Reflections

The C-130 bounced like a rollercoaster at a cheap traveling circus. I sat on the cargo netting bench seats surrounded by first-time jumpers and pretended to sleep.All I could think about—other than that one of these bastards was going to…

Jan. 23, 1968, was an exciting day for me. I had no idea just how exciting it would turn out to be.I’d recently returned from three weeks of leave in the US and was finishing up an 18-month tour in the Philippines that included several…

Enoch H. Kanaya was my sun-seeking neighbor who plucked red, ripe tomatoes off the vine in his sunny garden on our tree-lined streets in Chicago. He and his family—his wife, Carolyn, and their four daughters—moved into their modest brick…

My dad’s Navy service was nothing special. His single enlistment spanned from the end of the Eisenhower administration through that of John F. Kennedy. But in that time the Navy changed his life.In 1958, Merlin Chetlain left East Dubuque,…

I rode the third chopper in a daisy chain of five, each bird maybe 30 seconds behind the next. Clutching my M16 rifle in the left-side door gunner’s seat and surrounded by men cocooned in combat gear, I sat on a flak jacket in the vague…

My dad knew two things. He wanted to serve this country, and he wouldn’t live until his 40th birthday. In 2006, his last prophecy came true. He was 36.“On behalf of the president …” were the last words I remember hearing two uniformed…

I looked out the door of the Huey helicopter into the orange, yellow, and purple fan rays of the sunset over Southeast Asia. The air was cool up here—about 70 degrees compared to the 112-degree heat just 2,000 feet below us.It was June…

I sit staring at the empty chair next to me. We know whose chair it is. He isn’t coming.His name was Sam. He’d grown up in the country, the child of a military family, and he was obsessed with computers. We affectionately called him “our…

This time, I don’t wrap the picture frames, vases, and other delicate souvenirs in bubble wrap, or place them in Tetris-like defensive positions inside a large brown box.I don’t need to; the boxes aren’t going far.After years of going where…

My wife and I sit in a large auditorium in El Paso, Texas, waiting in anticipation, along with other families, for our daughter’s return from deployment. Upbeat music fills the air and the feeling in the assembled crowd is of a group of…