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Dottie and a Ray of Hope During my last few weeks at Beale AFB my supervising Sergeant had encouraged me to take some additional leave prior to heading out to Nebraska. He was rather anxious for me to be gone. He had figured that once he took me off the protected list I would be gone within the month. My divorce kind of gummed up the works. So, being a good soldier, I took his advice and took 10 additional days of leave prior to reporting to Offutt AFB in Nebraska. I packed up and drove back to NY once more, stopping briefly to visit some friends I knew from Valparaiso in Indiana. This was the third time in the last five months I drove across the country from California to New York. It was getting to be routine. While back in New York over the holidays, I ran into my best friend's high school girl friend, Dottie, at a local pub. We got talking and she invited me to a party she was going to the following night. We hit it off and went out a few more times. Sh

Go Big Red – Omaha, Nebraska RC-135's I reported to Offutt Air Force Base in the evening on New Year's Eve, 1971. Driving into Omaha I noticed that every marquee I saw had the message "Go Big Red" on it. The next day, New Year's Day, 1972, the #1 ranked Nebraska football team was going to play #2 Alabama for the NCAA championship. I was assigned a room in one of the barracks and when I got there the place was empty, everyone was out celebrating. I got a beer from a nearby vending machine and unpacked. I now had less than 17 months left to serve. Except for a possible TDY (Temporary Duty) assignment or pissing off the wrong guy, I would be clear of being sent to Vietnam for the rest of my commitment. Of course I had been fairly adept at pissing off people to that point, so I vowed to blend in, behave, and keep my mouth shut. The Vietnam War was still going great guns but was about to change course. The percentage of the population that was a