During daylight hours. And every night we'd come in. They'd take us out there and drop us off. We went through several different training episodes.

One of them they had a big ship. It wasn't that big, but it had the ... like an LSU. You know, Landing Ship Tank. On the back of it they had a big steel tower. And we had to wear our flying suit. But we didn't wear a parachute but we wore the harness. So they'd hook us all to that tower and we had to jump off the back of the boat that's dragging us along. And you had to get un -- get your parachute harness off. And of course you flip flopped on there. Then, the Navy had a SEAL team there that was supposed to come by and pick you up with an arm hook. You know, they'd come down and SEALs would be in a rubber boat attached to their bigger power boat. And. First time you go through that, you think that boat's going to run over you [chuckling]. Cause they got to get real close. And you're supposed to hold your arm up. As soon as that hook goes over, you're supposed to grab this arm, they swing you into that rubber boat. Man that's tough, I tell you. Cause BOOM! BOOM! It's over with before you know it. But that was one exercise.

Another one, we had to go on a five man rubber raft. Jump off the boat, and get ... inflate the raft, get into it, five of us and get back to shore. And they'd take us out far enough where we'd just barely see the shore. And where you landed, you had to carry that raft back [chuckling] to the starting point on shore. And it's pretty hard, the first time you do it. You kind of ... wondering where on the shore you want to be at. The closer you get to the shore, the more you try to adjust to that point. But you may be way down here, and it's way up here by the time you get ready to adjust. And then we had to do a twenty man raft. The next day. And so we did something every day. That was an experience there.




And just stuff like that. This is all Vietnam.

That was Tuy Hoa, a little town we stationed in. We had different fences around, this is the most outer fence. Then as you got in, the fences were a little better [chuckling].

Ben: Who's taking those pictures?

Don: Well this picture came out of a photo lab there in Tuy Hoa. They had a team of aircraft photographers and I knew them. And so it was easy for me to ask for pictures. 





And let me see what else. Ok this book here. From the time I went in the air force til I got out. And different things. And a presentation we had. And there's my enlistment papers. There was five us from Dallas went in together. Joined together.

Ben: Like friends? Or just when joined up?

Don: Well, I knew three of them. Personally. I mean we, rollerskated together and did things. But a couple of them, they lived in the Dallas area, and they just inducted us all the same, the same day.

Ben: Ben Burns! 

Don: Mm-hmm. Yeah, but this was related to us, and some more [unknown]. And we went to Lackland to ... basic training. So that's when I went in. That's when I did different things in the Air Force.