Prelude to Afghanistan

This Story Began Long Ago In The Back Seat Of A Harvard Wwii Trainer And Ended Years Later In The Cockpit Of An Airbus A320. In Between The Author Flew World War Ii Cargo Airplanes In The Arctic Crop-Dusted And Crashed In Idaho Flew Whore-House Charters To Nevada In A Dc-3 Dc-6'S And Dc-7'S Across The Pacific And Atlantic. He Had A Closet Full Of Uniforms When In 1966 He Was Hired By Pan Am - The World'S Most Experienced Airline. Twenty-Three Years Later The Once-Proud Airline Was On Its Knees. Fortune Blessed Him Again And He Took Up Residence In Southern France Employed As An Instructor And Test Pilot With Airbus Industrie. This Is A Fictional Account Of Some Of That Journey - The Central Player Clay Hutchinson. We See Clay: Confronting Inauspicious Beginnings And Frequent Humbling Failures. We See Him Crawling Out Of A Dark Hole And Setting Off On A Long Trip Learning Along The Way How To Become A Better Human Being. This Is A Recollection Of An Unfinished Journey During Which Clay Discovers Afghanistan. And There He Grows Up A Little. Not Entirely. Never Entirely.