The Christy Collection
Military Stories and Articles
My father, Joseph Swier, who served in the U.S. Army Air Corps during WW II in the Pacific Theater, inspired me to join the United States Army.
My father was in the seminary to become a priest, but when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941, he left the seminary to join the Army.
President John F. Kennedy, who served in the Pacific Theater, as did my father, also influenced me.
Both of these men and fellow veterans were and still are my heroes.
By 1962 the world was becoming a very scary place punctuated by continuing confrontations between global communist and democratic powers, alongside growing civil, racial, and political unrest. In Southeast Asia, the Korean War brought an indecisive outcome, and the tide of combat in Vietnam now favored communist forces despite US advisors in place since 1956. Further, in 1961 alone there was an armed conflict between communist and democratic armies along the Chinese-Burma border,...
