All’s quiet in the eastern sky |
During my tour in ‘Nam, I saw a certain number of body bags. Activated bags. I think about that on Memorial Days. Other days, too. Sometimes I wonder about this one guy, a pilot, who we might be honoring. Don’t know if he qualifies.
There were hundreds, thousands of planes. Hell, it was a military airport in the middle of a war zone. Douglas A-4 Skyhawks, McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantoms, Grumman A-6 Intruders, transports. Busy place, but suddenly, the focus was on just one. Things got unusually quiet.
This was during my war. 1967. Nam. Chu Lai Base Area. I was not a pilot. I was a Navy CB. I only took to the air as a passenger —delivered to Chu Lai in a C-130, flown onboard a chopper back and forth to Da Nang, and finally when our battalion’s in-country tour was ending, returned to the states in a Braniff International Airways........