Bob Moriarty runs the 321gold website. He has been a huge supporter of TBP for years. His linking to many of my articles has driven many new visitors to the site. I check his site out daily to find interesting articles. His site is stridently anti-interventionist and against the expansion of the America Empire. He recently notified me that he had written a book about his war experiences. I was blown away after reading the introduction below. After reading this introduction, I’m hooked. The link below will take you to the book on Amazon.
The youngest Naval Aviator during the Vietnam era was another Marine pilot who had a date of rank as a second lieutenant when he was nineteen, got his wings and was flying the hottest fighter aircraft in the world, the F-4B, when he was only twenty. He became a 20-year-old first lieutenant and a 22-year-old captain in the Marines. He flew 832 missions in combat in Vietnam.
That would be me. I was a warrior.
Getting my wings at that age was an accident of timing. The legal justification for the Vietnam War was the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, passed on August 7, 1964. My eighteenth birthday was a month later, on September 9, and I enlisted in the Marine Corps a week after my birthday. I became the youngest Naval Aviator because I started earlier.
Fifty years ago as I write, I was in primary flight training at Saufley Field in Pensacola, and a few days away from my first solo flight in the T-34B.
Continue reading “THE ART OF PEACE”
