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A War Story

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    Posted: 26 Dec 2018 at 4:41pm

 Pie Anyone ?
A war story


It was Christmas Eve 1972. I was at Ubon Air Base in Thailand fixing fighter jets. I repaired the ECM (electronic counter measures) equipment on Phantom jets that were bombing the Ho-Chee-Minn trail. One of my other jobs was to drive to the chow hall and pick up the box lunches that we would then distribute to the all the Avionics Maintenance personnel on the flight line and then to the shops. It was over 100 lunches that were packed in North Hollywood, CA, about two miles from where I am right now. A staff sergeant and myself picked up the lunches when a grizzly cook came over to us. He said, "MEN, come with me." He took us to a room the size of a basketball court with three long tables running the length of the room covered with pies. He pointed to the tables saying that one table held apple pies, the second held cherry pies and the third table held pumpkin pies. Why are you showing us this my partner asked. The cook said that the damn officers had him make up these pies for their Christmas party. He said he had three men working for two days to make up the pies and there were three times more pies then they needed. Again my partner asked the cook why he was telling us this. He replied that he was going on break, and if he returned and found so much as one pie missing, there would be HELL to pay. When we got back into the truck, sarge said let's wait a few minutes. Why I asked. Sarge told me, I know you listened to the cook but you didn't hear what he was saying. We walked back in and took a pie to go with every box lunch. As we drove by the bunkers that held the Phantoms we would pass out the lunches and a pie of your choice with each lunch. When we got to the end of the flight-line all work had stopped as all the squadrons were sharing in the pies along with the Thai guards. It was a beautiful silence. Everyone thought it was a kind gesture of the Air Force on Christmas Eve. We never heard another word about it.

 

Bruce Stark

8 April '07

 

An armed society is a polite society.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Kg7og Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 27 Dec 2018 at 12:26am
Who was not moved by this? Thank You
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Capn27 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 29 Dec 2018 at 2:04am
Brought tears to my eyes. Thanks, cooky!
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote red442joe Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 27 Dec 2020 at 12:43am
I'm reading this the day after Christmas,  2020.
I could not appreciate any more, your having shared with us.
Thank you, and I am so glad you came home.

Joe
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Bulls Eye Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 27 Dec 2020 at 1:53am
As good of a Christmas story that I think I've ever heard.
I was 14 years old snuggled safely in my home in Barstow, Ca. well aware of just where you were and exactly where I was, and who was the lucky one.
Thank you for your service and sacrifice. 
Merry Christmas to all!
Mark
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote tgt40 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 02 Jan 2021 at 1:52pm
Nice story Bruce.  Thanks for telling it!

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Dances with AutoMags Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 02 Jan 2021 at 2:41pm
I am happy so many of you liked the Christmas story "Pie Anyone ?"
 
Here is another true war story titled, "A Day in Turkey"   Enjoy
 

A day in Turkey

by Bruce Stark

I woke up early to try to get in and out of the chow hall and still get to the Recreation Center before the deadline of 8:30am.   The recreation center offered weekend tours to various tourist locations here in southern Turkey.  I had earlier been on one of their tours to Konya, Turkey for the 700th anniversary of Mevlana with the Whirling Dervishes and all.  I was working in Adana Turkey at Incirlik Air Force Base.  There were three of us from Torrejon Air Base in Spain. Larry, Jerry and myself.  We were in Turkey to support the electronic countermeasures (ECM) systems on a squadron of F-4 Phantom jets stationed there.  It was Saturday morning and Jerry was to be on stand-by if he was needed. 

It was the 20th of July,1974 and I found myself walking to meet the bus for the Castle by the Sea tour.  Just as I got to the bus it took off and left me standing there.  The man in charge told me that the tour had been cancelled.  It seems that the Turks had attacked Cyprus that morning.  They had unfortunately used the beach next to Castle by the Sea to launch their navel attack on Cyprus.  No Tour today. 

I had heard a lot of fighter jets that morning and could still hear them taking-off as I walked back to the barracks.  After a few minutes, a guy came into the barracks and said that our stand-by person was to report to duty......immediately.   The sergeant and myself tried to wake Jerry, but he was passed out cold from excessive drinking the night before.  The sergeant, Larry, told me to get into uniform and report to work.

I got a ride over to the flight-line where the Avionics Maintenance Shops were.  I walked into the ECM area of the room when a cluster of people moved into me.  Each one was a higher rank than the last one.  Things went quiet when one of them finally said, we have four Phantoms on the Victor Alert Pad.  I need to set their ECM Pods to war-time frequencies. 

It is not often that I say exactly the right thing at the right time.  I looked at the group and motioned some of them out of the way of my view of the safe.  I pointed to the safe and I said, I need and officer with a top-secret clearance and the combination to that safe.  A person I had never seen before got down on his knees and worked the combination to open the safe.  I told him to take the book out that is marked top-secret and follow the instructions.  He read for a minute or two and said, grab your tools and we will all go out to the VA-Pad, together.  The Victor Alert Pad consisted of four single aircraft cement hangers in a fenced-in area at the end of the run-way. 

Once we were at the first aircraft, I popped a panel off of the side of the ECM Pod to expose about ten rotary switches.  Each switch goes from 0 to 9.  The officer read off, switch four to position three.  Switch five to position 7 etc., etc.  We set the war-time frequencies into the pods of the four Phantoms while the Munitions Maintenance Squadron (MMS) guys placed a live nuke on the center-line of each fighter.

We were all ready to go back to the shop when it was announced that as long as there is an active alert, we had to be available to secure our equipment.  That went for the MMS guys too.  We were all escorted to a pilots hide-a-way.  It was a bar set in a dug-out so it had a low-profile.  We sat there for several hours.  We were told that President Nixon had called a nuclear alert because he was afraid that the Soviet Union would come to the defense of Cyprus and maybe bomb our base as this is where the Turks launched their air attack.

Late in the day we were called off of nuclear alert.  I scrambled all the switches on the four pods and marked them to go back to Spain for an inspection.  After I got back to the barracks, I was told of a talk that the commander of the base would be giving about the Turks attack on Cyprus.  I attended the talk.  The commander was basically reassuring the families living on the base that everything was going to be ok  He told of the US just selling the Greeks some new fighters.  I believe they were F-100's.  He said that the planes could reach our base but wouldn't have enough fuel to get back to Greece.  The commander added that the Greeks could do an air-to-air refuel but we sold them the wrong nozzles so they couldn't.   

Jerry got into big trouble for not coming into work when he was called upon.  I think he kept it to just an Article 15 but he said he stopped drinking after that.  Jerry served in the Air Force for over thirty years before he retired.

                        Added:

The Turks had increased security at our entrance point to the area where our Phantom jets were.  We were briefed on the new procedure.  When we drove up to the US Air Force guard shack they waved us through.  When we got to the Turkish Air Force guard shack, we had to shine a flashlight through a colored piece of cellophane.  The chilling part was that if you did not show the flashlight shining through the cellophane, of the proper color of the day, the Turkish guards were ordered to shoot on sight every person in the vehicle.  This didn't last very long but it made for a very sober crew.   Wink

 

 
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Dances with AutoMags Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05 Jan 2021 at 6:00pm
I'm a writing fool....enjoy.
 

Madam No No's.

by Bruce Stark

Jan 2021

 

It was 1974 and I was stationed at Torrejon Air Base just outside of Madrid, Spain. 

A few of us were sitting around the barracks one night when a conversation started about a legal whorehouse that was in the city of Alcala.  Alcala was just a short ride North-East of where we were.  A road trip was proposed and four of us drove to Alcala around midnight. 

Once we arrived in Alcala we walked the streets asking anybody if they knew where madam No No's bar was.  The locals laughed and pointed us in the correct direction.  We learned that Madam No No's was officially known as, "La Cantina De Madam Carmen Fernandez."    

When we found the bar and went in, we were all eyes and there was plenty to see. 

A long bar ran the length of the room.  There must have been ten girls standing on the customer side of the bar.  They were all dressed in fish-net stockings with striped shirts and lots of make-up.  They all looked like the classic prostitutes you would see in depictions of the girls our soldiers would encounter during world war II. 

One of the girls spoke good English and she told us the history of the bar. 

It seems that Madam Carmen Fernandez was a friend of Francisco Franco.  During the Spanish Civil War, she had hidden Franco from the rebels.  She was tortured to reveal where Franco was.  She did not give in even after they cut-off her nose.  The proper name of the bar was madam No Nose. 

After the war, Francisco Franco was asked by the church to eliminate all the legal prostitution in Spain.  Franco allowed Madam Carmen Fernandez  to continue her business as a reward for her service during the war. 

Here is the rub.  The only condition was that she couldn't hire any new girls.  Yes, all the whores at the bar were older that our mothers.  Madam No Nose was in the bar and the English speaking girl pointed he out to us.  She was in a glass booth overlooking the bar.  She was dressed in all black with a cloth covering her face where her nose should have been. 

We eventually left to drive back to the base, but Mike Hanlon decided that one of the girls was real friendly and he thought he would spend the night with her. 

Mike was at work the next morning with a smile on his face. 

An armed society is a polite society.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote tgt40 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 07 Jan 2021 at 3:14am
Yeah Bruce you gotta write a book....Random Ramblings of Life.....you got some good ones.  Your Turkish story reminds me that we had quite a period of high tension.  

I remember walking past a pile of charred and burned (thankfully) cargo parachutes in Germany one day in 1981 ish...  Sergeant told us that they were soaked in fuel by some troublemakers.  They were static chutes and upon deployment the friction was enough to cause the damage.   Not quite the same wakeup call you had but brother it got our attention!

Thanks again for the stories and the memories!
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Dances with AutoMags Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08 Jan 2021 at 5:32pm
Thanks for that Kelly.
 
I like writing and I have a good memory.
 
Calgary, Canada.........
 
"In 1969 I was a drummer with the Royal Cavilers Youth Band in Van Nuys, CA.  We marched the Calgary Stampede and won the Sweepstakes trophy !  I had a black girlfriend at the time and I wore a black hat.  I walked the Stampede for three days with her and never received a comment or even a dirty look.  Her mother broke off the relationship because I am not black "   Cry   Things sure have changed.
 
Hope you sell your gun. 
 
Bruce
 
Note:  I did write a book titled, "Black Sheep in Tokyo" about installing Tokyo Disneyland and about a few movies I did with large robotics.....Cheers
An armed society is a polite society.
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