Memories
I had just come home from church and taking my wife to brunch on Mothers' Day when I received a telephone call at my home. Apparently, people in the 61st Tactical Airlift Squadron orderly room had been trying all morning to reach me. The squadron had been tasked to immediately send 18 adverse weather aerial delivery system (AWADS) equipped C-130Es to Ching Chuan Kang Air Base, Republic of China, to augment intratheater airlift capabilities provided by the 374th Tactical Airlift Wing. The departures began the day before. Apparently, the medic assigned to the 61st TAS could not make the trip for some reason and, although I was actually assigned to the 62nd TAS, I was being sent on the temporary duty mission. I was instructed to grab my mobility gear and report immediately to the mobility processing center. I didn't have much time to say goodbye to my wife and my 18-month-old son. I had my wife drive me to the processing center, not knowing how long I would be gone. Airman First Class (A1C) Dale Forgy, who was not actually assigned to one of the flying squadrons was selected to accompany me. My supervisor was to be TSgt Riley Van Dorn.
Once I got to the center, my immunizations were checked and updated, my documents were checked, and my orders were cut. I found I was going to CCK for a period not to exceed 179 days. I was assigned to a chalk, made my inflight meal selections and within a couple of hours, was on my way to CCK. Traveling to Taiwan was a long ride with lots of stops! We left Little Rock and landed at McClellan AFB, CA, to refuel and were airborne again, this time to Hickam AFB, Hawaii. When we landed there, we checked into off-base commercial quarters and the flight crew went into crew rest. Twenty-four hours later, we were airborne once again. This time we went to Wake Island, where we again spent 24 hours for the crew to rest. While on Wake, I saw old rusted old Japanese artillery emplacements left from World War II and went swimming in the teal green water of the Pacific. We boarded the aircraft and made the next leg, travelling from Wake Island to Guam. We stayed 24-hours at Andersen AFB, Guam to allow the crew to rest. Finally, we made the final leg of the trip, departing Guam for CCK, on the west coast of Taiwan.
I remember being exhausted when we arrived at CCK. All that flying in a full C-130, either sitting in an uncomfortable canvas troop seat or lying on top of cargo, wherever it might be possible to find a large enough, unobstructed space where one could sleep, which were few and far behind. We were immediately assigned to temporary quarters and Dale Forgy and I shared a barracks room. Our quarters were directly across the street from the base swimming pool and not too far from either the Naval Exchange on base, or from the Dining Hall.
Typically, when we went TDY with our aircrews, we were provided space where we could operate our clinic to provide care for our flight crews. Since our crews were to be integrated into the 374th Tactical Airlift Wing, a decision was made that the medics who deployed both from the 61st TAS and Langley AFB's 36th TAS would be assigned to work in either the Aerospace Medical Clinic or the Emergency Room of the 6217th USAF Hospital. I was detailed to work in the Emergency Room. Most of the time, I worked nights.
I rarely saw any of our flight crews, unless they got drunk, fell down and showed up in the ER needing stiches. I sutured a lot of cuts on drunk airmen who fell down in a benjo ditch (open sewer carrying runoff rain water and human waste) or got into a bar fight. I helped treat a lot of young men who were in motorcycle accidents, too. Motorcycles were a very inexpensive and popular conveyance for most of the enlisted folks at CCK. I drove the crash ambulance a lot, too, but rarely responded to American aircraft declaring in-flight emergencies (IFE). Most of the ambulance responses I did were for Republic of China Air Force (RoCAF) F-104 pilots. The RoCAF unit based at CCK operated F-104G (single seat) and F-104D (twin seat) fighters, which were high-performance, difficult to fly, aircraft for the Chinese, which were frequently subject to IFEs.
When I wasn’t working in the ER, I was downtown frequenting the bars in the “Dirty Dozen” on Shijia Dong Street, swimming in the base pool across from my barracks, copying record albums to cassette or reel-to-reel tape at the Audio Hobby Shop, or trying to learn Chinese from the barracks “mamasan” or the bar girls. (The “bar fine” to take one of the young ladies out of a bar was NT$1,000--New Taiwanese Dollars--the U.S. equivalent of almost $30. Needless to say, many young airmen spent a lot of time downtown.)
I also purchased my first new watch – a Seiko – with a distinctive yellow face. It sat in a box in a glass display case of the Naval Exchange, which showed the price to be $125, but when I found out that the actually selling price was $48.50, I had to have it! I still have the watch today and wear it on special occasions. It was the first of many Seiko watches that I was to purchase over the years.
It was possible to buy pirated copies of popular albums downtown in a record store in the “Dirty Dozen” for NT$10 each – the equivalent of 29-cents American! I bought hundreds of albums, which were fine for a couple of plays before the inexpensive vinyl began to significantly degrade, and copied them to cassettes at the base audio club.
There was also a tailor downtown (GQ Tailor) in the “Dirty Dozen” who made clothing and shoes that were very popular with the GIs. One of the most popular items was a pair of chukka boots, made of swede, to look like an American flag. (The toes were blue with white stars. The balance of the shoe was alternating horizontal red and white stripes.) The soles were made of tire treads. They, too, cost NT$1,000 ($29.80) a pair.
I really missed treating my squadron’s flight crews and eagerly sought some way to increase my interaction with them. Unless I did, I felt I didn’t need to be all that way from home just to help out in the CCK ER. After all, our crews were engaged in heavy combat, working to resupply forces on the ground at both An Loc and Kontum. The Fifth Division of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) with its 3,000 troops, was engaged with three North Vietnamese and Viet Cong divisions – more than 40,000 troops. If An Loc fell, the North Vietnamese would have very little between them and Saigon. Accordingly, the decision was made to hold An Loc at all costs. South Vietnamese President Thieu radioed the senior ARVN officers in An Loc that the city would be defended to the death. By directing that the city be held "at all costs," Thieu all but challenged the North Vietnamese to take it. The NVA seemed to become obsessed with the desire to overrun An Loc.
The forces in An Loc underwent protracted attacks, marked by repeated human wave assaults and continuous heavy shelling. Our C-130s were flying around-the-clock resupply missions to keep the ARVN troops in the fight. What thwarted the North Vietnamese onslaught was the well-executed air support that struck the enemy well forward of the ARVN positions and prevented the NVA from reinforcing their initial success in the northern part of the city. American advisers directed repeated air strikes against the NVA forces, which were sometimes as close as twenty meters to friendly troops. The tenacity of the defenders, the continuous air strikes, and resupply of ARVN forces by our C-130s, prevented the enemy from expanding its foothold in the northern part of the city. The 374th TAW lost five C-130Es during the actions at An Loc and Kontum:
- Apr 18, serial number 63-7775, shot down
- Apr 25, serial number 64-0508, shot down
- May 03, serial number 62-1797, shot down
- May 17, serial number 63-7798, shot down by a rocket during takeoff at Kontum
- May 23, serial number 62-1854, destroyed at Kontum during a rocket attack
I found from some of the enlisted crew members staying in my barracks that the 374th had a detachment at Tan Son Nhut which was overseeing and coordinating the airlift missions in-country. I asked for permission to deploy to TSN to better care for our crews. It was approved and I was relocated at TSN.
Once I arrived at TSN, I found that there was little there for me to do as the largest U.S. hospital in all of Vietnam was located at TSN. Once I was there, I had even less to do than I did at CCK. While I was there, I was quartered in a “hooch” belonging to Detachment 14 of the 38th Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Squadron – the local base rescue unit at TSN. I began looking for ways I could assist at the Rescue Det. Rather than go back to CCK.
Not long before my arrival at TSN, the Rescue Detachment began using regular medics on the HH-43F helicopters that they operated rather than use paramedics, known as PJs. One of the noncommissioned officers in the unit offered to train me so that I could fly rescue missions on the HH-43s. This would permit me to get my monthly flying hour requirements met to allow me to continue drawing my monthly flight pay of $55 – something I wasn’t getting to do at CCK. When I wasn’t busy doing training at the Rescue Detachment at TSN, I was volunteering to go out into the local towns and villages and provide medical care to the villagers. On one such outing, a chaplain who accompanied us took my photo working on some of the kids. He offered to send them to me and asked for an address where he should mail them after I explained that I was there TDY. I gave him my home address and, true to his word, he mailed them to my home in the States. My wife was quite surprised to receive them, but was quite concerned about what she thought were bandages around my wrists in the pictures. She sent me a letter asking what happened. As it turned out, what she was seeing was part of the rubber gloves I was wearing on my hands as I tended to the wounds of villagers.
I did manage to pull ground alert at the Detachment several times and flew a half-dozen missions before being summoned to return to CCK. By the time I left TSN, I had been there about 90 days. I ended up returning to the States during the second week of September. I managed to be gone more than 179 days, forcing the Air Force to give me credit for completing an unaccompanied short tour. We ended up coming home the same way we went over. It seemed like the trip took a month rather than four days.
Once I got home, I was determined not to go back and I began looking for a job I could cross train into. It so happened that the 308th Strategic Missile Wing had an opening for a wing historian. Since I enjoyed writing, I applied, and was subsequently selected, for retraining into the field.
Just the same, I did end up back in Vietnam. I went back in on April 29, 1975, and came out on the last U.S. fixed-wing aircraft to leave Vietnam before it fell to the North Vietnamese Army. See my recollections of Operation Frequent Wind below.
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