I’ve been going through my FILs old memorabilia from Vietnam. He was plucked out of Alaska flying bush planes and thrown into the jungles of SEA flying fixed and rotary wing aircraft for Air America. He spent 5 years in Laos from about 1965-70 and then from 1970-75 he was based throughout Vietnam. He flew Kissinger as well as other delegations and is mentioned in the book. The Vietnamese guy (Chattarong sp?) at the beginning of the movie pushing freight is my wife’s godfather and was an actual employee of “The Company” for the entire war.
If you knew my FIL you’d know that he was a good man and one that never wanted to cause conflict, he just wanted to get along with everyone. He wasn’t an “educated man” but he was very intelligent and talented and he was a RULE FOLLOWER. I don’t think anything made him more upset than the allegations and assumptions about Air America’s cargo. He told me countless times that he NEVER transported drugs and that the guys he knew didn’t either. He didn’t want every Air America pilot painted with the brush of a drug runner and I don’t blame him. Those guys did some incredible things that few will ever know about. He told me stories about getting shot down (5 times total…1 in N. Vietnam, 1 in Laos and 3 in Mexico) and being surrounded by NVA as he was pulling survivors from the wreckage. Turns out that his cargo was North and South Vietnamese children of all ages from infants to pre-teens orphaned by the war. My FIL said he left his Swedish K behind the seat because he wasn’t going to shoot his way out of that one and kept unloading survivors expecting to be shot any second. He told the NVA in his broken Vietnamese that he was either going to save those children or die trying. The next thing he knew the NVA set their rifles in a pile and started helping them move the children into the aircraft dispatched to the scene. He did some extraordinary things and he never talked about 90% of it.
