Friday, September 30, 2005

3 Days in Hong Kong & Kowloon!

We hit the ground running after parking our base-flight C-47 (a "slick" or "trash-hauler" used for carrying supplies & people). Actually, most of us took the airport mini-bus to the semi-skyscraper President Hotel. This was a favorite spot with many American GI's on leave because of the many commercial shops on the first floor of the hotel. Getting excellent suits made from British wool & other fabric at very good prices was de rigeur. I got two tailored to my personal dimensions for taking back to the States 6 months later. We had all heard about the "China Fleet" store which was a British military/naval exchange open to all of us with many local concessionaires & great prices!

Unfortunately, I had promised a couple of buddies to bring them back stereo amplifiers and it limited the weight of my OWN purchases because we were hauling the purchases of the 30 GI-passengers too. On ANY airplane, the findings on weights-&-balances calculations are critically important! Overweight airplanes can't fly well and their extra weight burns extra fuel. You want to be light enough to actually lift off the runway as well as not run out of gas overwater. Most planes cannot be refueled in the air -- prior planning prevents poor performance!

I STILL wish I had not used such good discretion but had also purchased the most beautiful ivory chess set I have EVER seen! Anglo-Saxon warrior faces & helmets in ivory, elongated and stylized, were left in the China Fleet store because I was such a "Good Soldier." Turns out, the aircraft commander didn't mean for the crew to observe the same item limits as the passengers -- Damn! Miscommunication strikes again -- not uncommon among pilots (& others) who think they are "cool" and "efficient" because they don't use many words. "Efficient" can also mean "ineffective" -- especially when everyone else has to do the thinking FOR the miscommunicators, and imagine "what the Captain MEANT to say!"

I DID have a bit of fun wandering around Hong Kong Island when not at the China Fleet store. (The stores in Hong Kong delivered all my purchases back to my room at the President Hotel -- very convenient encouragement for increased sales!) To get to the China Fleet store, I had to find the waterfront and take either the larger ferry to the island in the harbor or pay for a more expensive "water taxi" by myself if I were in a big businessman's hurry. Since I had no one to accompany me in Hong Kong, I took the ferry -- more time to observe & participate in the culture & people. Although the Hong Kong ferry was the size of our Stateside ferries, theirs are for people -- not cars. Once on the island (which IS vigorously hilly in many places), I walked awhile but, eventually, took a rickshaw ride to the China Fleet store -- the easiest way to follow directions to get there! It was the only rickshaw ride of my life and felt just like I had imagined. I was in great shape back then & just used the fun of the ride instead of trying to find my way with Chinese directions. But, if I were there this many years later, I'd hire a personal rickshaw & driver for the whole day!

Now, at the China Fleet store, I can remember wandering around for hours looking at many different vendors' wares. The latest in classy, modern items of any specialty at the best prices in the Far East -- every brand of Japanese camera was available here cheaper than in Japan! (A helpful buddy had told me not to wait for a trip to Japan.) I bought a number of things for Raquel including a full ounce of the most intoxicating parfum I have ever inhaled -- Crepe de Chine! Ironically, it is true French parfum with the name, "Crepe of China!" I was so infatuated with the delicate China doll patiently explaining all the scents in the perfume shop with perfect English that I bought her a small bottle of Crepe de Chine perfume -- momentarily wishing that either I weren't such a newlywed or such a scrupulous Catholic! I surprised her as I left the shop and presented it to her with my thanks on the way out of the store! Raquel never DID finish that large bottle of perfume I brought home to her. Looks like I should have given the larger bottle to the China doll! (Looks like I should not have gotten married.)

posted by Richard A @ 3:46 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Good Deal Trip to Hong Kong!

Close to the end of my year's tour of duty, I came eligible to navigate my way to Hong Kong -- all overwater flights required an onboard navigator & Pleiku AB's "Base Flight" flying support missions had no navigators assigned! This was a mission hauling GI's on a 3-day "leave" or R&R to the edge of "Red China" as it was called then.

This was my first long-distance overwater flight anywhere without an instructor on-board! We tracked NNE out of Da Nang on the TACAN radio nav aid counteracting the wind drift so that, if winds didn't change over the next 8 hours, we would come in right over Hong Kong Harbor! The pilots had been on this route many times before but it was a virgin trip for me. The old C-47 had absolutely NO navigation equipment on-board, so I had to keep my DR (dead reckoning) position super-carefully up-to-date! If we had no clouds under us halfway across the South China Sea (during the Vietnam War, you heard of that place a lot), I would be able to see a large reef underwater and know where we were for sure! (In order to make sure we were not flying into Red China!) Well, the pilots were not worrying, so I surely was not going to show that I was!

The fear of Red China was a realistic concern back in the day! Look at any world map with Southeast Asia and you will see a very big, round island in the middle of the South China Sea between Vietnam, Hong Kong, and Red China. Draw a line from Da Nang in Vietnam straight to Hong Kong, and you will notice it comes too close to Hainan Island for comfort to an enemy nation's airplane. Especially if that airplane doesn't know exactly where the hell it is! Nav School taught us that DR (Dead Reckoning) is the basis of all navigation -- this flight would be the no-joke proof of that as long as we didn't drift the wrong way (west) over Hainan Island. And if I didn't reckon right with very careful line drawing, we could wind up dead. That could ruin our whole day -- crew AND the 30-odd GI's riding in this old WW2 aircraft. (I guess we wouldn't have to go back to Vietnam, though.)

Halfway to Hong Kong when I looked out my little navigator's slit window by the left engine, we were undercast & I couldn't see a frigging thing! I checked from all the other windows in the cockpit, too. Even with a super-accurate DR on your map, you can't see the ocean from 10,000 feet if there is a solid layer of clouds at 5000 feet! I guarantee I had kept a very accurate DR position for every little change of heading or change in engine speed. Our airspeed in a Gooney Bird was 120 Knots (2 nautical miles per minute) -- some of you have driven cars faster than that standard Gooney Bird speed!

That was a very important fix point and we could not take advantage of it to check on our wind drift or our groundspeed and ETA (Estimated Time of Arrival) to Hong Kong. There were no other landmarks like islands or ANY fixing aids until about 80 miles out of Hong Kong -- 7 hours into the flight as I recall, and we finally had our commercial AM radio lock-on to a Hong Kong broadcast signal. The arrow tracking the signal was pointing ever so slightly to the LEFT (west) of the aircraft's nose! If the equipment were working properly, we were not going to be shot out of the sky on THIS trip! Once we got within 35 NM (nautical miles) of Hong Kong, our TACAN radio navigation aid locked onto the signal, gave us a radial and distance away from the Hong Kong antenna, & confirmed we were within 8 miles of where my 6-7 hours elapsed time of careful DR'ing had plotted out on my navigator's chart! (That's really very close -- especially for just DR! International rules allowed us to be up to 20 miles off.)

Hong Kong airport's runway actually juts out into the harbor of the then-British Crown Colony of Hong Kong. The majority of that long, long runway is actually in the middle of Hong Kong Harbor! It runs straight out of the terminal area in mainland Chinese city of Kowloon! The tarmac sits on top of what appears to be a long, narrow levee dredged from the harbor floor. There is no room for running off the runway sideways because there is no grass overrun there like at every other runway I have ever seen. If you go off the runway when landing THERE, you might just drown! I don't remember if our old plane even carried water survival gear -- a big raft & individual PFD "water wings!" I'm sure we were required to have them (so they must have been there in a big old bag or two in the aft end of the little C-47 (DC-3), but it wouldn't have made a damned bit of difference on landing, anyway. It takes 5 - 10 minutes to get emergency gear out and ready to use -- that surely cannot be done when EVERYONE is strapped in for landing!

posted by Richard A @ 7:04 AM 0 comments

Friday, September 23, 2005

Fancy Silk Vietnamese Pajamas on my Bed!

Don't get excited -- these weren't Mama-san's PJ's although a couple of the younger ones had given pidgin-English hints to get into my bed when I was still in it! That was when they thought I was still single since I had kept my marriage secret. The Red Cross had let the cat out of the bag while I was on that secret flight over the Ho Chi Minh Trail -- no more horny mama-sans would be making sexy hints to me. Well, probably not. Who knows if they weren't just looking for a better deal than they had in Vietnam, anyway? Washing clothes and cleaning the hootch are not the most lucrative jobs in the world although I had heard a couple of the 20-somethings had found ways to supplement their regular mama-san incomes. Now, after learning about divorce first-hand, I'm not so sure it's any different back here "in the World!"

But the PJ's were VERY nice embroidered silk PJ's purchased from the on-base Vietnamese concessionaire, and left on my bunk in my locked-door Pleiku AB room as a surprise gift to be mailed to my new son from I-still-don't-know-who. I guess the on-base American Red Cross (ARC) worker must have notified the Squadron to find out how to locate me. He left the announcement to go by his office next day off for the official ARC certificate announcing Rik's birth. My buddies must have been shocked to find out I was married and, more shocking for any who previously thought I was a religious zealot because I wouldn't join them looking for "stray stuff" (for sex). Ironically, that's kind of how Ivan got started in the first place.

I recently ran across the photo I took of my son in those PJ's when he was finally big enough for them a year later and walking. That pic is of him opening the refrigerator door in our post-Vietnam quarters at Mather AFB in Sacramento, CA -- He has the cutest smile on his face as he turned his head around to look at me calling his name. I can picture it in my mind's eye anytime I want. Life was sure to turn out differently in the long run for us, but he and I have always remained close. Should be -- my love for him is really why I married his mother. NO child should be cheated out of knowing his/her Dad!

It was after the Red Cross announcement that I bought my own wedding band from the little BX on Pleiku AB. I had already given Raquel her diamond and wedding bands before I left the States. Isn't it interesting that my wife NEVER gave me another one, herself, over the next 20 years we were married? (Food for thought!)

posted by Richard A @ 10:44 AM 0 comments

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

Happy Ho-Chi-Minh-Trail Birthday! [First child's.]

Well, his birthday was way earlier than expected -- I was smack-dab over the middle of the Ho Chi Minh Trail in my EC-47 getting checked out on secret missions after being transferred out of the Delta to Bien Hoa near Saigon for a month and, then, switched to a different airplane with completely different equipment and a completely different mission! It only made sense to switch AC-47 PILOTS to EC-47's, but not navigators. The pilots must have been making the decisions. They often have difficulty thinking of anyone other than pilots. DUH!

Son, Ivan, was not expected for another month but his mom developed toxemia that required the base hospital in Laredo to induce labor early. If they had gone to a civilian doctor, the routine tests would not have been done which discovered this problem. They both may well have died! The only problem was that Raquel let the nurse talk her into changing the name she & I had agreed on BEFOREHAND to list on Ivan's birth certificate! It was the first hint that she would let other people push her around and do things against my better judgement. I took those things as a promise on her part and, it became a broken promise. (One of many to follow.) It was the first hint that her word didn't mean much to her. Readers should beware of this in their own lives if honor and truth-telling are of much importance to them: a person does not value truthtelling highly if she doesn't stay with her promises. Or vice-versa! She is likely to be unreliable in other situations, too. MY experience over the next 20 years taught me not to trust a person like her. But it TOOK 20 years and a psychological test because Raquel had been well-trained over her lifetime to hide the truth and say what would get her her own way or, at least, keep her out of overt confrontations. Now THERE is a hint of her Mexican culture coming through.,,, I DON'T think it was just HER family although I don't have scientific evidence of that, yet.

posted by Richard A @ 9:00 PM 0 comments

Saturday, September 03, 2005

Nuns & orphans first, marketplace w/ bars & hookers next!

[This is a continuation of the last post which was inadvertently locked into no-editing status.]

The promise I made to my squadron mates to motivate helping with Civic Actions visits to the orphanage was enticing to those who wanted a little more adventure in a typical "guy" way! "We'll stop by the marketplace downtown for a couple of hours on OUR WAY BACK! Those who want to can go shopping in the open air market & others can go for a drink in a nearby bar!" Of course, they knew there would be "waitresses" & the infamous B-girls (bar-girls) who would bring drinks or sit and talk with GI's for as long as one would buy them a whiskey & Coke to chat. These drinks were often, but not always, the well-known "Saigon Tea" which we had all heard about. Saigon B-girls had started the money-making tradition of charging for a whiskey & Coke and then drinking iced tea instead (it looked the same.)

The one or two times I can remember going into the bar in the afternoon with my GI friends (we were always in U.S. jungle fatigues), there were not many customers and the girls were certainly happy to see us! I do not remember what I did with the M-16 those times but the girls were more concerned with eventually getting our other guns operating. I recall some very beautiful Eurasian (French & Vietnamese) girls waiting on us - VERY beautiful! And me, not just a newlywed, but a secret newlywed! I think I just passed it off by saying I was engaged & could "not be butterfly boy" visiting all the beautiful Vietnamese flowers.

The troops were probably just as happy not to have the Trung Uy (1/LT) competing with them for higher payments in the private, little, back rooms (although my stock on the GI machismo market probably plunged with every downtown "after-trip" from the orphanage). Plus the girls understood I really WAS "taking care of my men." It's funny now, but I guess I sort of had command of an afternoon military patrol, then. More than most other AF officers I knew ever would. I probably SHOULD have gone Army! I always wanted to be a leader & had studied leadership extensively with my management & psychology courses. But, I had more command experience when I was an Airman Basic at Lackland (AFB in San Antonio) than I ever got again in 5 years of enlisted duty and 19 years of Air Force officer duty. That was when I was the Barracks Chief in charge of 50 of my fellow Basics when the Training Sergeants went home for the day. (And I didn't get "fired" like the other Barracks Chief -- good luck & the grace of God, I guess. I remember one night finding some of MY troops -- big ol' future football players for the United States Air Force Academy who were taking turns curled up on a table lighting a match to each other's live farts, of all things!) But, that is another story...

posted by Richard A @ 8:50 PM 0 comments

Prostitutes & Bars Motivated my Orphanage Helpers!

I am no longer writing about Nuns -- let's get that straight, my non-Catholic relatives! I tell people the truth when I say I am half-Protestant and half-Catholic, but I won't go into that right now. Nuns are not prostitutes; prostitutes are not nuns. Period. NOW, let me explain a little more.

To get some of the guys in the squadron to go off-base to help at the orphanage, I had to take some extraordinary measures. Even though the route was right through the middle of the Delta city of Can Tho, we knew there were many VC around, anyway. After I checked out the blue 6-pax to drive (clearly a USAF-marked vehicle), we really WERE marked men. Of course, we were caucasians in olive drab jungle fatigues -- you guess what country we came from! I had to go to the armory and check out an M-16 with ammo to give the illusion we could defend ourselves while off-base; that illusion was for making my recruiting of our troops easier more than for the VC. Ironically, when I was here in the Delta gunship squadron, there were only enough pistols for the aircrews while they were flying combat missions; each crewmember checked one out before each flight & returned it before going to our hootches for a beer the next morning. We couldn't KEEP firearms in our quarters like, later, at Pleiku AB when I went into a non-killing recon outfit halfway through my tour of duty.

[I will add more to this post when I get some time... Check back for the part about the bars & hookers! ************** OK, it's later -- here comes my hooker story. Oh, Rats -- I'll have to put it in the next post 'cause the system parameters won't let me edit into a new paragraph here, now.]

posted by Richard A @ 12:51 PM 0 comments

Friday, September 02, 2005

Civic Actions duty as 4th SOS AC-47 Gunshipper!

After a couple of weeks getting familiar with the aircraft and the mission & the procedures at Binh Thuy, I volunteered for the additional off-duty job as the 4th Special Operations Squadron Civic Actions Officer! Someone did that before I arrived at the little FOL of Binh Thuy on the southern branch of the Mekong River in the Delta. There certainly was not any training program for it -- basically, just hearing that we helped to sponsor the Vietnamese orphanage in nearby Can Tho which was staffed by French-trained Catholic nurse/nuns. All were Vietnamese and spoke French as well because they had gone to France for their medical training. Only one, Sister Anicet, spoke any English; luckily, I spoke high-school French for the times when Sr. Anicet was not at the Can Tho Orphanage during my visits. The kids at THIS orphanage were all under 5 years old and would form a throng around our G.I. legs happily greeting us on arrival. Obviously, they had associated visiting GI's over the years with the candy, hugs, and happiness we usually brought with us.

American GI's have always been softies for little kids in foreign countries. Kids always remind us of our brothers, sisters, kids, cousins, or neighbor kids back home -- local kids always seem to have the same innocence in spite of what they've seen in a war zone. Tan-skin, black-haired Vietnamese & Filipino kids reminded me of the Mexican kids (some would call "street urchins") I had often seen at border crossings into Mexico. Only difference seemed to be the lack of "chicle" for sale to support their families. Probably, kids don't seem threatening to soldiers like ours who averaged only 19 years of age in Vietnam (young, but not as young as many Viet Cong soldiers/"draftees.") Which is why the Viet Cong (VC) didn't take long to start using young local kids to carry/leave bombs and booby traps for American soldiers and vehicles (like tape-strapped grenades put in gas tanks.)

I liked this particular additional duty -- it was a social-justice kind of job. Since everyone had to have one or 2 additional duties, I figured I might as well pick one I could really enjoy doing & get some self-fulfillment out of it. Of course, Squadron Civic Actions officers had to recruit volunteers to go with us in the blue "6-pack" (6-passenger truck) we signed out at the Motorpool to take goodies or just to go visit the kids and nuns at the orphanage to strengthen the bonds of friendship we were building. An ongoing project which I had asked my newlywed bride, Raquel, to help continue was one where wives of Spooky crewmenbers would gather up clean, used clothes, diapers, and dehydrated milk to send us to give to the nuns for the orphanage kids. Many of those kids were extremely malnourished -- I'll never forget the little green-tinged baby lying in the crib who was dying of malnutrition but the nuns led us to hope & pray for that baby's sake. I never saw a child with such bone impressions showing through the skin before -- and that baby's skin was actually a shade of chartreuse all over! I just can't remember whether it was a boy or a girl since both were there and looked pretty much alike at the diaper-age of 18 months. On my next visit, that baby was no longer there.

posted by Richard A @ 6:52 PM 0 comments