Reply #7: Of all my memories of my year in Nam, Huey (and his cousins) is most deeply-embedded.

[TahitiNut]

Not only were we called upon to stand perimeter guard overnight at the heliport, a rotating duty that could occasionally get VERY hairy, absolutely every daylight minute was lived with the sound track of the "thwack, thwack, thwack" of helicopters overhead, coming and going, coming and going, coming and going ... sometimes with an urgency hard to describe.

Almost NOTHING, even today, forty years later, will cause me to 'flash back' on Viet Nam faster than the sound of a helicopter overhead. It's an eerie and almost instantaneous trip back in time and space to an insane place ... still with a foothold in my brain and gut. And psyche.

It is NOT hyperbole to regard the Huey as emblematic of the Viet Nam War ... since my own reaction is far from uncommon. Huey is absolutely iconic of that time.