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High Springs, Florida

October 10, 2004

Photographs

^{This is the picture of Patience I carried in Vietnam. She is twenty-two years old my true love, and the mother of our son, Jack.}

^{Jack is one and a half. He and Patience will wait for me in Naples, Florida.}

^{Catching a nap before a night training mission at Fort Benning. We’re forming up the First Air Cavalry, the world’s first combat airmobile division.}

^{Patience takes a final snapshot of Jack and me. I’m on the way to join my battalion to board a ship for Vietnam.}

^{On the deck of the USN Croatan, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.}

^{Gerald Towler (Resler), brand-new aviator like me, boarding the troop carrier Darby.}

^{In An Khe, Vietnam, we set up a camp for us and our four hundred helicopters. By January 1966. this was the layout of B Company. 229th Assault Helicopter Battalion. I lived in the 2nd Platoon tent with these guys.}

^{Clockwise in this group. Gerald Towler (Resler), Don Reynolds (Kaiser). Bob Kiess (Leese) and Dallas Harper (Banjo): Lee Komieh (Connors) and Watt Schramm.}

^{Chuck Nay (Nate) at our posh bathing facilities.}

^{Ken Dicus (Riker) in his cube in the 2nd Platoon tent.}

^{From front to back, my platoon leader, Robert Stinnett (Shakcr). Captain Gillette (Gill), and Hugh Farmer practicing his golf swing.}

^{Jack Armstrong and Tom Schaal (T. Shaw), from the 1st Platoon.}

^{Preachers laager in a rice paddy.}

^{Door-gunner Ubinski (Rubinski) during Happy Valley,}

^{Crew chief Bill Weber (Red).}

^{Crew chief Gene Burdick (Reacher) retrieved a Jeep driver’s foot, one of five soldiers we tried to rescue.}

^{Howard Phillips (Morris) and Woody Woodruff (Decker) were always together.}

^{A field briefing where I look for my lighter.}

^{Low-level run up Happy Valley.}

^{Dallas Harper, Neil Parker, and Lee Komich back from a mission,}

^{Gasmasks were a bad idea.}

^{Washing out the blood at the end of a busy day.}

^Extraction.

^{Door-gunners started out using bungic straps to hold their M-60 machine guns. Later, they were given mounts.}

^{From inside the cockpit at a sandy LZ in Happy Valley.}

^{Dropping troops off on a hilltop in Bong Son valley.}

^{Kiess, Towler, and Mason in the cockpit.}

^{Looking happy with my new M-1 carbine.}

^{Towler and I in our hex-tent at Dak To. We shared these quarters with Stoney Stizzle (Stoopy Stoddard).}

^{Dawn preflight at Pleiku. I don’t think I was awake without a cigarette.}

^{Lang, the cola girl.}

^{Waiting to crank up at Dak To.}

^{We spent a lot of time waiting between troop lifts and evacuations.}

^{Towler in custody of the company’s mascot, Mo’fuck the Mongoose.}

^{Kiess has coffee with a pilot on a picnic table made from ruined rotor blades, Happy Valley.}

^{Towler battles a sandstorm on the beach at Tuy Hoa. That lone figure by the tent in the background is Stoney Stizzle who is heroically trying to anchor our tent.}

^{Before I made the transition home, I made this swell ammo-box chair.}

^{First day home. I’m at the kitchen table trying to look normal.}

^{My new assignment was the flight school at Fort Wolters, Texas, where I became a flight instructor. The Hiller 23D is idling with the collective tied down while I inspect a practice LZ in the Texas brush.}

^{Our first family Christmas, Mineral Wells, Texas. Home at last.}

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