This was early war when morale was still good. I bet the film was cut right after mobile infantry tactics were started.
Well after Ia Drang and A Shau. Great film, though. Meet cute girls in Hawaii, buy puppies in Saigon, who wouldn't want to volunteer for choppers?
By the time you read this, over 4000 helicopters will have been shot down, a third of all the chopper pilots who have ever been to Nam will have been killed or medically boarded out of the Army, and the average life span of any loach pilot, whether in Nam, Laos, or Cambodia, will probably be down to somewhere around three months. But they still volunteer. There is not a Volkswagen in the parking lot at Fort Rucker, Alabama, or at Hunter in Georgia, nor a Scouter or Ford Fairlane running their roads. It's all Honda 500's and BSA Scramblers, Corvettes with the heads lowered, and Dodges with 3-11 rear ends. The kids who choose to go there are of a type - lean and tough, mechanically oriented, obsessed with speed and daring, and incredibly brave.From one of the best chapters in, IMHO, the best book about war, Ronald Glasser's "365 Days."
- oldman
