'Right place at right time': Gilmer man flew with elite squadron during Vietnam War (2024)

GILMER — He might not have been on a hook, but Troy “Rex” Morris was nothing but bait — for enemy gunfire.

The U.S. Air Force fighter pilot from Soules Chapel, a small town in Upshur County, didn’t know what he was in for in 1969 when he volunteered to fly with the Misty Squadron, an elite group on a daredevil mission over the jungles of North Vietnam. They aimed to locate enemy troop and equipment movements and call in airstrikes — all while flying low to the ground for hours on end, dodging enemy fire as they soared through the skies.

A few days before Independence Day, the 88-year-old Vietnam War veteran sat in his recliner and recounted his time in the sky. He was soft-spoken and quicker to say he wasn’t a hero than he was to list the details of a particular mission.

To him, serving in the Air Force was something he felt a duty to do — the kind of duty that millions of men and women have fulfilled to defend the nation’s freedoms, which people celebrate each year on July 4.

“A lot of people did a lot more than me,” Morris said. “I just happened to come along at the right place at the right time, I guess.”

First time for everything

With plans of becoming an industrial education teacher, Morris was a student at East Texas State University in Commerce in the 1950s when he noticed a group of men marching around the campus every Tuesday morning. He asked a friend what they were doing.

That’s when he learned about the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, which prepares college students to become military officers. He signed up, and when he graduated from the program, he passed a test that qualified him for pilot training. He enlisted in the Air Force in July 1957 and was stationed at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio.

“I never had been in an airplane,” Morris said. “Flying an airplane — not bragging — it just wasn’t that hard. I caught on pretty fast.”

He became a fighter pilot and chose to fly the North American F-86 Sabre, a supersonic jet used by the Air Defense Command.

“I was hot stuff,” Morris said.

Morris had been in the Air Force for more than 10 years when he volunteered to go to Vietnam; a tour there would help him advance his military career. He was a member of the 309th Tactical Fighter Squadron at Tuy Hoa Air Base in South Vietnam, flying the North American F-100 Super Sabre, a supersonic jet, on combat missions.

While at Tuy Hoa, Morris learned that a squadron that had been around only a couple of years needed pilots.

Just the FACs

North Vietnamese forces operated the Ho Chi Minh Trail running from North Vietnam to South Vietnam that they used to move troops and supplies into the south. And that meant American pilots had a job to do: watch the trail, spot enemy troop movements and call in airstrikes to stop them.

Early on, American pilots primarily flew those missions using slow, propeller-driven aircraft. But as North Vietnamese forces fortified the route with anti-aircraft guns and missiles, American losses “became unacceptable,” according to the National Museum of the United States Air Force.

The solution: fly faster jets. In June 1967, all-volunteer pilots in Detachment 1 of the 416th Tactical Fighter Squadron began flying F-100s along the route under the command of Col. Bud Day. The Misty Squadron was born.

Misty crews were known as forward-air controllers, or FACs, meaning they flew ahead of other fighters to guide them toward the target. Morris signed up to join Misty in 1969, giving the squadron its second connection to Upshur County.

The squadron didn’t get its name from the weather. Day’s wife’s favorite song was “Misty” by singer Johnny Mathis, who was born and raised in Gilmer, 10 miles south of Morris’ hometown of Soules Chapel.

“[Day] was the first commander of Misty,” Morris said. “That’s kind of where that came from.”

Misty Squadron members set out as two-man crews for their missions: a pilot and a spotter. Pilots flew at low altitudes, allowing their passengers to see enemy equipment, troops, missile sites and gun placements. The crews marked targets by firing white phosphorous rockets at them, sending smoke into the sky, and then radioed in the location of the enemy. Fighter pilots in another squadron then would respond and obliterate the enemy.

Passengers also were trained fighter pilots, and pilots and passengers swapped roles from one mission to the next.

Misty pilots flew as fast as their craft would allow — roughly 402 mph — because they could arouse enemy gunfire aimed at them. They wiggled their planes’ wings wildly in an attempt to miss enemy fire. The ride was a “roller coaster,” Morris said.

“The guy in the front seat flew the airplane, but the guy in the backseat, he was just looking and hoping he didn’t throw up,” Morris said.

Their missions weren’t only daring — they were demanding. The small size of the squadron meant pilots had to stay in the air for hours on end, far longer periods of time than most missions. They frequently refueled in-flight, rising into the sky to connect with a refueling plane before descending once again.

“In spite of their skill, specialized tactics, and fast aircraft, they paid a high price for striking at the vital, well-defended lifeline of the communists,” according to the Air Force Museum’s website. “Enemy ground defenses shot down nearly a quarter of the 155 Misty FAC pilots (and two were shot down twice).”

Despite the odds, Morris said he wasn’t scared.

“You didn’t pay very much attention to that,” Morris said. “You’re too busy doing your thing, and we all felt like we’re pretty invincible anyway.”

Morris’ tenure with the Misty Squadron was from Sept. 17, 1969, to Jan. 15, 1970. He completed 62 missions.

Those dates are embossed in a shiny badge-shaped plaque that hangs on a wall in his room at the Wesley House Assisted Living and Memory Care facility in Gilmer. It describes Morris as “one of the elite few to fly ‘on the trail’ as a Misty Super FAC.”

Morris returned to the 309th Squadron when his time with Misty was done. He completed his one-year tour of duty in Vietnam and returned to the U.S., where he spent seven more years in the Air Force. He rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel.

The Misty Squadron plaque isn’t the only Air Force commendation that adorns his walls. Morris received the Distinguished Flying Cross, which honors an airman’s extraordinary work or acts of heroism. Morris said he doesn’t really know why he got it, though.

Looking up in Upshur County

Flying along the Ho Chi Minh Trail undoubtedly put Morris in enemy territory. But earlier in his career, he flew over friendlier territory — and with the help of a friend, too.

It all started in 1965. After returning from England, Morris became an instructor at the former Reese Air Force Base in Lubbock. That’s where he got connected with a guy from Gilmer he’d known for years: 2nd Lt. Steve Dean. The Dean and Morris families had been longtime friends.

Morris, a major, became Dean’s flight instructor and, later, his flight commander. Dean became a flight instructor as well.

The two remain friends to this day. Both live in Gilmer, where Dean oversees the Flight of the Phoenix Aviation Museum at the Fox Stephens Field Airport. On Monday, Dean and Morris swapped stories and a few laughs in Morris’ room at the Wesley House.

One bright and sunny Sunday morning in 1967, Dean, Morris and some of their advanced pilot students were wrapping up a weekend navigation training mission. They flew out of Barksdale Air Force Base in Bossier City on their way back to Reese Air Force Base. Dean and Morris decided to make a special detour.

On Sunday mornings, Gilmer church parishioners had 15-minute gaps between morning Bible studies and the main Sunday services. Men would step outside to smoke cigarettes or go to a donut shop. Those breaks, Dean said, usually started around 10:50 a.m.

Dean and Morris planned their flight: After leaving Barksdale, they’d arrive over the courthouse square in Gilmer at exactly 10:50 a.m. and fly along Buffalo Street, which was lined by a number of large Gilmer churches, giving folks a Sunday morning spectacle like they’d never seen.

The flight went exactly according to plan.

“It was a nice, safe, legal flyover,” Dean said with a laugh.

“We were doing nothing illegal,” Morris added.

“I was the instigator in that. He wouldn’t do that,” Dean said.

“I was a major. I knew better,” Morris said.

That the two were stationed at the same base all those years ago proved a point: “It makes you realize what a small world it is, and it also makes you realize what a small, compact ... close-knit family the Air Force is,” Dean said. “Once you’re in it, you know everybody. Everybody knows everybody.”

‘Nothing special about me’

Morris returned to Upshur County after he left the Air Force. He taught school for a year and went to work for the Upshur Rural Electric Cooperative, where he supervised linemen. He retired in 1997, and since then, he’s enjoyed a relatively quiet life.

He and his late wife, Anne Vivian — a Gilmer girl he married while he was in the Air Force — raised a family of three boys: Ben, Les and Chris.

Though Morris loved flying, his wife asked him not to take to the skies anymore when his service was over. So, he stopped. But a quick look around his room at Wesley House shows that his head, and his heart, are still a little bit in the clouds. His military awards line one wall; a calendar featuring airplane photos hangs on another; and models of two aircraft he flew, including the T-100, sit on a shelf beneath his TV.

“That was just part of my life I did, and now I’m trying to get on with it,” Morris said.

Like other men of their time, Morris and Dean signed up for the armed forces because they felt a sense of obligation to do so. Both had uncles who served in World War II.

“You felt there was responsibility there,” Dean said. “Rex and I, we grew up in that kind of environment. So, it was more something you felt like you needed to do.”

So, what does it mean to Morris that he fought for his country?

“You know, I never thought a whole lot about that,” he said. “I just did what I had an opportunity to do. Nothing special about me.”