Hell, it might have been in an era of bad political decisions, and heavy military decisions were made by unqualified politicians, but the warriors who fought that war were good men! says Durham.

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Don’t get me wrong, he adds, I’m just a homegrown, everyday, run-of-the-mill war hero, but I know you writers. You’ll hype it up to look like I won the Vietnam War all by myself. He takes a long pause. I did not. But you know, I’ve noticed the older I get the more daring my war stories get.

Durham, now of Halls, Tenn., was born with a hairlip in a ‘holler’ [hollow] in the hills of Kentucky, the son of a Baptist minister. He still carries himself ramrod straight and looks much younger than his 67 years. He started his singing and guitar-picking career in the U.S. Air Force. During the Korean War he flew psychological warfare missions and played guitar.

In 1962, while Durham was flying Boeing B-52s, General Thomas Powers, commander of Strategic Air Command (SAC), heard a recording of Durham’s songs. Impressed, Powers assigned Durham a North American Rockwell T-39 twin-engine transport and three more musicians. The group flew to SAC air bases all over the United States, performing at formal dining ins and at SAC noncommissioned officers clubs. That’s when Captain Durham, B-52 pilot, wrote music parodying SAC–songs such as The Crew That Never Returned and The Wreck of the Old 97. SAC might have laughed at itself, but his songs did not make the wheels happy. Those songs and others were on his first album, Songs of SAC.

Durham flew a Puff the Magic Dragon (Douglas AC-47) gunship in Vietnam, but spent most of his time flying the Douglas EC-47. Much of the information about the EC-47 in Vietnam is still classified. I was a hired driver, Durham says, for MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology] electrical geniuses. Why, that ‘Gooney Bird’ was older than my co-pilot! He flew the EC-47 along the Laotian, Cambodian and North Vietnamese borders, picking up North Vietnamese radio orders to NVA (North Vietnamese Army) units in the field.

In one of his Vietnam war songs, Durham says the C-47 (forever known affectionately as the Gooney Bird) flew in World War I. That’s not quite true, but the twin-engine transport plane did fly as early as 1932. A typical EC-47 mission was seven hours long. After the seven-hour stint flying the Gooney with electronic gear, Durham and a four-piece band–the Starlighters–would load their gear onto an Army helicopter or, if their destination was close enough, an Army truck, and go to firebases in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam, hot locations where USO entertainers could not go.

Restrictions were placed on USO performers after all five members of an Australian rock-and-roll band, performing at a forward firebase, were killed by an incoming Viet Cong (VC) mortar round that fell on the makeshift stage.

Durham rounded up the musicians from such diverse places as the base motor pool at his home base of Pleiku. One band member was found working in a base laundry. Once the group was formed, they practiced wherever they could. One time the four men, plus instruments, crowded into Durham’s small living quarters. We got real friendly–real fast, Durham recalls with a smile. The group petitioned the powers that be in Saigon, home of MACV (Military Assistance Command, Vietnam) for permission to perform at far forward firebases. They reasoned that if a USO group could not go to the lonely firebases, then certainly men already in the military services should be able to go. The top brass in Saigon, given an endorsement from the home base in Pleiku, took two weeks to make a decision–record-breaking time for a military decision. The hastily formed Starlighters were soon on their way to making entertainment history–a history that is known by very few Americans.

Quite often the firebases where the Starlighters performed would be attacked by the VC; the show would be interrupted, and the Starlighters would then become fighting American servicemen. After the firefight, the band would resume the show. Most of the time the stage was a truck bed. Bull Durham describes one such incident: Incoming artillery shells and mortar rounds started falling on the camp, and all the lights were turned off. The band kept playing, to a now ‘captive’ audience.

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