The Lucky Loadmaster is an action packed book. It does not matter whether you are with the airmen in Vietnam, the first night of TET or just reading about the author’s hair raising childhood adventures. Sometimes growing up and learning defensive moves in a small middle North Carolina town can be interesting.
For the first time, a book written that is about the honest daily occurrences and multiple battles of a real airman in Vietnam. These were battles like others, in which people died and others became heroes. Battles in which crews looked death in the face multiple times each day, flying into places without the security of arms or cover, the stress of actual war.
Tom Stalveys wishes to enlist and study at the great Air Force electronics schools at the time, did not come to pass, instead he was assigned to the very lite and extremely dangerous rolls of an enlisted aircrew member. The courses these young men completed were at the considered complete college courses equal to obtaining a degree in a matter of months. The duty aboard the Lockheed C-130 Hercules as a Weight and balance Technician or Loadmaster was and still is essential. He was destined to end up in Vietnam.
After two and a half years of training and protocol Only a slight recess was given these airmen as these young men were handed the keys to three fourths of a C-130 aircraft. Most of them averaged 22 years of age. Trained at doing their jobs by the book they soon learned that doing so in Vietnam could cost time and lives. Great at modifying plans on the run, many were awarded our nation’s highest war time decorations.
Laugh out loud as you follow a young boy into what must have been The start of The Lucky Loadmasters ironic heavenly inspired protection and cry for the pain of his broken body!
