14 February 1970

Saturday night
14 February 1970

It’s hard to believe that February is half over!  Another two weeks and it’ll be March.  I sure like all the flying because it makes time fly by!  The only bad time of the day is in the evening when I have time to really be lonesome.  The rest of the time I’m kept busy.

I just looked up at my calendar and I haven’t  marked out the past 3 days - I’ve been so busy.  I see that today is Valentine’s day - Happy Valentine’s Day.

I was ODO this morning from 0900 - 1200, then flew two CAS missions this afternoon.  It seems I enjoy flying a little more each time I go out!  I keep thinking about my friends who are dead or missing, from flying, but I always tell myself  they could have died in a car accident just as easy.

They called off the search for Mike and Peck this morning.  I guess they thought they had covered the area thoroughly with no results.  We’re going to pack up Mike’s things tomorrow and send them to his folks.

Sometime I need to write his girl friend because she’ll never find out any other way.  I don’t know if they were very close because he didn’t talk about her that much.

Believe it or not, the movie tonight is a rerun! I saw it here about 2 months ago.  You’d think that at least we could get some decent movies over here for our “fighting men”.  All the money that’s being spent on this war and we can’t even get a few simple items for our comfort.

Our water heater is still out of order - two months now!  I missed dinner tonight because I was flying, so I had to eat hamburgers at the o’club.  They didn’t have hamburger buns so they used hot dog buns and the deep fryer was out of order, so no French fries!  You know, it’s the little things like the above that really get to a person.  The danger of flying we can accept, but not this little stuff.

Boy sounds as though I’m really upset - uh?  I’m blowing off steam.  We didn’t get any mail in Chu Lai today!  Another example.

122 is number one in the group now!  We’re ahead of the other two squadrons in number of combat missions flown this month!  We’ve really been working hard for this honor for the past 5 months!

314 was the number one squadron all along, but they had two planes crash and ruined some engines in some other planes, so they just can’t keep up now.  We did lose one plane, but got 2 new ones this week, so we’re better off.

I’ve about 95 combat missions, now, and over 120 points, so, actually, I’ve earned 6 air medals.  I hope to  get my 100th mission in 2 or 3 days, if I keep flying 2 hops a day.

I really feel comfortable in the F-4 now, because I know what I’m doing  and feel like an “old pro”!  Ha.  I don’t think I could ever be happy flying training missions again like we did back in the states.  That’s why I want to go to Glynco so bad, so I can be an instructor.

Well, enough nonsense for tonight.