Zooming in over the moonless Afghan desert at 100 feet, Capt. David Haake knew he was in trouble when he looked down through his night goggles and saw “a lot of flashes the size of soccer balls” heading toward his Osprey, a hybrid vehicle that can take off and land like a helicopter but also fly like a plane.
“It looked like a dance club,” says the 35-year-old Marine from Jonesboro. “Tracer rounds were everywhere. I could hear bullets impacting the plane.”
His job was to unload 17 Marines to reinforce others already in battle, under a “heavy volume of fire” from enemy forces he later learned had turned his Osprey into a giant Swiss cheese.
After “debarking” the men, and directing crewmen on board to help an Afghan soldier who’d been badly wounded, Haake took off, but immediately realized he was in trouble. The craft was spewing fuel, the controls were shot up, and he couldn’t flip the wings to airplane mode, which meant a slow and iffy return to base.
But they made it, and it wasn’t long before Haake, who says he was just doing his job and eschews the term “hero,” was being hailed as one.
Soon, in a spit and polish ceremony, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, one of America’s highest awards for valor.
He had done his job, and almost died doing it.
Somehow, his mother, Union Grove Middle School teacher Dolores Haake, knew it, felt it, sensed it. His wife, Cindy, says it was weeks after the incident “before he could tell me anything. I heard from him, he could not tell me details.”
The official citation says Haake “demonstrated heroism and valor in negotiating a landing to a contested area under heavy enemy fire, then flying his severely battle damaged aircraft to a safe landing.”
It also says he made it by a mere two minutes.
Another Marine pilot, Maj. Michael Hutchings, also was awarded the DFC for his actions that night, and seven men received Air Medals.
Haake, who has three children, was born in Duluth, later moved to south Atlanta and graduated from Lovejoy High before getting a degree in business from the Citadel in 2001. Then came the terrorist attacks of 9-11, inducing him to join the Marines “out of a sense of duty.”
Lifelong friend Bob Brandl, 64, a Marine in Vietnam, says when he was in combat, troops looked on pilots like Haake as lifesavers.
Wife Cindy says she knew something was up when she didn’t hear from him for a couple of weeks, which was unusual because they’d been sweethearts since 1997.
“I watched the Twin Towers fall in our classroom,” says Haake’s mom Dolores. “I knew then he was going to go off to war.”
After his brush with death, he called home, but didn’t tell her what’d happened.
“He said he was OK, but there was something different in his voice,” the Marine’s mom says. “I knew it had been very close. Mothers just know.”
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