Monticello Live

“Veterans Day Honors the Ultimate Sacrifice of our Current and Past Heroes”

By Mike Layfield, DMH CEO, originally posted Veteran’s Day, 2008.

During this week we observed and celebrated Veterans Day. A Veteran is any former member of the armed forces or a person who has served in the military. Throughout the nation, Americans participated in parades, ceremonies, and observances to pay their respect to our servicemen and women, both past and present. We want to recognize those men and women currently serving overseas, protecting our freedom in the United States and the world. Our hearts are with them and their families. Several of our Drew Memorial Hospital employees have family in the military, which are out there with their lives on the line, true everyday heroes in an often unforgiving and sometimes ungrateful world. We must not forget to tell them; we appreciate their effort and sacrifice and we hope for a speedy and safe return home, when their difficult job is done – defending our freedom, day in and day out!

In 1954, President Dwight Eisenhower changed the name of Armistice Day to Veterans Day; many here in southeast Arkansas still refer to it that way. Regardless of how we refer to this day, it is time to recall and honor the meaning of the lives that have come before us, who sacrificed their life in the line of duty. Take some time this week to honor all the soldiers who died on the ground, in the air, and at sea and show your patriotism to those who have fought or are still fighting for our freedom today. It is a moment we should reserve for those who have been “heroes” to all of us.

I want to tell you a story of a personal hero to me and my family. A story of a war hero, that no one has probably ever heard of, the only person to ever shoot down two North Vietnamese B1 planes from the side door of a helicopter defending our country and freedom. I am talking about my uncle, Glenn Woods. My Uncle Glenn worked for Air America during the Vietnamese War. The notorious airline secretly and later not so secretly owned by the CIA. The company was perhaps best known for supporting the CIA’s clandestine war effort in Laos and Vietnam in the 1960′s and early 1970′s. Uncle Glenn’s heroic story remained a secret until the mid 1990′s.

Well enough background- on with the story. On January 12, 1968, Uncle Glenn while flying as flight mechanic on an Air America Huey Helicopter, noticed two Vietnamese B1 Planes attacking a secret Radar Installation, killing some soldiers and wounding others. As the single pilot flew the helicopter forward toward the planes, Uncle Glenn opened the side door of the helicopter, took an AK1 rifle and single handily shot down both B1 planes. He was famous and a hero within the Air America Organization for years. His story could not be told until now, as it was classified confidential information and a military secret, as the CIA was supposedly not to be fighting in this war. He was honored for the first time at a CIA/Air American Reunion in Nashville, TN in 2007. 2007 marked the 60th Anniversary of the founding of the CIA. As a note, the first President Bush was the director of CIA before moving up the ladder to become President of the United Sates. To commemorate the occasion, a series of five paintings were commissioned to illustrate important “milestone” moments in their history. The five paintings will forever hang in the CIA Fine Arts Collections at CIA Headquarters in Arlington, Virginia and will be rotated to various Presidential Libraries over the coming years. If you want to read more about this story and picture go to http://www.air-america.org/News/LS85_painting.shtml. The fifth of these paintings Honored Air America and the subject was Uncle Glenn and depicted the Air America Huey Helicopter defending the radar installation and Uncle Glenn firing his rifle, shooting down both B1 planes. (By the way, the Huey Helicopter he was on, was a transport helicopter-not equipped with any guns or rockets like today’s modern helicopters) Uncle Glenn remains forever in Udorn Thailand, killed in action about a year later, August 14, 1969. The painting was officially unveiled in Nashville, TN on June 2, 2007 during the Air American Reunion at the CIA Headquarters. Now a copy of it also hangs in my office to forever remind me of Uncle Glenn’s dedication, sacrifice, and service in preserving the freedoms that we now enjoy today in our country. I was invited to attend the unveiling ceremony, as one of the last remaining family members of Uncle Glenn at the CIA Headquarters, and I attended with great pride and honor. I received personal invitations from President Bush and the director of CIA Headquarters. I received a personal tour of the CIA museum after the unveiling of the portrait, and I saw some amazing spyware. One very interesting piece of spyware developed in the 1970′s; on display, was a mechanical Dragon Fly. This Dragon Fly could fly long distances and was equipped with a camera and listening device. It worked, but it was never really used extensively as it had problems hovering and flying in moderate winds. I’m not sure if it’s in use today, so next time you see a Dragon Fly it might be a friend or foe, or it could be the CIA spying on you. Let’s just hope that if it is in use it is being used to look in on the bad guys.

As a child, when Uncle Glenn would come home for a visit from the war, I would ask about what he did in LAOS? What was his job? Because he was sworn to secrecy, he would simply say, “I work to keep you and your family safe from the bad guys.” Through his sacrifice and dedication, we have the greatest nation in the world. I hope we will always remember him, all the other men and woman and their ULTIMATE SACRIFICES for us and this nation. Let’s all again pay a special thank you for their services to our country. Let’s all join the rest of our nation this week and in the years to come on Veterans’ Day in remembering the sacrifices of America’s 25 million veterans and expressing our appreciation for their services. Theses “Past Heroes” should never be forgotten as we celebrate Veteran’s Day.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 11th, 2010 at 6:55 am and is filed under Veterans. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.