I never thought about it. I was sent there to participate, but they still wanted to know if there was anybody who would volunteer to pick these guys … - Joe M. Jackson

A unique thing about this was that this is the only mission, the only activity that resulted in an award of the Medal of Honor where a photograph was made of it while it was taking place. I have that photograph. It was shot from the air. I don't know who took it. But it shows my plane on the runway, the wrecked helicopter, and you can just make out two little dots showing two of the three guys as they were running for the plane.

I mentioned this happened on Mother's Day? Well, I'm the only guy I know of that gets Mother's Day cards. I used to get them from guys that were in the Army that were in that battalion that went in to reinforce. Last year I got one from a newspaper editor down here in southwest Washington.

I was three years old, maybe four, and one of my brothers and I, we'd been fishing, and we were walking down the road when this airplane flew over, and it started doing acrobatics in the sky, around the clouds. I looked up and thought that it would be the greatest thing in the whole world if I could do that. I remember that specifically. That was the first thing I remember in my life.