15th Aerial Port Squadron

“Look, I've got to go north today and standing around here bullshitting with you isn't getting me there.” What a delight to be hung-over and arguing with a fat, sweaty, gum-popping staff sergeant behind the booking desk at the 15^th Aerial Port. We’ve been at it for half an hour while he works through a full pack of Spearmint and I deal with a head full of worms and wet sand. The sergeant is apparently too short to give a shit. While we’re bitching back and forth, he’s coloring little squares on a short-timer's calendar.

“You bush-beasts don't impress me for shit.” He sticks his pen behind an ear and pops his gum. “I'm the one who says where you go and when you go around here. No Marine birds going north today, and that's the way it is. Sorry 'bout that.”

Sorely tempted to reach over the desk, grab this prick by the stacking swivel, and commence field stripping his sorry ass, I realize it’s futile. And it’s too hot in here for a man with a world-record hangover. It’s another of Nam’s little conundrums. You can generally zip right up to the forward areas with minimum difficulty, but just try getting space on something headed for the rear. There’s a much better chance of finding a PFC in the Pentagon.

So, how to get myself and four canteens full of booze plus my field gear up north past this uncooperative sonofabitch at passenger control? Heat and frustration drive me away from the desk to ponder the gaggle of aircraft on the 15^th APS flight line. A transient breeze carries the familiar odor of the orient mixed with JP-4 jet fuel. An Air Force cargo plane taxies toward a forklift idling next to a stack of boxes. The gear is marked for an outfit based at Dong Ha, and it’s likely the incoming aircraft is due to carry it there. If I can snivel my way aboard that C-123, I might make Phu Bai before dark.

A pilot in a jaunty blue overseas cap is standing outside the airplane, watching the forklift operator load his bird. Code of the grunt: Innovate and adapt, do what you have to do when and where you have to do it. The Air Force lieutenant eyes my slovenly condition through tinted flight glasses and smiles like a man who knows he’s about to become a mark for a needy grunt. He’s been there and done that a bunch driving airplanes around The Nam.

“Excuse me, sir. I got a real problem and I thought maybe I could ask one of you officers for some help.” I give him everything but the tears and digging my toe in the dirt. “My brother's up at Dong Ha at Charlie Med. He got hit yesterday and I got permission to go up and see him. But the Marines say there ain't anything flying north.”

And here is a clear opportunity for this guy to demonstrate that the Air Force could and would fly where the vaunted Marines would not. “So you want the Air Force to take you up there?”

“Yes, sir, and if I don't get up there today, my brother might die and I would never see him again.” I am prepared to whine and wheedle further but it isn’t necessary. This guy sees his chance to trump the Marine aviators and be remembered for all time by a hard-pressed grunt as Really Good Joe. He motions for me to say no more and get my gear aboard the aircraft. “When you see your brother, tell him the Air Force got you there on time, hear?'

His dual-engine transport claws for airspace over Danang creating a peculiar but familiar sensation back in the cargo compartment. It’s as if the airplane doesn’t want to leave the earth and get up there in triple-A range with its ass hanging out. There is a reluctant little lurch when the wheels lift off the runway and the deal is done. I snuggle under a retaining strap stretched across the floor of the cargo bay, hoping the staff sergeant down below at the booking desk picks up a bad burst of clap on his first low-level mission over a female back in The World.

My delicate stomach wakes me from a sweaty stupor as the aircraft suddenly dips and tilts. Visible below is the red clay of Dong Ha and the pilots are taking no chances on incoming artillery. They manhandle the airplane around the pattern and roar into a final landing approach at the last possible moment. Dong Ha puts me close, but I still have to make my way to Phu Bai. Leaving me on a steel-matted runway, the aircrew unloads rapidly and then spins it around to head back for cold beer and clean sheets.