Just a memory

Although I was a helicopter pilot in Vietnam, I had a golden opportunity to spend some spare time, when I wasn't flying, working with the S-5 and the Montagnards. What an experience, I think that the pictures, compared to my experiences don't begin touch the surface or tell the true story of their lives and the hardships and mistreatment they endured. Things I remember are such as the celebrations at the graveyard, when they played their gongs, and my first experience drinking rice wine (I was afraid they were trying to poison me) and of flying in a med-cap team and seeing the expression of a child who's toenails a doctor was clipping (obviously for the first time)and, when the chief would come up to us and say "You go now" and we knew that we had to go now! The bad guys were near, or the young boy who had been kind of adopted and did stuff around base camp and of the celebraion feast and being offered the bulls eye and part of those things we don't eat here in America, and afraid not to eat it so as not to offend the chief...What a wonderful memory of such loyal people (if they liked you, you knew it, if they didn't you knew that too) and yes, the time when I was given my braclet.