My grandfather may not have been the most badass person to ever live, but he was the most badass person I’ve ever met.

He flew P51s in Southeast Asia destroying Japanese trains in ww2, then F86s in Korea, then F4s and finally Cessna recon planes in Vietnam. He got the silver star and Purple Heart in Vietnam.

He never talked about his career until he was very old. He hated the south Vietnamese and Taiwanese and loved the communist Chinese and north Vietnamese, he thought they were much better people. He thought the atomic bombing of Japan was cruel and unjustified.

As a squadron commander in Vietnam he received an order, signed by Nixon (according to him the micromanagement from the government in Vietnam was horrible) to bomb a Vietnamese village. After flying over low and seeing children playing outside, he ordered his planes to turn around and lied about bombing it.

He was shot down by a Vietnamese SAM while flying a reconnaissance plane during his third tour there. He managed to escape back to friendly territory before being captured in spite of his injuries, and never went back.