Incident in the South China Sea--1971

A Veteran's Day Experience told by Edward, Major, Retired, U.S.A. Army

How are we influenced and are we really listening when our Heavenly Father is talking to us? Who is directing us during this time frame? While I was in Vietnam I had several experiences when I knew I was being prompted by our Heavenly Father. One took place when I was Operations Officer at Chu Lai in April 1971.

Since I was an Instructor Pilot, I’d been given a mission to give a checkride one day. In Vietnam checkrides were given every six months or whenever a pilot was made an aircraft commander. What you did on a checkride was to take the pilot through all the emergency procedures, all routine procedures, make sure they were able to handle the aircraft, see if their judgment was good, and if they were capable of flying the missions they were assigned to fly.

When we got out to the aircraft that morning, the aircraft that I was originally assigned to give the checkride in was restricted from doing running landings which was normally one of our procedures. However, as an I.P. (Instructor Pilot) I could wave that particular portion of the checkride if I wanted to. But I felt, “No, I want to give this particular individual the running landing.”

So I talked to another aircrew that was getting ready to go out on a regular mission that day, and their aircraft was okay for running landings, so we coordinated with maintenance officer to see if there was any problem with swapping aircrafts. He consented to letting us go ahead and swap aircraft.

We took off on the checkride, and everything was perfectly normal—no problems whatsoever. The airfield where I gave the checkride was located right next to South China Sea, and as we were downwind over the sea, all of a sudden there was a loud bang and the aircraft swung violently to the right. I thought initially, we had had a midair collision with an aircraft coming up off the airfield who had taken off and hit us in the back of the aircraft. In my mind, I visualized the aircraft on fire, falling into the ocean and exploding. I grabbed the controls from the young pilot and headed the aircraft for the beach.


Now, normally when you have things like this happen, emergency procedures are to reduce the throttle and make an auto rotation down. However, this time, for some reason, I did not do this. I did the exact opposite. I did not reduce the throttle—I kept it full open. I kept all the power that I had, that the engine could produce, applied to the rotor system. Why I did this I don’t know. I just did it. I can’t say that I was told to do it, or directed to do it. It was just one of those things that for some reason, I did. I kept the full throttle applied.



We made the beach. When we landed, I turned aircraft to land on a steep slope—a 25 degree slope. Usually you can't make a landing on a 25 degree slope in that particular aircraft. How I did it, I don’t have any idea. I just know I did. One skid was in the water, the other skid on the beach. That’s how close it came to going in the water. When the collective pitch was reduced, as the skids touched the beach, the rotor blades came to an immediate stop. Fortunately because of where we were and my extraordinary actions, both the other pilot and I were safe.


When maintenance checked the engine, they discovered that transmission oil was lost due to blown seals, resulting in internal failure of the transmission. The pieces of the transmission were ground into small magnetized metal, pieces of which I still have.
href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4yjun0Zxwp2iUGG9UFK78qTz01X1Tq_KUQtt1zmMMwYeMDRRgSxwde30N02Keqre1vELQIwq18iqyD6MV-XCT_1kNT__vLqAkacR2eKpE0IbP9YfDnyPn3YcrEqhc6AYBVylXeLQI0_Y/s1600/helicopter+report2+%2528Medium%2529.bmp">Now, if this aircraft, originally scheduled for another mission had gone on its original mission, there’s a very good possibility that the 10 to 14 people aboard (it would have been a loaded aircraft) would not have been as fortunate as we had been. If that aircraft had gone out flying out over the mountains, in very rough terrain, with virtually no landing areas available for them, when the transmission had seized up, there is little chance that they could have landed safely.

Maybe I was just a tool in the hand of our Heavenly Father; if we had not swapped aircraft most likely everybody on that other aircraft would have been killed. By swapping aircraft, I was very fortunate in being exactly where I was in the situation where I was in, to land the aircraft safely.

Our Father in Heaven does give guidance to us. We may not recognize that guidance comes from our Father in Heaven. At the time that this occurrence happened, I would not have said that I had had a vision like Moses did with the burning bush or that I heard a voice like Moses heard coming out of the bush telling him to do this or not to do this. But looking back on it, I know the promptings of the spirit were coming to me. I know that I was being given guidance and direction on what to do. I know that I was being looked after by our Father in Heaven. I know that our Father in Heaven guides us and directs us, and helps us in these things.

"Trailing Clouds of Glory . . . and Eternal Friendships"

Have you ever met someone and felt like you knew them already? Started talking to someone and felt like you were best friends?

Recently my daughter Diana and her husband Jason adopted a son Aedyn. As they get to know and enjoy his special personality, I wonder at the miracle of children and if we knew our children in the pre-existent world.

As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we believe in the Plan of Salvation—that our eternal experience can be divided into three main parts: premortal life, mortal life, and life after death.i In our premortal life or the pre-existence, we were spiritual beings with talents and abilities who chose to come to earth to be tested. Like today on earth, we had friends who we were closer to than others. Did we want to come to earth in families with those who we were close to in the pre-existence? I don’t know, but some things make me wonder.

When I had my second child 18 months after my first, she was as different as night from day as my first born child. Athena was a fussy eater, and would nurse for a minute, wiggle and look around, eventually get back to nursing and wiggle again. She wouldn’t cry; she just wasn’t interested in eating. She was hyperactive and didn’t sleep much and she was never still. Holding her was like holding a pack of monkeys.

She was the cutest, adorable little baby, but she drove me crazy. I had imagined a sweet, doll-like daughter to dress up who would coo at me, and I had a fidgety, squirming bundle of nerves who was never still. Getting her dressed was a 20-minute gymnastic trick and laying still and cooing was something she may have done in her sleep—if she ever slept. She didn’t nurse well, and when she did, she threw up everything—projectile vomiting. For the first year, I smelled like sour milk and I didn’t dare try to feed her any solid food.

One day in Mineral Wells, Texas where we were living, my older toddler son was playing happily and my daughter was going 100 miles per hour. Exhausted, I put Athena in the playpen, and sat down on the couch and broke down in tears. Suddenly I could see my deceased mother standing across the room by my daughter.

“Oh, Beth, I knew Athena’s special spirit before she came to earth! I knew how difficult it would be for you to understand her,” I felt my mother say.

I jerked my head up and stared at the playpen. There was no one, especially my long-deceased mother, standing by the playpen where my daughter was trying to climb out, as I had thought I had seen. I was sure I was going crazy. Not only was I a bad mother, now I was crazy, besides. I put my head in my hands and began to cry harder.

With my eyes closed, I saw my mother’s smile—she was almost laughing as she gazed at the baby. “Your daughter is such a special spirit, Beth. She and I were good friends in the pre-existence. When I knew you were going to be her mother, I knew it would be like it was between us—you two would struggle to understand each other, because you are both so different in personality. Just as we often struggled to understand each other—I often wondered if you were from Mars because we were so different. But just as we loved each other, you and Athena will love each other and learn from each other!”

I jerked my eyes open and although I couldn’t see my mother with my human eyes, I could feel her love and her laughter. I knew she was there in the room with me, comforting me and playing with my tiny daughter. I cried more, but it wasn’t tears of discouragement, but of happiness and love, as I picked up my squirming daughter. I looked around the room and wondered just where my mother was as Athena kept trying to crawl over my shoulder and reach something behind me, then would turn around and almost leap out of my arms grasping for something in front of me.

I thought of that incident over the years when I became discouraged or worried. I didn’t consciously think of my mother being there watching over me; but I knew she understood how I loved and tried to understand a daughter who was so different from me.

Years later we were living in Vicenza, Italy, and Athena and her younger brother, Marc, were receiving their patriarchal blessings from a Patriarch from Frankfurt Germany Serviceman’s Stake. As Brother Peter Mourik, the patriarch, was giving Athena the blessing (which was recorded, typed and given to her), he paused and added, “You are greatly loved by several wonderful friends who have gone to a glorious world. Forefathers and relatives are mindful of you; you have given them joy by the way you live. You do not live for yourself alone.” As he said these words, I felt so strongly that he spoke of my mother who was there in the room with us, who had been a friend to Athena in the pre-existence. I felt my mother’s love for Athena and for me so strongly that I could almost see her.ii

While Ed and I were in our forties and living in Italy, we had thought our child-bearing days were over—I had had nephritis, breast cancer, bilateral modified mastectomies, and many other medical problems. Then one night I “saw” a tall young man’s spirit standing by the side of our bed; he told me he was our son and he would be coming to our family. In January 1987 Bryan Mikele was born in Vicenza, Italy; he is over six feet tall, and very musical.

My daughter Diana loved music from the time she was born. She would calm and “listen” whenever music played. It was so noticeable that I wrote about it in her and in my journal, and then totally forgot about it. When she was a teen-ager, she “discovered” her musical abilities, became a vocalist and became my most musically talented child. She had beautiful blue eyes (my only blue-eyed child out of five children).

Diana and her husband Jason were disappointed twice when they almost adopted a baby, and then it fell through. Once the birth mother changed her mind and decided to keep the baby the day before they were to get the baby. So when they heard there was the possibility of a baby to adopt, they were afraid to hope it could be theirs. But they flew to Utah to check on the possible baby to adopt. The five-month-old boy’s name was “Aedyn,” and the birth mother did not want it to be changed; the only name Diana and Jason had ever planned on for a boy was “Aiden.”

The blue-eyed boy looked so much like Diana and Jason that he could have been their own genetic child. The birth mother said Aedyn's most prominent characteristic was that he loved music and would calm down and “listen” to it whenever he heard it. When the birth mother met with Diana and Jason and let them hold Aedyn, the baby laughed and smiled and was so excited the whole time they had him. The mother took that to mean they were to be his parents and immediately wanted to sign the papers giving him to them. Later she located the birth father and brought him in sign over his rights, fill out his medical history and write a letter to be given to Aedyn explaining why he gave him up to Diana and Jason—so Aedyn could have a better life.

I think Aedyn is Diana and Jason’s baby as much as if he were their own flesh and blood, and not just because he looks like them. If he were black or Hispanic, he would still be theirs—I am sure they were supposed to be a family, and when they are sealed in the temple, they will be an eternal family.

I am sure that if the veils were taken from our eyes and we could see all the pre-existent connections we had on earth today, we would be amazed. Did we give Marc his father’s name as a middle name because of a premortal connection? Are Diana’s musical talents (and her rheumatoid arthritis) a connection to Ed’s grandmother Viola Dayley who also had rheumatoid arthritis and was known for her musical talents all over Southern Idaho?

The next time you meet someone with whom you an instant rapport, is it just coincidence? Or could it be because you were close friends in the premortal life? Wouldn’t you like to know? Someday you will know!

William Wordsworth said it in a beautiful poem,

“Ode:iii
Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood”

“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:”

_______________________________________________

i http://lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?index=16&locale=0&sourceId=45af9daac5d98010VgnVCM1000004d82620a____&vgnextoid=bbd508f54922d010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD
ii “Patriarchal blessings are given to worthy members of the Church by ordained patriarchs. Patriarchal blessings include a declaration of a person's lineage in the house of Israel and contain personal counsel from the Lord. As a person studies his or her patriarchal blessing and follows the counsel it contains, it will provide guidance, comfort, and protection.”
http://lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?index=16&locale=0&sourceId=17517c2fc20b8010VgnVCM1000004d82620a____&vgnextoid=bbd508f54922d010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD

iii http://www.bartleby.com/101/536.html , Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250-1900. William Wordsworth. 1770-1850.