Replies

Grampa Dave said:
"One can hope that the Air Force guys were AF Special Forces. I have a couple of friends who served in Laos and areas around Nam during that war as AF SF's. These guys are in their 60's now, and a couple of them would take care of 5 left wing a$$holes in about a minute."

Hooray!! Pippin, I can indeed relate the story of how my husband was greeted in October of 1968 when he returned after a year of fun and games in Southeast Asia!

From January 1962 until June 1966, he was stationed at Eielson AFB, 30 miles south of Fairbanks, Alaska.
Skipping over all the fun those years were..:), I relate the last year there, he went through extensive training in hand to hand combat skills - thus was the forerunner of your correct description of AF Special Ops, Grampa.
Graduation required singlehandedly taking on 5 men at once, and beating them all.

Fast forward to a year at Myrtle Beach AFB and then assignment to Tahkli AFB on the Thailand border with Vietnam, where he was a "Strike Team Leader," with 6 to 12 men under him.
Tahkli was the base for the then new F-111s, and their primary duty was securing the airfield perimeter for their takeoffs and landings. In addition, they routinely patrolled the small villages around it, with the locals pointing out "strangers" (communist infiltrators) remaining among them - and 'dealt with them.'

When infiltrating, they of course had no supply lines and took every resource (food, livestock, etc.) the village had, and always singled out anyone in authority/educated for torture or worse. Even more horrible, did so to their children/grandchildren, to create fear and "cooperation" in the future.

In that era McNamara cleverly created "no paper trail" TDY's, so he could with a straight face report to the USA and Congress there were "X" thousand of our troops in Vietnam - a flat out LIE, since at any given time, troops actually 'stationed' in Thailand, Laos, etc. were choppered into Nam to help with the hot spots, and never included in the cooked figures.
My husband thus took his teams into the Tet Offensive battles, and Da Nang, as examples of just some of his his "R&Rs"

Then there was the 30-minute notice to board with his men to be choppered into NORTH Vietnam to confirm a downed F-111 had no survivors, and had self-destructed as it was programmed, to leave no clues for the enemy of its workings.
My, what a fun 3 days THAT was for them, before being extracted.....

After a year, quite literally plucked from the jungles for a flight to Bangkok and a charter flight home, aboard the plane the stewardesses tried to warn them about the sentiment in the States.

With about 200 of them debarking in San Francisco, all in uniform to qualify for Standby Rates - my husband having to fly to Dallas and then Columbia, SC where I waited for him - they were greeted by a lineup of Flower Children, chanting and screaming and yes - calling them Baby Killers...

One gal DID literally spit in B's face, and his "reflexive action" was to take her arm and snap it over his leg.

Without a spoken word, the men behind him all reached out and took the children to the rest room, Airport Security smiling and looking the other way!
In the next few minutes, they were given a
Lesson in "Thou Shalt Not Spit in Public 101"..:))
Security gave the military men thumbs up, and after they had dispersed, THEN called for the Police to come clean it up, having *NO* idea how the mess happened - LOL

It got just as bad, however, for him. Aboard both flights to get across country, the stewardesses DEMANDED he sit at the VERY REAR of the plane "so he wouldn't upset the civilians."

He called to tell me he would fly out of Dallas to Columbia sometime the next day, and I left our children with my sister and anxiously camped out ALL DAY at the airport.
Planeload after planeload came - no B...and around 4:30 p.m. the last flight in from Dallas arrived....again, almost 200 persons debarked and I was crestfallen, thinking I'd have to spend the next day the same way.

Last came the stewardess, and trailing alone far behind her was MY HERO - - - yeah, America - whatta way to hurt them and all of us who waited for them.....

Thanks, Grandpa Dave for confirming my often described on FR his AF Special Ops status back then...

Assigned next to Charleston AFB, he opted out in July 1969 rather than return to Southeast Asia, as was in the works for him.

Happy to say he had successful retail management years after that, and will be 70 next week.

Happy and proud Marine here - over and out..:))