My best friend in life David was an intelligence/analyst officer & linguist in the deadly Phoenix program in early Vietnam , you don't want to know what horrors they pulled off then ....years later when he graduated with his master's in Chinese history & politics we we're sitting one night and he went off in this recital of that poem by Poe and iwas just blown away by its power , amazing poem . It captured the images that he carried away from that war that few men remain unchanged by ...
Forget Appocalypse now , that movie never showed an Arc Light squadron drop its load of bombs , David intercepted an NVC battlion group communications nearing one of our special forces encampments by surprise & woke Brig General Stillwell up and had an Arc Light recalled from mission to Hanoi to take these guys out .
4 square kilometers is pretty much annihilated and all oxygen is consumed , everything dies that is above ground by immense concussion, fire & lack of oxygen . That NVC battalion was vaporized ...one of our rarer victories and Dave saved 100's of special forces lives , each B-52 would carry 60,000lbs of ordinance .
Well that poem has an immense meaning to me , lost David several yrs ago to heart failure big beautiful gregarious italian from Monterey Bay , spoke 7 Asian languages and 10 total , one of the best . |
