This is my cousin HAN NGUYEN in plain clothes, with me in Marines uniform.
We were same age.
When my parent sent me to the Redemptorist Monastery in Hue, his parent delivered him to St. Joseph Monastery in Dalat. We didn't have much time together during our youth.

After escaping the "buried-alive event" of the 1968 Mau Than War, I had been qualified to join the Air Forces, but my mother made her best to intervene and stop me. So I landed the first job as illustrator for the US Army, and he took my place, to be a jet-fighter pilot.

This photo was taken during a picnic to Nam O Beach. On an air-support flight to the 8th Marines Battalion on the south bank of Thach Han River, his A-37 Dragonfly has been hit. He parachuted to crossfire location. A Huey UH-1 passed by and saw his orange chute. The 4-airman crew landed and picked him up. As the chopper hovered up, it got a rocket and was down on the same spot. All five jumped out to safety. Three days later, 3 of them were able to cross into Marines bunkers, and my cousin was among the bodies they retrieved 2 days later. So this is his last photo, taken 8 days before his death.