The Best Reunion and Vacation of our Lives

April 25, 2023

Dear Readership,

Recently my wife and I traveled to Charleston, SC for a military reunion of our Nakhon Phanom (NKP), Thailand, brothers and sisters of the Vietnam War.

We enjoyed the visit to the Joint Base Charleston (US Navy, Air Force, and Army Units assigned there make it a Joint Base).  Although our tour of the C-17 aircraft was scratched owing to mission requirements, we saw the static display of the Lockheed Constellation (“Connie”) and the Douglas Aircraft Company C-124 Globemaster II, also known as “Old Shaky,” produced between 1949 and 1955. We retirees and veterans especially appreciated walking inside the C-141 which almost all of us had flown in during our times in the USAF and US Army. One of our guys was a paratrooper, and we Air Force folks chided him with, “What person in their right mind would want to jump out of a perfectly good airplane?!”

We got an operational briefing from a pilot and a tour of the aircrew Life Support facility that has improved its mission of parachute rigging, pilot helmets, survival kits, and oxygen masks.  Operational missions have been expanded since my time, and the C-17 is a magnificent bird compared to 33 years ago when I retired.  The C-5, C-141, and C-130 were the order of the day back then.  As a top-secret courier, I flew often in these aircraft as well as others.  Congratulations to my cousin Frederica, an executive with Boeing, for her contribution to the engineering marvel which is the C-17. We observed takeoffs and landings galore, nothing like the Short Take-off and Landing (STOL) of times past. Life-support technology is so much more advanced and safer than during my era, with no real comparison. The parachutes, helmets, masks and other gear are now much better engineered.

Some of us went to the Fort Sumter National Monument (first battle of the US Civil War was at the Fort) where the park ranger related its captivating and detailed history. The grounds are clean but preserved in an as-was condition for the most part.  A ferry took the group to this island in beautiful Charleston Harbor. 

We then explored Patriots Point and toured the USS Yorktown Aircraft Carrier (CV-10) Museum which is now moored in Charleston Bay. There was lots of climbing and walking available, although most of the veterans used the elevator. Every generation of naval aircraft that flew from the “flat top” was on display along with the Mercury and Apollo 8 space capsules that were fished out of the ocean by the USS Yorktown. The carrier is celebrating its 80th year of service since commissioning this month.

Adjacent to the carrier is a mockup of an army base in the Vietnam Experience area. It was very real from my 1970-71 experience. The war film in a sand bunker was just as I remembered it–scary as all get-out.

Friday and Saturday we had speakers that I arranged months in advance. One was an Air Force Colonel who as a lieutenant was shot down over North Vietnam and imprisoned for six years.  His was a horrible story of torture and an inspiring tale of survival, the details of which I will omit. How one human being can treat another like that is incomprehensible to me and was to the rest of the audience.

The other story is about the Son Tay Raid (suggest the reader google this in Wikipedia to read an amazing account).  In short, 58 Green Berets were flown into the Son Tay prison camp in an attempt to rescue and fly out 90 +/- US military prisoners. After the Green Berets landed, they killed 42 North Vietnamese prison guards in less than one minute after kicking in the doors of the prison buildings, but alas, the prisoners had been relocated to another prison camp a few weeks before. Though the raid failed to produce even one rescued POW, the grapevine got the message to all 591 prisoners of war in other locations that their country had not forgotten them, that true faith was maintained, and that no man was to be left behind. For the next two years and four months our American brothers had a hope that sustained them until our statesman, President Nixon, brought them home.

All in all, a well-rounded reunion and vacation was experienced.

Regards,

James M. Hoover, CACM
Captain, USAF (Retired)