{"quotes":[{"text":"I remember my father, who had served in Vietnam, once talking to me about how real courage is when you're scared out of your mind but you do what you have to do anyway. I didn't feel very courageous at the moment. I felt like a small mouse in the mouth of a lion.","author":"Anna M. Aquino","tags":["an-ember-in-time","back-to-the-future","christian","church","fiction-novel","in-time","pastors","quantum-leap","science-fiction","scifi","series","time-travel","vietnam","vietnam-war"],"id":1398,"author_id":"Anna+M.+Aquino"},{"text":"It’s not that I had more important things to do or that I didn’t want to help with whatever problems were interfering with her students being successful—rather, it’s this horrible truth that life has taught me: misplaced hope is the most devastatingly painful thing you can give someone.","author":"Tucker Elliot","tags":["education","indonesia","jakarta","leadership","students","teaching","vietnam-war"],"id":7369,"author_id":"Tucker+Elliot"},{"text":"Each morning, despite the unknowns, they made their legs move.","author":"Tim O'Brien","tags":["daily-life","mgg","the-things-they-carried","tim-o-brien","vietnam-war"],"id":12574,"author_id":"Tim+O%27Brien"},{"text":"Some people think 1963's a long time ago; when a dead American in the jungle was an event, a grim thrilling novelty. It was spookwar then, adventure; not exactly soldiers, not even advisors yet, but Irregulars, working in remote places with little direct authority, acting out their fantasies with more freedom than most men ever know.","author":"Michael Herr","tags":["adventure","soldiers","vietnam","vietnam-war"],"id":28974,"author_id":"Michael+Herr"},{"text":"The Mozart sonata Dad picked out begins to play. When we hear the first note, we open the sacks and the ladybugs escape through the opening, taking flight. It's as if someone has dumped rubies from heaven. Soon they will land on the plants in search of bollworm eggs. But right now they are magic-red ribbons flying over our heads, weaving against the pink sky, dancing up there with Mozart.","author":"Kimberly Willis Holt","tags":["coming-of-age","death","friendship","spirituality","vietnam-war"],"id":29000,"author_id":"Kimberly+Willis+Holt"},{"text":"During World War II the top secret “Norden XV” or “Blue Ox” otherwise known the Army Airforce’s “Norden M Series Bombsights,” were used up to and including the Vietnam War by all American military aircraft with bomb carrying capabilities. This bombsight was considered a “Canonical Tachometric Design” meaning that it had the ability to measure the aircraft's direction and ground speed. In time the Norden improved its original design by using a computer that constantly calculated the aircraft’s flight characteristic and external wind forces to determine the bomb's impact point. When the B-17 Flying Fortress was designed, it came equipped with a Sperry A-3 Autopilot that only corrected angular deviations in the aircraft’s straight and level course. In time most bombsights were replaced by video displays on the instrument panel. Dumb or gravity bombs were mostly replaced with in-flight guidance bombs, such as laser-guided bombs or those using a GPS system. The last combat use of the Norden bombsight was by the US Navy during the covert “Operation Igloo White” mission when OP-2E Neptune aircraft dropped electronic sensors to detect enemy activity along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Project CHECO Southeast Asia Report was declassified on May 5, 2013.","author":"Captain Hank Bracker","tags":["history","military-aviation","vietnam-war","world-war-ii"],"id":47097,"author_id":"Captain+Hank+Bracker"},{"text":"In your dream you call for Chaplain Charlie. You met the Navy chaplain when you interviewed him for a feature article you were writing. Chaplain Charlie was an amateur magician. With his magic, Chaplain Charlie entertained Marines in sick bays and distributed spiritual tourniquets to men who were still alive, but weaponless. To brutal, godless children Chaplain Charlie spoke about how God is merciful, despite appearances, about how the Ten Commandments lack detail because when you're writing on stone tablets with lightning bolts you've got to be brief, about how the Free World will conquer Communism with aid of God and a few Marines, and about free fish. One day a Vietnamese child booby-trapped Chaplain Charlie's black bag of tricks. Chaplain Charlie reached in and pulled out a bright ball of death...","author":"Gustav Hasford","tags":["death","existentialism","religion","vietnam-war"],"id":65627,"author_id":"Gustav+Hasford"},{"text":"As his boots walked towards the old station, he felt as though he were hallucinating. Scary apprehension increased the beat of his heart and the sweat upon his forehead was cold. The reality of where he stood created a sinking feeling inside of him.  An old man everyone called Uncle Tucker once owned this place. His sole existence behind the counter all of the time, day and night. He could have been a creature out of a fairy tale, with his long white beard and equally long white hair. Merlin. The overalls and the ball cap perched upon his head, along with the half-smoked cigar with an endless burning orb positioned in his mouth. It made him a fixture in time. He wondered if Tucker would still be alive. Tucker with his endless stories of the 1960s, the Vietnam War, and flower children. A man that never left a country thousands of miles away where bicycles filled the capital. A man who never left those fields where killing occurred.","author":"Jaime Allison Parker","tags":["age","aging","flashbacks","ptsd","the-past","time","trauma","vietnam-war"],"id":71565,"author_id":"Jaime+Allison+Parker"},{"text":"I tell the squad a joke: 'Stop me if you're heard this. There was a Marine of nuts and bolts, half robot--weird but true--whose every move was cut from pain as though from stone. His stoney little hide had been crushed and broken. But he just laughed and said, 'I've been crushed and broken before.' And sure enough, he had the heart of a bear. His heart functioned for weeks after it had been diagnosed by doctors. His heart weighed half a pound. His heart pumped seven hundred thousand gallons of warm blood through one hundred thousand miles of veins, working hard--hard enough in twelve hours to lift one sixty-five ton boxcar one foot off the deck. He said. The world would not waste the heart of a bear, he said. On his clean blue pajamas many medals hung. He was a walking word of history, in the shop for a few repairs. He took it on the chin and was good. One night in Japan his life came out of his body--black--like a question mark. If you can keep your head while others are losing theirs perhaps you have misjudged the situation. Stop me if you've heard this...","author":"Gustav Hasford","tags":["death","existentialism","joke","vietnam-war"],"id":85704,"author_id":"Gustav+Hasford"},{"text":"And in this moment, I realize one reason it's so great to have a best friend is sometimes, like right now, Cal and I are thinking the very same thing.","author":"Kimberly Willis Holt","tags":["coming-of-age","death","friendship","vietnam-war"],"id":93941,"author_id":"Kimberly+Willis+Holt"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":45,"pages":5,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}