Bob Gee was born January 8, 1948 in Vernal, Utah, a rural community- that means he shares a birthday with a man named Elvis Presley. Bob’s father served in the Army Air Force during WW2, and his uncles served in different capacities during that conflict too. Bob grew up during the Cold War when there was a fear of communism and nuclear war: it was the age of Sputnik and duck and cover drills in grade school. It was also the age of another new commodity – TV; Bob watched his first TV in 4th grade. The 3 channels were broadcast from Colorado between noon and midnight, and Bob remembers that they were quite fuzzy. He graduated from high school in 1966 and joined Air Force ROTC at Brigham Young University [BYU]. He married in his teens and had two children. In his BYU years, Bob recalls that there was no significant antiwar movement – that would come later. Bob would eventually be stationed at Andersen AFB in Guam. As a navigator he utilized manual, celestial and math guidance; he also received 6 months of Electronic Warfare Officers training. He would go on to complete 77 combat missions in a B-52G. As such, he had to confront the primary concerns of the time: SA2 SAMs and Mig-21s. Bob and the crew flew the 2500-mile mission between Guam and Vietnam many times; the missions generally lasted 12 hours and were flown in cells of 3 aircraft. On Guam Bob indicated that the crew was housed together but that the living conditions were miserable – with 12000 men on a base built for 2500. AS the war seemed to be winding down, they were surprised and assigned to Operation Linebacker, where they knew their destination would be Hanoi. They would lose 15 B-52s in the 11 days of Linebacker II. In the end, Bob said that he had mixed feelings about the war; he was and is bothered by the loss of 5 flight school classmates. Six young men from his small home town were killed in Vietnam too, along with the tens of thousands of other Americans who died during the war. Like many Vietnam vets, coming home was a big adjustment. New attitudes, a young family, and new opportunities in the air force awaited him as he would go on to serve until 1993. Crestwood students had the opportunity to hear these insights and more when we interviewed Bob Gee via zoom in May 2024.
