After a couple of weeks at Clark AB's "Jungle School" in the Phillipines to learn how to survive in Vietnamese jungles which were due west of the similar Phillipine jungles, we landed in Vietnam -- Nha Trang AB by the city of the same name.
There IS a little story from jungle school about the Negritos who were sent out to find us as proof that we could not E&E (Escape & Evade) very well! Turns out the old sergeant who did not camouflage himself and slept out right in the open, cool air where any Negrito within 30 yards would have seen him, did every bit as well as I did. He slept well while I went ahead & played the game properly as instructed. I covered myself under all kinds of warm, itchy, ground cover 2/3 the way up the hill on an incline crawling with bugs, insects, and God knows what else; since the Negritos never came down that particular path to search in our 12-hour nighttime E&E game, neither of us had to give up his chit worth one pound of rice for his family's jungle subsistence. OK, but if we WERE ever shot down in Vietnam, I had practiced MY lessons and would better evade the bad guys!
At Nha Trang, I in-processed for a couple of days but, right away, I ran into my best roommate from the Air Force Academy, Charlie Scott! I hadn't seen Charlie since I had been washed out of pilot training 18 months earlier in Laredo, TX. Charlie was a few classes ahead of me and made it through pilot training but we had lost contact with each other when I went to nav school in Sacramento. We BOTH had selected one of the ballsier assignments and were assigned to AC-47 "Spooky" sidefiring gunships whose wing HQ was at Nha Trang! (This is the same aircraft known earlier as "Puff, the Magic Dragon" in John Wayne's Vietnam movie, "The Green Berets.") It is interesting how many similarities Charlie & I had that I hadn't known about -- I just knew we were VERY well suited to be roomies and friends at "the Zoo." I had other roomies there but they came from such different backgrounds & values, I guess, that it kept us from "jelling" like Charlie & I did.
After 2 days of spending open time BS'ing and catching up at the Nha Trang Officers Club, he went north to Da Nang and I went south to Binh Thuy, and we never saw each other again. Although my orders said my base was Nha Trang, most of us were farmed out to "FOL's" (Forward Operating Locations) where we were encouraged to go because we could earn lots of medals there! (I DID want to come home with a few medals more than I left with, but there is usually a good reason why military people are awarded medals! Duuh!)
More later about this and Charlie...
posted by Richard A @ 8:37 PM
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