Shaffer
12-18-02, 09:45 AM
QUANTICO, Va. — A single-frame flashback comes to mind as our CH-46E Sea Knight corners hard and close to 100-foot-tall pines. I think of Robert Duvall's Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore loving the smell of napalm in "Apocalypse Now."
These are Marines, not the Army's famed Air Cav, and this day above the treetops of Quantico, Va., is far from the fall of Saigon in 1975. But even with the explosion of technology and the threat of biological and chemical weapons, little has changed in the way men fight.
"Guns go off upon landing," Marine Capt. Charlie Jones writes in my notebook as the deafening roar of the copter's two rotors drown out all conversation. "Mind set: Hand on gear. I'm up, he sees me, I'm down. Give it all you got."
http://news.mysanantonio.com/story.cfm?xla=saen&xlb=180&xlc=893397
These are Marines, not the Army's famed Air Cav, and this day above the treetops of Quantico, Va., is far from the fall of Saigon in 1975. But even with the explosion of technology and the threat of biological and chemical weapons, little has changed in the way men fight.
"Guns go off upon landing," Marine Capt. Charlie Jones writes in my notebook as the deafening roar of the copter's two rotors drown out all conversation. "Mind set: Hand on gear. I'm up, he sees me, I'm down. Give it all you got."
http://news.mysanantonio.com/story.cfm?xla=saen&xlb=180&xlc=893397