I was so lucky. An inch or two difference, and I would have been killed by the blow or dragged down with the plane. He felt devastated that his crewmen had been lost, White apparently killed in the plane, Delaney when his chute did not open. In truth there was nothing more Bush could have done. Yet he has wondered for years.
War is like that.
It is one of the oddities of his climb to the presidency that this story was almost unknown until he ran for the White House. Do it again and do it right. He doesn't say it, but maybe it was to be a last salute to his crewmen. He did not do anything about it until this February, when he gave a speech to the U.S. Parachute Association in Houston. His listeners stood and roared an ovation for one who had been there.