Going Native, the unsavory fate of a Minnesota farmboy.

Of my tech school class I think four or five of us were assigned to Ubon. The rest to bases in Vietnam. On their dream sheets of assignments bofore gaduating tech school they put Vietnam since they figured we were all going there anyway.  Not all of us figured that way.

Ubon Tales

This is an edited correspondence to the site master of RAAF UBON before it was mothballed by Yahoo/geocities. It includes the edited email to my daughter that was the germ that began this blog, Ubon Tales.
   We so often only find out the why of our actions after the fact.  It is as though it is kept hidden from us so our actions will lead us to its discovery and thereby awareness of something unexplainable by any other means.   What began as a series of tales of my youthful adventures while stationed a RTAFB Ubon has become, I hope, something more.

Ubon tales 2

    The following is an edited E-mail entitled Ubon Tales 2, written to my daughter but never sent following an email titled Ubon Tales, depicting the raucous night life that revolved around the clubs in town. The RAAF UBON site had a nearly complete photo set of the clubs, though taken in the quietude of daylight. These photos prompted this first email as a means of sharing that time of my life. A third followed, titled Ubon Tales 3, also never sent.   These formed the seed of this blog, UBON TALES.

A Moveable Terror (Ubon Tales 3)

                                                  
   Stories supposedly tell themselves. They do not.  We only tell the story we can bear to hear, only a shadow of the real story. The real story is too filled with sound, smell, anxiety, fear. So we tell something less, something we can bear. I have had men tell me what they could of their stories, what they could bear.

A Non-stop Full Tilt Boogey!

  "Hang on to your memories, they're all that's left you." Simon and Garfunkel advised my generation. I have come to believe that we are the living memory of our times. When we are gone they are gone. We are all that is left of that time.         

Mack the Knife

It was perhaps on my first trip to town, on the occasion of  my first exposure to the open market, that my cube mate Don saw to it that I aquired that necessary staple of self-defence, that object of dark alleys and nefarious dealings, outlawed in 50 states; Mack the Knife! I bought a switchblade! I can't now imagine that I'd have been very effective in defending myself. Besides a total lack of experience with knife fighting and the usual state I'd no doubt have been in if ever the occasion called for me to defend myself, which was in some state of drink.

Ubon in the Time of Cholera

It seemed surreal to me that we were faced with an epidemic. It was so far out of the realm of our American sense of reality. Sometime in the middle of 1969 Cholera swept down the river Closing each base it past finally arriving in Ubon and prompting the the brass to recall everyone onto the base until it had passed. Very few had clearance to commute to their quarters in town.  So 6,000 of us were confined to a base with recreation facilities for 600. The main form of wreckreation was drunken brawls and tearing the doors off the Airman's Club. The AP's were put to patrolling the 'business' section of the base with K-9's and running in any disorderly sorts. It seems to me that the base went dry for the duration as well and the clubs were closed. Finally after a few weeks the epidemic passed and life returned to what we accepted as normal. Got more details or experiences?

The Open Market

                Remember the first time you smelled it from four blocks away? The closest I could get to in the first time was three blocks. I almost wretched. I was three weeks in country and since I hadn't been to town yet my cube mate who was rotating soon took me to town insisting I had to see/ experience the open market.

RAAF UBON/ A site from Down Under

Sorry to see this site vanish with the demise of Geocities. Thanks Yahoo. On the wire with Russ this A.M. Said he'd saved it to disk and would be back! Good on ya, mate! This is the Aussie mob from the other side of the runway. They were gone in '68. I came on board Jan '69.  Remember check those VD cards!

Off we go into the wild blue yonder....!

http://www.aviationexplorer.com/f-4_phantom_afterburner_takeoff.htm