Every year, about this time, I think back on the enigma of 1st Lieutenant Charles E. Engle (promoted posthumously to Captain). I’ve watched over the last fifteen years as the Bigwigs come back and review his file and award additional medals. Good deal. I expect they’re eventually going to hang a CMOH around his neck. Chuck qualified as a “Wild and crazy guy” up in the sky when he was still cutting air. 

Truth be told, I hadn’t thought about Chuck for 37 years until the summer of 2008 when I was fighting the last part of getting service connected for hepatitis C. Chuck was aware of a GSW I incurred over the fence up in the country that rhymed with Mouse in September ’70 so I was hoping to get a buddy letter from him to confirm it. Jez, you’d think the scar would be proof enough. But nooooooooo. The VA ratings crew asked me if anyone could vouch for me on it. Chuck immediately popped up in my mind-but how to find him?

Still missing the RVN Cross of Gallantry with Palm

I wasn’t too savvy on computers yet so I asked Cupcake to help me. She found him in about 3 minutes. Unfortunately, he was was on the Wall and no longer among us. The last time I saw him was December ’70 outside the Class VI store which just happened to be next to the O Club there at Udorn. I’d flown in for a cigarettes and booze run because we didn’t have those amenities up where we were at East Bumfork.  He was on crutches and had flown down on the Klong flight for them to debride and sew up his foot over at the 432nd Hospital. He’d caught a round through the bottom of the A/C recently and they’d taken him off Flight status until he could push the right rudder pedal without his crutch.

We shook hands,  said hi and bye and I headed back out the next day back to O/L Charlie (Tango Eleven) (up in the northwesterly part of Thailand). The fact that I never ran into him again wasn’t weird. Most folks who were sane did a one-year tour and bugged out back to the World. Six months was the max up at Alternate. I never expected to need to speak to him again. Sadly, he’d be dead in less than two months.

The information is sketchy but I believe he was ferrying an O 1 back to Udorn on February 22 from Alternate for maintenance and augered in somewhere in between. The AvGas we were using was always contaminated by the red clay silica which got stirred up on the flight line and revetments every time a propeller got near it. To counteract it, we had to operate our engines with a richer fuel mixture which made them run hot. It eventually clogged up the carburetor bowls requiring a cleanout and rebuild. We were lucky if we got more than 350 hours of run time before maintenance.

I did get a chance to fly back to Indiana for other business and made a side trip up to Winchester (where he’s buried) in 2015. It’s too bad he didn’t make it back. So, for whatever reason, his date of passing always comes up subconsciously on my radar every year. I’ll look down at the date when I’m doing something on the computer and notice it’s February 22…all over again. Fifty two years this time.

It’s said in Indian Country you will live forever as long as your name continues to be spoken. I’d hope that’s true. Chuck will continue to live in my mind in that sense until I bite the dust, too. I’m sure there are others who will also remember him as fondly as I do. He was definitely unforgettable as far as human beings go. What we’d call a ‘keeper’.