My uncle George, whom I was named after, a Marine, died at Tarawa. He was in a foxhole with several of his buddies. The Japanese threw a hand grenade into the foxhole and George jumped on it, saving all his buddies. He was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously. God bless our fallen heroes!

 

Six of us, fraternity brothers, same major, graduated together, had girlfriends that were friends, and lived it three apartments in the same building in Inglewood,. We all wanted to be fighter pilots. I was drafted. My dad's partner on the LAPD , a Bird Colonel in the AF and a B52 pilot (soon thereafter promoted to Brig. General), had my orders backdated, and my buddies and I all signed up together, graduated from AF Flight School together, were assigned to the same squadron of F4 Phantoms. It seemed like forever before we got our orders, but finally we did. Three days before we were to ship out to Tan Son Nhut, we were playing baseball one Saturday at Brooks AFB in San Antonio. I was catcher, standing too close to the plate, and got hit in my left eye with a bat. There went my 20-20 vision and my flight contract. My five buddies all shipped out to Nam and within a year three of the five were shot down and killed in North Vietnam.

I went into an AF Reserve unit at March AFB. March had the largest wing of B52s in the Strategic Air Command. Three months later, the entire wing rotated to Udorn Air Base in Thailand for a year's duty in Southeast Asia. An equal number of B52s cycled back to March. My dad's partnerr, General Jack Finger, said "You just started working for Atlantic Richfield (later ARCO). They're a patriotic outfit. You get two weeks paid Summer camp leave. Ask for three. I'm flying a B52 to Unorn and flying another back to March. Join me. You can screw around with your buddies in Saigon. I did. We flew from Thailand, refueled at Elmendorf AFB in Alaska, and landed at March. I was deadheading. General Finger said they were also on a training mission. The B52 sat on the tarmac at March with all eight turbines still firing. I got off and the aircraft took off again. It crashed and burned in Sunnymead (now Moreno Valley), three miles to the east. The concussion lifted me off my feet. My dad was going crazy. He waned to know what happened to his partner, but the AF quickly put a cordon around the crash site.....It wasn't my time.

 

Hey George google: 'Uncle Steve Car Doctor podcast' I think you may enjoy it.