Coming Home It was May 26th, 1971, time to step onto the “freedom bird” and go home. Like every other guy in the war-zone back then, I had no illusions about what to expect. We all read the Stars and Stripes newspaper and knew what the news was from the States. The objective of a returning serviceman was to get through the airport quietly and unnoticed, get off the aircraft, or the bus, or the train, and get home with as little contact as possible. Even so, nobody I knew