News

Medal of Honor recipient to attend Robins celebration

  • Published
  • By Jenny Gordon
  • 78th Air Base Wing Public Affairs
ROBINS AIR FORCE BASE, Ga. --  Imagine you are one of the three men who are part of an Air Force Special Forces combat control team in charge of evacuating personnel at a camp in Kham Duc, South Vietnam.

It is May 12, 1968.

Faced with the realization you're the only ones left in the camp, it's time to get out. But you can't because there's heavy fog hiding the enemy - and they're closing in fast, armed with mortars, small arms, and automatic weapons and rifles. The enemy has already destroyed one C-130 on a nearby 4,000-foot, debris-filled airstrip.

Col. Joe Jackson, who loved model airplanes as a child growing up in Newnan, is circling overhead at the controls of a C-123 Provider. It's mid-afternoon, and the weather is deteriorating fast. Another C-123 had already attempted to land, but enemy fire prevented the aircraft from finding the men.

Diving from 9,000 feet at a rate of almost 4,000 feet per minute, Jackson goes in for the rescue, jams on his brakes and skids halfway down the runway. He couldn't reverse the propellers to stop the plane, since doing so would shut off two auxiliary engines he'd need for the quick escape.

As the plane turns to take off the way it came in - you and your team jump into the open rear cargo door. But it's not over yet. A 122mm-rocket is fired at you, and its shell skids along the asphalt, breaks in half, and stops only 10 meters from the plane. It doesn't explode. Jackson goes around the shell, and takes off under intense heavy fire.

The C-123, piloted by a man who had flown 298 combat sorties when the Vietnam War began, was on the ground in less than one minute.

For his heroism, eight months later in January of 1969, President Lyndon B. Johnson presented Col. Jackson with the Medal of Honor.

"I remember thinking on the way down - on that steep approach - well I know I'm going to be shot. I just have to accept that and go right on," recalled Col. Jackson on the phone from his home in Kent, Wash. "It's something that you know you have to do - that it's the right thing to do."

The Georgia native said he has never forgotten that day. When asked over the years about those few moments before his plane landed and after, he explained he never has the answer most people are looking for.

"Have you ever been shot at?" he asks, to which he said most say no. "Then I can never explain to you how it is. Regardless of how much I try, you'll never understand it. But if you have been shot at - you understand."

Col. Jackson is married to his bride of 66 years, Rosamond. They have two children; one grandchild; and one great-grandchild. Jackson returned recently from a trip to north Georgia, dedicating a middle school in Habersham County which is named in honor of another Medal of Honor recipient.