Blog 3857 – 06.14.2026

Freedom Bird Retrospective

In early December 1970 I was one of the lucky ones who got to fly a “Freedom Bird” home from Vietnam. I recall the audible collective exhale followed by a cheer when a plane load of G.I.s took off for home from Saigon headed for San Francisco with only one stop in Japan. 

Many of those young men saw things and did things that would haunt them for the rest of their lives. Again, I was one of the lucky ones who did not personally witness the carnage of war. I did however learn in my debriefing before leaving my duty station what my efforts as a teletype repairman in Top Secret com centers on Tan San Nhut Airbase and in Saigon had contributed to the war effort.

On my month leave before reporting to my final stateside assignment at Fort Bragg, NC, my mother observed that I washed my hands every few minutes and brought it to my attention. So even I, one of the lucky ones, still felt guilty for contributing to so many deaths, for leaving my brothers behind, for surviving the war that so many did not. 

War is a terrible thing. Only fools, madmen, and profiteers think otherwise. I read several years after returning  home from Vietnam that the war had created more millionaires in the U.S. than there had ever been before. To me that is a sickening thought.

When I saw today’s picture, I thought of that flight over fifty-five years ago and a plane load of young men coming home to a country very distrustful of those who had gotten us into that war. They say “times change”, but do they really? I think it is high time we held our leaders and war profiteers to task.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David James White