Our little shindig started taking shape the next morning as we gathered around our C-123 transport, got acquainted, and checked and rechecked for proper tools and supplies. It is embarrasing to get on the job somewhere at the end of the world and not have what you need to do the job. It can lead to some terrific A$$chewings later when you are de-briefing the job.
My basic function on jobs like this were to pick the right people, to pick their brains to determine what logistics we needed, pull everything together, get it organized and keep it organized. So it stands to reason that if things dont go right, I would be the chew-ee come A$$chewing time. With rank and privilige comes responsibility. Or as some learned individual named SnakeSpit said, "The good that men do is oft interred with their bones, but the evil lives on...and on.....and on.....and on."
We had been joined by the pilot, co-pilot, and a Tsgt flight engineer who were going to fly out the crippled bird. The Pilot, a Major Jackson, automatically became our little groups commander as he was the ranking officer. He and his crew joined us where I had everybody and their tools and parts lined up. We all did a mind game about what problems the airplane might have and whether we were prepared for it. I asked Major Jackson if he was satisfied and he nodded yes. I asked Lt Bond if he had anything to add and he said no. As we were breaking up, I noticed the aircrew getting acquainted and shaking hands with Riley. There is a certain relationship between a pilot and the man who tunes his engines. It has something to do with the fact that you cant walk away from an airplane if the engines quit running. In spite of all the other preparations we had made, it boiled down to the fact that if that airplanes engines would run good enough, we were going to fly that baby out of there. This may be a long winded story about a lot of other stuff but it really was a very simple job, get the engines running and fly our bird to home base at Howard AFB in the Panama canal zone.
The final thing we loaded onto the transport were the mini-guns and ammo for the four little tweety birds. You see, we have some kind of goofy treaty with Mexico, and maybe some other banana republics of central america that we dont land on their soil with armed airplanes. Thats the way it was explained to us and we got a laugh out of the fact that we were flying the 4 tweety's as a show of "strength" or "force" but we were flying them unarmed.
Just before we got to San Antonio, our 4 little tweety's closed up around us and flew formation with us. We got a kick out of that, thinking what we must have looked like from the ground. Your Air Force Special Operations Forces on display. Hooray for the good guys. We were envious of the tweety birds four crewchiefs because they were getting to fly in the right hand seat of the twetty birds, really riding in style while we trundled along in the transport. They smirked at us and shot us the bird and we shot it right back at them.
After landing, we transferred our stuff over to the airplane that would transport us south. It was a modified version of a C-154. It had sleeping quarters in the rear and a cooking galley up front with lots of plush seats in between. We were going in style. We loaded all our stuff in the belly of the airplane. The guns and bullets were in boxes labeled something else as camoflage. Fun and games, fun and games.
We were to have a meeting with all the wheels from Washington at 3:00 PM that afternoon and were spending the night there on Kelly AFB.
The meeting at 3 PM didnt go too well in my opinion. For one thing, the physical layout was bad. All the state department and pentagon people were introduced to us one by one as they were all standing on a little platform about a foot higher than the rest of the room. The crippled birds aircrew and the tweety crews and us maintenance types were sitting on a lower plane than these anointed ones from Washington as each of them was introduced and proper homage paid to their importance to the over-all success of our great mission. Never once were we introduced individually to anyone.
An old baritone voiced guy with wavy white hair from the State department introduced himself as in over all charge of the mission and gave a speech about how important it was in our relationship with all South American countries. A distinguished looking bird Colonel from the Pentagon (no pilot wings on his uniform) said he had heard some great things about the Air Force Special Operation Forces and how proud he was to be serving with us. Both the civilian and the Colonel had a small gaggle of tote and fetchers and yessir and nosir people nodding sagely as these two great sages impressed us with their importance.
Then a younger state department type gave us a little lecture about the cultural differences between americans and mexicans. The main thing he emphasized though was about the food and water and Montezuma's revenge. He made it sound like we should be carrying C-rations to eat rather than take a chance on eating in Mexico. Our little sheetmetal man got all in a dither about that Montezuma's revenge stuff. "Isn't there any kind of pills you can give us for that what ever kind of revenge stuff," he asked in his squeaky little voice. It was looking like I had been had by that sheetmetal shop supervisor that picked this kid for me. He slipped a ringer in on me and I intended to get him for it when we got back to home base.
Then things deteriated further when the meeting was turned over to a Major Fetchit (not his real name) who was to be the Liason Officer between us lowly types and the high muckledy mucks of this most honorable diplomatic mission. Major Fetchit wasn't wearing pilot wings either. The gist of Fetchit's speech was to tell us that we were to say absolutely nothing or take any kind of action that would detract from the importance of the diplomatic mission. And that if we had any problems, feel free to tell him and he would take care of everything. That we were to never, under any circumstances, initiate any actions or conversations with "indigenous" personnel without prior approval.
Riley and I were sitting next to one another and I must admit, we were not taking all this too well. I was praying Riley wouldn't act in an undiplomatic manner. But sure enough, Riley leaned over and whispered in my ear loud enough for just about everybody in our little bunch to hear, "That Major is a constipated looking SOB, aint he?" Trying to not laugh, I was choking and snorting pretty loud and the rest of the unannointed ones around us were guilty of some giggles and snickers. Major Fetchit paused in his recitation long enough to admonish us. "Gentlemen, Gentlemen, if I may......if I may have your attention" he said. If pomposity was worth a nickel a pound, this guy would be a millionaire. We managed to pull ourselfs together so he could continue. Riley leaned my way again but I cut him short by hissing "Just shut up, Riley," and that was loud enough so I got a dirty look from Major Fetchit. Our commander/pilot, Major Jackson, was sitting in the seat in front of Riley taking all this in. He was wearing his flight fatigues with the cloth gold Major's leaves on the shoulders bouncing up and down as he was struggling to choke back laughter.
Major Fetchit managed to finish the breifing. He told us we would land and spend the night in each of three places. Mexico City where we would overnight in the Maria Isabella Hilton Hotel. Geeeee, talk about first class! Other overnights would be Managua, Nicaragua and Grand City, Guatemala. (Im not sure my memory is correct about that Grand City but thats how I remember it). After this grand tour of central america, impressing the whole universe with our unarmed tweety birds, we would then proceed to the main focal point of our mission. That would be the tropical paradise of El Sombrero where the all important diplomatic mission could reflect glory upon the honorable United States of America.
Major Fetchit stopped there and our pilot raised his hand and told Fetchit he forgot one thing. Fetchit frowned and asked what that was and the Pilot said "Our airplane. The bastards have our airplane. Isnt that what this is all about? What do you know about the airplane?"
Fetchit said, "Oh well, of course, of course, the airplane, Well......uh...its still there."
"Well now thats really, really, good news," Major Jackson drawled without any attempt to hide the sarcasm. Then he asked, "Does anyone in your group know anything about the condition of our airplane?" That stumped the whole contingent of Pentagon types so Jackson told them to just forget it, we would take care of that when we got there and then he added in a manner that was oh so unctious and condescending, "But we do appreciate your efforts in assisting us with our transportation problems, Major Fetchit, allowing us to concentrate on the more important mission of recovering our aircraft. And then he added what may be called a pointed remark. "Im going to specifically mention your name when I turn in my final report."
After the meeting broke up and we were all outside, I walked up to our Command Pilot and shook his hand. "I owe you a beer, sir." Without hesitation he said, "I accept."
So off we go with our unarmed arsenal of unarmed Twetty's. We landed the transport bird at Mexico City. The airports traffic controllers had not allowed our twetty's to fly formation with us as we approached the airport. American Embassy personnel met us with transportation. All the officers and diplomatic personnel decided to take a bus on down to the hotel while the rest of us were waiting for the tweety's to land and post flight them. Lt Bond stayed with us working grunts.
Some television camera's were being set up nearby, all pointed at us so we were mostly acting on our best behavior as we waited for the baby birds. I asked Riley not to drool at the camera's.
The Twetty's landed and reported no problems. Lt Bond took their pilots into one of the terminal buildings and hooked them up with embassy transportation. As he was walking back toward us and the Tweety's, a whole bunch of people, we estimated about 30, came tearing out of the terminal building and ran past Bond and on out to where the rest of us were bedding down the tweety's.
What a revolting situation that was. It looked like we were being invaded. They just flooded the area around the airplanes before we knew what was happening. I started running back and forth and in tight circles and breathing hard like a good sargeant should. I was also screaming for the guys to close the tweetys canopys so one of those idiots didnt reach in and accidently blow the seats and canopys or cause some other damage.
We were caught in the middle of a full scale riot. Some of those people were wearing big round buttons that said "Press". No kidding, it looked something like one of those old 1930's movies where all the newspaper reporters went around wearing buttons like that and yelling a lot. These people were screaming a lot.
Riley was doing his own version of riot control. He wasn't swinging his fist wildly and I was glad of that because of the danged camera's. But when one of those nuts would come running by him he would throw a hard shoulder block on them and put them right on their butt. Then he would casually stroll off looking for another fast moving victim.
What really surprised me was Lt Bond. Camera's or no camera's and diplomacy or no diplomacy, Bond had lost his cool and was swatting the hell out of anything he could reach. His example was energizing some of the other boys too, diplomacy was going by the wayside, and this was shaping up like a real mess.
The rioters were getting more than they might have bargained for and were backing off mostly and just yelling and shouting a lot.
I finally spotted the guy who seemed to be in charge and cornered him up beside a tweety bird. He was a fat guy and everytime he tried to take off I would hold him there and bounce his fat butt back up against the nose of the airplane. He spoke english and said we were violating a treaty by flying armed airplanes in Mexico. I popped a panel open on the tweety and showed him that the guns had been removed. Then he ran up and started pounding on the refueling boom that stuck our of the nose of the airplane. "You stupid SOB," I yelled at him, "that is a re-fueling boom."
About that time, some Mexican police arrived. I think there was more of them than there was the rioters. Geezzz! talk about rough police tactics. They were banging shin bones with clubs. Evidently these were experienced rioters that had been shinboned before. Some of them were running bent over trying to protect their shins with their arms. I saw one rioter jumping up and down real fast like he thought he could outjump the shinbone treatment but they got him anyway. That bunch was laid out and dragged off in short order. I almost felt sorry for them.....but not quite.
A bunch of Embassy personnel materialized along with a bunch of Mexican officials and Mexican military to take charge of the situation. We were not leaving the airplanes untill we were convinced they were safe even though they were now surrounded by Mexican guards. Someone from the Embassy who struck me as trustworthy assured me and Lt Bond that he personally would stay there and protect the airplanes and he said it would calm things down if we took ourselfs and our american uniforms out of sight. It finally boiled down to us getting ordered to leave by a message from the Leaders of our little mission who were still safely ensconced in the Maria Isabella Hilton Hotel. We were ordered to come on down to the Hotel and let the American Embassy personnel take care of things.
So we loaded up in some suburbans and headed downtown. Riley had a satisfied smirk on his face. "how many did you get, Riley?" I asked him and he said he busted about 10 of them mo-fo's. He chided me cause all I got was one big fat guy. I told him yeah but that was the guy who was in charge. Riley said yeah, leave it up to me to brown nose whoever was in charge. Its kind of hard to win an argument with Riley. Riley asked me who had been feeding gunpowder to Lt Bond. Bond said his mother would be ashamed of him for his momentary lapse of manners. One thing for sure, I told Bond, you can forget about a diplomatic carrer if those TV cameras got some good shots of you in action, Major Fetchit and Ambassador Baritone is going to be mighty disappointed in you.
While the other members of our little mission had been told about us being mobbed at the airport, they had been ordered to stay in the hotel downtown and let the American Embassy handle everything. Our Major Jackson met us as we arrived at the hotel and checked us all over for damage. As we entered the lobby of that fancy hotel, the annointed members of our diplomatic and pentagon core were gathered there, glumly announcing that the evening TV news was supposed to show the airport riot. Old Ambasador Baritone apologized for any "inconvenience's we may have suffered."
Our young Lt Bond actually strutted up to the Pentagon's Major Fetchit and asked loud enough for all to hear, "Gee, where were you, Major. You said if we had any trouble, you would take care of it." Fetchit turned red in the face and mumbled that he was sorry but had not been allowed to leave the hotel. I was so proud of Lt Bond. That young guy was shaping up real good.
Major Fetchit said he thought it might be better if we all stayed in the hotel that night rather than go out on the town. Major Jackson looked incredulous and asked him if he was crazy. That ended that thought.
The TV story about the riot was kind of dissapointing. Only one shaky shot of me bouncing fatso off the tweety's nose. If anyone starred, it was Lt Bond who was plainly shown to be antaginistic toward mexican rioters. "This isn't good," Ambassodor Baritone was heard muttering.
That night, The crippled birds aircrew joined with the rest of us enlisted types and went out on the town. After we had enough beer to limber us up, I got a bright idea. I thought I had the guys talked into eating some genuine mexican food. The idea was to stay away from the touristy type restaurants and eat some real mexican food at a real dump of a mexican restaurant. But different guys kept disapproving the different restaurants for different reasons and as the beer wore off, even I noticed that they might be considered somewhat less than desirable.
Then our little sheetmetal man said, in his squeaky little voice, "Oh, looky there, there is a Denny's Restaurant!" And I got out voted and we ate at Denny's. I was really ashamed of those guys, eating canned and frozen TV mexican dinners right in the middle of Mexico City at a danged Denny's. The little sheetmetal man would only eat french fries and coke cause he was afraid of Montezuma's revenge. I looked across the table at Major Jackson and said, "They just dont make these special forces troops like they used too, Major." He replied, "Yeah, danged shame aint it, guess we will just have to muddle thru with what we got."
My basic function on jobs like this were to pick the right people, to pick their brains to determine what logistics we needed, pull everything together, get it organized and keep it organized. So it stands to reason that if things dont go right, I would be the chew-ee come A$$chewing time. With rank and privilige comes responsibility. Or as some learned individual named SnakeSpit said, "The good that men do is oft interred with their bones, but the evil lives on...and on.....and on.....and on."We had been joined by the pilot, co-pilot, and a Tsgt flight engineer who were going to fly out the crippled bird. The Pilot, a Major Jackson, automatically became our little groups commander as he was the ranking officer. He and his crew joined us where I had everybody and their tools and parts lined up. We all did a mind game about what problems the airplane might have and whether we were prepared for it. I asked Major Jackson if he was satisfied and he nodded yes. I asked Lt Bond if he had anything to add and he said no. As we were breaking up, I noticed the aircrew getting acquainted and shaking hands with Riley. There is a certain relationship between a pilot and the man who tunes his engines.
It has something to do with the fact that you cant walk away from an airplane if the engines quit running. In spite of all the other preparations we had made, it boiled down to the fact that if that airplanes engines would run good enough, we were going to fly that baby out of there. This may be a long winded story about a lot of other stuff but it really was a very simple job, get the engines running and fly our bird to home base at Howard AFB in the Panama canal zone.The final thing we loaded onto the transport were the mini-guns and ammo for the four little tweety birds. You see, we have some kind of goofy treaty with Mexico, and maybe some other banana republics of central america that we dont land on their soil with armed airplanes. Thats the way it was explained to us and we got a laugh out of the fact that we were flying the 4 tweety's as a show of "strength" or "force" but we were flying them unarmed.
Just before we got to San Antonio, our 4 little tweety's closed up around us and flew formation with us. We got a kick out of that, thinking what we must have looked like from the ground. Your Air Force Special Operations Forces on display. Hooray for the good guys. We were envious of the tweety birds four crewchiefs because they were getting to fly in the right hand seat of the twetty birds, really riding in style while we trundled along in the transport. They smirked at us and shot us the bird and we shot it right back at them.
After landing, we transferred our stuff over to the airplane that would transport us south. It was a modified version of a C-154. It had sleeping quarters in the rear and a cooking galley up front with lots of plush seats in between. We were going in style. We loaded all our stuff in the belly of the airplane. The guns and bullets were in boxes labeled something else as camoflage. Fun and games, fun and games.
We were to have a meeting with all the wheels from Washington at 3:00 PM that afternoon and were spending the night there on Kelly AFB.
The meeting at 3 PM didnt go too well in my opinion. For one thing, the physical layout was bad. All the state department and pentagon people were introduced to us one by one as they were all standing on a little platform about a foot higher than the rest of the room. The crippled birds aircrew and the tweety crews and us maintenance types were sitting on a lower plane than these anointed ones from Washington as each of them was introduced and proper homage paid to their importance to the over-all success of our great mission. Never once were we introduced individually to anyone.
An old baritone voiced guy with wavy white hair from the State department introduced himself as in over all charge of the mission and gave a speech about how important it was in our relationship with all South American countries. A distinguished looking bird Colonel from the Pentagon (no pilot wings on his uniform) said he had heard some great things about the Air Force Special Operation Forces and how proud he was to be serving with us. Both the civilian and the Colonel had a small gaggle of tote and fetchers and yessir and nosir people nodding sagely as these two great sages impressed us with their importance.
Then a younger state department type gave us a little lecture about the cultural differences between americans and mexicans. The main thing he emphasized though was about the food and water and Montezuma's revenge. He made it sound like we should be carrying C-rations to eat rather than take a chance on eating in Mexico. Our little sheetmetal man got all in a dither about that Montezuma's revenge stuff. "Isn't there any kind of pills you can give us for that what ever kind of revenge stuff," he asked in his squeaky little voice. It was looking like I had been had by that sheetmetal shop supervisor that picked this kid for me. He slipped a ringer in on me and I intended to get him for it when we got back to home base.
Then things deteriated further when the meeting was turned over to a Major Fetchit (not his real name) who was to be the Liason Officer between us lowly types and the high muckledy mucks of this most honorable diplomatic mission. Major Fetchit wasn't wearing pilot wings either. The gist of Fetchit's speech was to tell us that we were to say absolutely nothing or take any kind of action that would detract from the importance of the diplomatic mission. And that if we had any problems, feel free to tell him and he would take care of everything. That we were to never, under any circumstances, initiate any actions or conversations with "indigenous" personnel without prior approval.
Riley and I were sitting next to one another and I must admit, we were not taking all this too well. I was praying Riley wouldn't act in an undiplomatic manner. But sure enough, Riley leaned over and whispered in my ear loud enough for just about everybody in our little bunch to hear, "That Major is a constipated looking SOB, aint he?" Trying to not laugh, I was choking and snorting pretty loud and the rest of the unannointed ones around us were guilty of some giggles and snickers. Major Fetchit paused in his recitation long enough to admonish us. "Gentlemen, Gentlemen, if I may......if I may have your attention" he said. If pomposity was worth a nickel a pound, this guy would be a millionaire. We managed to pull ourselfs together so he could continue. Riley leaned my way again but I cut him short by hissing "Just shut up, Riley," and that was loud enough so I got a dirty look from Major Fetchit. Our commander/pilot, Major Jackson, was sitting in the seat in front of Riley taking all this in. He was wearing his flight fatigues with the cloth gold Major's leaves on the shoulders bouncing up and down as he was struggling to choke back laughter.
Major Fetchit managed to finish the breifing. He told us we would land and spend the night in each of three places. Mexico City where we would overnight in the Maria Isabella Hilton Hotel. Geeeee, talk about first class! Other overnights would be Managua, Nicaragua and Grand City, Guatemala. (Im not sure my memory is correct about that Grand City but thats how I remember it). After this grand tour of central america, impressing the whole universe with our unarmed tweety birds, we would then proceed to the main focal point of our mission. That would be the tropical paradise of El Sombrero where the all important diplomatic mission could reflect glory upon the honorable United States of America.
Major Fetchit stopped there and our pilot raised his hand and told Fetchit he forgot one thing. Fetchit frowned and asked what that was and the Pilot said "Our airplane. The bastards have our airplane. Isnt that what this is all about? What do you know about the airplane?"
Fetchit said, "Oh well, of course, of course, the airplane, Well......uh...its still there."
"Well now thats really, really, good news," Major Jackson drawled without any attempt to hide the sarcasm. Then he asked, "Does anyone in your group know anything about the condition of our airplane?" That stumped the whole contingent of Pentagon types so Jackson told them to just forget it, we would take care of that when we got there and then he added in a manner that was oh so unctious and condescending, "But we do appreciate your efforts in assisting us with our transportation problems, Major Fetchit, allowing us to concentrate on the more important mission of recovering our aircraft. And then he added what may be called a pointed remark. "Im going to specifically mention your name when I turn in my final report."
After the meeting broke up and we were all outside, I walked up to our Command Pilot and shook his hand. "I owe you a beer, sir." Without hesitation he said, "I accept."
So off we go with our unarmed arsenal of unarmed Twetty's. We landed the transport bird at Mexico City. The airports traffic controllers had not allowed our twetty's to fly formation with us as we approached the airport. American Embassy personnel met us with transportation. All the officers and diplomatic personnel decided to take a bus on down to the hotel while the rest of us were waiting for the tweety's to land and post flight them. Lt Bond stayed with us working grunts.
Some television camera's were being set up nearby, all pointed at us so we were mostly acting on our best behavior as we waited for the baby birds. I asked Riley not to drool at the camera's.
The Twetty's landed and reported no problems. Lt Bond took their pilots into one of the terminal buildings and hooked them up with embassy transportation. As he was walking back toward us and the Tweety's, a whole bunch of people, we estimated about 30, came tearing out of the terminal building and ran past Bond and on out to where the rest of us were bedding down the tweety's.
What a revolting situation that was. It looked like we were being invaded. They just flooded the area around the airplanes before we knew what was happening. I started running back and forth and in tight circles and breathing hard like a good sargeant should. I was also screaming for the guys to close the tweetys canopys so one of those idiots didnt reach in and accidently blow the seats and canopys or cause some other damage.
We were caught in the middle of a full scale riot. Some of those people were wearing big round buttons that said "Press". No kidding, it looked something like one of those old 1930's movies where all the newspaper reporters went around wearing buttons like that and yelling a lot. These people were screaming a lot.
Riley was doing his own version of riot control. He wasn't swinging his fist wildly and I was glad of that because of the danged camera's. But when one of those nuts would come running by him he would throw a hard shoulder block on them and put them right on their butt. Then he would casually stroll off looking for another fast moving victim.
What really surprised me was Lt Bond. Camera's or no camera's and diplomacy or no diplomacy, Bond had lost his cool and was swatting the hell out of anything he could reach. His example was energizing some of the other boys too, diplomacy was going by the wayside, and this was shaping up like a real mess.
The rioters were getting more than they might have bargained for and were backing off mostly and just yelling and shouting a lot.
I finally spotted the guy who seemed to be in charge and cornered him up beside a tweety bird. He was a fat guy and everytime he tried to take off I would hold him there and bounce his fat butt back up against the nose of the airplane. He spoke english and said we were violating a treaty by flying armed airplanes in Mexico. I popped a panel open on the tweety and showed him that the guns had been removed. Then he ran up and started pounding on the refueling boom that stuck our of the nose of the airplane. "You stupid SOB," I yelled at him, "that is a re-fueling boom."
About that time, some Mexican police arrived. I think there was more of them than there was the rioters. Geezzz! talk about rough police tactics. They were banging shin bones with clubs. Evidently these were experienced rioters that had been shinboned before. Some of them were running bent over trying to protect their shins with their arms. I saw one rioter jumping up and down real fast like he thought he could outjump the shinbone treatment but they got him anyway. That bunch was laid out and dragged off in short order. I almost felt sorry for them.....but not quite.
A bunch of Embassy personnel materialized along with a bunch of Mexican officials and Mexican military to take charge of the situation. We were not leaving the airplanes untill we were convinced they were safe even though they were now surrounded by Mexican guards. Someone from the Embassy who struck me as trustworthy assured me and Lt Bond that he personally would stay there and protect the airplanes and he said it would calm things down if we took ourselfs and our american uniforms out of sight. It finally boiled down to us getting ordered to leave by a message from the Leaders of our little mission who were still safely ensconced in the Maria Isabella Hilton Hotel. We were ordered to come on down to the Hotel and let the American Embassy personnel take care of things.
So we loaded up in some suburbans and headed downtown. Riley had a satisfied smirk on his face. "how many did you get, Riley?" I asked him and he said he busted about 10 of them mo-fo's. He chided me cause all I got was one big fat guy. I told him yeah but that was the guy who was in charge. Riley said yeah, leave it up to me to brown nose whoever was in charge. Its kind of hard to win an argument with Riley. Riley asked me who had been feeding gunpowder to Lt Bond. Bond said his mother would be ashamed of him for his momentary lapse of manners. One thing for sure, I told Bond, you can forget about a diplomatic carrer if those TV cameras got some good shots of you in action, Major Fetchit and Ambassador Baritone is going to be mighty disappointed in you.
While the other members of our little mission had been told about us being mobbed at the airport, they had been ordered to stay in the hotel downtown and let the American Embassy handle everything. Our Major Jackson met us as we arrived at the hotel and checked us all over for damage. As we entered the lobby of that fancy hotel, the annointed members of our diplomatic and pentagon core were gathered there, glumly announcing that the evening TV news was supposed to show the airport riot. Old Ambasador Baritone apologized for any "inconvenience's we may have suffered."
Our young Lt Bond actually strutted up to the Pentagon's Major Fetchit and asked loud enough for all to hear, "Gee, where were you, Major. You said if we had any trouble, you would take care of it." Fetchit turned red in the face and mumbled that he was sorry but had not been allowed to leave the hotel. I was so proud of Lt Bond. That young guy was shaping up real good.
Major Fetchit said he thought it might be better if we all stayed in the hotel that night rather than go out on the town. Major Jackson looked incredulous and asked him if he was crazy. That ended that thought.
The TV story about the riot was kind of dissapointing. Only one shaky shot of me bouncing fatso off the tweety's nose. If anyone starred, it was Lt Bond who was plainly shown to be antaginistic toward mexican rioters. "This isn't good," Ambassodor Baritone was heard muttering.
That night, The crippled birds aircrew joined with the rest of us enlisted types and went out on the town. After we had enough beer to limber us up, I got a bright idea. I thought I had the guys talked into eating some genuine mexican food. The idea was to stay away from the touristy type restaurants and eat some real mexican food at a real dump of a mexican restaurant. But different guys kept disapproving the different restaurants for different reasons and as the beer wore off, even I noticed that they might be considered somewhat less than desirable.
Then our little sheetmetal man said, in his squeaky little voice, "Oh, looky there, there is a Denny's Restaurant!" And I got out voted and we ate at Denny's. I was really ashamed of those guys, eating canned and frozen TV mexican dinners right in the middle of Mexico City at a danged Denny's. The little sheetmetal man would only eat french fries and coke cause he was afraid of Montezuma's revenge. I looked across the table at Major Jackson and said, "They just dont make these special forces troops like they used too, Major." He replied, "Yeah, danged shame aint it, guess we will just have to muddle thru with what we got."
