Robert F Rex
"Bob"
d 1969
Service
United States Air Force
Highest Rank
Captain
Years of Service
6
Combat
Yes
Biography as of Oct 29, 2013
While in high school at Odebolt, IA, Bob earned 7 letters in basketball, track, and cross-country. At the Academy, he focused more on singing and became President of the Protestant Choir and VP of the Chorale.
Following graduation, Bob was off to Craig AFB, AL, for pilot training, then to assignments flying C-130s at Charleston AFB, SC, and Maguire AFB, NJ, which included flights to SEA. After training to become a forward air controller (FAC) in Cessna O-2As, Bob arrived at NKP (Nakhon Phanom RTAFB) in northeast Thailand. In July 1968, he became a FAC in the squadron I'd left 6 months earlier, so I understand the missions and the areas he flew.
Typically Bob would fly his Cessna on 20-25 classified missions per month over the heavily defended Ho Chi Minh Trail in central Laos - with occasional excursions into the fringes of North Vietnam. It appears Bob specialized in flying Prairie Fire support missions. Prairie Fire was the even more highly classified program of inserting Special Forces teams along the Trail - and trying to withdraw them under heavy fire when those teams were discovered.
I was amused to learn Bob became known at NKP for his swagger stick. Pictures of Bob near the FAC crew quarters show it to have been a rather ostentatious piece of hardware, much more impressive than the swagger sticks sometimes appearing in British movies. E.K. Loving reported Bob ". . . always carried a swagger stick while at NKP. It became a squadron sport to steal his swagger stick. I delivered the swagger stick to Bob's parents in 1971 in Odebolt."
A flagstone on the FAC memorial in Colorado Springs characterizes FACs as: Men who flew willingly to the sound of battle. Bob was doing exactly that on 9 March 1969. He and an Army Special Forces Sergeant scrambled out of NKP to help control the extraction of a Special Forces team more than 100 miles from the base.
The team members were trying to escape from numerically superior enemy ground forces deep in enemy territory. In this instance an actual prairie fire had started and was covering part of the area with dense smoke. Other rescue fliers were having trouble locating the team in the smoke. Bob flew down into the smoke to try to determine the team's precise location - and never came out of the other side.
Another flagstone at the FAC Memorial states: "Greater love has no man than this, that a man give his life for his friends." John 15:13. Or, perhaps, that a man gives his life for brothers he's never met.
"I was a 23 year old 2LT pilot in need of a leader. Bob Rex took me under his wing. We got shot at together and partied together. I thank God for his friendship and will never forget him." Jim Glanton, 23rd Tactical Air Support Squadron
"My 86th mission was a lot longer - 5 hours on 9 March 1969 with Lt. Searcy as we went looking for a fellow Airman, Bob Rex, Nail 40. Listening on the radio, hoping to hear his beeper, and hearing nothing made those 5-hours very, very long. No, Nail 40 will not be forgotten, swagger stick and all." Russ Parrish, former SSgt, USAF, Combat Photographer