On a january night in 1969, I strapped into the right seat of a Pennsylvania Air National Guard Boeing C-97 at Travis Air Force Base in California for the next leg of a two-week odyssey from our home at Willow Grove Naval Air Station to Cam Rahn Bay in South Vietnam. We went through our checklists for a late-night takeoff for the next stopover, at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii. I was a new second lieutenant, six months out of pilot training, still mastering where all the circuit breakers were and remembering to check that the floor hatch to the lower deck was closed before I stepped into the cargo area.
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