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Now it
is Veterans Day USA November 11, 2024 and once again am thinking about
D-Day in Europe 1944, and how it was celebrated earlier this year
as the old veteran soldiers emerged from a Delta Air Lines flight
onto a hardstand, in France where a couple dozen wheel chairs whisked
them to the battlefields of Normandy where once upon a time they had
fought their way onto the beach.
As these men fade away, it reminded
us of when the last WWI soldiers moved slowly down Fifth Ave thirty
years ago, or when we saw the last Civil War Vets on flinty black
and white newsreels from the 1920s.
Looking at these Vets, I am aware that
still today we say little about our experience as Vets. Having been
lucky enough to return from a forced two-year enlistment in the U.S.
Army, serving 13 months of that time as a guest of Uncle Sam in a
strange land—Vietnam, my heart always goes out to my U.S. Army
comrades November 11th on Veterans Day.
Looking back to the 1960s serving in
Vietnam, right away it was clear then that the locals in Vietnam were
a wonderful, industrious lot, who most certainly had more in common
with people from the North who looked familiar, spoke the same language,
ate the same food and for the most part shared the same religion.
Can only still wonder of the sensibilities
of our Government to put us into that jackpot of a place, which had
been ruled for 100 years by the French, who regretfully adding not
much to Vietnam except perhaps using the country as a one-way export
profit market for themselves.
Do recall the time in Saigon and The
Continental Hotel as venue for a Graham Greene novel, titled “The
Quiet American”.
Actually, The Continental with its wrap
around Sidewalk Cafe (I think it is still there) sat on the corner
of Rue Tu Do and was antebellum design elegance.
But enough of that stuff with one more
thought for the military Generals out there.
If you must go to war, any war, try
and win it, otherwise you too can be dismissed as we Vietnam Veterans
were “as participants in loss.”
Some of that has changed, but for decades
after the Vietnam War the rejection of Vietnam veterans was palpable.
 I
recall flying to Saigon from Oakland aboard a World Airways Constellation,
the most beautiful airplane that has ever been built, period. We stopped
at HON and also at Wake Island.
Sixty years later I still dream of those few hours on Wake sitting
in what was left of the old Pan Am China Clipper Hotel there.
The color of the South Pacific Ocean
was deep blue cerulean, a color never seen before or since.
The menu on the airplane was two 12-inch
sausages and pancakes. We ate that meal over and over at least four
times on our trip. Others must have had that delectable treat as well,
because I saw a picture of the meal on the web a couple of years ago.
Later during the late 1970s when I was
doing an interview for Air Cargo News with World Airways Founder and
CEO Ed Daley in his office at Oakland, I told him that story, and
he laughed.
Good thing, because during those days
it is said that Ed kept a loaded six gun pistol in his desk.
World carried a lot of troops to ‘Nam
including the last flight out with desperate people running up the
rear stairway of a World jet.
Recalling that last U.S. military in
Vietnam flight, and watching almost the same thing happening as U.S.
forces departed Afghanistan, with hundreds of people hanging onto
and falling off a U.S. Air Force freighter . . .
But now fast forward, the view of that
beautiful Delta Air Lines Airbus in France with dozens of wheelchairs
literally surrounding it, whilst stewards gently carried some of the
vets down the staircase this past June 7 brought service and love
of our country to mind.
As we celebrate Veterans Day 2024:
Bless 'em all!”
Geoffrey |
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Vol.
23 No. 44
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