"God's Own Lunatics" 
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I don’t know if there is anyone here today who does not thrill to the sound of those blades. That familiar whop-whop-whop is the soundtrack of our war, the lullaby of our younger days. To someone who spent his time in Nam with the grunts I’ve got to tell you that that noise was always a great comfort.

It meant someone was coming to help. Someone was coming to get our wounded, someone was coming to bring us water and ammo, someone was coming to take our dead brothers home. And eventually someone was coming to give us a ride out of hell. Even today when I hear it I stop … catch my breath and think back to those days.

I love you guys as only an Infantryman can. No matter how bad things were, if we called you came. Down through the green tracers and other visible signs of a real bad day off to a real bad start. To us you seemed beyond brave and fearless … that you would come to us in the middle of battle in those flimsy thin-skinned crates ... and in the storm of fire you would sit up there behind that thin Plexiglas seeming so patient and so calm and so vulnerable... waiting for the off-loading and the on-loading. We thought you were God's own lunatics and we loved you. Still do.

We are the fortunate ones! We survived .. when so many better men gave up their precious lives for us. We owe them a sacred debt ..to live each day to its fullest. What they are saying … when you listen hard enough is this: We are at peace; and so should you be, and so should you be.

Joe L. Galloway July 2, 2000

Vietnam's UH-1 Huey Pilots taken from a talk by Joe Galloway given at a 
VHPA Memorial Service at The Wall during the VHPA convention in DC.
Reproduced with the permission of Joe Galloway