MY TURN By Bill Lemanski

Reminiscence of a military flight long ago In 1966 as the Vietnam War escalated, the government began contracting commercial airliners to convey replacement and returning troops along with certain civilians to the war zone. Our flight misleadingly was on a shinny, plush Braniff airliner, the type that would routinely shuttle businessmen to meetings and later vacationers to Orlando, Florida. The flight provided all of the amenities for an enjoyable, trip minus the pretty stewardess’s and a pleasant destination; however, our destination was an altogether different play and than Disney’s Florida dream. Unlike the planeload of young 18- and 19-year-old passengers who were newly minted graduates of jump school at Fort Benning, my seat partner Zambel and I were grizzled old war veterans at the age of 20. They were to become new cannon fodder with the 1st Air Cavalry and 101st Airborne Divisions while Zambel and I were returning for a second tour with our former outfits in that much despised war in Southeast Asia. The usually tedious and dull 24 hour trip was enlivened throughout by the endless singing in unison by the young paratroopers of Barry Sadler’s then popular “Ballad of the Green Berets” and other miscellaneous airborne barrack tunes. With the childish anticipation of their assumed exciting and adventurous year ahead, the planeload of young soldiers sounded like a group of youngsters on their way to a ballgame. The constant din of the off-key, patriotic serenading along with boorish statements of bravado kept Zambel and I awake and unnerved throughout much of the flight. However, conditions and attitudes soon changed. While the engines droned on as we cruised over the South China Sea, with nighttime darkness merging the water and sky into an opaque continuum through the muted lighting of the cabin, the pilot suddenly interrupted the festivities with the sobering announcement to buckle-up and seat forward: “In twenty-minutes we will be landing at Ton Son Nhut Air Base in Saigon.” As we banked west over the dark waters below, the port windows began to display a multitude of small red lights coming into view in the far-off darkness. Not the roadway lights of city streets or the familiar office building illumination from workers burning the midnight oil but a surreal display of fast-moving streaks, arcing toward the heavens and slow moving, dangling lights spread across the sky in random patterns. As a hundred-plus noses were glued to the plane windows observing the bizarre pyrotechnics, the young troopers began to realize they were witnessing a countless array of tracer bullets and aerial flares marking hostilities in the night sky around Saigon. The noisy bravado ended as abruptly as it spontaneously began nearly a day earlier as the sobering realization of war belatedly took hold in ominous silence. The 101st Airborne Division, known as the Screaming Eagles ,were the first troops dropped behind enemy lines on D-day. They famously held the encircled Town of Bastogne against overwhelming German armor during the Battle of the Bulge. However, despite their WWII fame, according to official division records, the 101st suffered twice as many casualties in Vietnam as it did in World War II. They were also the last combat division to leave Vietnam after spending more than six and a half years in country. The National Archives and Records Administration list the 1st Cavalry Division as sustaining the highest losses of any combat unit in the Vietnam War. I often wonder after all these years how many of those patriotic young men ultimately fared after that flight. They, like so many of us before, were imbued with the mindless enthusiasm and naïveté of youth who instantaneously stepped into the world of adult reality so many years ago on that military flight. Bill Lemanski is a 28-year resident of Tuxedo. He served two tours in Vietnam: 1966 and 1967 as a Light Weapons Infantryman. He also is a longtime writer for the Photo News.