My name is John Ellis. I consider myself very fortunate to have spent 26 years of my life in the United States Air Force. I had many experiences in those 26-years, some were bad but most were good. I often wish I had kept some sort of a journal, which would make it so much easier to recall the good times, but as it is, like most people I’m forced to extract my memories from my gray matter. Following are some of those memories that are still with me. I’ve written them here, many years later, in an attempt to do what my brain cells can’t, and that is to simply hold on to them a little while longer.

South East Asia:

I guess it’s only natural that as the years pass people tend to remember fewer and fewer of their experiences. And, more than likely, the memories they have are not of the way it really was back then, but rather the way they wish it was. I spent over 26 years of my life with the Air Force at countless assignments, and one thing I learned was that people tend to remember the good times and forget the bad. No two people will ever remember South East Asia in the same exact way. We all came from various backgrounds, had different experiences and saw everything through different sets of eyes. One thing is for certain though, and that is most people will tend to exaggerate both the good and the bad experiences. Although it is difficult after all these years, I will try to be as accurate as I can in writing some of the things I remember from that time.

My story begins in August of 1971. I just finished tech school at Chanute AFB in Illinois to become an aircraft electrician when I got my first assignment, Minot North Dakota. What kind of a person working in Airman’s Assignments could be so twisted to send an 18-year old boy to a place like that? The day I got there, I volunteered for Vietnam, Thailand, Taiwan, The Philippines and even hell just to get out of there. After all, I joined the Air Force to get out of a town like Minot. I can still hear my fellow electric shop workers and barracks mates laughing and saying, “Mother SAC has you now. You’ll be at Minot for years before you’ll be transferred”, and they would point to an example of a fellow that had been there for several years. Well my friends there is a God, and all the praying I did paid off. In less than four months I was sent to Utapao Royal Thai Naval Air Base in Thailand.

Utapao

Anyone who served any time in Thailand will most likely remember the obvious things like the heat, the 12 hour shifts, the tailor and jewelry shops at the main gate, and oh yes the little kids swarming you at the gate for “one baht” – “one baht”. The things we tend to forget are the little things like the fried rice which was wrapped in a banana leaf and a page from an aircraft maintenance manual for only 5 baht; the black smoke coming from the exhaust of those baht buses with those god awful rattling windows. Or, the sight of two young girls or two guys walking down the street holding hands. Remember walking out the gate and hearing “Where you go GI” from the Ka-toi’s ? (The Ka-tois were the dressed-to-kill transvestites trying to prey on the GIs)

I arrived at Utapao in January 1972 on a C-141 flight from Clark Air Base just days after a sapper attack on the B-52 side of the runway. I remember my first days of going through the shock of it all. The heat, getting issued the jungle fatigues, learning my way around the base, trying to figure out the base bus system, and just the 24 hours a day of constant activity. This was a busy place, unlike Minot, which rolled up the sidewalks at 4:00 PM. The 307th FMS Electric Shop at Utapao had well over 120 guys assigned, including the Alternator/Drive shop. I was assigned to work from 6:00 AM to 6:00 PM out of “27 EAST”. That was the call sign of our truck, which drove around the Juliet, Kilo, Lima and Mike rows of B-52s to cover the pilot’s in-flight write-ups.

I remember getting a lot of instrument lighting jobs since most of the Buffs flew night missions, but we also had our share of wing tip gear malfunctions, and electrical power distribution problems to troubleshoot and repair. These were the B-52 D-models which were beginning to show their age. I also recall having to rewire a lot of engine firewalls, which was a requirement at each engine change on these eight-engine monsters. I was just an Airman First Class and still a 3-skill level (apprentice) when I got there, but it didn’t take long to get upgraded with that kind of on-the-job training being dished out.

I remember one day during this training that I met Mr. Electricity up close and personal. I was being taught how to take a resistance reading at a distribution box in the flap well of one of these behemoth planes. My trainer (Sergeant Brunk) assured me there was no power on the connector pins I was checking. My God was he wrong. There was more power there than was needed to light a small city, and it knocked me right on my keister. Naturally he thought it was funny, and to this day I think he purposely set me up, just to teach me to respect the power of AC current.

Another moment worth mentioning is when a fellow electrician, Sergeant Laulau (pronounced low`lew) from Samoa, and I were dropped off of the launch truck to work a problem with the hatch light staying on in the cockpit. This light was supposed to illuminate anytime one of the several access doors to the plane was open or even slightly ajar. We were both still pretty green on this plane and relied a lot on luck and instinct to fix anything. The technical orders in those days left a lot to be desired too. Since they received so much abuse, a lot of the pages were torn or missing. The troubleshooting guides were poor at best, and most of the schematic diagrams were outdated, torn, or missing. Anyway, I told Laulau to get in the cockpit and watch the light as I went around and closed all the hatches. I told him to yell if the light stayed on.

I was in reasonably good shape back then and probably weighed about 180 pounds, but I still had a hell of a time getting the main hatch to latch properly. Laulau on the other hand had arms the size of my thighs and weighed about 250 pounds. He said “Ellis you pansy, you get up here and look at the light and let me close the hatch”. And he did, with about as much ease as closing a car door. I don’t recall if the light was on at that time or not; that’s not what was important at this time. What happened next was that I was unable to unlatch this door from the inside. It had jammed somehow and I couldn’t get it open with the eight to ten inch release handle which was mounted on the inside of the door. I struggled and struggled until I decided to stick my size nine jungle boot in behind the lever to give me more leverage. Well, I got leverage all right. When I gave it a kick, the hatch actually blew off the aircraft and bounced around the revetment a few times. It scared the crap out of me, but luckily Laulau was clear of its path. Just as it happened, our truck was driving by to check on us so everyone on our crew got a good laugh. It seems the hatch had just been installed and rigged, and incorrectly I might add, which was causing the light to stay on.

It was generally a pretty good bunch of guys on our crew. We all worked pretty well together considering we all had a different background and levels of experience. I remember the crew leader; a fellow named TSgt Brand, who had come there from instructor duty in the States. He was very knowledgeable of the B-52 electrical systems on paper, but when it came to the hands-on work he was all thumbs and didn’t know one end of the plane from the other. Another fellow I can remember was a Buck Sergeant Norwood who was the quiet California surfer type of guy whose only reason for being there was to do his four years and get out. Had there been no draft at that time he obviously would never have joined the Air Force to avoid the Army.

Although it was work, we also really had some fun moments out on the ramp. A lot of our slack time between jobs was spent sleeping in the truck or stretched out in the shade of a B-52, that is until around the middle of April. That was Song-Kran, or Water Festival time. That time of year marks the beginning of the rainy season, and as I learned people like to celebrate by getting each other wet. In other words, it is one big water fight. This was a lot of fun off of the base with the Thais, but in the true American spirit of things, we needed to take it all to a new level out on the flight line. This meant throwing as much water at each other as possible by any means possible. Not only would we sneak up on people with trashcans full of water, but water fire extinguishers were used as well as balloons and condoms. It was like a mini war out there with all of the different trucks pitted against each other. It was a real blast until a flying water balloon broke a truck windshield. The Chief of Maintenance quickly put an end to our fun on the flight line after that.

My first few months in this completely foreign land were spent mostly on the base. Occasionally A friend and I might venture to Sattahip, a small town to the east of the base, on one of our days off. This was a real good place to buy jewelry and clothes. Generally though I stayed pretty close to the safety and familiarity of the base. I remember going to the movies at the outdoor theater at the end of the runway in the evenings, and having to hold my ears during the B-52 launches. Who decided to put that theater there anyhow? I also spent a great deal of time at the airman’s club on base and working to finish my Career Development Courses (CDCs) so I could get upgraded to a five skill level. Days off were usually spent sleeping in and going to the base beach. I was gradually getting comfortable with my surroundings and getting used to a culture that was such a change from “The World”, but my exposure to the culture was really only through the Thai Nationals that worked on the base. Since this was my first time being so far away from my family, I continued the letter writing to my Mother and Father about once a week, a habit I formed while I was in Basic Training less than a year earlier.

With all of the bizarre things I was seeing on my few trips to town during the day, I wasn’t quite ready to hit “the ville” at night on my own quite yet. After awhile though I wanted to experience the nightlife that I was hearing so much about at work. Finally one of my five barracks mates (Bernie Zwickel from the engine shop) took me under his wing and one night offered to show me Kilo-sip. This was a small bar town about two or three kilometers from the gate. Man-O-Man! I thought I died and went to heaven. There was a big party going on outside the gate all this time and I never knew it. It was like one big carnival with lots of drinking, dancing, balloons, chicken on a stick, the works. One place I remember even had beautiful oriental girls with numbers on them, sitting in a huge glass-fronted room which looked like an aquarium. I got my initiation that night, and in no time at all I was a veteran of the club scene.

A Typical Day:

For about the next eight months, I worked myself into a routine that went something like this: I’d show up for roll call at 0600 and jump onto “27 EAST”. We’d drive the 2 or 3 miles to the east side of the base (B-52 side), and if there was little or no work pressing we’d try to get breakfast at the hilltop chow hall. After breakfast, half of our crew would get dropped off at the USO for a couple of hours while the other half were dispatched to work the B-52 jobs and respond to red-balls. A red-ball is what a job was called on an aircraft that was within two hours of it’s launch time. After lunch the other half of our crew was usually dropped off at the USO. The USO at Utapao was really a great place to relax. It was the only building I can remember that had air-conditioning, and it had the most comfortable chairs in the world. It was a great place to catch up on the sleep I missed the night before. There was always a lot of activity going in this place; Pinochle, Spades and Gin Rummy games, racks of magazines, and a great snack bar.

By early afternoon, while in the truck cruising the flight line, the subject of discussion was usually centered around who was, or was not, going to hit the town again that night. At one o’clock I was usually still pretty tired from the night before, and I was saying I wasn’t going to go. I planned on going back to the barracks to catch up on my sleep. Around three o’clock for some reason I began to murmur “maybe I’ll go”. There was a lot of coaxing going on, and with the stories about the great time everyone had the night before, I began to perk up. By the time five o’clock rolled around, I seemed to have my second wind and I couldn’t wait to get off and hit the town again. At six o’clock our shift was over, and we were driven back to the shop for turnover.

The work atmosphere in Thailand was one that I never saw again in my 26-year career. Most everyone did their job the best they could, and there was little or no kissing the boss’s ass for a good performance report. It seemed that the guys just wanted to do their year and get back to the land of the big BX. Something that may have helped to contribute to such an attitude was that a tour there was only one year long. So, at any give time half of all the people over there at any given time had less than six months to go, and they usually reminded you of it somehow. This was done either by displaying their short timer calendar on a locker, under the Plexiglas on the desk, or by them yelling the word SH..O..RT!

After dragging our sweat-stained selves off the truck at 1800 hours each day, we usually met at the hooch behind the FMS building for a beer. This is where Pete, the 10-foot python was kept. Pete was sort of the squadron mascot, although I think everyone on base thought of it as a mascot of the entire base. The sheet metal shop made this snake an elaborate cage with a water trough in the middle and a five-foot tree trunk standing upright in it. This was always a sight to see about once a week when it was feeding time for Pete. Someone would throw a live chicken into the cage, and Pete seemed to sense that he was supposed to put on a show. For some odd reason it seemed he wouldn’t wrap himself around his meal to crush and eat it until a large crowd gathered around to watch.