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
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