In one of my most cherished flying assignments, I had the honor of being a Wild Weasel. Those are the intrepid airmen who were given the task of finding, then attacking, surface to air missile sites. Those who flew these great aircraft and this most dangerous of missions felt much like the brave British warriors who were with King Henry V at the battle of Agincourt. In Shakespeare's great play about “King Harry,” the King gives one of the most inspirational speeches ever given to a group about to enter battle against overwhelming odds. That speech—the one about St. Crispin's Day—will stir you to your bones. “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers...” That is from where that line comes made famous by Stephen Ambrose in his book, then television series, about Easy Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne in WWII— Band of Brothers. The tie-in back to the Wild Weasels is that we took on overwhelming odds every time we took off and raised the gear handle. Though we never had any in our ranks who were as eloquent as Shakespeare, we did have a modernized response to going into combat— YGBSM. This acronym means You’ve Got to Be S******g Me. I know, it’s a little crude, but it certainly captured the feeling of most of us. That acronym made it onto all of our unit patches. People used to ask what it meant. Once they found out what we did for a living, they stopped asking. Funny how that works.


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