“Where am I going,
Sarge?”
“You’re not really going
anywhere for this one, Phil. There’s a female air traffic controller working at
the Bien Hóa Airfield Air Field, the only one in Vietnam we think. There’s
probably not that much to it but we thought it might make a good story that we
can put in a press release.”
“A press release?”
“Yeah, a press release.
You know what those are, don’t you?”
Well of course I knew
what a press release was and we had covered the subject a little bit at
Journalism school but for the past few weeks I had kind of grown attached to
the idea of being a storywriter for a magazine—not a common run-of-the-mill
news reporter.
But as every
soldier in every war eventually learns, it’s almost always not about you.
“We’ve got an interview
set up for tomorrow—shouldn’t take more than an hour. Someone will drive you
over.”
Suddenly I remembered the
kid in the recruiter’s office when I signed up to be an Information
Specialist—the one that couldn’t become a truck driver because he didn’t have a
license. I also didn’t have a military driving license. I was approved for
shooting a rifle should the need ever arise and before my tour ended I would
have interviewed everyone from privates to generals but I couldn’t drive myself
five miles to the airfield.
“It will probably only be
picked up in her hometown paper,” he reminded me, “so make sure you get her
hometown.”
“Yeah sure.”
“No really. I mean it.
Make sure you get her hometown.”
