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Student protests, 1969
1969-10-15 ""The New Prairie Primer"" Page 11
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New Prairie Primer, October 15, 1969, Page 11 ARRIVAL AND DEPARTURE More servicemen travel these days; like us all, they go by air. Time was, no trains has a seat, khaki and blue legs cluttered the aisle. Now, planes hold for later troops . . . "The sound you hear are their duffle bags loading in." Today, I aw one who carried no luggage; he wasn't going away, but back, and his luggage carried him. From the waiting room looking down where wheeled, static-proof machines serviced the planes that pulsed their flaps like half-live fossils fixed for flight, I caught a clean flash of color crisp amid the oily gray machines -- and when I looked, saw a flag draped on a box with four hand grips. But the service crew used no hands. A fork-lift eased the box to a baggage belt, which fed it into the plane in one smooth pass to keep the dead unmoved; at the last minute, the foreman smoothed the flag like a waiter twitching a table cloth. Jets whining for heat, the plane nosed out from its lousy swirl of carts to take its runway; and there, waiting, slid spider like from nowhere, a crooked chopper stopped short in a groundward swoop to hover, switch ends, rise, slip, maneuver, skilled, grotesque avatar of war, olive green as putrid flesh on men it plucks from jungle ambush to save for coffins jetted home. It swayed a demon dance in air leering at me, bobbing a practice run just above the watchers' heads. I nearly missed the plane, from dead stop roaring up the sky on stilts of smoke to disappear with a coffin in its belly under the rows of seats for tourists, "That's a transworld airline, all right. Estimated departure on time, soldier, Ride tight" -- John Lindberg HERO
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New Prairie Primer, October 15, 1969, Page 11 ARRIVAL AND DEPARTURE More servicemen travel these days; like us all, they go by air. Time was, no trains has a seat, khaki and blue legs cluttered the aisle. Now, planes hold for later troops . . . "The sound you hear are their duffle bags loading in." Today, I aw one who carried no luggage; he wasn't going away, but back, and his luggage carried him. From the waiting room looking down where wheeled, static-proof machines serviced the planes that pulsed their flaps like half-live fossils fixed for flight, I caught a clean flash of color crisp amid the oily gray machines -- and when I looked, saw a flag draped on a box with four hand grips. But the service crew used no hands. A fork-lift eased the box to a baggage belt, which fed it into the plane in one smooth pass to keep the dead unmoved; at the last minute, the foreman smoothed the flag like a waiter twitching a table cloth. Jets whining for heat, the plane nosed out from its lousy swirl of carts to take its runway; and there, waiting, slid spider like from nowhere, a crooked chopper stopped short in a groundward swoop to hover, switch ends, rise, slip, maneuver, skilled, grotesque avatar of war, olive green as putrid flesh on men it plucks from jungle ambush to save for coffins jetted home. It swayed a demon dance in air leering at me, bobbing a practice run just above the watchers' heads. I nearly missed the plane, from dead stop roaring up the sky on stilts of smoke to disappear with a coffin in its belly under the rows of seats for tourists, "That's a transworld airline, all right. Estimated departure on time, soldier, Ride tight" -- John Lindberg HERO
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