Is An Apology to Audobon Society In Order?

By: | TriCities.com
Published: July 05, 2009

Yesterday was Independence Day, a holiday marked with bands marching, flags flying, speeches and cookouts and excessive beer drinking.

But it is also time to pause and reflect on events, particularly during wartime, that took place over the years. Some are tragic, others heroic, and still others are on the lighter side.

This story was told to me by a former GI many years ago, who swore that it was true: During WWII in the South Pacific, we had a number of landing strips for planes on small islands or atolls on islands in the South Pacific. They were GIs who flew and maintained the aircraft, quonset huts, and not much else, and nothing to do. But there were some flightless birds which the GIs called dodos. The birds couldn’t fly well, because they were too heavy and unable to run fast enough to achieve flying speed, or Vmc to us aviators.

So the GIs would amuse themselves by revving up a couple of bombers and the dodos would run toward the propwash, but when the dodos got a few feet in the air, the GI chopped the throttles and the birds would crash and become as dead as, well, a dodo. This atrocity was never reported by the war correspondents.

I am copying the president in hopes that he will apologize to the Audobon Society.

Ted Slack
Lebanon, Va.