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.

   An entry from the now mothballed Aussie site, RAAF UBON, set me off on to the darker side of Ubon reality as I set out to write more about my Ubon days. The clubs, bath houses, whores, drinking binges, dope, etc. were the distractions from our duties. We were disconnected from our previous lives. Most of us hadn't had much of a previous life, I was 19.( The draft sucked up most of us my age especially after college deferments were suspended. There was a guy in tech school who was 26 and really pissed he had to put the life he'd started on hold for a four year AF enlistment that got him out of the draft. Four years in the AF anywhere was better than 2yrs in the Army 'somewhere'!)  I think we were all secretly elated that we had a dry bed to sleep in every night, all the chow we could eat, and didn't have to hump after 'charlie' in the boonies. I was. But still there we were and we lived so the aircraft could fly.
    One F-4, I imagine, could nearly carry  the ordinance than a Squadron of B-17's! We were there so the aircraft could deliver ordinance the length and breadth of South East Asia. Mostly we were not in Cambodia nor Laos nor N. Vietnam, southern China, nor northern Thailand.
    They never mentioned in tech school the ancillary duties incumbent in a combat zone some of us might be called on to engage in. I did not know what an augementee guard was, then I  were made one.
    On the Aussies last page, "Overdue Recognition" , about 2/3 down, "There was always the distinct probability of retaliatory attack," (79th Squadron RAAF  were flying interdiction into northern Thailand to supress the VC traffic from the Ho Chi Min Trail) and he continues with a revelation to me that he believed their Digger patrols 'out side the wire', so to speak, suppressed 'Charlies' ability to mount a serious incursion and their absence resulted in the attacks he mention after they left.(68)  I arrived in Jan 69, was immediately dragooned into the 'Augementee Guards'. This revelation puts a back story on the engagements we experienced, that they were those! The irony was there was 'no wire'. We had no defensible perimeter!  It wasn't until after the first serious attack that some security genius concieved that a pyramid of concertina wire wouldn't be such a bad idea. Some one must have wished the Aussies back. So over a short few weeks rolls atop rolls of concertina wire snaked around the perimeter encircling us in a fortress wall of  wire, gleaming like medieval armour, with stick legged a towers astride it at   intervals, and sand bagged redoubts at strategic points.( one in which Dan Greeno and I spent a very long night). Towers and bunkers
. My first duties at Ubon were weapons qualifications and night perimeter patrols in a jeep, just like in the movies, with an 'old hand' ( maybe 23) air police staff sgt., whose name I woefully have forgotten, but who's moniker was Tex. Honest!  Only it seems he was from Oklahoma! I think it was from the drawl that he got his handle during his Vietnam tours, couldn't swing another there so stayed 'in Theater' by going to Ubon.
    Tex guarded stuff.Tex taught me to guard stuff and not get my ass killed. This training lasted a few weeks, then I went on the guard roster and to my 'real job' of fixing F-4 radar. After that whenever 'charlie' paid us a visit, always a night visit, and the alert siren screamed I and my fellow augmentees got our battle kit of flack jacket, helmet,web belt w/canteen we kept in our locker; I had two extra mags of ammo that the guy I relived who was rotating and and just happened to be in my bunk area gave me (yah, we were issued One (1ea) mag with 16 rounds in it, real fire power.  Does the thought of bait come to mind? Did to me!) "Here I didn't turn these in, you might need them.",some pocket food might have been involved and smokes for sure. We formed a swelling stream destined for Guard Mount at the armory as our fellow inmates streamed for the sand filled bomb crates formed up as protective bunkers.
    As I write this, dusty images come to mind that at the time were unintentional mental snapshots of the activities we were engaged in; waiting at the armory for weapons issue, "Don't load your weapon until after you get out of the truck", A hub bub of activity inside and outside the Air Police HQ, We augementees being formed up in no particular order once you had your weapon and loaded into trucks and personell carriers, A P's hurrying about , confused details of reports of what was going on. A sense of tenseness about everyone.
    All this mustering out and arming and deployment was done 'under fire' as it were. All this was in response to the base already being under attack with every expectation it would escalate.   
    I just realized during this composition how aware all of us were as to what we were about... final smoke before mounting up and being transported to our post for the night....Out in the darkness, usually alone, not certain exactly where you or the next guy was. We didn't talk about how shit scared we were each going to be within the next half hour. NOTHING WAS SAID ABOUT IT. NOTHING. We'd all been out before. We all Knew.  We were what was between our airplanes and everyone else on the base and those little bastards in the dark. A flare chopper was put up or they used mortar flares and a gun ship if one was handy. It was the real shit and we were in it!  The Lone Ranger and Tonto, Rin Tin Tin, nor John Wayne  weren't   on the set; Elvis was staying away from the building;  And we were not going to San Fran-fucking-cisco!!!! This was the 'Real Shit' and we were in it!
   I get more anxious talking or writing about these things than ever I felt at the time.  Somehow the echo of the naked terror we each privately struggled with is more powerful as a spectre. I have come to realize each of us fought our own war whether engaged in live fire combat, as only a few were at Ubon, or as most of us were, anxiously waiting in the dark, more fearful of cowardice and failing to do our duty than engaging the enemy. I know I was.

UB LA DEE UB LA DAH

Locked and Loaded and Ready to Rock And Roll!!!!!!!!!    AND WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT / OUT IN THE DARK ALONE/
ABOUT EVERY OTHER SCARED SHITLESS BASTARD OUT THERE/ AND YOU HOPE HE HAS ENOUGH SENSE NOT TO SHOOT YOU/ HOW TO MAKE YOURSELF SMALL AND INVISIBLE/ SILENCE HAS A SOUND AND IF YOU DON'T MAKE IT IT COULD BE THE LAST SOUND YOU NEVER MAKE/ DARKNESS IS YOUR FRIEND PUT  OUT THE DAMN FLARE/ LOOK QUICK JUST YOUR HEAD AND EYES/ THIS IS LIKE HUNTING ONLY THEY HUNT BACK/ THE FLARE GOES OUT AND I'M INVISIBLE AGAIN/ONLY SOUNDS/FAR OFF GUN FIRE/SHIT SEARCH LIGHT/DAMN THAI GUARD/DOES HE KNOW I'M/ WE'RE OUT HERE/IS IT JUST A BLACK JOKE THAT YOU NEED TO SHOOT THEM FIRST IF YOU GET ENGAGED/BLESSED DARKNESS/TERRIFYING DARKNESS/HOME AND STUFF YOU DID/THIS IS WHAT IT'S LIKE YOU THINK FOR ALL OF US/ THERE 'S SOME POOR BASTARD IN VIETNAM DOIN AND FEELIN THIS SAME SHIT/OH DEAR GOD I HEAR A NOISE DON'T LET ME BE A COWARD/.UB LA DE UB LA DAH./makemyself small/fingeron trigger/fullauto/wait---let them get closer so you cant miss if it isn't a friendly/breathe/just mash the trigger if they fire/last thing you do......................./halt---Halt-----....................................."DON'T SHOOT BUDDY  DONT SHOOT!  Shit they didn't tell us you guys were out here. You okay?   "yeh"  two young men near each other in the night inkyness standing close to quietly  chit chat/ whats going on?don't know haven't seen any one but you/me either./how many more of you guys/don,t know they brought a truck load of us in here/thanks man/ be cool/ ya, you to./you okay,/ yeh/( each privately aware of their shared terror and what might have happened)
I'm glad you didn't shoot/...K-9 and handler crunch softly back into the darkness. / i hunker down into the shallow scrape Ive made with by helmet along side the slight rise of the gravel track that served as a road in  the bomb dump  . Ob La dee Ub La DAh  the nights  went on.  
----------------------------------------------------------------- 40 yrs on.....                                           

So am I, buddy. So am I.


The next night Dan Greeno and I, armed to the teeth, were in a sandbagged bunker on the base perimeter near where the VC had come in the previous night.