John MacInnis, who grew up as a Canadian citizen in Southern California, volunteered to serve in the US Army. Given the choice between being a helicopter pilot and an air traffic controller, he opted for the latter. He did his Army basic training at Fort Ord, California, earned a stripe, and after a lonely stint in the “alien barracks” waiting for his security clearance was sent to Keesler AFB in Biloxi, Mississippi to be trained by the Air Force in air traffic control. After that he was sent to Fort Rucker to practice “setting up the airfield, radar, tower, all that sort of stuff” in the “deepest jungle of North Florida.” Now a specialist 4, MacInnis was at last deployed to the biggest and busiest Army airfield in Vietnam, a place called Long Thanh North. He remembers the VIPs in their Beechcraft King Airs, and the Mohawks of the 73rd Surveillance, and the Army Security Agency folk with their radio relay aircraft, which “looked like porcupines” with all their antennas. He recalls the milk runs, and the scrounging, and the brisk trade that kept the 365th ASD comfortably ensconced with Fosters lager and “hot water heaters, plumbing, indoor facilities.” He also recalls being sent to Hawaii where he “drank a bunch of funny umbrella drinks at Fort DeRussy” and was sworn in as an American citizen, only to return to Vietnam and just barely miss being sent to Khe Sanh for Operation LAM SON 719, “the biggest aviation operation of the war,” because he was granted an early out and sent home Christmas Day, 1970, after enjoying a Bob Hope show because his plane was delayed.