New Year’s Day 2012, retired USAF Special Intelligence Officer Harry Batchelder, having completed post-war visits to old haunts in Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand, realized the time had come to confront his Vietnam bêtes noirs. “Owl Brook Farm: A Step Back in Time” chronicles his decision, preparation, and return to the landscapes and people of South Vietnam.
On October 30, 2014, retired USAF Colonel Harry Batchelder, having long forsworn setting foot above the 17th Parallel, boarded an American Airlines flight from New York to Chicago, transferred to a Japan Air flight to Tokyo, and then, via Air Vietnam, flew on to Hanoi, where he planned to pick up a Minsk motorcycle and take off for the Tonkinese Alps. His adventure took an unexpected early turn, as recounted in “The Last Flight West.”