Best Friends Being 19 and not in the "in crowd" I had few close friends in the ranks. Had many friends in Hawaii in civilian world.
Best Moment Landing in Hickam AFB on a Sat AM knowing I was off until take off Sunday PM. My friends on island would pick me up after I got my surfboard from cargo bay and we were off for island surfing for a few days. Great time.
Worst Moment None to speak of. I usually got reamed for just being stupid I guess, a bit for hair regs being borderline but it was the 60's and all. Men's hair now would have been good in those days as it is cool to be with short hair (or no hair) now.
Chain of Command Pretty impressive group. Nurses, businessmen and executive types. Many from Service academies. I learned a lot from some of them. Nurses were quite good and taught me a lot. They had a good time with the pilots and other officers as I recall. I wasn't in the food chain obviously.
Other Memories Seeing injured and broken soldiers we took care of in flight. Most all were my age. I recall them being relieved to be coming home. I sort of numbed up and tried not to think about it much. I just thought it was cool they were making it home. Never thought about stuff like PTSD, drug, Agent Orange as it was over my head.Some were amputees. I hopped a flight home to base once in 1968 on a cargo plane full of aluminum caskets . No seats were rolled down, just caskets lashed down so I curled up on the cold steel floor and used my field jacket for a pillow. Could smell the cold dead odors from inside the caskets. I slept for several hours, waking a few times thinking about who was inside them. I still think about it. These were guys my age, teenagers. Many pulled by the draft from work or college. Sent to Ft Ord or Ft Polk, trained for several months & sent to Viet Nam (many of us didn't even know where that was). They got ground up, killed or wounded and now were going back to their parents with a flag over them...called heroes. I was young and patriotic. It was helpful to be young and stupid as well as I never asked terribly complicated questions in those days either.
