CHAPTER 1
Going Overseas
The steady murmur of the turbojet engines and the slight pulsations of high altitude flight were reassuring signs that progress was being made toward our destination. This aircraft was just another in a near endless chain of chartered Continental Airlines Boeing 707s, transporting an ever increasing number of individual replacements to Vietnam. What a way to go to war! Endless orders with endless endorsements of which one needed endless copies to substantiate nonreimbursable travel claims. From Travis Air Force Base, near San Francisco, to Kadena Air Force Base, Okinawa, all ranks, services, and sexes thrown together on this journey with but one common denominator—the happenstance of scheduling that put us on this airplane, this date, for a common destination.
The contrast with the way I had previously gone to war was immense. Little more than a dozen years prior, I, along with my entire regiment had embarked on a general class troopship, with all our equipment, to land with unit integrity upon the shores of Asia.
Perhaps it was the almost imperceptible unsteadiness of the 707s motion which suggested that we were riding an ocean of air as well as crossing an ocean, once again heading for the Orient. Vastly unlike travel aboard ship where one had a month to settle down, get to know and trust your charges and companions, cover last minute training or administrative deficiencies, spend hour upon hour of watching the endless sea while steeling oneself for the coming storm, and establishing and exercising the chain of command. Movement by air was over in a day or less. No time for mental preparation, the psyche to adjust, conjecture about the future or reinforcement from your peers and superiors—just Muzak, movies, and meals. The fleeting thought that as unsatisfactory a method of transportation to battle as this was, it was one hell of a lot easier than our adversaries departure down the Ho Chi Min trail—on foot—with all his belongings on his back as well as someone else's ammunition, and with little hope of either a safe- or scheduled-return.
As for myself, I had completed almost fifteen years in the U.S. Marine Corps, had a wife, two kids, a dog, and a mortgage, and was starting my third unaccompanied overseas tour. My feelings were extremely ambivalent in that I detested leaving my family, even overnight, yet looked avidly forward to flying in combat. If I let myself dwell on the enforced separation from family, I could easily succumb to the thousand yard stare in the ten-foot room, or what we termed "going Asiatic." Once west of Hawaii, one had to alter their outlook. Lock all the pleasant memories of home, heart, and family in a subconscious portion of the brain and store twelve months for recall. Think of it as a one year Certificate of Deposit and don't dwell on it while it earns and matures.
During the Korean War, I had been a rifle platoon leader in the First Marine Division. I enjoyed the independence and decision making but not the living conditions. I vowed that if I had to go to another battlefield, it would not be as a grunt. I applied for flight school, got my wings, and could at long last employ my years of training as an attack pilot. That is, I could if I could dodge the many rear echelon jobs that had to be filled. It is almost axiomatic that headquarters and staff billets must be fully manned before any thought could be given to filling tactical units.
My current rank as a major didn't enhance those odds as you were subject to assignment to any job that called for a captain to a colonel. Another hazard was having some kind of specialty tagged on to your records. Hmmm ... I see you have a Q clearance ... speak Swahili ... have a degree in Chemistry ... attended postgrad school: each can be the kiss of death toward assignment to a tactical unit. In turn, the specialty can relegate your entire tour to the third floor of some obscure building, where no one else is quite sure how to utilize the specialty that brought you there. The final hurdle is that of having a "friend" in personnel. By and large, escape from the drudgery of his job is dependent upon convincing whoever has "by Direction" authority that his ideal replacement has just walked in the door. Fat, dumb, and happy, you wander in and are delivered a fait accompli!
Approaching Okinawa, I have prepared myself to meet most of the aforementioned hazards. I have timed my arrival to very early in the month (3 November) knowing that most replacements come later in the month and earlier in the year. Most come during the summer, mistakenly thinking their priorities are to get the family settled and the kids in school by September. By autumn's end, the critical jobs should all be filled, and it's too early to begin replacements.
As to being a specialist, I have carefully excised any such information from my Officers Qualification Jacket during prior tours as either an administrative or commanding officer of former units. Thus, the official records which I must present, and are scrutinized by each headquarters through which I must pass, look as bland and unremarkable as the expurgated SS files of Kurt Waldheim. As a last resort, I am ready to feign amnesia, throw a fit, wait until everyone goes to lunch, or outright bribe an otherwise gung ho and straight forward clerk.
One nonadministrative hazard that one needs to trickle down to a gun squadron is to be current and qualified: in type (light attack), model (A-4), and series (E), of the tactical aircraft assigned to the unit. For the previous year, I had been the CO of a Marine Air Base Squadron, a nonflying unit that holds the deployable air field assets of an aircraft group. Not the ideal place to get current, much less transition to a different model aircraft, which I had to do. Ground school, emergency procedures trainer, ejection seat checkout, fitting out for equipment unique to the new aircraft, water survival, and a run through the high altitude pressure chamber all had to be accomplished before one could even interest the group operations officer into assigning you to one of the tactical squadrons to begin their checkout and familiarization flights.
The Douglas A-4 "Skyhawk" had been around for almost ten years and was up to their E series when I started this transition. Progressing through the familiarization, formation, instruments, and tactics syllabus, I even got to tag along with a gun squadron on its deployment to the complex of air-to-ground targets and ranges near Yuma, Arizona. I got about thirty hours and maybe that many hops in the various ordnance delivery patterns before I got called back to my home base in Beaufort, South Carolina, to put a steadying hand on my own squadron.
There were other requirements to meet or schools to attend, all of which simply got written up in my records ... sans attendance. Mostly there wasn't the time to crowd them in, the remainder were just plain odious. In either case, I could show that I had attended Survival School, Aircrew Escape and Evasion Course, Vietnamese Indoctrination, and Sensitivity to Minorities (ours, not theirs) Class. I've skipped others, but by now you get the drift.
I have struggled to get sixty hours of flight time in the aircraft that I will fly in combat for the next year, and have a thousand hours of classroom trivia, only some of which will be marginally useful, and all of which was directed from on high. To balance some of the shortfall of experience in this aircraft, I had accumulated some 2500 hours of flight time, most of which was in single-seat fighter and attack aircraft. My confidence level is very high that I will meet or exceed norms as soon as I gain a little more familiarity in the cockpit of a Skyhawk.
Sixty miles out of Okinawa, the "Fasten Seat Belt" sign blinks on. You notice the reduction of power, not from the sound of the engines, but by the slight change in cabin pressure as we start a long, gradual descent. Below ten thousand feet and closer to the island the first faint odor of the Orient began to be pumped through the air exchange system and into the cabin. It is difficult to explain, but as one approaches the Far East, one can smell it. A mixture of the earthy and the exotic, Asia can be recognized from miles off her coast. Like the first time a Midwesterner smells the salt air of an ocean, the olfactory glands are alerted of a new environment. Sniffing the air, not in any pejorative sense, I now have my bearings. It is as if one approaches a Greek restaurant, or passes a Danish bakery, each with their own distinctive aromas, that evoke those forgotten associations.
Memories of Asia start flooding back in such a number and disordered chronology that my now active grey matter goes to "overload" and I cannot sort out time, place, or happenstance. Had there been more time on the approach before the "No Smoking" warning came on, perhaps I could have sorted out my thoughts into a logical sequence of things past. "Thump, thump" went the landing gear as they locked into place and "bump" as we touch down. I subconsciously give the civilian pilot a five point seven out of six for the landing. With a fixed smile and a "hope-you-had-a-nice-flight" from one of the stews, it's welcome to Kadena Air Force Base, Okinawa.
It was late afternoon local time and not quite drizzling. One is instantly aware of the high humidity. Should have my raincoat at hand, passes through my mind. The departure briefing at Travis should have covered expected arrival weather rather than avoidance of a new and rather pernicious form of venereal disease.
For all our egalitarian assemblage and treatment aboard the 707, moments after departing the aircraft, an abrupt change occurs as soldiers, sailors, marines, and air force personnel drift apart for individual service processing. Within services, officers and enlisted are placed on separate transportation and female service members are weeded out for processing and billeting. I'd been on Okinawa many times before, and each return found more headquarters, more housing, more permanence, more westernization, higher costs and less desirability than the time before. I do not yet know how long the processing is supposed to take, but I'm not looking forward to even one night. I begin to plot my most expeditious departure from this half-Ryukuan, half-American archipelago by chicanery and subterfuge if official procedure is overlong.
Since last here, a huge administrative complex to manage all marine corps facilities on Okinawa had been established. I had not yet seen Camp Butler, as this facility was called, but intuitively knew I did not want to get ensnared in its tentacles. As a field grade officer, a staff car was here to whisk me away to Butler. It threw the driver a little when I told him to take me to Futenma first. Futema was the Marine Corps Air Station in Okinawa, and I knew I could find a friendly face to put me up at the Bachelor Officer Quarters without check-in or other mickey mouse for as long as I would remain on the island. As it was "Happy Hour" time when we arrived, I had him pull up to the Officer's Club while I ran in ... found someone I knew ... borrowed his key ... drove to the BOQ and deposited my gear on the empty bed in his room ... and rejoined the driver with only my orders in my hand. Thence on to the "proper" destination for whatever my fate was to be.
Driving to Camp Butler was even worse than I had envisioned. Six o'clock on a drizzly evening and we sat in traffic eight thousand miles from Los Angeles in a near grid lock! Jesus Christ! Just a dozen years ago, at this very same spot, you could have fired a cannon down the road and not endangered a soul! Multilaned divided highways, overhead signals, curbs, and sidewalks too, and we were nowhere near "downtown." Where the hell had all the bars and jo-sans gone? I guessed they had retired, bought the adjacent property with their savings, decried the number of honky-tonks in the area, had them all removed and demanded all the trappings of western suburbia. I knew it was senseless to question the young driver. He probably thought this was the way it had always been. Thomas Wolfe's observation that one can never go home needs expansion to include the admonition that one can never return anywhere ... and have conditions remain as they were.
At the Butler gate, my worst fears were confirmed. Landscaped approaches, permanent buildings, sodium vapor lights, and not a hand lettered sign to be seen. I wondered, almost aloud, what was going to keep the troops busy for their tour—there weren't even any rocks to paint.
Arriving at this time of day was no fluke either. As part of my hazard avoidance planning, I assumed there would be no decision makers aboard at this time of day so I could feel out the lay of the land with one or two sharp clerks who I figured would be the only ones on duty. Find out from them who the aviation assignment officer was, what current policy was, and if perchance, there were any tentative assignment lists around. My driver pulled up to one of the few "manufactured" or temporary buildings in the camp. It was marked: "Westpac Transient Personnel Processing." Well lighted from the exterior, I anticipated a single unshaded bulb dangling from the ceiling, as I opened the door and stepped inside.
Surprise! This facility, while not fully staffed at this hour, was functioning with a buzz of activity at a number of counters around the periphery. A dozen or so souls like myself were getting orders endorsed, transportation arranged, applying for pay, and receiving quarters assignments while awaiting their next air movement. Well, what the hell, at least there were no lines.
Clutching my orders like a two-year-old does his blankie, I moved up behind one man and listened intently to the standard patter being reeled off from many iterations by the clerk. Displaying a casual and somewhat bored external demeanor, inside I was ready to take flight like a six-pointer on the second day of deer season. I checked for exits, heard nothing that triggered further distress signals and boldly stepped up to the counter.
Still retaining a hold on my orders, but relaxing my death grip somewhat, I gave the clerk my name and asked if officers were preassigned. A slight tug-of-war ensued as I maintained a grip on my orders as the clerk tried to wrest them away. Turned out that he just wanted to make sure of my name. He turned his back, picked up a pile of papers, scanned them expertly, dropped them back in place and picked up another stack. "Here they are, sir ..., MCC167." My heart leaped and I almost jumped to match my feelings. MCC167 was the designator for the First Marine Aircraft Wing, headquartered in Vietnam. My orders slipped easily out of my hand to his. In return, he handed me a bunch of forms to fill out as he did forty or fifty times a day. His memorized litany went on, but was lost on me, as I scooped up the forms and sank into one of the fifty or sixty school desks neatly lined up in the room for this purpose.
The only form of interest to me was a transportation request to get in line for a flight south to Da Nang. I scanned the remainder and signed them hurriedly after looking at their headings (I have read and understand all orders, directives, and bulletins ever issued by anyone in the Far East, etc.), and returned to the clerk with the transportation request. "When can I expect a flight to Da Nang? ..." "Usually within four or five days, you'll be told what flight you're on," was the response. Okinawa was not my favorite watering hole and I knew I could do better with friends at the marine transport squadron based at Futema. The clerk already had an endorsement, signed "by Direction" with a facsimile stamp, as I swapped the filled out forms for my orders.
On the ride back to Futema, I felt quite pleased with myself. I thought I'd have a drink or two at the club, meet some old comrades and find out who did the scheduling of the transports. My reverie was rudely interrupted as I entered the O Club. I was not prepared for the Futema Officer's Club on this Saturday night. Usually low key, it was "Animal Night" at the club. Every round-eyed unmarried (mostly) female on Okinawa must have been there. Nurses, school teachers, civil servants, Red Cross workers, distaff officers, stewardesses, and tourists were present and they were here to party! It was only about half past eight and, with the exception of waitresses and bartenders, I was the only totally sober person present. One of the best kept secrets of the Far East unfolded before my eyes. This was the heyday of the mini-skirt ... and this place was the showcase of the world for the briefest mini. Even those skimpiest of skirts got whipped off several times a night while the bearer danced on table top, bar, or piano. Exhibitionism run rampant. The big name discos of Soho or Greenwich Village would vacate in an instant if they had to compete with these expatriates during "Animal Night."
