by J.R.Harris

Created on: May 02, 2008   Last Updated: May 05, 2008

Even War Time Can Be Fun,

From the nightmares of a student loadmaster assigned to C-130 Squadron at Sewart AFB, Tn.

It was August 1964 and we, that lived in the barracks, were getting ready for bed as it was about 11:00 PM ..
Then the phone rang. Because it was on the wall next to my bed, I was the one to answer it.

A booming voice said.."This is a recall...Pack your bags and be in the briefing room in 30 minutes".

Well, we all groaned as we had been having practice drills like this for a few months now.

I figured..what the heck, so I packed up what little I had and put on my flight suit and drug my B-4 bag to the briefing room.

We sat there for nearly an hour before the squadron commander came in and told us about the crisis in the Tonkin Gulf and that we would be launching within a couple hours for Southeast Asia.

By 3 AM, we had the wheels up and were on our way to Clark Air Base, in the Philipines.

This turned out to be a big rush and when we finally got to Clark, they did not have any quarters for us. So it was decided to open all unused base housing and provide cots for us and that was our living quarters. Now you have to remember , this was before airconditioners..so the heat and humidity were killing us..we couldn't sleep very well and the mosquitoes nearly carried us off.

It was about 3 days before we started getting it together and began flying into Vietnam and Thailand.
Someone told us that the Sqadron Commander said we could grow beards, so a lot of us tried but I was just a young pup and only needed to shave about once a week so my efforts were a bust..but within a week. some big wig said to "cut that out" so everyone had to shave again..oh well.

Before we left Sewart AFB, we had all been required to qualify with the colt .38 Special. When we arrived in Clark AB, we were given a box and were told , "here are your weapons"
So we opened the box to give them out and low and behold what did we have but Colt 45 Automatics. I had never even held one much less fired one...I managed to buy a box of ammo and one saturday, I went to the range and this old Major showed me how to load and fire the weapon and how to break it down for cleaning..I never knew his name but many thanks to him.

There was such a back log of cargo to be hauled that we flew day and night for the first 2 weeks..by that time, we had hauled everything left to be hauled and the Military Air Transportation Service, (MATS), weenies could not bring it into Clark fast enough to keep us busy. So, we started

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