John Leslie Glossbrenner

West Point, 1951

Be Thou At Peace

Posted by Leah Rae Glossbrenner on January 31, 2010:

I am his third daughter with Benita Sue Swafford. I love my father still! I will always miss him and be proud to be his daughter. Dad loved to fly almost as much as he loved the USA and all her freedoms! God Bless You Dad! THE FNG SONG Well we're the F-N-Gs with the Flyin Fiends And we don't have much to say The old guys hate us and they don't listen to us They laugh at the things we say But that don't matter cause we fly the Viper And we know what we wanna be And before too long they'll be singing this song As we go down in history Flyin fiends.... Gonna find old Quentin Roosevelt Fiends.... Tell him all about the Migs I kilt Fiends.... Gonna fly my Viper jet With the FABULOUS FLYING FIENDS! Well the foes started dying when the fiends started flyin Back in World War One and Two The Commies said bummer in the Korean summer When the fiends in their Sabres flew Vietnam came along and they fought the Viet Cong In their F-4 Phantom Two When a war needs winnin; the generals be grinnin 'Cause they know what the fiends can do Flyin Fiends.... Tell the Daks that the fiends wanna play Fiends.... Shit their pants and we watch 'em run away Fiends.... What the hell we'll shoot 'em anyway We're the FABULOUS FLYING FIENDS! Now the time's come along where we end this song And have ourselves a beer or two We'll talk about flyin, and we'll talk about fightin Might even shoot our watches too In our party suits, and our combat boots Who wouldn't wanna be us? Cause we always check six, and we've got big ______ That's why they call us FAB-U-LOUS Flying Fiends.... Gonna roll in hot and take a shack Fiends.... Won't be happy till the commies attack Fiends.... Gonna build me a pile of daks We're the FABULOUS FLYING FIENDS! The fabulous flying fiends.... Gonna put a slammer in his face Fiends.... Gotta G.E. engine, wanna race? Fiends.... We're gonna fucking own this place We're the FABULOUS FLYING FIENDS! A SALUTE TO THE FIENDS The average fiend is one part lover and two parts tiger, with a dash of sangfroid, a dollop of Joie de vivre, and a hunk of weltschmerz thrown in for good measure. He lies with a perpetually irritated bump on the bridge of his nose where his oxygen mask rubs, is slightly deaf from listening to loud engines and radios all his life, and has low blood pressure and even lower pulse rate, is uncomfortable on the ground in anything but a tight fitting phone booth, has trigger reflexes, eyeballs on the back of his hard hat, broad peripheral vision, a rock-like bottom, and extremely articulate hands (with which he demonstrates innumerable combat maneuvers each day - between cigars.) He also has the habit of looking at his fingernails often to see if they are turning blue (the basis of high altitude oxygen management.) He believes passionately that the only degree worth having is a PHD in flyology, and is just as firmly convinced that the world is three drinks behind and that there would be no more wars if people would only catch up. Many think he is to be replaced by some sort of flying univac, but to this he replies: "Where else can you find another non-linear servomechanism weighing only 160 pounds and having such unusual adaptability that can be produced so cheaply by unskilled labor?" When he eventually spins in and 'Buys the Farm', he wants to do it with his boots on (wellingtons, modified with zippers: $23.50) and live forevermore in a land populated by blondes.... "Where whiskey flows from telegraph poles, and there's poker every night."

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