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Pleiku,RepublicofSouth Vietnam
1205 Hours 15 August 1963
When the glistening twin-engine Beechcraft U-8D, painted in the peacetime U.S.
Army glossy white, black, and olive color scheme, touched down on. the runway at Pleiku, Major Warren H. Hightower,Infantry,USA , the commanding officer of the 170th Assault Helicopter Company, was on the parking ramp waiting for it.
Hightower, a stocky; tanned, and open-faced man of thirty four, was dressed in a gray tropical-areas flight suit, a brimmed cap, and flight boots. A Model 1911Al Colt .45 ACP pistol in a leather holster hung from a web belt on his hip. Because he himself had just returned from flying, he’d decided he was not going to change into a more formal uniform just because the battalion commander had gotten on the horn to announce that he and the Battalion S-3 [Plans and I Training] were inbound on their return from Saigon and would the Major please meet the aircraft in the parking ramp.
When the door of the U-8D opened, he regretted his decision. There turned out to be more people on the plane than the two Hightower had expected. Specifically, there were two full bull colonels, one a Green Beret and one in tropical worsted,
obviously a member of the palace guard at the Pentagon East, inSaigon .. There was also another Green Beret, a captain, a black guy.
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