{"id":15412,"date":"2026-05-28T14:42:49","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T19:42:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/187thahc.net\/?p=15412"},"modified":"2026-05-28T14:46:38","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T19:46:38","slug":"toon-daddy-by-pat-dougan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/187thahc.net\/?p=15412","title":{"rendered":"Toon Daddy by Pat Dougan"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I finally wrote it down,<\/strong><\/p>\n

‘Toon Daddy is published<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For those of you who have known me for a while, you’ve probably heard pieces of this story. A year in Vietnam. A nickname the men in my platoon gave me. A day in November 1968 that I still measure the rest of my life against.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is all here.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

‘Toon Daddy: Twelve Months in Vietnam as a Commissioned Officer and Combat Helicopter Pilot\u00a0<\/a><\/em>is now available on Amazon as a Kindle eBook, with the corrected softcover arriving by Friday, May29th.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I’ll be honest with you about what it is and isn’t. It is not the Great American Novel. It is a short memoir about 1\/80th of my life <\/strong>but the most important 1\/80th, the year that made me who I became. There’s no blood and gore, no score-settling, unfortunately there is tragedy. What there is: the truth about what it was like to be a twenty-one-year-old lieutenant leading a platoon of highly intelligent warrant officer pilots who were constitutionally suspicious of anyone who hadn’t earned their respect <\/strong>and what it cost to earn it.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cI can tell you plainly: it happened the way he says it happened. The men were who he says they were. That day in November was exactly as bad as he says it was.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chief Warrant Officer Johnnie T. Wilson (Ret.), 187<\/em><\/strong>th<\/sup><\/em><\/strong>, Crusaders, who wrote the foreword and has been my friend for nearly sixty years.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book was written for people who weren’t there — <\/strong>families, friends, anyone who has tried to understand why some men come home from war (regardless of which war — WWII to Afghanistan<\/strong>) and are never quite the same, even if they never took a bullet. Veterans will find the behind-the-scenes look familiar. Everyone else will find it honest.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are also a few moments I can only describe as Divine Interventions. You’ll know them when you get there.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, I’m proud of it. And yes, at my age, finally being a published author is not nothing.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I hope you’ll read it. When you do, please leave a comment in the Amazon review section.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pat <\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I finally wrote it down, ‘Toon Daddy is published For those of you who have known me for a while, you’ve probably heard pieces of this story. A year in Vietnam. A nickname the men in my platoon gave me. A day in November 1968 that I still measure the rest of my life against….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14764,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","iawp_total_views":22,"footnotes":""},"categories":[191],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books"],"modified_by":"Webmaster","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/187thahc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/187thahc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/187thahc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/187thahc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/187thahc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15412"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/187thahc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15413,"href":"https:\/\/187thahc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15412\/revisions\/15413"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/187thahc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/187thahc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/187thahc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/187thahc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}