Faite Mack
Faces of Five Wars
Story by Karin Orr
Portrait by David J. DeJonge

Historical original interview; not a current biography.
Recovered original Word document: Col Mack.doc

Col.  Faite Mack
U.S. Army, U.S. Army Air Corps, and U.S. Air Force
World War II, Korean War, and Viet Nam War

	Faite Mack fought two battles in World War II, one with the Allies against the Axis powers, the other more personal.  A member of the 100th Air Squadron, Mack was an original Tuskegee Airman.  “There were no blacks in aviation,” Mack states, because those in power “felt as though they were either too stupid or didn’t have the educational background to fly aircraft or to maintain aircraft”
	Col. Mack insists that the whole Tuskegee Airmen project, in fact, “was just a big experiment “set up to pacify black senators, congressmen, and the editors of black newspapers, such as The Chicago Defender and The Pittsburgh Courier.”  It was supposed to fail.  “It seems as though the Army had spent money for this experiment to fail,” Mack continues with an ironic smile.  “But it didn’t fail.”
	Before the program closed in 1947, it had graduated 992 black pilots, 95 per cent of whom had either a college education or a skill.  In all the missions they flew escorting bombers, Faite notes proudly, they never lost once.  Mack, who was in charge of the squadron’s maintenance, saw action in North Africa, Sicily, and Italy, “from the bottom of the boot up to the top.”  Then there were six or seven battles during the invasion of southern France.
	“They used to bomb us all night long in Italy; that was the worst time for me,” says Mack.  “Lots of times when the sun was at 12 o’clock, that’s when they would come in and strafe us . . . as they were going back north” from dropping bombs in the south.
	Mack’s one-on0one encounters with the enemy, however, were quite different.  “Most of the Germans I ran into who could speak English,” he reports, “said, ‘I was drafted just like you.  I didn’t want to be here . . . I don’t have no grief against you at all, so don’t be angry with me, because I’m not angry with you.’”
	From Mack’s own countrymen, the greetings were not always so benign.  When the train carrying troops bound for Newport News and eventually Europe passed through eastern Kentucky, Mack remembers the porters pulling down the window shades, although it was day.  “I wondered why and pulled the shade up a little bit,” Mack says.  “And there were people lined up along the tracks throwing rocks at the train.  Somebody told them there were black guys on the train, I guess.”
	A strong believer in education (his three sons have exemplary careers), Mack continued his own schooling in flight school, earning his commercial pilot’s license.  He also attended helicopter school and the air academy, studying maintenance administration, and recruiting.  For thirty years Mack was in charge of maintenance for the Illinois National Guard, and in 1050, the Chicago Tribune gave him the “Outstanding Soldier” award.  Of all his war decorations and civilian tributes, what pleases Mack most, he grins, is his Good Conduct Medal.
	Good conduct has certainly been Mack’s motto.  When he and his wife, Katy, lived in Chicago, he volunteered in many civic organizations, a pattern he has continued since moving to Grand Rapids eight years ago.  Recalling his days with the fabled Tuskegee group, Mack says real life wasn’t what current movies portray—flying all day and partying all night.  “At Tuskegee Flying School, there were no fast cars or bars.  It was train, train, train.”  And though he appreciates the credit the flyers are finally receiving, it would have been nicer fifty years ago, “when they were all alive and not forgotten.”