TBS 2-67 Cruisebook_Updated_7Jan23

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impossibility of seeing very far with a one­foxhole
view (or alone in the jungle). Surviving events dayafter­day
left you with a sense of the complexity and a
frustration at not being able to see it all, ever. What
helps is time. Sadly what time adds to your thinking it
robs from your eyesight.
***
Church ladies see by different lights than we do. You
couldn’t sneak a nun’s fart past one in a windstorm.
(You’d be equally ill‐served trying to sneak an idea
past Ormand Simpson or Robert Barrow that
confused could with should.)
Out in Olathe, Kansas, church ladies put a
group together called Heart‐to‐Heart and decided it
would be a fine thing for them to take extra
medicine of this sort or that to places in need. Not
send, take. But to where? Wouldn’t The Seat of the
County Prefecture be spiffy? Dien Bien Phu.
Getting a plane full of ladies to Vietnam was several
rungs up on a shaky ladder. There were problems of:
(1) no plane and (2) no diplomatic recognition with
Vietnam; so even if you should go, maybe you
couldn’t. Conversely, if you could, maybe you
shouldn’t.
Which was the real question? They differ.
Absent a civilian plane (no desire in Hanoi for
the U.S. Air Force’s return), their project seemed
doomed anyway. So, who has spare cargo planes?
Everybody they knew was slap out airliners except
for one fellow. They sent a FedEx a letter to
Memphis to say what they needed: anything with
four engines. They waited.
About 8:00 pm one evening (2000 for you,
Kenny) the phone rings and the household longhaired
bunkie, puzzled, says: Somebody saying he’s
Fred Smith…
He had but one question: “Is this the right thing to
do?”
Ah, we all hate the SOBs in Hanoi, but the
question wasn’t about TBS class 2‐67. Nor did it get
asked that way. Fred’s was a different question. It
was asking if it wasn’t time to toss our old duce‐gear
out, and let the Church roll on.
No one in Hanoi failed seeing the old ladies on
the tarmac unloading medicine from a big, American
DC‐9. Not a one. And it mattered. The next
American plane to Hanoi brought our first
ambassador.
Somebody had asked the right question.
***
We understand life backwards, it’s said;
nevertheless, we have to live it forwards. Time helps
with the first part but the second is up to us. Our
outlook shapes even our questions. For Company C,
life was colored with a tint of Marine­green. Passed
down from regiment to regiment, we’re told. Sure, but
past glories, though always admired, dim. Lasting, is
A‐46