58,000.

That’s the population of the cities like Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Bozeman, Montana. Sanford, Florida.

It’s also the number of names carved into the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C.

58,000 Americans who didn’t come home.

This is Memorial Day. Time to honor those fallen service members and all who have fallen while serving to protect and defend the freedom of those of us lucky enough to call ourselves citizens of the greatest nation on earth.

Nha Trang, Circa 1966

Vietnam was a primary focus of about 10 of my 30 years in the Air Force. 1963 to 1973.

In 1966 I witnessed something that made me fervently wish that conflict would end. Quickly.

I was the navigator on a C-130 aircrew, grounded in Nha Trang, waiting on some maintenance. I walked out to the flight line.

Another C-130 was loading body bags for transport home.

The stench was terrible.

As I approached, I saw the tags. These are not the real names but names like these:

Sgt. Charles Smith, 23, St. Louis, MO

Pvt. Joey Jones, 18, Charlotte, NC

Cpl. Sammy Cohen, 22, Newark, NJ

The ages.

The ages struck me to the core.

What the hell were we doing?

When will this war end?

It Did Not End There

Not for me.

I flew several more airlift missions. Then I served a full year in-country, summer 1969 to summer 1970. Over 100 recon missions as navigator on the venerable C-47 “Gooney Bird.” The oldest aircraft in the USAF inventory.

I followed that with four years at the Air Force Accounting and Finance Center in Denver, administering pay accounts and helping the families of our POWs and MIAs.

The most rewarding and entangling assignment of my 30-year career.

The Price

58,000 lives was only part of the story.

Over 300,000 service members were wounded. More than 150,000 needed hospitalization. About 75,000 were permanently disabled. And Lord only knows how many of us came home carrying some form of PTSD.

We also burned billions of our national wealth on a lost cause.

Then came 1973. The end of hostilities. The return of our POWs.

A highlight of my career.

The war itself didn’t end until 1975. Hardly any of our MIAs have ever been found.

Korea

As brutal and tragic as Vietnam was, there is another war, nearly forgotten now, that was even more deadly.

Korea. About three years. Over 36,000 American lives lost.

The 58,000 we lost in Vietnam came over fifteen years.

Korea took 36,000 in three.

Let that sink in.

May God bless and protect all of our fallen military brothers and sisters, our first responders, and their loved ones and families on this Memorial Day.

In our great nation.

Amen.

There’s a list I carry in my head.

People I’ve seen. People I’ve touched. People I watched on a stage and never forgot. A New York kid who ended up in uniform for thirty years gets lucky that way. Lucky enough, anyway, to have run into some of the best.

If I’ve mentioned any of them before, bear with me.

* * *

Al Jolson — 1948

He was billed as “the World’s Greatest Entertainer,” and even a nine-year-old boy in Flushing had heard of Al Jolson. You couldn’t miss him. His voice was unmistakable. His movies were everywhere.

But in every one of those movies, he wore blackface.

So when the announcer at Loew’s Prospect Movie Theater hollered “Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Al Jolson!”and a white man walked out…

Wait, wha? He’s white!!

I was only in the early February of my life. I had genuinely believed he was a negro. That was the proper term in Flushing, 1948.

His singing voice was one of a kind and wonderful. The show was great. I was enthralled.

And still confused.

* * *

Bobby Thomson — 1953

I was a die-hard Yankee fan, which made this more complicated.

My Uncle Dan (not really my uncle) took me and my friend Johnny to the Polo Grounds to see the Giants. Bobby Thomson was their star outfielder. Two years earlier, he’d hit the Shot Heard Round the World, the three-run homer that won the 1951 National League Pennant against the Dodgers.

After the game, Johnny and I waited by the locker room door. We spotted Bobby. He spotted us and started moving fast toward his car.

We ran after him, shouting his name.

Johnny stumbled. Scraped his knee. The chase was over.

And then Bobby stopped. Turned around. Came back. Helped Johnny up.

And gave us both an autograph.

* * *

Surprise — September 1964

Marjorie and I had been married exactly three days.

We were on our way to two weeks in New York City, with a stop in Washington, DC. Walking past the National Theater, we noticed a matinee about to start. Tickets available. Great orchestra seats. Cheap.

We went in.

The show was a preview. We watched it and wondered to each other whether it might be a hit on Broadway.

It was Fiddler on the Roof. Starring the great Zero Mostel. On a spontaneous whim, three days into our marriage, we saw the original Fiddler.

Of course it became a monstrous classic.

What a surprise!!

* * *

Barbra — Same Honeymoon, Different City

We saw ten Broadway shows in fourteen days. One of them was the mega hit Funny Girl, starring the mega star Barbra Streisand.

I had been a super fan even before getting married. Had all three of her LPs. Marjorie had loved her before I even told her about her.

Her performance in Funny Girl.

Absolutely unforgettable.

* * *

Johnny Mathis — The Copa

Yep. Same honeymoon.

The Copacabana. Most famous nightclub in New York City. Maybe the world. Golly, I was naive. I thought having a reservation meant we were all set.

Then I noticed the people ahead of me slipping something into the maître d’s hand.

Of course, it was $$.

So you want a decent table, reservation or not, have cash ready for tipping/bribing. Believe it or not, we got a decent table. Johnny sang a bunch, didn’t talk much (that wasn’t his thing), and we loved it.

We went back decades later, saw him again at Myrtle Beach in the ’80s.

Still great.

* * *

Sammy — 1981

He was the only headliner in Las Vegas advertised on the Sands famous giant hotel billboard with just one name.

Sammy. That was enough.

Of course, it was the great entertainer, singer, dancer, comic, actor Sammy Davis Jr. He put on the most entertaining one-man show that Marjorie and I ever witnessed. A one-of-a-kind talent and the only member of the Rat Pack I ever had the privilege to see in person. Never got to see Sinatra, Dean Martin, Peter Lawford, or Joey Bishop.

He died way too young, at 64, in 1990. Smoked too much. Lived too hard.

But happily, Marjorie and I got to see him in his glory.

* * *

Presidents Nixon and Carter

In early 1973, I was at a podium in the Statler-Hilton in Washington, briefing families on what to expect when our Vietnam POWs came home. Medical care, finances, the whole process. We were expecting Dr. Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State.

What we got was better.

I heard Hail to the Chief over the loudspeaker and stepped aside fast.

President Nixon walked to the podium and said, modestly, “I know you were expecting Henry, but I hope I can step in for him.”

Standing ovation. He’d ended that stupid war. Our POWs were on the way home.

President Carter was different. Around 1978, at Pope Air Force Base, adjacent to Fort Bragg, NC, home of the 82nd Airborne Division and the great Green Berets, he made a pass-through visit on his way to somewhere in Florida. He wasn’t very popular among military folks, but he was our Commander-in-Chief, and my boss asked (ordered) me to bring some of my people to the flight line to greet him.

I brought my seven-year-old son Jeffrey.

President Carter walked by with Rosalyn. She looked at Jeffrey and said, very graciously, “Oh, what a cute little boy.”

Jeffrey and I never forgot that wonderful honor.

* * *

Reagan and Bob Hope — Same Stage, 1985

Believe it or not, they were on the same stage together.

At a major Army-Air Force training exercise at Fort Bragg/Pope AFB, there they were. President Ronald Reagan and the one and only Bob Hope, a fantastic supporter of those serving our country in uniform and one of the greatest comedians ever.

Their good-natured banter about their respective ages was easy, warm, and genuinely funny. Reagan was beloved by the military. And there will never be another Bob Hope, not for those of us who served.

I had the honor to be in that audience.

Not bad for a geezer from Flushing.

Jolson. Thomson. Zero Mostel. Barbra. Sammy. Two presidents and Bob Hope.

Unforgettable.

Enuf.

OK. Here I am, a gawky, skinny 15-year-old walking into where he was talking, not nicely, to my mom.

There he is, way bigger than me. He coulda easily killed me.

I said in my high squeaky voice, “Frank, you’ve had too much to drink. I think you’d better leave.”

He looked at my mom and asked, “Do you want me to go?”

She answered, “You heard him, didn’t you.”

I was so proud of her. He left without further incident.

Let me back up.

My mom was an attractive “widder lady,” as they would say in some small towns. But we lived in the biggest “small” town anywhere, New York City. Ergo she had lotsa suitors, and I had lotsa uncles that weren’t really my uncles.

One such “uncle” who I liked a lot was Uncle Frank.

When I first met Uncle Frank, he was part of a pair. Uncle Frank and Aunt Emma. Yes, he was married. Aunt Emma wasn’t with him when he visited frequently, apparently on his way home from work. He and my mom would usually sit on the sofa and talk. He would send me out a lot to bring home ice cream. I was never gone more than 30 minutes, and they would still be on the sofa talking when I got back. He was always kind and generous to my mom and me.

Uncle Frank was a big man. An electrician, plumber and general handyman, who worked at several big factories in the NY area. One he mentioned a lot was the Breyer’s Ice Cream factory in Long Island City. The iconic, gigantic Breyer’s Ice Cream sign was a fixture on my many subway rides from my hometown, Flushing, to Times Square in the heart of Manhattan.

Uncle Frank enjoyed a drink now and then.

One evening near Christmas, he arrived after having several drinks somewhere. After a short conversation with my mom on the sofa, he became verbally abusive. Since they weren’t whispering and our apartment was small, I could hear every word from the kitchen. I heard her ask him to leave. He didn’t start to leave right away.

So, I walked in.

As scared as I was, I still think I kinda became a man that Christmas, at that moment.

But that wasn’t the only moment.

I’ve been thinking about when a boy becomes a man. Not the legal stuff — the voting age, the draft age. I mean when does he start behaving like one. When does he accept responsibility. When does he understand the impact of his behavior on the people around him.

For me, that incident with Frank was the first.  Here are the other two.

The Draft Card

At age 18 in New York in 1957, I received my Draft Card, formal documentation of manhood. With a Draft Card at that time, I could buy booze.

The day I received it, I entered a local liquor store and bought my mom a pint of Imperial, an inexpensive blended whiskey. I knew she enjoyed a very occasional highball. That’s a shot of whiskey in some Club Soda and ice. She couldn’t afford it normally, so this would be a well-deserved treat for her.

First legal booze purchase… went straight to my mom.  Yes, we had a unique mother/son relationship.

The Dentures

From about age 12 to 18, we were dirt poor. We were squeezing the nickel so hard, the Indian was ridin’ the buffalo. (Google that one, young folks.)

My mom needed a set of dentures bad. Her front teeth were terrible and she was embarrassed.  She often covered her mouth with her hand while talking. But the $$ were not available for the dentist.

Then things started to get a little better. I was working part time with the Post Office. My pay went from $1 an hour, as a porter/dishwasher, to $2 to sort mail. For you math majors, that’s double. My mom had a decent paying job at Family Circle Magazine. We were paying our rent on time.

So I saved enough to help her get a set of dentures.

How often does a young man buy a set of false teeth for his mom?

Enuf.

I was four years old.

My dad was on a gurney, on his way out the door to the hospital after a heart attack. He looked up at me and said, “Take care of your mom.”

That was the first quote that never left me.

These are the words that hit me to my core. The ones that made me who I am.

I did the best I could.

In Second Grade: Welcome to Wurtsboro

I was seven years old, starting second grade in Wurtsboro, NY. A little hick town 75 miles north of “The City,” where my Aunt May and Uncle Ted had a tiny chicken farm.

We were there because a housing shortage in NYC had basically made us homeless. My mom, my sociopathic older brother, and me were there long enough that I had to go to school somewhere.

One of my “homey” classmates greeted me on the first day, welcoming me to the “Waltonesque” town of Wurtsboro.

“We don’t like city slickers around here.”

So much for the stereotype of friendly people in a friendly small town.

What I took from it: the world doesn’t roll out a welcome mat. You find your own way in.

And I did. Those same summers, age 12 to 16, I couldn’t wait to get back up there to spend time with Aunt May and Uncle Ted, my cousins Richard, Marjorie and Nancy, and the freakin’ chickens. Thank heaven for my good pal named Peter, who lived across the street and whose folks had a nice cabin in the woods near Yankee Lake. Lotsa swimming and canoeing.

I found my way in just fine.

In High School: Mr. Vessa Speaks

“Mr. Scooler, you’re too damned sensitive.”

That was my high school Latin teacher, Mr. Vessa. He was soooo old. Probably about 60. (Ooh! Sorry, kids.)

I had just given him “what for” because of something he said that I felt mocked my intelligence. Instead of sending me to the dean, he just laid that one on me.

He was right on.

I was too sensitive. Thin-skinned. Ready to fight over a slight, real or imagined.

What I took from it: I hadn’t yet met my wonderful wife Marjorie, who later showed me the art of ignoring an idiot (me) who says something mean in a bad-temper moment. You don’t need to engage in a stupid, unnecessary argument. Mr. Vessa planted that seed. Marjorie harvested it on the regular.

In College: The English 101 Gut-Punch

“Mr. Scooler, your essay is perfect. Correct spelling, punctuation, and grammar. It’s clear and concise. But it’s the most boring piece of crap I ever read. Put some life in it, man!!”

And he didn’t say “crap.”

That was my English 101 professor at Queens College. I was a college freshman who had gotten a lot of A’s in high school compositions and thought he could write pretty good.

It stung.

What I took from it: put some life in it. Humor. Color. Something that makes a person want to keep reading. I’ve really tried to do that ever since. (You be the judge.)

The other lesson: I listened. I didn’t argue. I didn’t sulk off and decide he was wrong. Maybe Mr. Vessa had gotten through to me after all. Somebody told me a hard thing, and I believed them. That doesn’t come naturally to this prideful kid from Flushing, Queens.

But it’s a helluva gift when you finally figure it out.

In the Air Force: Rebel

“Get the hell off that GD bus, you freakin’ idiots, and get down on your haunches and walk like a duck.”

He didn’t say “GD” or “freakin“ either.

That was “Rebel.” A 6’7”, 250-pound survival school sergeant with tattoos and a big snake wrapped around his arm (not a tattoo, a real freakin’ snake!). He succeeded in scaring the hell out of us 20-year-old AFROTC cadets attending a Survival School in Nelsonville, Ohio.

But then there’s me and my big mouth.

As we got off the bus, he yelled: “I said, walk like a duck. Now say, ‘Quack quack.’“ I was doing the duck walk but not quacking. He yelled at me. “Say quack quack, you idiot!”

I retorted stupidly, “Quack quack, you idiot.”

I can’t remember how many push-ups I had to do. But it was a bunch.

Of course, if it had been a real POW camp, I would have gotten a rifle butt in the mouth. Or been shot. Luckily, I was not in Korea or Vietnam at the time.

What I took from it: know when to keep your mouth shut. It took a snake-armed giant and a few hundred push-ups to drive that one home. But I got the point. Thirty years in the Air Force, and I never forgot it.

Training succeeded.

And so here I am.

A seven-year-old city slicker who didn’t belong. A high school kid who was too sensitive for his own good. A college freshman who could spell but couldn’t write. A young airman who couldn’t keep his mouth shut.

Every one of those people had something to say to me.

Every one of them was right.

And underneath all of it was a four-year-old boy standing in a doorway, watching his father leave on a gurney.

Take care of your mom.

Did I do ok, Dad?

Enuf.

She was young. She was beautiful.

And I, a nine-year-old kid from Flushing, Queens, had a giant crush on her.

Mrs. Swenson, my fourth grade teacher, was the person that taught me so many things that are essential for an enjoyable life. Sure, she covered the basics. English. Math. The kind of fundamentals that are not successfully covered for many of our kids today.
But more important for me, she taught me to live.

She taught me to dance. She instilled confidence in me that I could stand in front of people and speak, sing, act, and be a presence that others could understand and enjoy.

She was in charge of entertainment for the PTA meetings, and somewhere along the way, I became her go-to-guy. Her “pet,” if you wanna call it that. I’ll take it.
I was Casey, who waltzed with the Strawberry blonde. Shirley Royes was that blonde. Wonder where she is now, some 76 years later? Wow.
I sang “Sweet Adeline” in a kid’s Barber shop quartet and got a laugh from a room full of grown-ups, not cuz I was good, but because I “gently” elbowed a fellow singer who hit a wrong note.

In a skit about the importance of vocabulary, I was her “Dictionary”–a lead role that had lots of words for me to recite in a costume my mom fashioned from a large cardboard box. As a 10 year old, I impressed the PTA by just not screwing up my lines. LOL

For a while, I thought I was hot stuff.

Short while.

My buck teeth were coming on their own and pretty much destroyed my self confidence for a while. Ahh pre-teen adolescence!!

Mrs Swenson also had so much courage. She took a group of us 25 nine or ten year olds on several field trips to learn about the greatest city in the world, right under our nose. We visited museums, zoos, the fire department, the Statue of Liberty, Hamilton’s grave site, Skyscrapers!
Her biggest outing was, unfortunately, one I missed. She took the class to see High Button Shoes a Broadway musical hit of 1948. That was almost 80 years ago….Sheeit!
That missed opportunity was finally assuaged in 1957 when I saw my first Broadway show, “West Side Story”. Wow, worth the wait!!
To this day, The Big Apple has played a major role in my life. I’ve introduced my family to its magic, sometimes one grandkid at a time. I still plan future visits, as possible. Thank you, Mrs Swenson.
Enuf.

My freakin internet connection doesn’t work.

To fix that problem my gigantic corporate internet provider sent me a new cellular modem. I had to ask what the hell that was. A cellular modem is air internet. Wireless. I’m a computer dinosaur, so that’s a redundant sentence.

Anyway. Guess what? It doesn’t work.

For three days, Jim (my son, a computer savvy engineer), Jerry (my local IT professional), and I tried numerous methods following the provider’s directions (and good ol’ Google) to connect. To no avail. A red light continued to mock us.  I think something is amiss. We weren’t sure if it was the modem or something not operating correctly in our neck of the woods, like a tower. The evidence pointed to the new modem being defective.

Sooooo. The ignorant dinosaur had to make the dreaded phone call to the giant corporate provider’s “Customer Service.”

Why “dreaded”? Primarily because it usually kills the better part of a day trying to get a human who speaks good English to help you. AND when you get one, he/she will ask you questions you can’t answer.

So here’s how the “dreaded” call went.

At about 1:30 pm I nervously dialed the 800 number. The friendly robot said all service reps were busy helping other “nervous” customers and I had a choice. I could wait on hold for God knows how long, or ask for a call back. I opted for the call back, expecting maybe an hour or so. The robot said 10 minutes.

Sure ‘nuff, my iPhone sang nine minutes later. I answered and identified myself to another robot. It/he/she said all reps were busy and someone would be with me shortly. “Ain’t this where I came in?” After a short wait, Leo answered. Leo was a human and he spoke good English. I was pleased.

“What can I help you with today?”

Oh Lord. How do I recap three days of frustration succinctly and tactfully for Leo? I did my best. He started remotely troubleshooting their local equipment, towers, signal, the works. Finding no significant problems on their end, he moved to my modem.

But first, he had to make sure I was me.

He emailed me a security code and asked me to read it back. I’m on my iPhone with him. How the hell do I check my email without losing him? Well, I tried. I swiped him away, went to email, found the 6-digit code, and trusted my memory to carry it back.

Bad idea.

I told him what I thought the 6 digits were. Uh uh. “’Rong.”

Sheeeeit. Swipe, hunt, write it down this time, swipe back, talk. Worked the second time. He now knew I was me. Good Lord!

Now that we’ve established that I y’am who I y’am, Leo gave me my first physical challenge. “Can you unplug the modem and move it to a completely different room near a window on the opposite side of the house? I can wait.”

I thought: that’s what I’ve been doing for three days. But ok.

At my age, I don’t run anywhere, so I walked briskly into the bedroom. No socket near the window. There must be one behind the big-ass bureau (high boy) because there’s a lamp on top. I succeeded in moving it a bit.

Murphy lives. The socket was on the opposite side.

I couldn’t reach it without risking a hernia and causing the stuff on top to fall and break. I opted for a socket in the bath and sink area near a bright window and replugged the freakin modem. Believe it or not, Leo patiently waited through the whole scramble. He was still there.

This was the fourth location we’d tried. We’d done all this before I made the dreaded call.

We waited about 5 minutes. The red light came on again.

After running me all over the house and overworking my pacemaker a bunch, Leo confirmed what I told him up front. The modem’s defective. They’ll send me another one.

I have my orders. Wait for the new modem, hand it to my IT guy Jerry, and ship the inop one back UPS with my account number. Leo gave me that over the phone too, because I forgot it.

Will the new one work? Hope so. But I ain’t bettin on it.

I was exhausted after the dreaded phone call. They did a good job. Of course, I still have no wifi. My iPhone on cellular is my workaround for now.

The “dreaded call” gave me a decent sitcom story. I hope y’all can visualize “the Old Man in the Attic” hunting for a socket to confirm for the bureaucracy what he already knew. That’s also my wifi network name, as it happens. Which I currently cannot access.

As my buddy Macbeth would say, it was another example of “Life’s but a walking shadow. The poor player struts and frets his last hour upon the stage, then is heard no more. ‘Tis a tale told by an idiot; full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Enuf.

“Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all.”

That’s Hamlet. And I’ve been thinking about it for a while now.

I am lazy. Ergo, I don’t read Shakespeare very thoroughly. But I love several of his lines. I recently wrote about his Macbeth characterization of life as a “tale told by an idiot. Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Especially important when I foolishly thought I was indispensable.

But “Nothing?” I don’t buy that.

So here’s a question that comes to mind from Hamlet’s line:

Was I a good kid, or was I just scared of getting caught?

From the ripe old age of 10, I was a latch-key kid. Very little supervision. Mom worked. Dad passed away when I was 4. I “coulda got away wit moida,” as a New Yawka would say.

And yet…

I stayed outta trouble. Mostly. When one of my “buddies” tried to talk or shame me into doing something “naughty” (Halloween tricks, for example) something stopped me. Never even thought about mooning the PTA. Lol.

Was that conscience? Or was it Mom?

Mom had a line she repeated so often it got wired into my brain:

“Whatever you do, don’t bring disgrace to the family.”

Now. Was that good upbringing? Or was it the very specific guilt that Moms are so expert at aiming at you?

Part of me thinks it was the “Scooler luck” theory. If I misbehaved, I’d surely get caught. No doubt that thought occurred to me more than once. But I think Mom’s warning had already done its work before the temptation even showed up.

She planted something. I’m just not sure what to call it.

The question followed me into adulthood.

Why did I choose a life of government service? Thirty years in the U.S. Air Force. Ten years as a teacher and program director at Trident Technical College.

Was it a drive to serve my country, my state, my fellow man?

Or was it my need for a secure, monthly paycheck, the kind I needed to adequately support my family?

Why not aim higher in terms of economic achievement? Make a lotta money?

Desire to serve, or fear of failure?

A little bit of both, I surmise.

Mom’s voice in my head. Hamlet’s line on the page. Eighty-seven years of evidence.

I stayed outta trouble. I served. I supported my family.

Maybe it doesn’t matter why you take the right road.

You just do.

Enuf.

The water below was a beautiful shade of blue-green. The pink coral was shining through. Light winds. Variable. And me, a 24-year-old Air Force lieutenant navigator, hopping island to island across the Caribbean.

Even compared to Joburg. Bangkok, Thailand. Adana or Istanbul. And all the other exotic places I’d been, this was the most fun airlift mission I ever flew.

The mission was called “Up Range.” In support of NASA radar tracking sites in the Bahamas and the Caribbean. It went from Patrick AFB, Florida to Grand Bahama to San Salvador to Eleuthera to Grand Turk to Antigua. Maybe not in that order.

Low stress.

The pilot could tune in the next stop on his ADF radio.

Nobody was gonna get lost.

The Overnight

Antigua was the payoff. We stayed overnight, and the island did not disappoint. Great Caribbean food. Rum punch. Steel bands. Dancing. And lots of ladies who were there teaching or nursing.

A fun, easy going mission.

Not a bad place for your aircraft to break, either. But that never happened.

Twenty-some years later, the Beach Boys would write a song trying to describe exactly that kind of night. Rum punch. Steel drum band. Cocktails and moonlit nights. They called the place Kokomo.

I just called it Antigua.

Enuf.

An F-15E Strike Eagle, shot down over Iran. Both crew members ejected. The pilot rescued within hours. The second airman, a Colonel, spent more than a day evading capture in the treacherous mountains of southwestern Iran, Iranian forces closing in, a bounty on his head. The CIA ran a deception campaign to throw the enemy off. U.S. special forces went in with heavy air cover and pulled him out of a mountain crevice.

“God is good,” he’d transmitted from his hiding spot.

He followed the principles of the Survival Course to a “T” even while seriously wounded from the ejection. And he survived.

This news of the daring, successful rescue struck eerily close to home for me. Not because I was downed and rescued, but rather because that never happened to me. Thank Heaven.

HOWEVER; As a C-130 airlift navigator, I flew 2,500 hours all over the globe, including in and out of that jungle paradise called Vietnam. But not before taking a short, but extremely rigorous Air Force Survival Course. Actually I completed two Survival Courses; the big one at Stead AFB, Nevada and a shorter, targeted course in Jungle Survival at Clark AB in the Philippines. The latter one was just before reporting to Vietnam for one year as an EC-47 Navigator. (And 1,000 hours at 1,500–2,000 ft over the Vietnam jungle in the oldest aircraft in the Air Force inventory; the venerable “Gooney Bird”, the C-47.)

Although it was over 50 years ago (yes, I’m old) the experience is indelibly etched in my feeble brain.

Both courses included a bunch about evading the enemy if you are forced to leave your aircraft. Getting hit by gunfire and being forced to violently eject from an F-15 fighter jet at high airspeed and altitude is a helluva way to leave it.

Our downed airman’s ordeal will be engraved in all future Air Force Survival School agendas.

Get away from your parachute landing place ASAP. Hide, but get to a high elevation to be seen and caught by friendly forces, not the enemy. Avoid people. Did I mention, “Hide”? Try to communicate so you can be identified. (In 1969 there were no iPhones or any pocket-sized phones one could carry into combat. How about a small glass mirror one could turn toward the sun and aim at an aircraft to get a pilot’s attention.) Stay calm and alert. Easy to say. Hard as hell to do. Hide and wait. Rescue will come.

It did.

Amen.

Here are some of my forever learnings from the “School” experience.

First. Don’t get captured.

The mock POW training taught me one major thing. They have total control over you. Food, drink, sleep, mobility, etc. Forget the John Wayne movie stuff. Try “name, rank and serial number” after no sleep, food or water for two days. And a few gun butts across your jaw. (They didn’t do that but they coulda.)

What else did I learn? Forget fairness.

After evading successfully, I was rewarded by 3 days in a mock POW camp. It was very real, but what made it “mock” was that it was for three days. You can stand on your head for three days. LOL.

Seriously, knowing it’ll end in three days or even three months means you can put up with a lot of punishment if you know it’s gonna end. If you’re a real POW, you don’t know if or when it’s gonna end. Big difference.

So do your damndest to evade capture. I demonstrated that in the Philippines, when during an evasion exercise, I hid in a clump of jungle and watched quietly as searchers almost stepped on me. I did not get caught, but was almost eaten alive by skeeters.

Lastly.

Make sure you have a good grip on the rope ladder when being pulled onto your rescue helicopter. I know of one MIA who was rescued and then lost his grip on the rope ladder about 10 ft from the helicopter entry, but 1,000 ft from the ground.

He wasn’t found.

Definitely enuf.