when it pulled out of sight.
Terry would remember the grin and what
his Uncle Ralph said. His little brother rarely got hit in the boxing
ring, Ralph said. But the grin always got bigger when someone tagged
him. Felix always grinned when hurt.
On the way home, Terry turned to his
mother. The sky over Eugene had lightened; Oregon dawn, gray and damp,
Sept. 24, 1951.
"I will take care of you, Mom,"
Terry said.
The boy was not yet disappointed with his
father. That would come later and last most of a lifetime.
Months later, a reporter came to the door
of the Asla home in Eugene.
He came to interview Mom about Dad, the
heroic Maj. Felix Asla of the United
States Air Force.
Dad was now the 28-year-old commander of
the 336th Fighter Interceptor Squadron in Korea. He had shot down four
enemy MiG fighters. His men called him "Ace." Four MiGs down
and one to go. One more MiG and he'd be a real ace, like James Jabara
and Col. Harrison Thyng and all those wild boys before him who had shot
down their full five.
Dad had won the Silver Star. He'd won the
Distinguished Flying Cross. He flaunted himself like long-haired Custer,
painted shark jaws on the nose of his F-86 Sabre jet. He painted black
bolts of lightning on the crown of his flight helmet.
As the reporter left, Terry called out to
him.
"Don't you want to interview
me?" he asked. "I'm the man of the house."
The reporter laughed.
"Tell you what, kid," he said.
"We'll come back and interview you when your father gets
home."
At 0840 hours on the morning of
Aug. 1, 1952, squadron commander Felix Asla climbed into the cockpit of
his F-86 Sabre jet on the flight line at Kimpo Air Base north of Seoul.
He buckled in.
His crew chief, Sgt. Floyd Clark, leaned
against the side of the cockpit and checked Asla's shoulder straps.
Clark watched the squadron commander pull on his lightning bolt helmet
and fasten his oxygen mask.
The two men looked down the flight line.
On the field, an airman began wind milling one arm.
Time to go.
Clark reached out one hand and tapped the
top of the commander's helmet three times.
Tap, tap, tap.
He'd often asked the major, "How
come you want me to tap your helmet three times?"
"My little secret, Chief," Asla
would say. And that's all he had ever said. It was the major's mission
ritual. One hundred twenty-five missions now, and there had been three
taps on the helmet every time.
Clark climbed down from the cockpit and
watched.
Asla slid the canopy cover shut on the
fighter he had named "The Chopper." He flipped the starter
switch. The Sabre's engine whined, then began to roar.
Clark watched as Asla took off, Chopper
leading the flight of four fighters . They ascended quickly, then headed
north. The Korean air thundered behind them.
Another morning at Kimpo.
Clark walked toward the radio shack. All
around him were traces of Asla, and he'd remember them.
He would never know another man who could
direct a squadron, fly fighters, shoot down MiGs, sketch and paint. They
said he could box, too.
The flight line of F-86 fighters parked
in a staggered row - Asla had walked along it and talked to every airman
on it. He'd painted the scene on a long, scroll sheet that he'd rolled
up and mailed home. The Korean village at the end of the runway - Asla
had sketched that, too. He liked the look of the thatch and tiled-roof
villages, though he and Clark knew that some of the Korean villagers
were spies who counted the planes that took off and those that came
back.
The tents where the airmen slept - Asla
had dropped in here often at night, his dark Basque face grinning in the
dim light, giving away his beer ration to Clark, eating popcorn with the
airmen, showing them "snaps" from home.
The guy talked all the time about the
wife and two kids. Maybe the three taps on the helmet were for them,
Clark thought later.
Forty minutes or so after takeoff, Clark
sat in the radio shack, listening to Asla on the radio, chattering to
pilots in another dogfight in MiG Alley.
This one was hot.
Clark had listened to pilot-chatter
during many dogfights; our guys were often outnumbered; the MiGs often
hung all the way back along the Yalu River, 200 miles to the north; our
guys always fought while low on fuel. Some of the pilots were convinced
they were fighting Russians, which was a frightening thought. Sometimes
there were dozens of MiGs; sometimes Asla would come back from a
mission, and Clark would have to pull the skinny, 5-foot-6 major out of
the cockpit, so whipped from stress he couldn't move, so soaked in his
own sweat that he looked like he'd had a shower. The missions took so
much out of pilots that Air Force policy was to send pilots home after
100. Asla stayed, though he had more than that.
In the radio shack he could hear Asla's
voice. Asla didn't just talk; he smothered other pilots with advice.
Pilots like Robbie Risner would say later that the pilots revered Asla,
that he was "some sort of superior being."
How's your fuel? How's your hydraulics?
He'd saved pilots with his chatter. Asla
could talk and fight at the same time. It was as if he could see MiGs
coming before they came. They often came from above and behind, and
pilots had to swivel their necks like owls to watch for them.
Break left, break left, you got one on
your tail. . . .
He even told pilots to stop shooting, in
the middle of a dogfight.
Back off your triggers, he'd call out.
You're gonna melt your gun barrels. Which was true. If you fired long
bursts, those 50-caliber gun barrels would melt and bend in the middle,
and there you'd be - disarmed in a dogfight. Maybe dead.
Today was hot. Asla was all over the
pilots, talking, giving chase, attacking. This was a fight. Clark could
hear adrenaline.
MiGs! Break left!
A voice, but not Asla's.
The voice was yelling to someone to turn
hard left and get out of there. And suddenly Clark knew: It was Asla
being chased.
Break left! Break left! Break left!
Silence.
The radio went silent.
Finally, a pilot's voice.
Where's Asla?
In Eugene, Ore., a telegram arrived.
Dated Aug. 1, 1952, it was from Col.
Harrison Thyng of Kimpo Air Base.
Dear Mrs. Asla,
It is with deep regret that I inform you
that your husband, Maj. Felix Asla Jr., 16568A, is missing in action in
Korea. . . .
Maj. Asla departed this base on a routine
combat mission on 1 Aug. 1952. The flight of which he was leader made
contact with enemy MIG-15 aircraft. During the ensuing action, his plane
was seen to receive several hits. Because of the sharpness of the
action, accompanying pilots were unable to determine whether or not he
was able to parachute to safety. However, he was at a high altitude and
had enough time to get out. He called on the radio that he was so doing.
Was he alive?
For Besse Asla, there could be only one
answer.
She told her 7-year-old son and her
4-year-old daughter that Daddy had been shot down.
And she told them that Daddy was still
alive.
She said it for nearly the rest of her
life.
At the age of 10, two years after
the Korean War sputtered to an armed and inconclusive truce, Terry Asla
created a daydream.
My Boy Scout troop rides a bus to the
airport.
At the airport, a plane lands. The
passenger door opens.
Men in uniforms walk down the steps -
prisoners of war finally released after years of captivity from the
Korean War.
Dad comes down the steps, waves at me,
and he is grinning again. Medals shine on his chest.
I go to him. I tell him how it has been
for all of us.
I tell him that we're all right.
Terry Asla loved his father. The daydream
recurred for many years.
"You can't imagine what it was
like," he would say later. "To grow up like that. Dad wasn't
dead; he was merely missing."
Mom never remarried, believing for most
of the rest of her life that Dad was alive, probably in a prison camp in
Russia. Felix had told her secrets: We're fighting Russians in the air
in Korea.
Merrilee went to school crying nearly
every morning for two years because she thought that she might come home
and find Mom missing too.
And Terry withdrew. From nearly everyone,
even from Mom and his dear Merrilee. He moved to Kansas in the 1970s and
rarely returned to Oregon, not even to help his sister in his mother's
final days.
Over the years, his hopes faded and
suspicions grew: Was Dad dead? And if he was dead, why?
Something his mother told him in his
teens upset him. She'd heard it from his friends: that Dad had
under-reported his missions to his superiors so that he could stick
around to kill one more MiG.
Had Dad died of ambition? His father
wanted fame. Terry wanted a father.
By the mid-1960s, the daydream flickered
out.
One day in 1992, when Terry was 47,
married, a father himself and a resident of Newton, Kan., the daydream
returned.
He was reading a newspaper story. Or
maybe it was in a magazine. When he saw it, his heart began to thump
faster.
It was a story out of Russia.
Military and intelligence officers from
the United States were dropping bombshell hints.
They were hearing that Soviet
intelligence officers, working in cooperation with our North Korean and
Chinese enemies during the war, may have stolen away dozens of captive
American pilots shot down over North Korea.
No Westerners had seen them since.
The U.S. military was investigating.
Terry felt 10 years old again. The
daydream came back. Medals glinting on his chest.
Maybe, he thought.
Maybe Mom and Uncle Ralph had been right
all along. Maybe Dad was still alive.
And if he was, we could see him again.
Show him grandkids. Reconcile estranged family and learn once again to
love without fear.
Redeem lost bits of soul.
After Dad went missing, Terry Asla had
sworn a vow.
He had sworn, at the age of 7, that he
would never get close to anyone ever again.
With the exception of his wife and
children, it was a promise Terry kept.
Maybe, he thought.
Maybe Dad's alive.
Reach Roy Wenzl at 268-6219 or rwenzl@wichitaeagle.com
In Tuesday's Eagle: Terry Asla learns the
truth about what happened to his father.
About the series
The four-part series "The Hero's
Son" is based on dozens of interviews with Maj. Felix Asla's family
and fellow servicemen, letters written by Asla, correspondence between
the Aslas and U.S. officials, and reports by Soviet and U.S. Air Force
officials.
Special thanks to Merrilee and Dick Lee,
who photo-copied and faxed hundreds of pages of Merrilee's father's
letters; Alan Cullison, Moscow reporter for the Wall Street Journal; and
Slava Osipov, a former Russian air force flier living in Wichita who
acted as a translator.
The writer
Roy Wenzl, 45, joined The Eagle in 1996.
He has worked as a columnist and a writer since November 1998. His
eight-part series on a former Wichita runaway, "Karen: Lost and
Found," was published in May. He is a graduate of Kansas State
University and previously worked as a reporter in Kansas City and as an
editor in Illinois and Florida.
The editor
Polly Basore Elliott, 33, joined the
Eagle in 1998. She is a graduate of Oklahoma State University and
Columbia University. She has worked as a reporter in Washington, D.C.,
and briefly in Moscow.
And more
Travis
Heying provided local photos. The series was designed by Eagle design
director Vic DeRobertis. The copy editor was Nicholas Jungman. The
supervising editor was assistant managing editor Marcia Werts.
© 2000 The Wichita Eagle. Reprinted with
permission. All rights reserved. Any copying, redistribution or
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