I went to see Top Gun, Maverick.  People asked if I liked it.  No-yes, it was like going back to Beaufort in 1963-66, Ken being the squadron commander of 27 pilots, trying to teach them how to keep from getting killed in Viet Nam--because that was where all of them were going.

I knew what he was doing every day.  He would walk out the door every morning, and I would raise 3 kids.  There were so many who were killed doing what they did.  Pete Olson, Bill McMann, Rhon Iverson, who were all experienced, excellent pilots.  But they died.  And left families.  Then there were the young ones that were killed in Nam.  Or ended up in the Hanoi Hilton.  Or came back “different.”

Rhon’s wife told us about their two boys giving their bunnies a bath--she heard the rabbits screeching, went out and found the boys had hung them up to dry on the clothes line--by their ears. Losing one of them, it’s personal.

Pete was killed with the Blue Angels.  Rolled an F-9 into the beach in Corpus.  Bill McMann ripped the hook out of an F4D along with the fuel tank--as Ken was waving him aboard the carrier...shouting “Eject, eject.” But all of them thought they could bring a plane back around and land it--Bill hit the water.  They all thought they were invincible. 

Rhon went TAD to the Air-Force teaching the Air Force pilots how to fly like Navy and Marines. One of them turned into him in the air--mid-Air.

Those stories are about three Marines.  There were so many others.  It’s a good movie if it isn’t personal.