DEATH, TERROR, FEAR, COURAGE, WASTE! In 1966 I climbed out of the big jet into a steamy colonial oriental town built by the French using thousands of Vietnamese workers. The air smelled like rotten cabbage mixed with dead fish. You could almost taste the disintegrating organic material. Nothing seemed real. I was with a group of young, and not so young, trainees the company called FNG's ('fucking new guys'). We were all highly competent pilots with considerable experience but, for the past few weeks we had been in training for something completely different from anything any of us had ever done. We were hired by a mysterious US Government contractor, actually the Central Intelligence Agency, to fly in Vietnam where most of the population wanted us dead. The company was called Air America. Back then, I guarantee, none of us ever heard of it.