The veteran helicopter pilots were back in Southeast Asia - landing in Bangkok to reminisce about the exploits of the CIA's secret wars.
The gathering last week was the first big effort to bring together veterans of the secret wars in Laos and Cambodia and not-so-secret actions in the Vietnam War, at the scene of much of their wartime rest and recreation, Bangkok.
These were the hard men of Air America, the CIA's secret airline, and its cousins the Continental Air Services, the civilian Bird Air, and the 'customers' - namely the CIA agents who directed the secret war.
The coded language seems part of the mystique even now, after archives have been opened and books written about one of the largest covert operations ever.
Numbers of aircraft, codes for hidden airstrips and the noms de guerre of the helicopter pilots, known as rotor-heads, jostled for attention as they shared memories and legends of their high times in the wars.
But time has wrought its work on these one-time macho men: 'Now what was the name of that place. I can see the topography clear as anything, just can't think of the name . . .'