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as years go by, we can buy bricks for individuals
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Bob, you are wise beyond your years.
However old you are...
As Davey Silk reports that I said (I don't remember it) at the end of one sonofabitch of a day, "Silk, the bastards tried to kill me again today."
If we can figure out a way to remember our pals the way we, and they, and everybody else who showed up, really were, without glorifying the ugly result of any war, we'll really have something. It's a fine line to walk.
Gotta be very hard to do, but if they'll leave a block of blank bricks open for us to fill in with named bricks all together, that would be wonderful.
Bill Frakes deserves a brick.
Jimmy Johnson deserves a brick.
Butch Lammers deserves a brick.
Eggy deserves a brick.
Jake deserves a brick.
Shifty deserves a brick.
Shakey deserves a brick.
Ti-ti deserves a brick.
Oi.
Bobby Copher deserves a brick.
BonBon deserves a brick.
Baby Huey deserves a brick.
Oh, lord. Come to think of it ...
All the dead guys deserve a brick.
All the 545th guys deserve a brick.
All the 119th guys deserve a brick.
Every pilot deserves a brick.
Every gunner deserves a brick.
Every crew chief deserves a brick.
I can't think of anybody who doesn't deserve a brick. Even the assholes.
... we could maybe pave the parking lot for these guys at the museum?
The guys I lived with and flew with were a bunch of gnarly, ugly, smellbad, kickass characters who couldn't wait to go fly and maybe get lucky and kill as many bad guys as they could find. And they did, every day.
On the other side, I don't have to tell anybody here that Vietnam is still killing those who served there, and is still killing their loved ones. It has finally just killed a lovely man named Frank "Mick" Maher, a '65 Ia Drang grunt who came back and ended up under a burning B/1/9 1st Cav LOH in 1968. He married one of his nurses, lucky woman. God bless him.
Mark has shown us one way to do it right with this web site. I bet we'll figure it out; there's a lot of talent hanging around here.
Let's get this done.
Bob