DELTA SHOTGUN

War is many things to many people, and their perceptions of war depend on many factors, one of which is experience. For a young, twenty year old Army aviator, it was to be an experience that would present itself only once, and the daily drama that was to be his war would take place in a small, two-seat recon aircraft flying just above and sometimes below the tree tops, alone with nothing but a thin armored seat between him and the enemy. There was no school for this type of flying. It was a deadly form of on-the-job-training that you either mastered quickly or paid the price. This is the factual story of one such Army aviator. It was Vietnam in 1969 and a newly winged pilot was about to find out what war meant to him. While his friends back home were learning life lessons, he was learning life and death lessons.