Introduction

Several years ago, while cleaning out a closet in my study, I stumbled on an entire footlocker of handwritten notes from my tour of duty in Vietnam, a half century earlier. These notes were maintained as a daily diary during a single year of my life, 1966-1967, as a U.S. Air Force flight surgeon stationed in Vietnam. My first impulse was to dispose of the entirelot.

You haven’t looked at these during the past forty and some odd years. What makes you think they have any value at all? ………But, once they are gone, they are gone forever…, Ithought.

These notes are a time capsule of what I did and what I thought at age twenty-eight; meticulously documented for that one year of my life. No other period of my life, before or since, is or will be so well-documented. All other writings of my life will be second-hand history, from memory. Only these “on line” notes are all that remain of the man I was at that age. These are the words and thoughts, written at a specific time in history, by a person whose personality and thoughts had been molded in Southern military tradition by ancestors from colonial Virginia and New England, who wrote the history of this country by their deeds in war andpeace.

A man is a complex product of the society and times that produce him. Having been born in 1938, my most formative years were encompassed by seven years of World War II, from 1938-1945. My father served in the Pacific Theater on Guadalcanal against Japan, as did my uncle and mother’s brother. Another uncle served with Gen. George C. Patton in Europe. Other uncles by marriage were pilots in the U.S. Navy and U.S. Army Air Corps, respectively. In summary, in the formative years of youth, all male members of my family had served in the U.S. armed forces. Since the earliest colonial days, my ancestors fought in every conflict to create this country. Sam Houston, who defeated Mexican Gen. Santa Ana for Texas independence, is from my mother’s side. Gen. “Vinegar” Joseph Stilwell is also of mother’s side. Gen. John Bell Hood from my paternal grandmother’s side lost the battle of Atlanta during the War Between theStates.

In my unjaded, youthful perception of life, fighting for your country was the honorable fulfillment of duty for every man. However, Vietnam was a distant land and thus differed from other wars of this country. I was fortunate to enter the Vietnam conflict before the American citizenry reacted against the war. Morale was universally high and there was no conflict about our presence. From the perspective of a physician at the largest Air Force hospital in Vietnam, I never heard of a case of marijuana or other drug use. Our country had called and we had answered thecall.

These writings are recordings of events, emotions and reactions during that one year of my life. During that time, I experienced more adventure than most men experience in ten lifetimes. Now, as I peer through the rear-view mirror of fifty years, I feel blessed beyond allmeasure.

During my nearly eighty years of life I have known many persons from every rank and file. I can state, without reservation, that the pilots with whom I flew and their support personnel were the finest men I have ever known. They were of the highest moral integrity and all served their country honorably. Let no critique of the conflict or of political decisions at any time cast shadows on the men who fought this terriblewar.

As far as our nation and its leadership, I am not so sanguine. We continue to in