For an “Afghan Hand,” Explosions and Crashes Echo Loss and “a Romanticized Idea of Adventure”
“His story is so much the story of Afghanistan: youth destroyed violently while fighting for a better home,” writes reserve Naval Officer Jack McCain.
About Jack McCain
Jack McCain is a reserve naval aviator for Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron 85 and a graduate of the United States Naval Academy and Georgetown’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. He has deployed four times in the Pacific, Persian Gulf, and Afghanistan where, as an Afghan hand, he flew alongside Afghan pilots in the Black Hawk throughout southern Kandahar and Helmand province. Prior to that he was a leadership instructor at the Naval Academy and a search-and-rescue pilot in Guam. He is working as American Airlines’ director for state and local government affairs for the western United States.
