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Two Officers
June 25, 2011 |
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I was just thinking about a TDY (Temporary Duty) I
took to Korea. I had a 2nd looie who kept bugging me
about our balky damned radar until I called Clark
and they told him to worry about Ops and let me take
care of the maintenance activities. By contrast, a
Lt. Col. Smythe, who occasionally came up from Seoul
to check on things, never bothered me at all. Once,
when the radar was down and I was busy
troubleshooting, he did ask me a few questions,
which I answered at length.
However, I was up
on the antenna – which wasn't as high off the ground
as you might think – and I speak softly, so the
colonel hadn't a clue as to what I was saying. He
later remarked that he could see I was busy, and
although he hadn't understood a word I had said, I
sounded polite and looked efficient. So, since he
didn't know what I was doing anyway, he decided to
just leave me alone and let me do it. Naturally,
since I was left undisturbed, I got the radar back
on the air immediately.
I think the
lieutenant suspected that I sometimes shut the radar
down just to piss him off. He learned the error of
his ways after I left and the guys who replaced me
couldn't keep the little bugger on the air at all.
It was the same radar set I had worked on for a year
in ‘Nam, and, apparently, was pissed off at having
been dismantled and stored on Clark for nearly two
years. It had worked fine in ‘Nam. Of course, it had
gotten shot up a little bit too, which probably
didn't help matters. A couple of rounds through my
antenna wouldn't have improved my disposition much,
either.
They thought about sending me back to
Easy Queen Mountain to help out, but my tour on
Clark was almost up and they had already
involuntarily extended me once. None of them really
wanted to die, so they reconsidered and I rotated
back Stateside on schedule. |
 By
Thurman P. Woodfork
Copyright 2005
About
Author...
Thurman P. Woodfork (Woody) spent his
Air Force career as a radar repairman in places as disparate as
Biloxi, Mississippi; Cut Bank, Montana; Tin City, Alaska; Rosas,
Spain and Tay Ninh, Vietnam. In Vietnam, he was assigned to
Detachment 7 of the 619th Tactical Control Squadron, a Forward Air
Command Post located on Trai Trang Sup. Trang Sup was an Army
Special Forces camp situated about fifty miles northwest of Saigon
in Tay Ninh province, close to the Cambodian border.
After Vietnam, Woody remained in the Air Force for nine more years.
Visit
Thurman P. Woodfork's site for more information |
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