REMF

Rear echelon M _ _ _ _ F _ _ _ _

That's one of the coinages from the Vietnam War, REMF, along with FNG. Earlier wars gave us FIGMO, SNAFU and many other sanitized renderings of GI vulgar slang.

When I went to Thailand I was not particularly a REMF. And we were all FNGs. There were no old timers, and Ubon was the far end of the Air Force.

In early 1962 I was a brave and loyal SSGT in Texas fixing radios. Whoa, an assignment to Clark AB in the Philippines. Not too cool, but not the worst. I moved my pregnant wife and two existing kids to California, near her sister. They would, said the Air Force, join me in about 6 months.

I arrived at Travis one morning, 15 March 1962, and left that afternoon.  Contract DC-6. Landed at Clark sometime after midnight a couple of days later. Couldn't find out anything about the 5th Tac, my new organization, so I took a bus to the transient barracks. Next morning I called 5th Tac orderly room. They said they had someone down at the terminal last night to meet me, but couldn't find me. Hey, I was one of the guys getting off that big airplane out there.

Up to the group, into the orderly room. Guess what. --You're going to be assigned to DaNang, Sarge.-- Was I dumb? I knew what and where DaNang was, even in 1962. Bummer. --13 month tour, Sarge.-- Could be worse, but I'll be goddamned if I can see how. Maybe Central Africa, or the polar ice cap in a pup tent.  But, just a day or two later, good news. --You ain't goin to DaNang, Sarge, you're going to Bangkok.-- Well, maybe they see my value. At least they ain't filling sand bags in Bangkok. I had to hang around Clark for a couple of weeks. Needed a passport to go to Thailand, so one was generated for me. Then, off we go into the weird blue yonder on a C-130. Brief stopover at Tan Son Nuht, and on the Bangkok.

5th Tac had a little radar site between the runways at Don Muong, Bangkok International. Hadn't been there long, and was just now being manned by PCS unfortunates instead of TDYs. This was not bad duty.  Lived in a barracks, with mosquito nets. Pretty good chow hall. Club with beer. Transportation to downtown Bangkok. Lotsa activity downtown. Somehow regretted being married.

--Uh, say Sarge, did you know we're moving this radar to Ubon?-- Now you got me, I don't know where Ubon is, or is what Ubon is. Well, it's a city upcountry where there is an airfield with nothing on it. So, we tore down, or up, the radar site and shipped it partly by train and partly by air to Ubon. I got to ride up on a C-123 wearing a parachute. This was not the first time, understand, but I still say I go out right after the pilot.

We landed at Ubon. It was the first time I had disembarked from a plane that still had the engines running. As soon as we were off, with our equipment, the plane left. Hmmm. We were met by a lonely 6 by. Rode up to the cantonment, or where the cantonment would be after we put up tents. Spent the afternoon erecting 8 man squad tents. Sure weren't many people around.

That evening, before dark, we went over to edge of the cantonment, removed our clothes, climbed on the bed of a 6 by, and showered. How it worked was our fire engine wet us down, perhaps a dozen at a time, we soaped and then the engine rinsed us. Worked fine, and was amusing, perhaps even educational, to the numerous Thais who gathered at the nearby tree line to watch. You might ask wasn't the water cold? You'd be kidding, right? Nothing's cold in Thailand in May.  By the next evening, as I remember, the engineers had a shower tent erected and plumbed.

A few days later I rode back to Bangkok on another, or maybe the same, C-123 and picked up my clothes.  What was left of them after I shipped back my winter stuff. And most of my limited civilian wardrobe.  Back up to Ubon on a C-124, the last time I rode on Old Shaky, I'm not unhappy to say. That's the last time I left Ubon until I went back to the States in March of the next year, 1963. Needless to say my wife and two, soon to be three, kids did not join me.

Lord knows what the history of this radar and radio equipment was. I don't. It was Korean War vintage, or earlier, and I'm sure it had been moved many times. The radios, my stuff, were housed in metal huts, we called them vans, but they had no wheels. They transported well and only needed to be turned on, for the most part. Of course, the antennas had to be put up. I stayed busy with that and did not participate in the erection of the radars, search and height, or the maintenance and operations shelters. From what I observed, I feel for the next guy trying to disassemble the shelters.

Those 8 man tents up at the camp evolved. They gained floors, then sides, then roofs. Took time, of course.  While we diddled around with our radars, scopes, radios, generators, the engineers worked their asses off fixing up the camp. They built a nice chow hall. It was screened to keep the flies in. The ones that didn't get into the stew.   They built a very nice latrine, also a major stop for the flies. Actually, the latrine was a very vital and welcome feature. Everyone likes wash basins, flush toilets, and showers. Eventually we even had two temperature water.

Speaking of water temperature, showering was somewhat of a problem.  Our water supply as in a tower. It was brought to the latrine in pipes laid on the ground. In the summer the water was so hot from the sun it was almost deadly. Then, when the weather cooled off and Clark still had not sent any water heaters, it was so cold you'd look down as you showered and wonder what happened to your manhood. Eventually the water heaters arrived.

We had a little PX in an evolved tent, and a club in another. There was beer in the club. I lived right next door to the club, a handy location.  Some Australians eventually arrived and set up a camp not far away. I think the had some F-86s. Mind you, there was no war going on around there, but we were working with the Thai Air Force in a training capacity, and whatever. Anyway, the Aussies were great a amusing themselves. They'd come up to our club, drink, sing, make noise. Many a night I lay awake listening to Waltzing Matilda. 

From memory, what I did daily was unmemorable. If a radio happened to break I'd fix it. Actually, the radios were excellent little dudes, even if not of recent vintage. There were TRC-32 vans, each containing 2 GRC-27s.  There were TRR-7 vans with 2 VHF receivers, BC-1420s I think. Slightly updated BC-639s. And there were TRT-3 vans with BC 1421 transmitters, which were slightly updated BC-640s. If a maintenance man could just bring himself to leave the damn things alone, ignoring all preventive maintenance routines prescribed by the Air Force, they worked wonderfully well, and almost never broke. I quickly mastered that technique.

And here are the little darlings, those are the "vans" and inside of them are the radios. See me holding up a VHF transmitter van. See that search radar back there? Firing RF pulses through my body for many months. Could that be why my testicles are the size of garbanzo beans? Just kidding.

A good bit of the time I was the only radio repairman there. Early on there was another guy, but he had a back problem and had to return to Clark, maybe to the States. Once in a while a Clark native from the 5th Tac would turn up for a month TDY. Really had no use for any help.  Nothing much to do. Boring. One maintenance officer thought if we painted the tops of the vans silver the equipment would run cooler.  Yeah, right. About 0.5 degree cooler. Anyway we painted them. Took about 3 days. Every morning I swept out the vans. Then I sat in my hut and waited for someone to tell me something did not work. Maytag.

The monsoon came and went. The rainy one, I mean. Ever been through a monsoon season in Southeast Asia? Rains a lot. Really big, bad, impressive storms. I kept waiting for lightning to strike my antennas and blow up a few radios. Excitement. Never happened. Then winter. The other monsoon. Wind down off the Himalayas. Temperature drops to (gasp) 50 degrees. Boy, were we glad when the water heaters came. No heat, though. I slept on my GI bed, the old style narrow one, under two blankets and a shelter half doubled. It was comfortable.

As the time to leave approached I came to realize that my uniforms would perhaps not reach the end of the tour with me. The fatigues, that is. I said that Ubon was the far end of the Air Force; you could not buy a uniform. I never went to Clark on R&R, so I never had a chance to replenish that way. The last few days I was there I would take off my underwear and socks each night and throw them away. Then, when the fatigues were dirty I'd throw them away. I ended up on the morning I left with two sets of Khakis, a couple of changes of underwear and socks, a pair of shoes, and a cap. I had one pair of cotton civilian pants, and one cotton short sleeved shirt.

Finally, no days, no wakeups. Caught a C-123 through Udorn to Don Muong, stayed overnight, or maybe two nights, and caught the C-135 courier coming back from Saudi and rode it to Tan Son Nuht, Clark, Hickam, and Travis. At Travis I put on my cotton pants and cotton shirt with my GI shoes and socks and caught a civilian bus through Sacramento to LA and Long Beach. And on home to my wife and kids.

And so, dear reader, that's how I became one of the first Air Force guys outside of the MAG to spend a complete tour of duty in Southeast Asia.  I was not terribly pleased about it at the time, but as the years went by an unanticipated benefit became apparent. I received credit for a Southeast Asia tour. Well before the war heated up. I never had to go back.