I will identify anyone in these photos whose name I remember, but after 33 years that may not be many. In this photo, I am wearing Victor Garcia's hat, this formation was called at short notice. At this time, our unit's practice was to total up flight time and award air medals every 2-3 months. Just after this, they began waiting until 30 days from your DEROS and awarding all accumulated air medals. This cut down on paperwork, but was a mistake from the morale standpoint. Also, you did not get any medals for your last 30 days of combat. A lot is made of the idea that American soldiers in Viet Nam were a bloodthirsty lot, eager to massacre Vietnamese. I had one opportunity to participate in a "massacre". In the summer of 1967, we were lifting troops into a landing zone near Vi Than (I think). As we were going in with the first lift of the day, an excited voice came over the radio, saying "Tigers, suppress this canal line in front of you!" As we came over the canal, we saw that it was filled with sampans full of people leaving (quite sensibly, I thought) the area of the operation. Two of the sampans were on my side, I was flying the door gunner's seat that day, and one of the oarsmen was standing up and looking at me about 40 yards away. I fired a burst into the bank, and waved at him. When we got back to the stage field, an officer was there asking how many we killed. I thought "My God, we were supposed to shoot those people?!?!" I told him that I did not have any targets on my side. The kid who I was training said that his gun jammed. Curious, I followed him to the next few aircraft. Never was there such an epidemic of jammed guns, Helicopters between the gunner and the targets, etc. No one claimed any kills, and it would have been just like shooting fish in a barrel. The Army did not have to teach us not to murder people, our families taught us that! Also note, that people will not obey an order that they do not understand, or that does not make sense. Did we really prevent a massacre, or did we let several score of Viet Cong escape to fight us later? I will never know.