John Halachis retired from the United States Air Force as a Lieutenant Colonel where his career was divided between flying as a weapons officer/navigator in F4's and in the field of human intelligence gathering assignments. In the span of this career he was assigned to Germany (Potsdam), Vietnam and Greece on three occasions mostly in the capacity of Air Attache. But, before all this began he had a four-year tour in the United States Navy where he was assigned to the Joint Military Advisory Group in Greece at the outset of the Marshall Plan. The motivation to portray some of these experiences in Birds Got to Fly had roots in personal reminiscences throughout the decade of the 1940's. It was an era when America's horizons stretched beyond the shores of Boston brought about by a global war.