Nhi Le said...Thank you Mr. Hoa Pham. As an FAC pilot, who has flown for you guys many years, visiting your page, all the memories, joyful and sorrowful, are waking up in me. In my previous life, a life of a “pilot de guerre”, I had always wondered, how did you guys do it. Now, a retiree 70 years old, I still wonder again, how did you guys do it?
Let the world be known, there were only two words in the “Loi Ho” parlance. Yes, only two words but deadly important: Insert and pickup. Meaning deploying and bringing back. There were nights I couldn’t help but kept thinking about you guys, after flying an air cover mission to insert a team, way in the middle of the jungle of the Vietnam high plateau. It could be on this side of the Vietnamese border or the other side, in Cambodia or Laos territory. It didn’t make any difference. The Special Force officer in the back of my L-19, coolly maintained contact with the inserted team only by clicking the FM (PRC25) radio button. (Lieutenant Trung Covey, who is in San Jose, is one of those.) Every click meant something that I had no clue.
It was the Insert, the easy part.
Pickup was another entirely different episode. It could be fine, when everyone went home happy. Or it could be bloody which I have to call in air support, and only a few of you coming back. Or worse, God forbid, it could be a total fucked up, to which we called a “Failed pickup”. None of you were returning. What happened to the team, only God knew.
As painful as it was, life just went on. We were preparing for the next mission, trying not to think about the last.
Then if by chances, we met at the local bars, after a few beers or a few cases of them, we would loosen up. We talked about our country, and our dreams, and our girls and even our whores, but you guys never talked about your missions. It wasn’t because there were any secrets you didn’t want to spill, but because, I guessed, you guys wanted to block those painful memories from your thinking. We were having fun, why contaminate it?
Well, Hoa, a salute to you and all your comrades, who have never failed to fight in war, and now in peace, have never failed to live like men, like soldiers.
Trường Sơn Lê Xuân Nhị
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