Sunday, January 10, 2021

Just another day...

I'm a young Airman in the at Clark Air Base in the Philippines. Its 1981.

I got up bright and early as always, threw on the uniform, and went next door to feed the neighbor's cats. He was away on business and I promised to take care of them. I went in the house and immediately smelled gas. I went back out and turned the gas off at the main, called the base civil engineers/fire department from the neighbor's house, +and went back in to check on the cats. They weren't their ravenous selves. As a matter of fact they didn't get up to greet me. Weren't ever gonna get up again either. I think I feel a pulse on one. I haul it outside and try mouth to mouth on that pussy, but all's I get is fish breath. But he wakes up. Ooops, Ken really loved those cats.

Oh, well, nothing that I can do about it. Went to work and get a letter of counseling for being late. The fire chief had called my shop chief and went ballistic because I risked my life to try to save 3 cats. Get sent out to do the dirty work for the day. At about 10:30, I'm out behind the missile shop, stripping the paint off of
some white phosphorus warheads, when I hear the sound of three aircraft taking off in formation (hang around aircraft long enough, you can ID the type and number of aircraft by the sound). This is rare. Its the Royal Thai Air Force flying their A-4 Sky Raiders. My shop, with 88,000 lbs of live munitions is at the end of the runway. 

Right at transition, the lead bird (they take off in a triangle formation) has a major malfunction of the right main gear. It roles up and takes out the right wingman. Wingman ejects. +The guy on the left makes it into the air, but barely.

We are at the bottom of a hill at the end of the runway, uuhh, hmmm. We're on the right if you're taking off. I now have two high performance (work with me now) jet fighters, full of fuel, doing cartwheels at full takeoff
speed heading directly down the hill at me. Okay, time for a break. I casually step inside the missile maintenance bay and close the door. Hey, it could help. Couldn't hurt. Neither can a primal scream or the fetal position, which I proceed to employ. I set off car alarms in a 30 kilometer radius.+ I hear thumps against the two foot thick cement walls of the shop. 

When the noise stops, I peak outside. There are airplane parts all over the place and the warheads, each filled with 85 pounds of white phosphorous, still in the very flammable paint stripper, are five feet from some flaming JP-4 jet fuel. Okay, an extinguisher will put this out. I role the giant flightline cart over and empty it on the flames. 

The rest of the shop comes out to help. I get pulled aside as the fire department shows up for the second time in my day. My boss asks me if I'm alright. He's the one that sent me out there to work (and wrote me up for being late). I guess I'm kinda white and purple. My pasty color may have something to do with it, but I get sent home to rest. After he tears up the letter of counselling. The rest of the shop has to do guard duty, as the double fence surrounding the shop has been bowled over by a jet engine and two right wings from two A-4s.

I wash off the toxic "Purple K" extinguisher powder and the soot. The uniform (and my underwear) is ruined. Time to go fishing. Not many free afternoons off. I grab my "new" Orvis graphite rod and head over to the
river where Mr. Aquino, the local barrio chief, had shown me where the fish were (he has an Orvis too, stored in his nipa hut, or grass and bamboo shack). There is a fish in this putrid river that is a cross between a big tilapia and a pirana. Gold and black, but nasty as hell. Have no idea what they're called, but they are a blast on a fly rod and will take a white woolly bugger.

The water is up, but there is a laydown out a ways that always holds some fish behind it. I can normally reach it from shore, but the water has increased the distance to about a 75 foot cast. Not within my skills at the time. I talk to a group of about 6 guys with shotguns and rifles. They tell me thats where I should cast to.

Oh what the hell, I can wet wade. I go out and wham, I'm into a catfish. They're fun to catch. Another. And another. I must have hit the mother load. I bring in one that's about 10 pounds. He put up a tremendous fight. 

As I'm removing the hook, he flips and spines me. Not in the hand, but in the abdomen. I go down in the muddy water. This really hurts. Really, really hurts. I literally have to pull him off my stomach. Well, the water isn't the cleanest, time to get out and get this seen too.

I get out of the water and try to rinse off on shore. There's a lot of black junk hanging off my legs. Hmmm, its not rotting vegetation, its leeches. Probably 30 or more. Never even felt them. I burn them off with a cigarette. 

I head back to the car and start back towards base, roadblock. The local constabulary and Army is looking for New Peoples Army (NPA) terrorists. Those guys with the shotguns and rifles. No one can leave the barrio. I walk up to the Lt in charge, with my US ID in hand. He initially waves me off. Then looks at me again. I'm in a muddy white t-shirt and shorts with blood coming out of what looks like a gun shot wound in my belly. There are multiple bleeding sores on my legs, and still a couple of leeches. I have a certain "don't mess with me" look on my face. He accepts my 50 peso donation and lets me through.

I get to the base hospital. They clean me up, shoot me full of antibiotics that end up killing all of my intestinal flora and fauna, and send me home after 72 hours of IV, in a hospital gown (the recommendation is to burn my clothing).

I get home and my fly rod is not in the tube. I've left it next to the river (about 50% of a months pay). Shit. I can't even drink a beer. The docs say that it will interfere with the antibiotics. Time for bed at 8 pm.
Well, tomorrow is Saturday and at least I don't have to get up and feed the cats.

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