The exigencies of war ought be colorblind. Inane social-constructs the likes of racism ought break down precipitously amongst men thrust together into combat’s equal-opportunity abattoir.
Faced with a common, indiscriminate enemy, human beings ought perceive—suddenly, and with perfect clarity—the immateriality of color, creed, religion, and the myriad trivialities by which they fatuously divide themselves in peacetime.
Alas, they do not.
When Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941, when Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, when the towers fell on September 11th, Americans ought to have grieved and seethed as a single people—indifferent to the divisions of December 6th, November 21st, and September 10th.
Alas, they did not.
The Vietnam War, for the benefit of younger readers, was a conflict fought, officially and unofficially, across the Southeast Asian nations of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. The war’s official belligerents were Soviet/Chinese-supported, communist North Vietnam; and U.S./NATO-supported, democratic South Vietnam. The conflict, which commenced on 01 November 1955, was joined by U.S. forces in 1959, and dragged on until the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975, is widely considered a Cold War-era proxy war.
Direct U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War came to an end in 1973, by which time 57,015 American servicemen had lost their lives. By war’s end, a tragic total of 58,209 Americans—of all races—had perished.
Among those who fought in the Vietnam War and remember such with terrible lucidity is Joe Ponds, a U.S. Army rotary-wing combat pilot whose compelling story has been documented in an incisive and engaging video captured by Jim Soyk and Annie Byers and edited by Aero-News chief videographer Nathan Cremisino.
Throughout his military service, Mr. Ponds—today, Dr. Ponds—fought battles on multiple and disparate fronts. The enemies he faced wore the uniforms of both North Vietnam and the United States, and alternately assailed him with anti-aircraft ordnance, small-arms fire, and the slings and arrows born of small minds.
By dint of his character, courage, memoires, and affiliation with the Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association of Florida, Dr. Ponds keeps alive the memory of the Vietnam War and perpetuates the lessons intrinsic thereto—lessons particularly germane in a deeply-divided, 21st Century America embroiled in an intensifying, Eastern-European proxy war.
Read more about Dr. Ponds in his book titled, 600 MOL, where he tells more stories of being one of only 600, more or less, black helicopter pilots in Vietnam. For perspective, there were a total of 35,000 helicopter pilots that served in the Vietnam war.
Aero-TV is a production of the Internationally syndicated Aero-News Network. Seen worldwide by hundreds of thousands of aviators and aviation adherents, ANN's Aero-TV has produced over 5000 aviation and feature programs, including nearly 2000 episodes of our daily aviation news program, AIRBORNE UNLIMITED, currently hosted by Holland Lee. Now in its third decade of operation, parent company Aero-News Network, has the most aggressive and intensive editorial profile of any aviation news organization and has published nearly a half-million news and feature stories since its inception -- having pioneered the online 24/7 aviation new-media model that so many have emulated.
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