Ben Stein on a visit to Camp Pendleton

Stein–Camp Pendleton
Thursday
A dreary, cold day in Southern California. My pal Lisa Agustsson and I drove down the 405 Freeway to the 5, immense ten lane highways most of the way, to camp Pendleton, the major Marine Corps base on the West Coast. I had been invited to appear and meet and greet marines attached to a rocket artillery battalion about to deploy to Afghanistan.
We went through the guard gate, were met by a man in a huge truck, and escorted many miles inside the base to a large hangar like structure gaily hung with balloons and a cheery Santa Claus and many young men with mostly short hair, including some who were having a rock climbing competition as we pulled up.
The men were muscular and fit looking with no exceptions–lean, intense, alert. Most were in civilian clothes, even T shirts with rock group characters on them. There were pretty young wives, many with small children, many pregnant. I was greeted by several women from the huge Saddleback Church. They were the organizers of the event and they had invited my appearance. They could not have been more enthusiastic.
Glad hander that I am, I started immediately greeting as many men and women as wanted to greet me, which was pretty much all of them. I posed for pictures with them, asked them where they were from, told them of various connections I have or my wife has with their part of the world.
They were from small towns in Missouri, small towns in Wisconsin, small towns in Colorado, small towns in New Mexico, in Mississippi. There were also many from East L.A., happy to get away from the gangs, many from parts of New York City, even one young officer from Spring Valley, an extremely upscale part of Washington, DC. (“The Marine Corps attracts all kinds of people,” he said happily.)
They had the kinds of faces you used to see in Jimmy Stewart movies, all American faces, white, brown, black, Asian, but all smiling, all eager to do something for their country. They did not have the kind of conniving, weasel like faces I usually see around me in Beverly Hills. They looked like straight shooters, in a word. I guess they are, since every Marine is a rifleman.
I asked each of them if he would be deploying for Afghanistan soon. With only one or two exceptions, they all said they would, and usually said it as in, “I hope so, sir.” They said it like they meant it.
Several of them explained to me the rockets they would be firing. These were little devils that could go about fifty miles and hit a target without ten feet with a large explosive charge. They use satellites and drones and computers and I am glad it’s our side that has them and not the Taliban.
After about an hour, I went inside the hangar or whatever it was. Hundreds more Marines and their wives or girlfriends greeted me and told me how eager they were to be deployed–although the wives looked a bit less eager than the husbands. ( Later that night Lisa told me that a wife told her she could not sleep at night worrying about her husband.)
I gave a short little speech about how they were where the rubber meets the road in saving freedom and dignity. It may be agony for Mr Obama to decide what to do in Afghanistan, but it is these men and their families whose lives are on the line. I told them that we back at home sitting in chairs with our fat asses could not survive without them and that we thanked them, asked God’s blessing for them, prayed for them.
I talked to still more people, ate some turkey that a local church had prepared for this large group, and then, thoroughly chilled, went off into the night back to Los Angeles.
We had a driver so I slept most of the way back. But when I awakened near Long Beach, I saw immense waves of cars and their lights rushing towards me like a scene in a movie of a space ship rocketing towards a cluster of stars. There were thousands of cars, tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands. And in the rest of the nation, hundreds of millions more.
A whole nation. Three hundred million plus souls. All rushing around making a living, taking their kids to soccer games, buying groceries, getting and spending.
And in this little corner of Camp Pendleton were the men and women who make it all possible, about to go fight in a horrible place called Afghanistan. Not one of the men or women I spoke to tonight ever mentioned the stock market or real estate or the dollar or commodities or a stimulus package. Not one of them complained to me about anything. It was probably the longest time I have ever been in a crowd where not one person mentioned money. Maybe it’s because they know that what they do is beyond price. Back to sleep and then I awakened as we got close to home.
I passed many Christmas decorations as we got off the 405 and headed east on Santa Monica Boulevard. The thought came to my old head that I had just seen the best Christmas group I have ever seen: men and women who so love their fellow man that they are cheerfully and eagerly going off to risk their lives to save total strangers. These really are the peacemakers. These really are the blessed of the earth, the gifts from God. If we have any decency at all, these men and their families take our gratitude and our prayers with them with every step they take. Merry Christmas, Camp Pendleton, and all who serve to save.





--

Ed Freeman: Medal of Honor Recipient

You're a 19
year old kid.

You're critically wounded and dying in the jungle in the Ia Drang Valley.

November 11, 1965.

LZ X-ray , Vietnam .

Your infantry unit is outnumbered 8-1 and the enemy fire is so intense,
from 100 or 200 yards away,
that your own Infantry Commander has ordered the MediVac helicopters to
stop coming in.

You're lying there, listening to the enemy machine guns and you know you're
not getting out.

Your family is 1/2 way around the world, 12,000 miles away, and you'll
never see them again.

As the world starts to fade in and out, you know this is the day.

Then - over the machine gun noise - you faintly hear that sound of a helicopter.

You look up to see an unarmed Huey. But ... it doesn't seem real because
no Medi-Vac markings are on it.

Ed Freeman is coming for you.
He's not Medi-Vac so it's not his job, but he's flying his Huey down into
the machine gun fire anyway.

Even after the Medi-Vacs were ordered not to come.

He's coming anyway.

And he drops it in and sits there in the machine gun fire, as they load
2 or 3 of you on board.

Then he flies you up and out through the gunfire to the doctors and nurses.

And, he kept coming back!! 13 more times!!


He took about 30 of you and your buddies out who would never have gotten
out.

Medal of Honor Recipient,
Ed Freeman, died
last Wednesday at the age of 80, in Boise , Idaho .

Wright Brothers 1909

Film clip from the Austrian archives about the Wright Brothers demonstrating their plane in Italy in 1909. What is even more fantastic is there was an on-board camera on the Wright plane and the last part of this film shows it. Wilbur Wright is at the controls on both of the flights. It's a GREAT video considering it is 100 years old and the quality/weight of the equipment of that day.

This film clip is fascinating and in very good condition for its age being as it shows the Wright Bros demonstrating the Flyer to a group of European officers and officia ls in 1909. Only runs for 4 minutes. The shots of the plane in flight are the best I have ever seen of this machine showing a degree of speed and smoothness I did not think would have been possible. Excellent starting sequence with the linen covered props and easy start but the outstanding sequence: being the take-off along the rail. You can't see the actual weight drop to pull it along the rail but in some shots you see the tower. The small piece of string on the forward elevon was put there by the Wrights to ascertain degree of side slip as you are aware the plane basically turned flat, and although they eventually put in a form of wing warping it was always a difficult plane to handle in turns, so they kept it as flat as possible because any side slip over a certain angle was unrecoverable. This was the two seat version as you can see and designed for a hopeful military use. It could only fly in very calm conditions.

The in-flight shots were something else again and possibly the earliest aerial movie shots ever taken. When you think he had to fly the plane and also hand crank the camera, I think it must have been fixed in position as the camera stays motionless and in any case cameras were heavy in those times and the plane had little spare capacity but I could be wrong. Note the take off ramp. Loved the ancient Italian Roman ruins in the final shots the approach speed was very slow in deed.

When you get to the site, just double click on the picture of the flying machine, it loads automatically. The other vintage videos are entertaining, too.



http://www.europafilmtreasures.eu/PY/322/fiche_technique.htm?ID=322


=

Dr. Bill Krissoff

Attached is a story about a truly wonderful man, Dr Bill Krissoff (as usual at least one error in the article – said he was a corpsman when he is a surgeon). This is the website for the story: http://www.10news.com/news/21725340/detail.html and this is the website for the great video of the channel 10 news story; http://www.10news.com/video/21725020/index.html . I felt very humbled sitting next to him at dinner at the San Diego Air & Space Museum two weeks ago thanks to Bob Jackson. I spent most of the evening talking to him and because of the seating arrangement, I was really sorry that I didn’t get much of a chance to talk to his wife Christine who is another incredible person.

President George Bush Sr Agrees To Write Forward To Forthcoming DFCS Book

For nine years our oral historian, Dr. Barry Lanman, has been collecting oral histories for the purpose of publishing a book on DFC winners. President George Bush Sr, a World War II DFC winner, has just agreed to write the forward. The book should be published next fall and we hope by a major syndicated publisher. The book will cover DFC winners from the very first prior to WWII and then from all the wars including present day Iraqi operations. The book will be very diverse including women; Native Americans; and the Tuskegee Airmen.

Navy Pilot proved Soviets had missiles in Cuba

Retired Navy Captain William B. Ecker, age 85, passed away on Nov 5th at his home in Punta Gorda, Fla.

Captain Ecker received his DFC personally from President Kennedy for his close up photography of missile sites on Cuba. The proof of these sites resulted in the well known Cuban Missile Crisis and the confrontation with the Soviet Union which ultimately lead to the removal of all missiles.

Captain Ecker was portrayed by actor Christopher Lawford in the movie "Thirteen Days" starring Kevin Costner as an aide to kenedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Boy Who Fled Vietnam War Returns as U.S. Officer

By SETH MYDANS
DANANG, Vietnam — Cmdr. H. B. Le, the first Vietnamese-American to command a United States Navy destroyer, had just stepped ashore on a formal port call, making an emotional return to Vietnam for the first time since he fled as a boy on a fishing boat at the end of the war in 1975.
A youthful and smiling man of 39, he bore on his shoulders the weight of the symbolism of cautiously warming military ties between Vietnam and the United States in the latest of fewer than a dozen naval port calls since 2003.
But the symbolism quickly became more nuanced as his welcoming ceremony was delayed by a dispute between the sides over the display of the red Vietnamese flag with its gold star aboard the Blue Ridge, the flagship of the Seventh Fleet, which had just pulled in to port.
Two hours later the flag was finally raised high on the yardarm, seemingly in accord with the Vietnamese demand and contrary to American naval custom.
The waiting generals began to smile again, the red carpet was rolled out, and Commander Le was free to proceed with his return.
“Stepping ashore was awesome,” he said after landing from his destroyer, the Lassen, which was anchored in Danang Harbor.
“To be able to return to Vietnam after 35 years and to be able to do it as commander of a United States naval warship was an incredible honor and a privilege.”
He was returning to a very different Vietnam from the one he fled at the age of 5 with his parents and three of his siblings. Most people in this young nation, like Commander Le himself, have no memory of the war.
In the last decade or more, Vietnam has opened its economy, increased trade with the United States and risen from postwar poverty even as the Communist government maintains control of the press and political expression.
The city of Danang today, with its four new bridges, its broad streets and its emerging high-rise skyline, is almost unrecognizable to those who were here during the war years.
Despite the changes, the flag-raising dispute and the background of Commander Le’s own story illustrated the complexities of a relationship that remains shadowed by the war even as it moves tentatively forward.
“Gradual and steady,” said Carlyle B. Thayer, an expert on the Vietnamese armed forces, describing the relationship. “The Americans see a glacier moving, and they call it progress.”
He said Vietnam had been slow to accept American overtures of closer military ties, hoping to balance Chinese influence in the region with an American presence but stepping carefully to avoid offending Beijing.
“The two considerations that govern the Vietnamese are worries about China and deep suspicion of the United States,” said Mr. Thayer, a specialist on Vietnam at the Australian Defense Force Academy in Canberra. “Suspicion is the underlying feature that puts a brake on progress.”
The Vietnamese generals who greeted Commander Le — whose full name is Hung Ba Le — might have had reason to have mixed feelings.
Commander Le’s father, Thong Ba Le, who is now 68, was himself a commander in the wartime South Vietnamese Navy and for a time held a senior position here in Danang. In 1975 it was this same Communist military he was fleeing as his base came under attack by rocket and mortar fire. The family spent two days at sea before being rescued by a United States Navy vessel.
While he was able to take his wife and his four younger children when he fled, he was unable to rescue four older children, who were trapped in Hue, Commander Le said. Two of these sons spent several years in Communist re-education camps, he said.
After he reached the United States, the father’s story was a model of immigrant success as he worked his way up from busboy to manager of a grocery chain in Northern Virginia and provided for college educations for all of his children, including the four who followed eight years later in a formal departure program.
Commander Le is a model of the success of many children of refugees.
A standout scholar and athlete in high school, he graduated from the United States Naval Academy with a bachelor’s degree in economics in 1992 and was commissioned as a Navy officer. He is married with two children.
“I’m a lucky guy,” he said. “My dad got me out of the country. He did what he had to do. He gave us opportunities to have a good life in the United States.”
Aboard the Vietnamese tug that brought Commander Le ashore was a man with quite a different set of memories: Chief Engineer Nguyen Van Ne, 50, said that as a child he had been terrified of American soldiers.
“They burned down my parents’ house,” he said. “They burned it down because they thought we were Communists.”
But he said that those memories were in the past now and that he would like to visit the United States “just to go and have a look.”
“In America people are really good in their professions,” he said. “They get a good education and they get ahead, like Commander Le. He studied and he rose in his line of work.”
Like some second-generation immigrants, Commander Le never seems to have looked backward, learning only a little of the Vietnamese language and very little about his father’s past or his family’s history.
And so his visit on Sunday to his home city of Hue, 50 miles north of Danang, to meet the aunts and uncles who are his only relatives in Vietnam was a voyage of discovery of his roots.
“Something I recently learned was that my dad was not the first Vietnamese naval officer,” he said. “Back in imperial times, my great, great, great, great — four or five greats — grandfather served with the emperor. He was like an admiral.”
Commander Le prayed at the family’s ancestral shrines, visited their graves and learned of what he said were his family’s royal connections in the old imperial capital.
“I had noodle soup by the Perfume River, sitting on little plastic stools,” he said. “I definitely felt like a Vietnamese, just enjoying that food and the company of my family.”
Although he hardly mentioned the war to his children, Commander Le’s father has written accounts of his escape, bitter at what he calls the abandonment and failure of ideals of the withdrawing American military.
He has refused to return to Communist Vietnam, saying he fears for his safety, although it is unlikely that he would face difficulties. Though he is proud to be an American, he said in a telephone interview, he still honors the red and yellow flag of the former South Vietnam as a symbol of freedom and democracy.
Here in Danang, the flags in dispute were the Stars and Stripes and the gold star of Communist Vietnam.
According to United States Navy custom, the flag of the host nation is to be displayed only on the quarterdeck, beside the American flag, said a public affairs officer, Cmdr. Jeff Davis of the United States Seventh Fleet.
The Vietnamese custom is to fly their flag high at a level equivalent to that of the visiting nation, he said.
In previous port calls, the Navy has bent its traditions in honor of Vietnamese custom, Commander Davis said. But this time the Blue Ridge, the flagship of the Seventh Fleet, held firmly to American custom.
After two hours of unhappy discussions, the top Vietnamese military and civilian brass began to walk off the pier, abandoning the welcoming ceremony. At just that moment, their flag inched its way upward and began to flutter side by side with American flag.
“It’s beautiful,” one Vietnamese general said, looking up.
“Each country has its own customs.”
The next morning, though, reporters noticed that the Vietnamese flag was flying just six inches lower than the Stars and Stripes.

Tricare Future Threatened

Tricare For Life was instituted to correct the broken promise that military retirees would recieve free health care coverage for life and it covers the Medicare co-pay. Now a heavy assualt has begun on Veterans/Retirees benefits to pay other programs our President promised during the campaign. And it is a high priority of his admiistration.

Please pay attention to what is happening and contact your congressional representatives to protect our benefits.

First American Indian to fly for the Navy

Reported in the Washington Times today, 87 year old Tom Oxendine, was reported to be the first Native American Indian to fly in the Navy despite strict segregation policies. During WWII he served as a pilot flying the 02SU Kingfisher off of the USS Mobile during the Pacific campaign. He was awarded the DFC for heroic action in rescuing a downed airman off of Yap Island in 1944.

Air Story Out Of Vietnam

By Lawrence E. Pence - Colonel, USAF (Ret)
For most servicemen who served in Vietnam , the Freedom Bird was that civil airliner which took them back to the land of the big PX at the end of their tour. Mine was a bit different sort of Freedom Bird.
In mid-1967, as a junior Air Force Captain, I was detailed to 7th AF Hq in Saigon as an Air Technical Intelligence Liaison Officer, short name: ATLO (the "I" gets left out, as people look strangely at anyone who calls himself an ATILO, thinking he is somehow related to Atilla the Hun). My job was to provide 7AF and the air war the best technical intelligence support that the Foreign Technology Division of AF Systems Command (my parent organization) could provide, in whatever area or discipline needed. Also I was to collect such technical intelligence as became available. This was a tall order for a young Captain, and this assignment provided much excitement, including the Tet Offensive.
At that time, Operation Rolling Thunder was underway, the bombing of military targets in North Vietnam . The weather in NVN was often lousy, making it difficult to find and accurately strike the assigned targets, so a radar control system was set up to direct the strike force to their targets.
This system was installed in a remote, sheer-sided karst mountain just inside Laos on the northern Laos/NVN border. The site could be accessed only by helicopter or a tortuous trail winding up the near-vertical mountainside, so it was judged to be easily defensible.
The mountaintop was relatively flat and about 30 acres in size. On it was a tiny Hmong village called Phu Pha Ti, a small garrison of Thai and Meo mercenaries for defense, a helicopter pad and ops shack for the CIA-owned Air America Airline, and the radar site, which was manned by "sheep-dipped" US Air Force enlisted men in civilian clothes. Both the US and NVN paid lip service to the fiction that Laos was a neutral country, and no foreign military were stationed there, when in reality we had a couple of hundred people spread over several sites, and NVN had thousands on the Ho Chi Minh trail in eastern Laos. This particular site was called Lima (L for Laos ) Site 85. The fighter-bomber crews called it Channel 97 (the radar frequency), and all aircrews called it North Station, since it was the furthest north facility in "friendly" territory. Anywhere north of North Station was bad guy land.
The Channel 97 radar system was an old SAC precision bomb scoring radar which could locate an aircraft to within a few meters at a hundred miles. In this application, the strike force would fly out from Lima Site 85 a given distance on a given radial, and the site operators would tell the strike leader precisely when to release his bomb load. It was surprisingly accurate, and allowed the strikes to be run at night or in bad weather.
Th is capability was badly hurting the North Vietnamese war effort, so they decided to take out Lima Site 85. Because of the difficulty of mounting a ground assault on Lima Site 85, and its remote location, an air strike was planned. Believe it or not, the NVNAF chose biplanes as their "strike bombers!"
This has to be the only combat use of biplanes since the 1930's. The aircraft used were Antonov designed AN-2 general purpose 'workhorse" biplanes with a single 1000hp radial piston engine and about one ton payload. Actually, once you get past the obvious "Snoopy and the Red Baron" image, the AN-2 was not a bad choice for this mission. Its biggest disadvantage is, like all biplanes, it is slow. The Russians use the An-2 for a multitude of things, such as medevac, parachute training, flying school bus, crop dusting, and so on.
An AN-2 just recently flew over the North Pole. In fact, if you measure success of an aircraft design by the criteria of number produced and length of time in series production, you could say that the AN-2 is the most successful aircraft design in the history of aviation!
The NVNAF fitted out their AN-2 "attack bombers with a 12 shot 57mm folding fin aerial rocket pod under each lower wing, and 20 250mm mortar rounds with aerial bomb fuses set in vertical tubes let into the floor of the aircraft cargo bay. These were dropped through holes cut in the cargo bay floor. Simple hinged bomb-bay doors closed these holes in flight.
The pilot could salvo his bomb load by opening these doors. This was a pretty good munitions load to take out a soft, undefended target like a radar site. Altogether, the mission was well planned and equipped and should have been successful, but Murphy's Law prevailed.
A three plane strike force was mounted, with two attack air-craft and one standing off as command and radio relay. They knew the radar site was on the mountaintop, but they did not have good intelligence as to its precise location, It was well camouflaged, and could not be seen ;readily from the air. They also did not realize that we had "anti-aircraft artillery" and "air defense interceptor" forces at the site. Neither did we realize this.
The AN-2 strike force rolled in on the target, mistook the Air America ops shack for the radar site, and proceeded to ventilate it. The aforementioned "anti-aircraft artillery" force - one little Thai mercenary about five feet tall and all balls- heard the commotion, ran out on the helicopter pad, stood in the path of the attacking aircraft spraying rockets and bombs everywhere, and emptied a 27-round clip from his AK-47 into the AN-2, which then crashed and burned.
At this juncture, the second attack aircraft broke off and turned north towards home.
The "air defense interceptor" force was an unarmed Air America Huey helicopter which was by happenstance on the pad at the time, the pilot and flight mechanic having a Coke in the ops shack. When holes started appearing in the roof, they ran to their Huey and got airborne, not quite believing t he sight of two biplanes fleeing north. Then the Huey pilot, no slouch in the balls department either, realized that his Huey was faster than the biplanes! So he did the only thing a real pilot could do -attack!
The Huey overtook the AN-2's a few miles inside North Vietnam , unknown to the AN-2's as their rearward visibility is nil. The Huey flew over the rearmost AN-2 and the helicopter's down-wash stalled out the upper wing of the AN-2.
Suddenly the hapless AN-2 pilot found himself sinking like a stone! So he pulled the yoke back in his lap and further reduced his forward speed. Mean-while, the Huey flight mechanic, not to be outdone in the macho contest, crawled out on the Huey's skid and, one-handed, emptied his AK-47 into the cockpit area of the AN-2, killing or wounding the pilot and copilot. At this point, the AN-2 went into a flat spin and crashed into a mountainside, but did not burn.
It should come as no surprise that the Air America pilot and flight mechanic found themselves in a heap of trouble with the State Department REMF's in Vientiane . (REMF is an acronym. The first three words are Rear, Echelon, and Mother.) In spite of the striped-pants cookie-pushers' discomfort at (horrors!) an inter-national incident (or perhaps, partly because of it) these guys were heroes to everybody in the theatre who didn't wear puce panties and talk with a lisp. They accomplished a couple of firsts: (1) The first and only combat shootdown of a biplane by a helicopter, and (2) The first known CIA air-to-air victory.

Here's what the Andropov AN-2 Colt looks like -- get more info at http://www.museumofflight.org/aircraft/antonov-2-colt

Pilot Was One of the Last Surviving Flying Tigers

In today's Washington Post we learned that Air Force Major General Charles R. Bond Jr. passed away. He was one of the last Flying Tigers. In 1996, a day after the 55th anniversary of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, the Air Force awarded 255 Distinguished Flying Crosses to surviving members of the Flying Tigers or their families. Gen. Bond told reporters that the Distinguished Flying Cross he received that day was one of the greatest honors of his life.

An Unusual Story BUT TRUE by Chuck Sweeney

Recently I flew to the Midwest to conduct two Oral History interviews for the Distinguished Flying Cross Society (DFCS). The fact that a retired Tailhooker flew to Kansas City and then drove to an Army base (Fort Leavenworth) to interview two Air Force pilots is a little unusual but that is not the point of the story.

About two years ago I convinced Major Kim “Killer Chick” Campbell USAF to join the DFC Society as our first female pilot member who was awarded a DFC in combat. Since then I have been trying to figure how to conduct a interview with her for our Oral History Program but wasn’t successful because of schedules, workload etc. I finally was able to turn that around after I learned that she was attending the Army’s Command and General Staff College. Kim was awarded her DFC for a harrowing mission flying the A-10 Warthog in Iraq on April 7, 2003 and there was a lot of press when the event happened.

I also wanted to interview another A-10 pilot who was awarded three DFCs in Afghanistan during Operation Anaconda in March 2002. I thought my being awarded three DFCs in one week was a little unusual but being awarded three in four days is simply amazing. The second pilot is Major Scott “Soup” Campbell. Yes he does have the same last name as Kim because they are husband and wife. Kim and Scott met at the Air Force Academy, they were married while Kim was going through flight training, both flew the A-10 and now have a beautiful baby boy named Colin Reed Campbell. I was mesmerized while listening to both Kim and Scott described the events that led to their DFCs and feel extremely lucky to have met them.

Well, the unusual part of the story is having a husband and wife each being awarded DFCs for heroism in combat while flying the same aircraft type but I am asking the help of Tailhookers to determine if this is truly unique. We feel pretty confident that they are the only married couple flying US Air Force fighters that have each been awarded a DFC. In order to make this a truly unique story we need to find out if any other married couple in any of the services have both been awarded a DFC for combat.

This has also opened up a couple of other interesting questions concerning families with multiple DFC recipients. I know there are several father/son recipients and I also read of one father/daughter (USAF) and I’m sure there are probably brothers with DFCs but what about brother/sister or sister/sister? If anyone can answer these questions with some details, the DFCS would appreciate hearing about it so that we can make contact and write a story about them. Please email Chuck Sweeney at dfcs@dfcsociety.org or reply through the DFCS website at www.dfcsociety.org if you have any answers.

DFC National Memorial March AFB Museum

Force Assodation
1501 Lee Highway, Arlington, Virginia 22209-1 198 (703) 247-5800 www.afa.org
An Independent Nonprofit Aerospace Organization
Michael M. Dunn
PresidentlCEO
July 30,2009
The Honorable Ken Calvert
22201 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 205 1 0
Dear Congressman Calvert,
The Air Force Association is writing to express support for H.R. 2788, a bill to designate
a Distinguished Flying Cross National Memorial at March Air Force Base Museum in
Riverside, California. Ever since Congress created the Distinguished Flying Cross 80
years ago, the award has played a pivotal role in recognizing the heroism displayed in the
sky by our men and women in uniform. It is the Air Force Association's firm belief that
the nearly 200,000 recipients of the Distinguished Flying Cross deserve a national
memorial to honor their example of excellence and dedication to duty.
Sincerely,
Michael M. Dunn

Seeking Nominations for DFCS Director Positions

NOMINATIONS FOR BOARD OF DIRECTOR’S ELECTION
This notice is to inform you that your Distinguished Flying Cross Society will be holding our election for Directors at the Annual Membership Meeting in October, 2009. We have two Directors, Reed Phillips, and Bob Krone who is currently serving as our Secretary are up for reelection. In addition we have two open seats on the board to be filled. I have been appointed as the Chair of the Nominating Committee. In addition to informing you of the upcoming election I would like to know if there are any members who would like to serve the Society as a Director. What we would like to see are members with legal, accounting, fund raising, public relations or other professional backgrounds, or any who feel they can contribute to the growth and professionalism of your Society. I am requesting that a member who wishes to be a nominee submit a brief one page biography, outlining military and civilian experience and the reasons why you wish to serve your society. I would prefer submission via e-mail and/or as a Microsoft WORD file. Please send to me

Letter to DFCS

Dear Ms. O'Neil,

Thank you very much for your message and for processing my father's
application. He and all of us are pleased, and of course we are very proud
of him, the particular instance of heroism that merited the DFC, and his
service to this nation which spanned a long and distinguished career in the
USAF. I am grateful beyond words for your and the DFCS's efforts to ensure
that he and all like him are recognized.

Sincerely,
Greg Horn

Senior Pastor & Head of Staff
The Presbyterian Church of Upper Montclair