John Gargus

This is the fourth of five stories I wrote for my grandsons Dylan and Kemper while they were students at the Montessori School of Rome in Georgia. Their mother, Miss Dolores, was a schoolteacher there. This is an educational story intended for the fifth grade and older students. It features the same set of jungle characters as the previous stories and focuses on the flying experiences of Turtle TUTTLE - the new kid in school. He flies high over the jungle, chases a rainbow, and gets hopelessly lost. He spends the night trapped in tall grass where he landed after an exhaustive search for his home. He must chew his way out of the grass and find a jumping off place in a renewed search for his home. Finally, his bird friends find him and escort him back to the school for a joyous reunion with worried family and new friends.

This is the third of five stories I wrote for my grandsons Dylan and Kemper while they were students at the Montessori School of Rome in Georgia. Their mother, Miss Dolores, was a schoolteacher there. This is an educational story featuring the same set of jungle characters as the previous stories and introducing a physically challenged newcomer, Turtle TUTTLE, who can barely walk because of his flattened butterfly-like feet. On his first day in school TUTTLE learns why birds can fly and becomes convinced that the same principles of flight should apply to him and that he should also be able to fly. Is he right?

This is the second of four stories I wrote for my grandsons Dylan and Kemper while they were students at the Montessori School of Rome in Georgia. Their mother, Miss Dolores, was a school teacher there. She read the stories to her class as a treat to her young students who heard Dylan boast that his Papa wrote stories for him. This story about redemption and cooperation on the school grounds. Parents of students heard about these stories and enjoyed reading them. Little Gorilla MEG is too small to join others and is playing by herself in the sand by the Watermelon Rock. Giraffe ASHLEY comes to see what she is doing and her thin leg punches through a hole in the sand to an empty space below. She jumps back and Hippopotamus MOUSS comes to see what is happening. As he steps closer to MEG, the surface cover for an ancient well gives away under his weight and she falls through to the water 10 feet below. Everyone panics. Little MEG is not injured, but she cannot swim. MOUUS is a good swimmer, so he tries to coach her about how to stay afloat. As before, Hyena RICK comes up with a solution. They summon SASS's dad Python ZAZZ who is 20 feet long. He can reach down to MEG, but can't pull her out without slipping down the well. MOUUS steps up to provide the solution. He provides anchor point for ZAZZ who wraps his neck around his foot and succeeds in pulling MEG out of the well. So MOUSS, who had shamed himself in the first story becomes a collaborative hero who had redeemed himself.

This is the first of four stories I wrote for my grandsons Dylan and Kemper while they were students at the Montessori School of Rome in Georgia. Their mother, Miss Dolores, was a school teacher there. She read this story to her class as a treat to her young students who heard Dylan boast that his Papa wrote a story for him. This story about teasing, bullying, jealousy and showing off in a school environment became a huge success, not only with the students, but also with their parents who started wondering about what Miss Dolores was teaching them. The students got their parents involved at home by asking them to pronounce words the way a snake would with their tongues sticking out of their mouths. They also loved the story once my daughter shared it with them. I took the liberty to call the school the Monkeyssori School. They liked that name also. I hope that you and your children will enjoy reading about what is happening in this jungle school.

Combat Talons in Vietnam is a personal account of the first use of C-130s in the Vietnam War. It provides an insider’s view of crew training and classified missions for this technologically advanced aircraft. Many covert missions over North Vietnam were sucessful, but one night, John Gargus, a mission planner, oversaw an operation in which the aircraft—carrying eleven crewmembers—failed to return from a nighttime mission. For thirty years, a search for the missing aircraft remained in progress. In the late 1990s, the Combat Talon veteran community at Hurlburt Field in Florida, still uncertain of the full story, decided to dedicate a memorial to the lost crew. When wartime mission records were declassified, Gargus embarked on a long journey of inquiry, research, and puzzle-solving to reconstruct the events of that mission and the fate of its crew. He discovered that the wreckage of the plane had been found in 1992 and that the remains of the crew were being held in Hawaii. Through numerous Freedom of Information Act requests, interviews, and site visits, Gargus sought to answer the question of why it took so long to find the wreckage and, more importantly, why the special operations command units and crewmember families were left uninformed. By 2000, the remains were relocated to a common grave at Arlington National Cemetery at last providing a measure of closure to family, friends, and comrades.

In May 1970, aerial photographs revealed what U.S. military intelligence believed was a POW camp near the town of Son Tay, twenty-three miles west of North Vietnam’s capital city. When American officials decided the prisoners were attempting to send signals, they set in motion a daring plan to rescue the more than sixty airmen thought to be held captive. On November 20, a joint group of volunteers from U.S. Army Green Berets and U.S. Air Force Special Operations Forces perfectly executed the raid, only to find the prisoners' quarters empty; the POWs had been moved to a different location. Initially, the Son Tay raid was a devastating disappointment to the men who risked their lives to carry it out. Many vocal critics labelled it as a spectacular failure of our nation’s intelligence network. However, subsequent events proved that the audacity of the rescue attempt stunned the North Vietnamese, who implemented immediate changes in the treatment of their captives. The operation also restored the prisoners’ faith that their nation had not forgotten them. John Gargus not only participated in the planning phase of the Son Tay rescue, but also flew as a lead navigator for the strike force. This revised edition incorporates the most recent information from raid participants and also includes recent translations of North Vietnamese perspectives. No previous account of this top-secret action has given such a full account or such insight into both the execution and the aftermath of Son Tay.