Great magazine and never missed an issue.
Those were wilder times, hardier times, memorable and loose. The
veterans of Vietnam were not yet aged and, as happens after wars, did
not settle easily into selling air filters at the NAPA outlet. They had
lain atop Amtracs in the tropical night, with star shells blazing white
in the sky and the smoke trailing almost solid and the distant roar and
thump of artillery. They had known the fast flight of helicopters over
emerald-green dangerous jungle and the clotting dead and garish
disemboweled and the crack of AKs. It was not preparation for the
boredom of civilian life.
And so they came, we came, some of us, to work for
Soldier of Fortune, dread magazine of purported mercenaries, in Boulder, to the horror of soft, nice liberals whose town it was.
SOF
was more a pretext and framework for international adventuring than
anything else, although it was honest journalism. The staff were ballsy,
uproarious, given to guns and motorcycles and skydiving and the holy
god Adrenaline. Unconventional. I doubt that they had even heard of
convention.
I recall them offering 1 million dollars reward for a Mi 24 Hind-D if there was anyone crazy enough to steal one and fly it into Honduras, Pakistan or El Salvador.
ReplyDeleteThanks and am not clear on that or a lot of other things! :)
DeleteI remember this mag. That said, I don't recall its existence in the early 70's Central America. Primarily Southern/Central Mexico and Guatemala (all). We had maintained a presence there for years. Primarily either CIA, or under the auspices of United Fruit. Crazy days for sure. What happened to that thing? SOF? :)
ReplyDeleteI don't recall its existence in the early 70's Central America.
DeleteI was in Vietnam and hadn't heard of it until I returned in '75.
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