“The stories told within the pages of this book are a reflection of a war long past, but never forgotten by men, who were constantly in harms way.” —Jackie R. Kays
Fifteen years ago during the first Gulf War, Desert Storm, American troops were fully supported by the American people, even if some didn’t agree with the war.
Now, six years into “Iraqi Freedom,” the American people treat their troops with reverence even while deeply critical of the government’s activities. This is vastly different from the reception our troops received from the so-called “Love Generation” in the late Sixties and early Seventies. So incomprehensible and humbling was that war and its experience that many wanted to forget about it, bury their heads like the proverbial ostrich and deny it ever happened. But it did happen, and the American people are still paying on a physical, monetary, mental and spiritual deficit.
After serving their tours of duty and fighting an opponent that had been in a perpetual state of war, the ‘Nam veterans expected at the least a warm welcome and a little understanding at home—never mind the tickertape parades of WWII. Instead, they walked into a ‘country divided’. A mass of people caught up in the civil rights/peace and love protests. Some protestors actually had the audacity to attack and ridicule the vets blaming them for governmental policies in Vietnam.
Security Police Vietnam & Thailand War Stories, compiled by Jackie R. Kays, is a small but positive step towards the recognition and validation of unsung air-policemen that successfully defended our bases in Vietnam and Thailand. Because of their bravery and dedication not one Air Base was ever overrun by the enemy. The majority of the testimonials in Security Police have a conversational feel to them, as if listening to reminiscences over a friendly beer where grammar and spelling doesn’t make a difference in the telling and only the heart beating within the content matters. The typos and misspellings add a “to err is human, to forgive is divine” quality. For example in a story entitled Sandbags by Sgt Mike Diaz, he writes, “When we who served are all gone, to a man and women, what will generations of military and civilians say about us? I am no writer, and the only time I put pen to paper is when I have to write a report so please be easy on the grammar, punctuation and structure…”
Security Police consists of thirty stories from twenty-seven veteran air-policemen, including eleven black and white photographs that give a face to these memoirs. Readers will be honored to share, learn, and become a part of an elite extended family, the Combat Air Policemen Vietnam veteran.
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