The recent post about the blonde who got shot in the head when the frozen biscuits exploded reminded me of a story about the night I got shot in the head.
First.....the background. About 1970 I was a member of an Air Force training team training Laotian's how to maintain and fly C-47 gunships. We were having lots of success and keeping the gunships over the battlefields really discouraged the communist Pathet Lao. They tended to quit fighting and hide so we couldn't spot them and hose them down at the rate of 18,000 bullets per minute.
The Pathet Lao retaliated by putting all our team members on an assasination list. Also the bird dog pilots who sometimes helped us locate targets and the ground combat controllers who often radioed us in on targets from the ground were scheduled for assisination. All of us were working out of Udorn Air Base in Northern Thailand, just
across the Mekong river from Laos.
One of our members had a close encounter with death when someone attacked him from a dark alley with a knife. Two of our combat controllers were jumped by some Thai kick boxers (who were often hired hooligans in Thailand) and it was quickly determined that 4 kickboxers are not equal to 2 combat controllers.
All this was taking place before we were informed by the American Embassy in Laos that we were on the enemy's assination list. Our Commander came back from a meeting at the Embassy and said they were thinking about letting us all wear 38 caliber snub nose pistols in shoulder holsters. That scared the hell out of me and I quickly spoke out against it on the grounds that only our combat controllers were combat trained while the rest of us were aircraft maintenance technicians. Turning a bunch of nervous flyboys loose in a Thailand city with pistols would have put us in a very compromising situation if we had shot someone and not been able to prove that they were agents of the Pathet Lao out of Laos. Most everyone quickly agreed with me except for a few guys that had seen too many thriller movies and had never played with real guns before.
So a decision was made that all of us known to be on an assination list would only be able to leave the base if three or more were going together. This was really a mess because didnt everybody wont to go to the same places at the same time. Someone was always unhappy and grumbling. As the Non Com in charge, I had to try to keep things smoothed out.
One night, I got talked into going just about three blocks outside the base gate with three other guys to have a beer. There was a bar there that we were all familiar with. After a couple of beers, I decided to go back to the base while the other three decided to stay a while longer. I cautioned them to stay sober and watch each others backs.
I had not been back in the hutch long before two of the guys came in. I raised up in my bunk and asked where the other guy was and they said they couldnt talk him into coming back on base with them. "You know how crazy Bailey is," they said.
I chewed them out for leaving Bailey out there by himself and jumped up and got dressed. They offered to go back with me to get Bailey but I was mad at them for leaving him out there by himself and suggested that those two little sissy boys stay safe in the hutch while I went after him. Big mistake on my part.
About halfway to the bar, I was walking on the left side of a busy and very dusty road, more of a highway than a road. In Thailand, cars drive on the left side of the road so lots of traffic was whizzing by just off my right shoulder. I was still mad, walking tall and mentally planning a first class butt chewing for Bailey. Then suddenly, my head exploded, BANG!! My next thought was that I was down and that I was hurt. Also I was having trouble breathing and I could hear this really pitiful sounding high pitched whiny voice saying, "help...help...help." That was big brave me, thinking I had been shot in the head.
My senses were returning enough to know that my breathing problem was caused by me being knocked face down in a dusty ditch. As I was trying to cough up the dust and wipe the dirt out of my eyes, I could see one of those small datsun looking pickups backing up toward me as I lay there in the ditch and there was some guys in the back of the pickup. The thought came to me that that was the guys that shot me in the head and they were coming back to finish the job.
For some crazy reason, I came wobbling up out of the ditch screaming bloody murder and trying to get at the guys in the pickup. The pickup took off and I staggered over into traffic and almost got run over by oncoming cars.
I managed to make it across the road without getting run over. I kept thinking, "Im shot, Im shot". There was something sticky leaking out the back of my head and I was convinced I was shot. I could still walk, although I was unsteady, and I told myself to just keep putting one foot in front of another untill I could make it to the base gate where I could get help.
By the time I got to the base gate, I was in better shape and decided to just walk the extra block to our hutch. By the time I got to the hutch, I was much steadier and rather than go into the hutch, I decided to go into the latrine and look at myself in the mirrors.
I was covered with that old red dust so typical of northern Thailand. The back of my head was bleeding and my upper back and right shoulder was hurting bad so I ripped off my shirt and tee shirt and in the mirror I could see that something had whacked me in the back of the head and upper back and scraped my right shoulder blade bad. It looked like a big blue bruise was already forming. It was then I realized that I had not been shot. I had been sideswiped by a large rear-view mirror like some pick-ups have. Just another traffic victim. You dont get a purple heart for getting side-swiped by a pick-up truck but I decided that was OK with me. Its better than being shot in the head.
First.....the background. About 1970 I was a member of an Air Force training team training Laotian's how to maintain and fly C-47 gunships. We were having lots of success and keeping the gunships over the battlefields really discouraged the communist Pathet Lao. They tended to quit fighting and hide so we couldn't spot them and hose them down at the rate of 18,000 bullets per minute.
The Pathet Lao retaliated by putting all our team members on an assasination list. Also the bird dog pilots who sometimes helped us locate targets and the ground combat controllers who often radioed us in on targets from the ground were scheduled for assisination. All of us were working out of Udorn Air Base in Northern Thailand, just
across the Mekong river from Laos.
One of our members had a close encounter with death when someone attacked him from a dark alley with a knife. Two of our combat controllers were jumped by some Thai kick boxers (who were often hired hooligans in Thailand) and it was quickly determined that 4 kickboxers are not equal to 2 combat controllers.
All this was taking place before we were informed by the American Embassy in Laos that we were on the enemy's assination list. Our Commander came back from a meeting at the Embassy and said they were thinking about letting us all wear 38 caliber snub nose pistols in shoulder holsters. That scared the hell out of me and I quickly spoke out against it on the grounds that only our combat controllers were combat trained while the rest of us were aircraft maintenance technicians. Turning a bunch of nervous flyboys loose in a Thailand city with pistols would have put us in a very compromising situation if we had shot someone and not been able to prove that they were agents of the Pathet Lao out of Laos. Most everyone quickly agreed with me except for a few guys that had seen too many thriller movies and had never played with real guns before.
So a decision was made that all of us known to be on an assination list would only be able to leave the base if three or more were going together. This was really a mess because didnt everybody wont to go to the same places at the same time. Someone was always unhappy and grumbling. As the Non Com in charge, I had to try to keep things smoothed out.
One night, I got talked into going just about three blocks outside the base gate with three other guys to have a beer. There was a bar there that we were all familiar with. After a couple of beers, I decided to go back to the base while the other three decided to stay a while longer. I cautioned them to stay sober and watch each others backs.
I had not been back in the hutch long before two of the guys came in. I raised up in my bunk and asked where the other guy was and they said they couldnt talk him into coming back on base with them. "You know how crazy Bailey is," they said.
I chewed them out for leaving Bailey out there by himself and jumped up and got dressed. They offered to go back with me to get Bailey but I was mad at them for leaving him out there by himself and suggested that those two little sissy boys stay safe in the hutch while I went after him. Big mistake on my part.
About halfway to the bar, I was walking on the left side of a busy and very dusty road, more of a highway than a road. In Thailand, cars drive on the left side of the road so lots of traffic was whizzing by just off my right shoulder. I was still mad, walking tall and mentally planning a first class butt chewing for Bailey. Then suddenly, my head exploded, BANG!! My next thought was that I was down and that I was hurt. Also I was having trouble breathing and I could hear this really pitiful sounding high pitched whiny voice saying, "help...help...help." That was big brave me, thinking I had been shot in the head.
My senses were returning enough to know that my breathing problem was caused by me being knocked face down in a dusty ditch. As I was trying to cough up the dust and wipe the dirt out of my eyes, I could see one of those small datsun looking pickups backing up toward me as I lay there in the ditch and there was some guys in the back of the pickup. The thought came to me that that was the guys that shot me in the head and they were coming back to finish the job.
For some crazy reason, I came wobbling up out of the ditch screaming bloody murder and trying to get at the guys in the pickup. The pickup took off and I staggered over into traffic and almost got run over by oncoming cars.
I managed to make it across the road without getting run over. I kept thinking, "Im shot, Im shot". There was something sticky leaking out the back of my head and I was convinced I was shot. I could still walk, although I was unsteady, and I told myself to just keep putting one foot in front of another untill I could make it to the base gate where I could get help.
By the time I got to the base gate, I was in better shape and decided to just walk the extra block to our hutch. By the time I got to the hutch, I was much steadier and rather than go into the hutch, I decided to go into the latrine and look at myself in the mirrors.
I was covered with that old red dust so typical of northern Thailand. The back of my head was bleeding and my upper back and right shoulder was hurting bad so I ripped off my shirt and tee shirt and in the mirror I could see that something had whacked me in the back of the head and upper back and scraped my right shoulder blade bad. It looked like a big blue bruise was already forming. It was then I realized that I had not been shot. I had been sideswiped by a large rear-view mirror like some pick-ups have. Just another traffic victim. You dont get a purple heart for getting side-swiped by a pick-up truck but I decided that was OK with me. Its better than being shot in the head.
