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A US Air Forces' C-141 - These huge birds  ferried our boys into Vietnam, and took the KIAs home --those boys Killed In Action. I rode in one on my last trip to Tokyo to put the last edition of The Transit together at Stars & Stripes. The rode changed my opinon of The War i Vietnam.

My KIA Flight to Japan

Americans at home see little of—and think less about—death, or the dead, except at funerals. The process is all out of sight. Here in ‘Nam, the locals see death and the dead every week. They see family members and neighbors lying on the ground, blood beginning to pool under them. Kids see this. It wasn’t right.

     So far, I’d not given death and dying much thought. Only one of our ‘Bees died in-country and that was from a concussion during a basketball game. I started wondering why were we here anyway? To stop the spread of communism? Why bother?  When we were ordered to Vietnam most of us felt we were doing the patriotic thing—defending the American way of life.  Some may still feel that way, justifying what they were called on to do--kill another human being.

     Sitting there in that web seat on that C-141, I was changing my mind about this war, the waste, and the egos of politicians and the military generals. I began to realize what we were doing to a generation of my guys, as well as what we were doing to this lush and rural landscape and its people. We were blowing the hell out of it.

     Fortunately, just after take-off, the crew chief came down the ladder from the flight deck, and spoke in my year.

     “The skipper doesn’t want you staring at these coffins for the next four hours. You can come up on the bridge with the crew.” Relieved, I followed.  Chatting with the crew chief in more favorable spaces, I learned this flight takes off twice a week, each time, bringing the bodies of a hundred American service men home.

     (More than 11,000 Americans were killed in Vietnam in 1967, and that’s not counting the South and North Vietnamese army and civilians we killed.)


This is part of an essay that appears in the book, where I share my thoughts about war, and this war in particular.

The Book:

SEABEE71

IN CHU LAI

A 350 page memoir of a Navy Journalist's 14 months with the Seabees.

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Photographs and text copyright © 1967 and 2019 by David H. Lyman

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I stood in line at the Military Transport counter at the DaNang Airport  waiting to check in for a flight to Japan. Then, I waited. Late afternoon, toward dusk, with thoughts of spending the night in the terminal, my name is called. I met the crew chief for a C-141 heading back to the States, with a refueling stop in Japan.

     “I required to warn you,” he said as we shook hands. “I have to tell you, this is a KIA flight. You okay with that?” What he said didn’t really register. Any flight out of here was better than spending the night in the terminal, so I followed the Airman out and across the apron to his mammoth silver bird, two engines drooping under each wing.

     I followed the crew chief up the ladder and through the crew door. A single row of passenger seats, the web kind, was against the forward bulkhead. I dropped my gear in an adjoining seat, sat down and buckled in. As I looked up, toward the rear of the cargo bay, 5 feet away I was faced by a wall of sliver aluminum cases, stacked four across, four high, and they went all the way back.

     Then it dawned on me. This was a KIA flight, “Killed In Action.” Those were coffins. Each contained the body of an American serviceman. This flight was taking my fellow Americans home.  I tried to count. There must have been over 100 of these KIA cases filling the cargo bay.

     I sat looking at the wall. This was the first time in six months I’d fully realized: boys where getting killed over here. And that’s what we were doing here in Vietnam–spending the lives of these guys, just as The Brass was spending millions of dollars on infrastructure, material and ordinance to fight this Old Man’s War.

     I tried not to think about who was inside that one case on the bottom row, third from the left. I could see a name, rank and serial number on a label in a holder. I did not want to know. Here I was, alive—flying up to Japan to work at Stars and Strips then climb some mountains on R&R. My choice to signup for the Naval Reserve five years ago was the reason I was sitting here, and not in the Army, or in one of those cases. In a few months, all this would be behind me. I’d be out of Vietnam, out of the Navy—my whole life now ahead of me. These boys would not have that opportunity. They’d not be able to live out their lives, get laid, find a job, marry, start a family, raise a few kids, run for office, start a business, write a book.