Free Republic

CAMP TAJI – Culminating a year-long partnership that built a lasting friendship, leaders from the 1st Air Cavalry Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, joined their Iraqi Air Force counterparts here to bid each other farewell, April 4. "I feel that you are becoming a part of Iraq," said IqAF Brig. Gen. Nazim Liftah al-Agwadi, commander of Taji Air Field. "We have a saying in Arabic that when you've spent 40 days with the guys, you learn their habits – you become one of them. "You have just spent one year [in Iraq.] I feel that you are like Iraq, like the...

Wild Bill Wilder takes a look at the role of Air Cavalry in the Vietnam War. Upon arriving in Vietnam in the fall of 1965, the proud young sky troopers of the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) took a lot of ribbing from the grunts. They ridiculed their “cruising” around in the sky, enjoying a soft army life. In angry defense, a young private, embarrassed, yet intensely proud of his unit and his accomplishments, retorted, “Go to hell! We’re still cavalry!” And they were. It is true that their arrival on the battlefields of Southeast Asia was not heralded by a...

G U A T E M A L A   C I T Y, Sept. 4 — Doctors reattached three fingers to the hand of a a 16-year-old pop singer, after they were severed by a helicopter rotor as he waved to fans. Ricardo Abarca was getting off the aircraft at a Guatemala City airport on Saturday. In raising his hand to greet fans, he put it into the still-whirling rotor."The index finger and middle finger are completely recovered," surgeon Gustavo Lopez said Wednesday. "We only have some problems with blood circulation in the little finger."Abarca, who had only recently...