Vietnam shaped a generation of Americans and changed the country forever. The divisive conflict lasted well over a decade, during which more than 58,000 Americans were killed and 300,000 were wounded. The war bitterly divided the nation, bringing protests and mistrust of the government, as well as inflation and a reluctance to enter into foreign conflict for decades. It saw an end to the draft and it lowered the voting age. Soldiers returned home to name-calling instead of ticker-tape parades and many veterans struggled to make sense of the horrors of war. Despite all that, many south Alabamians bravely fought for their country and did their duty as soldiers, medics, and more. Of the approximately 2.7 million Americans who served in the war, less than 600,000 are alive today. In honor of the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon and the end of the Vietnam War on April 30, 2025, Mobile Bay Magazine is sharing the stories of four local veterans in four monthly installments. We honor their bravery and commitment to our country, and thank them for their service.
General Guy Hecker was raised by his mother, aunt and grandmother on Springhill Avenue in Mobile. He was about 15 the first time he flew in an airplane. The pilot was a friend who had taken only a few flying lessons.
“He didn’t know any more about flying than a man on the moon,” Hecker said. “I must have been crazy to crawl into that old World War II bi-plane with him, but I was hooked.”
Hecker’s boyhood hero was a cousin who flew in World War II; his own goal was to become an Air Force pilot. Hecker attended the Marion Military Institute, The Citadel Military College of South Carolina, Harvard Business School, the National War College and the Air Force flight school. He was one of the first air training officers in the new U.S. Air Force Academy and was made an honorary member of the Class of 1959, the first graduating class at the Academy.
“I enjoyed flying so much that I decided to stay in the military,” he said.
Flying also helped Hecker court Frances, a girl from the Mississippi Delta who was a stewardess on American Airlines. He would put her on a plane at Love Field in Dallas, then fly to where her flight overnighted. Hecker had the faster plane and would beat her there.
“It wasn’t a bad way to date,” he said.
A few years later, the couple married and had three children. Hecker was a major in the Air Force and was sent to the Vietnam War, leading a group of F-100 Super Sabre jets from McClellan Air Force Base in California to Bien Hoa Air Base, a U.S. base about 15 miles northeast of Saigon. Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine units were stationed there from 1961-1973.
Above General Guy Hecker is pictured with his wife Frances. Right Hecker in front of his plane.
Hecker was in charge of 10 lieutenants in the 90th Tactical Fighter Squadron, the oldest squadron on continuous service in the Air Force. Called “Pair-O-Dice,” the squadron’s lucky “Seven Up” emblem was red dice with white dots reading seven no matter which way it was tallied. Pilots called their F-100s “The Hun.”
Squadron life for the Pair-O-Dice centered around a hooch built between two base runways. The hooch was living and maintenance quarters. A small mess hall on the alert pad cooked up anything the pilots wanted.
“They had great steaks. That was the advantage of being on alert,” Hecker said. “I would order my steak with an over-easy egg on top.”
Every night, a flight crew was on the alert pad, ready to go, or “scramble.” A TIC call with “troops in combat situations” scrambled the alert pad.
“Some guys didn’t like to go on alert because it was more risky than the average bombing of the jungle,” said Hecker. “There were bad guys down there who wanted to kill us. We had to kill
them first.”
One night, Hecker was “roped into” planning and emceeing a going-away party for senior colonels at The Officers Club. He had a few drinks, knowing it wasn’t the Dice’s turn to be scrambled.
“Needless to say, I had a great hangover,” Hecker said. “But the call came into our squadron’s tactical air control center. The Viet Cong were coming through the wire into an Army camp. They needed napalm and bombs. Quick.”
The mission also needed someone with the most experience. One of Hecker’s students from the Air Force Academy was on duty in the command post. He saw Hecker’s name on the grease board and said, “That’s who we’ll send.”
Lynn High was part of Hecker’s team on the mission and wrote about that day in January 1969 in his book, “Born to be a Warrior.”
At 4:00 a.m., the claxon rang, and the duty officer shouted, “Scramble the Dice!”
Everyone was awake, the claxon’s shrill scream allowing no one to sleep through it, and everyone was shocked to hear the call for the Dice…Within two minutes we were heading down the taxiway with no idea where we were headed.
The command was to head toward The Seven Sisters, a small mountain range in Cambodia: a different direction than most missions. There was no moon, and the night was black with a thick haze.
The attack was coming from a former French fort on the border in Cambodia. An Army reconnaissance outpost was trapped by heavy fire. The squadron saw the mortar and machine-gun fire but waited for clearance to attack.
“Major Hecker and I could see all of this, but until we received command clearance or until the enemy began to cross the river, we were simply holding ‘high and dry’ and waiting,” High wrote.
Finally cleared to attack the fort, Hecker went first, dropping napalm. High followed with outbound bombs into the middle of the fort. He saw hundreds of tracers pass Hecker. Three pierced the major’s plane.
“As we began our departure, the FAC (Forward Air Control) told us that all firing from the fort had ceased, and the interior of the fort had many locations burning out of control,” High wrote.
Hecker later went back to the camp and it was then that he saw how close the Viet Cong had gotten.
“They were picking the VC out of the barbed wire right next to the camp,” he said. “We made crispy critters out of them. You had to dehumanize them to fight them.”
Hecker and High were both awarded the Silver Star for this mission.
Hecker served in Vietnam for a year. Service members stationed there for over six months received a freedom pass for rest and relaxation. Most went to Japan, Australia, Hong Kong or Hawaii. Going home to the U.S. was against the rules. Hecker went home anyway.
“I got on the freedom airplane and said, ‘We’re going to San Francisco, right?”
From San Francisco, Hecker flew to Phoenix for a week with Francis and their young kids. He never got caught.
“What were they going to do? Send me to Vietnam? I was already in hell there, so I had no fear.”
Hecker said those fighting in Vietnam knew the war was unpopular and the country wasn’t behind it.
“The Viet Cong defeated the French,” Hecker said. “We should have realized those guys were in it for the long haul. We didn’t need to get involved unless we were prepared to go all out. Instead, we got involved in increments rather than using the full force of the United States. But we were afraid China or Russia would join the VC, and we’d have World War III.”
For Hecker, the Vietnam War was about flying, courage and proving himself, not the “mundane issues of politics.”
“We flew the missions and kept morale high even though we knew the country didn’t support what we were doing,” he remembers. “Things were happening fast, and we had to do a lot just to keep our asses alive. Rocket attacks hit us 122 days in a row at Bien Hoa. We were not only shot at in the air, we were shot at in our quarters.”
Hecker was at the base for the second Tet Offensive in February 1969, when the Viet Cong took control of the end of the Bien Hoa runway.
“We took off and landed over those guys right there on the base with us,” he said. “We got them out pretty quick.”
Hecker flew 170 missions in Vietnam and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, the highest military award for flying achievement. The F100-440 he flew is now in the Smithsonian Museum and used as an example of the aircraft used in Vietnam. After the war, he was assigned to the Pentagon and moved to Washington D.C.
“I kept getting promoted and ended up a two-star general,” he said.
Hecker was elected into the Murphy High School Hall of Fame in Mobile. His photo is also on the wall of the Ruth’s Chris Steak House and Dew Drop Inn. Hecker retired to the home he built at Mount Vernon on one of George Washington’s original farms on the Potomac River. He enjoys watching the river from his library.
Guy Hecker in front of the F100-440 he flew in the Smithsonian Museum.
“I feel like I’m 15 going on 16, but I’m 92 going on 93,” he said. “Frances and I were married for 65 years before she passed away.”
Hecker learned that life is fleeting. You never know what’s around the turn or how one action affects the people around you.
“If any of those bullets had hit differently, I would not be here today,” Hecker said. “I always knew someone was up there taking care of me.”
