War Stories 40

[ikar]

People think it's easy being assigned to a gate. That depends on how you look at it. Maybe compared to what someone else may have for a job that includes hard work like ammo or aircraft maintenance, or civil engineer, it is. It's the other things you have to consider.

If you're on the main gate, you're busy all the time, checking I'D.s, vehicles, and so on. On another gate it's not as busy but you have to check in the rare person who comes in that way, inspect the bomb truck convoys, and put up with the noise of the B-52 missions taking off only a couple hundred yards away.

The rest of the gates would be slow with almost nothing coming through except when somebody was coming to work or going home and then there wasn't that many. You could easily spend 6 of the eight hours seeing nobody except the T.G., Thai Marine of Thai skycops assigned with you. Sometimes there was nobody else with you.

So what do you do out there?

The first thing, after the posting vehicle has left was to inspect the gate and its surrounding area. After that, break out your radio and tune in the base A.F.R.T.S. station. They would have a lie show going or play a pre-recorded show from the states. If you missed it the first time they would play it again 12 hours later. That was so everyone had a chance to hear it as some people worked 12 hour shifts or more.

At times I would take pictures, depending on what gate I was watching. Did more than a few experimental self portraits:

One time I had a couple girls walk up from the village by the beach to keep me company, and distracted, while their grand father snuck back through the fence to the village.

One night I started a small fire and was cooking my latest find, a can ob beanie weenies I stumbled across in the BX. The flight chief caught me and told me to put the fire out, they could see me. I just had to point out that it didn't matter because I was under a flood lamp and completely visible anyway.

On another night at the Thai Navy gate I watched a animal of some kind drinking from a puddle. It was a good size critter and finally I had to ask the Marine what it was. He looked for a minute and said "rat." I considered that for a few seconds and pulled out my .38 and started to line up on it. Suddenly the head came up and it rose up on two legs and looked at me for a couple seconds and hopped through the wire and was gone.

Occasionally I could see a mongoose running across the road into the next field.