The Final Mission of Extortion 17 by Ed Darack

Author:Ed Darack
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Smithsonian
Published: 2017-09-19T04:00:00+00:00

As Dave, Bryan, Spencer, Pat, and Alex listened within Extortion 17’s dark confines to the Tangi Valley operation unfolding over their radios, all understood that despite their past experiences and skill levels, some situations involve unknowns. Such possibilities, however, never swayed their resolve to press ahead with their mission. Pilot Bryan Nichols’s determination was only strengthened by his memory of the Honey Eater downing.

“Mama! Mama!” one of Dave Carter’s brothers yelled, scampering into the family’s home on the outskirts of Oshkosh in rural western Nebraska. “Dave’s gonna fly off the shed!” Dave’s mother, Elsie, ran to the back door to see her son flapping his arms atop the peak of an old wooden outbuilding that leaned slightly to one side. He wore wings he had built by hammering together scraps of weathered lumber he had found lying around the backyard. Before she could say a word, the determined 10-year-old leapt into the air, flailing his arms until he slammed into the ground.

The moment was not his first concerted attempt to soar, or his last. Unscathed, young Dave stood up, ready for another try. Despite a stern warning against trying to fly with homemade wings, the future Chinook pilot, fascinated with flight since he’d learned to walk, continued his efforts. “ ‘If birds can do it, so can I,’ ” his mother recalled her son saying. “He tried over and over. We lived in Nebraska’s Sandhill Country, and the ground is sandy. It’s soft. And that’s why I never had to take him to the hospital with broken bones. He kept trying, sneaking around behind my back with those wooden wings.”

Elsie Carter had given birth to David Rudolph Carter, the second of three boys, on July 12, 1964, at a hospital at Royal Air Force Base Mildenhall, in the eastern English county of Suffolk. The family had moved to the facility because his father, a U.S. Marine, was stationed there, but just a few years later, she would take on the full burden of raising Dave and his two brothers on her own as a single mother. Young Dave, inspired not only by birds and flight but by the vistas and wildlife of western Nebraska, grew to love hunting and fishing. By remarkable coincidence, Elsie later moved the family to Hays, Kansas, Bryan Nichols’s home town, just prior to Dave’s high school years. There he continued his love for the outdoors, where he bowhunted geese and deer for the first time. He also began drinking coffee, a habit he learned from his mother—that was the source of his nickname, “Twitchy.” In 1983, at the age of 19, Dave joined an Army Reserve unit in Salina, Kansas, about 100 miles east of Hays, not as a pilot but as a military police officer.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.