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C H A P T E R 8 THE HOLIDAYS November 22, 1970 Dear Mother, I have today off because I have to fly tonight. I’m in good health. They sent the Americal Division home so they just changed us to the 23rd Infantry Div. All it was was a name change. My platoon leader from Fort Carson, who was stationed here, got killed last week. Quite a few people from Carson have been getting it. I am enclosing a money order for Christmas. Please go ahead and buy the kids and yourself presents from me. If there’s any left, go ahead and buy the Christmas tree with it. Please spend it all. I hope this letter gets to you in time. The mail is starting to slow down quite a bit. I’m still trying to keep my morale up. It’s pretty hard sometimes. Well, I better run now. Holidays were some of the longest and loneliest days of my Vietnam tour. Those days were spent thinking about home and wondering what my family and friends were doing. I wondered how they all were and if they were missing me as much as I was missing them. I usually tried not to think about home because it made me feel lonelier and depressed. I discovered that the less I dwelled on it, the better off I was. But when the holidays came around, I could not help but think about home. Fourth of July in 1970 was the first major holiday that I spent in Vietnam. It came and went without mention of its passing. This was 91 the first Fourth of July that I had ever spent away from home. The previous year, my class had received a leave during our break in flight school, and I was fortunate enough to make it home for the holiday. My family’s tradition was to celebrate the Fourth by having a picnic in the late afternoon, after which we would all climb into the car and go see the fireworks. This was the custom of many of the families back home. But in Vietnam there would be no picnic or fireworks for me this Fourth, just a mental note of the days passing. Thanksgiving came, and I was scheduled to fly. I was hoping I would have the day off. That morning, like every other morning, I got up at 0430 hours and headed down to the flight line. I always skipped breakfast for a little more sleep and a stronger stomach. I found it hard to get into a helicopter with a stomach full of the Army’s mess at that time of the morning. We walked down to the flight line, completed our morning preflight of the aircraft, cranked up our bird, and flew to the first unit that we were assigned to support for the day. The sun was breaking over the horizon as we turned on our final approach to Hawk Hill. Hawk Hill was a combination fire-support base and troop headquarters for several of the ground units that we flew support for in our AO. After parking the bird and shutting her down, we got out and secured her blades. The copilot and I then walked over to the unit’s headquarters that we would be supporting for the day. When reporting in, we heard that our mission would be to fly turkey out to the troops in the field. I thought this was a cool mission, being that it was Thanksgiving . Along with the turkey we also would be flying a priest, whose call sign was Sky Pilot, to give a blessing to the troops. The officer in charge briefed us on the location of the different units and how we should accomplish this mission. He then told us that the turkey would not be ready until 1000 hours. I looked at my watch, and it was only 0700 hours. With three hours to kill, we immediately headed to the mess hall for some breakfast. It was a few minutes before ten when a specialist came over to our chopper and notified us that the turkey was ready. It was time for us to do our thing. The cooks loaded the hot turkey dinners into mer-mac cans (insulated green canisters) to keep the food warm until we could deliver it to the troops. Our crew loaded the aircraft with enough chow to feed 92 R A T T L...

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