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Tuesday, June 12, 2018

The Last Men Killed In Vietnam

The Last Men Killed In Vietnam

I have been honored to have Chris Alexander as a wonderful and beloved friend for 54 years. There are not enough good words to describe him.

After all these years, I discovered something new about him. He took the US Air Force test for pilot at Tulane's Air Force ROTC. He scored high and was encouraged to become a US Air Force fighter pilot,Chris graciously turned down this offer.(In my case I took the test for US Navy aviator and failed.)

This got me thinking. Truly the last man killed in Vietnam was a US Army major killed by accident after hostilities ceased. (It was a tragic misunderstanding.) In combat the last 2 men killed in Vietnam were flying in a US Air Force F-4 Phantom jet. If Chris had chosen to become an air force pilot after his hypothetical 1971 graduation from Tulane, he would have spent 12-18 months training to fly this mach-2 fighter. He could have very well been flying that F-4 Phantom shot down by the North Vietnamese right at the end of the war.

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