Shot down over North Vietnam, Capt. Herbert (Hesh) Altman has a close encounter of the simian kind!

Source: National Geographic, September 1968.

"Hesh graduated from the Airforce Academy in 1962. Hewas flying as navigator in the back seat of a McDonnell F-4D Phantom II, when he ejected, or punched out.

"My pilot yelled, get out, Hesh, get out, and I ejected. It was 7 o'cock and a pitch-black moonless night."

The airman found himself hanging up along the side of a cliff face, bits and pieces of his jet plane burning all about him. Far down below he could see columns of enemy trucks driving south with their headlights on.

"About midnight, Hesh went on, a chestnut-brown monkey came to see the burning wreckage and I said, Hi, monkey.

I petted her for about an hour, happy to have company.

I scratched her under the chin and she really liked that. Seemed to me that she had been petted before.

She crawled up and kept playing with my vest. I was trying to get my strobe light out in case I had a chance to signal.

I had to take off my gloves to do it, and the monkey stole my gloves..."

Yes! Hesh was successfully rescued!

In fact, according to the author, Howard Sochurek:

"As of this writing, U.S. Air Force teams in Southeast Asia have bought back 1,300 American servicemen, many of them wounded, plucking them from dense jungle with steel cables [like Hesh, minus his lady-monkey friend!], snatching them from blazing fields of battle, fishing them from enemy waters."