Jo Ann, My Baby Sister

As long as I am discussing flying, let me tell you about my sister. She has been a Flight Attendant for many years with Delta and now with ASA. She went to Michigan State University for two years and then applied to Delta to be a Stewardess (now call Flight Attendant). Delta accepted her into the school and she flow for them for over thirty years before retiring. Retirement did not last long and she applied to ASA and was accepted.

My sister is currently a Flight Attendant with ASA and she loves flying around the States. When she was with Delta, she spent a lot of time as an international Flight Attendant. She loved flying international flights but it is hard on you with all the time changes. Before the start of this Iraq war, she flew many soldiers over to Kuwait in the middle of the night. She never told me about this until she was finished doing those flights. Guess she knew it would upset me and I would worry about her.

I have included a of picture of her while flying. The picture was taken with the Russian Cosmonaut Sergey. I forget his last name. Jo Ann is in the middle of the back row. The second picture was my sister and me as little kids. That sure was a long time ago.

Why I Hate Flying

In my previous post, I mentioned my flight from Vietnam to the Philippines had a few problems. Two of the engines were overheating so they shut them down when we were at altitude. They had all four engines running for takeoff and landing.

My flight to Vietnam went from San Fransisco to Tokyo on the first leg. It was via TWA and was uneventful. The flight was a combination of military and civilians. After a layover of a few hours in Tokyo to refuel, we continued on to Okinawa and it was now all military. About a quarter of the way to Okinawa, the pilot announced that there was a slight problem with the plane and we would be going back to Japan.

Of course, we all cheered that announcement. It was the sight of the co-pilot walking down the isle and opening a little door in the floor. Now they had our attention. The co-pilot opened the door and went down into the belly of the plane. This caused us to wonder what the problem was and how severe.

There were a couple of military pilots among the passengers and they were the only ones that really knew how bad the problem was. They knew that because of the method the pilot was using to turn the plane around. He was adjusting the engine speed on each side causing a slow turn. The reason the co-pilot went into the belly of the plane was to hand crank the wheels into a down position. The Flight Attendants (we called them Stewardesses back then) had everyone get into the emergency landing position with our heads on a pillow on our knees. I still peeked out the window on landing and saw all these emergency vehicles lined up along the runway. When the pilot reversed the engines, the wings caught on fire because he had dumped fuel over the ocean earlier. It turns out that the plane had lost hydraulics. This is not a good thing. At least we had to stay in Japan an extra 18 or so hours until another plane was brought in to take us on the rest of our trip.

Another problem I encountered while flying was out of Camp Lejeune. It was a small twin-engine airline (DC-9 or something like that) and as the plane prepared for leaving the gate, the cabin filled with smoke and we evacuated the plane. After an hours wait, they fixed the problem and we got back on that same plane. My confidence was greatly diminished.

The worst problem was while in Vietnam. This occurred while on my second tour (as I call it) and was about the middle of March 1968. I was ordered from Gia Le to be reevaluated at the hospital in Da Nang. The Marine Corps wanted to make sure I was okay for duty in the bush. Of course, the doctors in Da Nang could not figure out why I was sent back to Nam with my type of injury. They put me on limited duty at that point and said I could not leave the base. I could work at a Medical Clinic on base only. That was fine with me. However, going back to my base from Da Nang, I boarded a twin-engine plane they referred to as the Caribou. It had a high tail and the back dropped down to load cargo.

I was used to taking off in C-130’s from Dong Ha, accelerating, and climbing very quickly. We were in a slow assent from the end of the runway when we were hit by 50-caliber fire. The left engine shut down instantly which throw us into a left turn because the right engine was still on full power. In a matter of seconds, we had changed direction and just missed the top of the hills as we were coming down. The pilot got control of the plane and we came in wheels up onto the runway that we just left. Remember that back door I mentioned earlier on the Caribou? It was still down in the open position and as soon as the plane slowed down enough, we were out that door and off the runway.

Now do you know why I hate flying?

Quang Tri to Guam

After my big foot hit the booby trap, Doc Hall bandaged me up and off I went by chopper with two other Marines that also were hit by shrapnel. I went to Dong Ha where I had my initial surgery on the wounds and by the end of the day; I was headed to Phu Bai via C-130. I had more surgery on the wounds and was put into a full leg cast with little openings for dressing changes. Here is how I described by wounds in my little medical book, “shrapnel in left lower thigh, shrapnel laceration of lateral malleous, shrapnel in middle of foot, thru and thru shrapnel wound near middle toe”. They estimated the grenade went off about two to three inches away from my ankle. It was not pleasant.

My little medical journal says that the next day was “uneventful, Pain bearable with slight drainage of wounds”. “Possibly will have dressing changed tomorrow”. After my surgery on the 13^th is when we discovered that, I was allergic to pain medicine. I began taking many aspirin, which did not give me a problem. Changing dressings and debridement of wounds was not a pleasant experience without pain medicine. They gave me a large dose of Thorazine so I did not care what they were doing. It still hurt but I did not care.

In my little book, it states “as of 1200 hours 19 Oct. 67, I have received 26.4 million units of Pro-Pen and 11 grams of Streptomycin. Guess they were not taking and chances in my getting an infection. A lot of the skin was blasted off the top of my foot so the Doctor used something he was experimenting with for wound granulation. Sugar and Basitracin mixed and packed on top of the wound. This kept the wound moist and helped to reduce infection. This is a precursor to the modern day wet dressing. Alternatively, maybe it was a form of maggot therapy to get the maggots to eat the dead tissue. I was swatting flies that were constantly landing on my foot.

The healing process was slow and not progressing as fast as the medical staff had hoped. About the middle of November, I was flown down to Cam Rhan Bay where they have air conditioned medical wards to see it that would help. I still had a lot of swelling of the foot and ankle and after two weeks, they decided to ship me out to a Naval Hospital. Am I going home? Fat chance.

They shipped me off to Guam via the Philippines. The plane that came in to take a bunch of patients out to the Philippines had a problem with the engines. There were only two stretcher patients so they considered us the critical ones and put us both on the plane that normally would hold a couple of hundred. We must have had ten nurses taking care of two patients and they were all female. It was a great flight until they told us about the engine problems. Two engines were overheating so once we were airborne; they shut down the two problem engines and did not turn them back on until we landed in the Philippines. Remember this problem with airplanes and I will tell you, later, a few more problems that I have encountered while flying.

From the Philippines, I was placed on another plane, headed for the U.S. Possession of Guam. I arrived at the US Naval Hospital on Guam on 2 December 1967. After a couple of weeks there, I finally was able to get around on crutches. Mobility at last. The wounds on my foot still had not closed up as yet but it was getting there. By the middle of January 1968, I was finally walking without the aid of the crutches. I was transferred from the Hospital to work at a Medical Clinic on the Naval Base while waiting for orders back to Guam.

I was on Guam for New Years Eve that year and let me tell you a story that is cute now but was not cute then. I was an E4 or Hospitalman Third Class at that point but was friends with many Marines on the ward that were E6 and above. E4s had to be back on the ward by midnight that night. Well, about four of us went out, started hitting parties and bars and at 2330 hours, I said that I needed to catch a cab back to the hospital. These guys would not let me go. There excuse was “what are they going to do, send you back to Nam?” Therefore, I stayed out and partied with the Marines.

When we rolled in the next morning, the Chief on Duty said I was late and AWOL. All the Marines in unison said, “We told him but he wouldn’t listen”. They all had big grins on their faces as they walked off leaving me there. I was scared for the next couple of days that I was going to get a Court Martial or something. I never heard anymore about that so I figured the Marines had taken care of everything. It is just as the bumper sticker says, “The Navy has Hospitalmen, Marines have Corpsmen”. Semper Fi.

Quang Tri, Vietnam

On my first tour, I was not at Quang Tri for very long. Maybe a month to a month and a half and I do recall we got a lot of rain. Bravo and H&S Company of 1^st Btn 4^th Marines were the initial military group to secure and prepare the area for the new air base. Dong Ha further north was too close to the DMZ and was in range of artillery. Quang Tri was level and further south and was less vulnerable.

My first day there was miserable because of the heavy rains. We setup in a Vietnamese cemetery. The dead were buried under mounds so a lot of us setup our tents on top of these mounds. The water drained off nicely. The next day, the villagers marched on our camp in protest of what we were doing. The villagers were informed that a base was going to be built here and the cemetery could stay inside the base or they could move their cemetery. Guess they decided to move the cemetery.

We did patrols from this small camp going west out onto the rolling plains. There was not a lot of farming out in this area and it was rolling hills and tall grass. The area had a few small villages between the camp and the mountains jungle. Most of these villages were the enemy and we would come under sniper fire when we approached them. Thank goodness, we had patrol dogs with us on these wide-open plains. They warned us of sniper fire before the rounds got to us. It was out on these plains that I stepped on a booby trap. A grenade went off next to my left foot. Twenty Marines went through the same spot before me but lucky or unlucky I am the one that set it off.

Before I jump ahead to Friday the 13^th of October 1967, I will talk more about the early Quang Tri base. As I said before, there were very few of us at the start but everyday more and more would arrive with wire and fencing. Once the engineers arrive, things start to more fast. Around the wire, we had many small tents and the Headquarters had a large tent. During the heavy rains, the large tent was the place to go to get warm and to stay out of the relentless downpour.

This area backed up to a river, which we used to bath every now and them. One of the guys in our platoon was married and one day he lost his wedding ring in the river. We all tried diving to the bottom looking for that ring. Two days later after the rains had stopped, there was his ring sticking out of the mug on the edge of the river. How cool was that? He was about 21 and he had been married for 6 years. He was about 16 and she was 14 or 15 when they got married. He was a Southern boy from Tennessee or maybe West Virginia. I do not remember now. I really like that guy and how he loved his wife so much. He wrote her everyday and she did the same. He was short but very stocky and must have carried 20 clips of ammo on his belt. He was ready for anything. (Sadly, I heard that he was KIA from a mine.) Wish I could remember his name to leave a remembrance at The Wall.

While at Quang Tri, I had two to three days a week that were not spend on patrols so I volunteered to go to the Quang Tri Provincial Hospital in Quang Tri. Two of us Corpsmen would take a jeep and follow the engineers into the city. The engineers were sweeping for mines so it was not wise to go pass the engineers. Once we got to the hospital, our job was to work mostly with the children. There was a Norwegian Red Cross group working there running the emergency room and surgery.

Much of what we did was to lance and treat boils. The rice paddies were also their bathrooms so the water was a little bit contaminated. It the kids were cut or bite by a leach the wound could turn into a large boil. Boils are not a big deal in the states but in Nam, it took the lives of many children. We would lance and pack the area and give an injection of antibiotics. The next time we were there, we would give another injection and change the dressing. I hope that we saved many kids by doing this on our days that were somewhat free.

Hospitals in Nam were very different then what we are used to stateside. In Nam, when a patient was in the hospital, the whole family also moved in with them. There is not a food service at these hospitals so the family cooks the patients and families meals out on porches that surround the wards. The patient area is a little smoky from small fires but does smell nice from all the cooking. Even though there was a war going on, the people were friendly and so thankful for our help.

While at Quang Tri, you might say that I got promoted by moving up to H&S Company from Bravo Company. I was now in charge of the Corpsmen in Bravo Company. Now I did not have to go on patrols all the time but I did have to go out on Operations. After two weeks with H&S Company, we went out on Operation Granite and four hours into the Operation, I stepped on the booby trap. I was Med-Evaced out by a UH-34. Usually you see the Huey as a Med-Evac chopper but I was picked up by the old UH-34. I thought I was going stateside. Oh how wrong I was.

Shitters

I will keep this short and sweat because this is a messy subject. Earlier, I described the basic layout of the shitters in Nam but what I found interesting was the magnetic effect they had on enemy incoming. If mortars or rockets hit us, invariably, the shitters would get almost direct hits. Of course, no one was stupid enough to seek shelter in one of the shitters during an attack because we all knew they would be hit. I have a series of slides of this phenomenon but could not find them for the blog. Maybe some other time.

Ask any Nam Vet and he will tell you the same story about the shitters always getting the brunt of an attack. Being a Corpsman, it was my job to get a couple of Marines and a can of diesel fuel, go around, pour fuel on the little piles of shit, and set them afire. We needed to keep the area as sanitary as possible. Like I said, it was a shitty job but someone had to do it. I wonder if this same phenomenon occurs in Iraq.

One thing that is probably different in Nam then in Iraq is the urinals. In Nam, we had artillery transport tubes sticking out the ground with a screen on the top stationed around the base and that was the urinal. With the female Marines in Iraq, that method probably would not be feasible. At least we did not let the Marines just pee anywhere. We needed to keep things sanitary.

Bet you never thought of these kinds of things in a war zone. Isn’t this a great education?

Leftovers and Football

Hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving and a safe one also. Being grandparents, we had to split our holiday with the other grandparents so we got everyone on Friday. That worked out nicely this year because that was also Joanne’s birthday. It was a double celebration day. We were stuffed and have been having leftovers for the last two days. I think we will have pizza tonight. We will probably go to Red Lobster tomorrow for Joanne’s normal birthday dinner. Much of the last two days has been spent eating leftovers and watching football.

We got a lot of snow on Thursday and it is snowing heavily right now. I hope that this will not last long but with Lake Effect, you never know. If the wind is coming down off the lake and the temperature is just right, it will continue to snow for hours on end. It is supposed to warm up above freezing this coming week so the snow should be gone by weeks end. Let’s hope so.

Happy Thanksgiving

Wishing all of our family, friends and readers a “Thanksgiving Blessing and Best Wishes for a safe and happy holiday”. May we all take a moment to be thankful for the many blessings that we each receive from our friends and family. I also want to thank our Military personnel in far away places to stay safe and remember you are in our thoughts and prayers.

Best Wishes and Safe Travels