{"id":150,"date":"2013-05-27T13:38:00","date_gmt":"2013-05-27T13:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/2013\/05\/27\/this-is-a-day-of-special-thanksgiving"},"modified":"2013-05-27T13:38:00","modified_gmt":"2013-05-27T13:38:00","slug":"this-is-a-day-of-special-thanksgiving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=150","title":{"rendered":"This is a day of special thanksgiving"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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I don\u2019t dwell too much on these kinds of things, but I\u2019m thinking today of a young man I knew briefly many years ago.<\/p>\n

His name was Jose DeLaTorre. We served in the same U.S. Army aviation battalion at Marble Mountain, a heavily fortified outpost just south of Da Nang in what used to be called South Vietnam. He served in a different company than I did; he worked on a UH-1 Huey helicopter crew while I was assigned to a fixed-wing outfit, the 245th Aviation Company, which flew OV-1 Mohawk reconnaissance aircraft.<\/p>\n

One day in June 1969, Jose came bursting into our work area full of enthusiasm. He was going home in just a few days. I recall he\u2019d extended his tour in \u2018Nam several times. I think he had served something like 32 months in-country. I recall he usually was full of it \u2013 even on his quiet days. But on this day, Jose was pretty much out of control with excitement.<\/p>\n

Later that day, his Huey company scrambled on a troop-lift mission. DeLaTorre did what he usually did when his company got the call to lift off: He strapped himself into an M-60 machine gun and flew as a door gunner on the mission. <\/p>\n

It was supposed to be a \u201croutine\u201d drop at a landing zone. It wasn\u2019t. The LZ was \u201chot,\u201d meaning the ships were greeted by heavy enemy fire when they arrived.<\/p>\n

You know how this tale turns out.<\/p>\n

DeLaTorre was killed in action that day. <\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t know him well. Indeed, it took me 21 years \u2013 when I visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in D.C. in 1990 with my wife and sons \u2013 to learn he hailed from Fullerton, Calif. I saw his name carved into The Wall. I paid my respects and, yes, choked back the lump in my throat.<\/p>\n

Today I\u2019m thinking of that effervescent young man and the 58,000-plus other names on that monument, as well all those who have fallen in battle since the beginning of this great republic.<\/p>\n

May they all rest in peace.<\/p>\n

Thank you for your sacrifice.<\/p>\n\n

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I don\u2019t dwell too much on these kinds of things, but I\u2019m thinking today of a young man I knew briefly many years ago. His name was Jose DeLaTorre. We served in the same U.S. Army aviation battalion at Marble Mountain, a heavily fortified outpost just south of Da Nang in what used to be … Continue reading This is a day of special thanksgiving<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}