I was just thinking about a TDY (Temporary Duty) I took to Korea. I had a 2nd looie who kept bugging me about our balky damned radar until I called Clark and they told him to worry about Ops and let me take care of the maintenance activities. By contrast, a Lt. Col. Smythe, who occasionally came up from Seoul to check on things, never bothered me at all. Once, when the radar was down and I was busy troubleshooting, he did ask me a few questions, which I answered at length.

However, he was on the ground and I was up on the antenna - which wasn't as high off the ground as you might think - and I speak softly, so the colonel hadn't a clue as to what I was saying.

He later remarked that he could see I was busy, and although he hadn't understood a word I had said, I sounded polite and looked efficient. So, since he didn't know what I was doing anyway, he decided to just leave me alone and let me do it. Naturally, since I was left undisturbed, I got the radar back on the air almost immediately.

I think the lieutenant secretly suspected that I sometimes shut the radar down just to piss him off. He learned the error of his ways after I left and the guys who replaced me could hardly keep the little bugger on the air at all. It was the same radar set I had worked on for a year in 'Nam, and, apparently, was pissed off at having been dismantled and stored on Clark for nearly two years. It had worked fine in 'Nam.

Of course, it had gotten shot up a little bit too before it left Trang Sup, which probably didn't help matters. A couple of rounds through my antenna wouldn't have improved my disposition much, either.

Naturally, of the two officers, I much preferred Col. Smythe. Besides, he took me for a joy ride in an observation plane, which didn't hurt his standing with me any. That was before winter really set in and I got extended. They claimed they couldn't find anybody on Clark with the 'experience' to replace me.

I couldn't quite get it through my head just how much 'experience' one needed to be able to competently work on a UPS-1. Particularly since, with one exception, the members of my crew were a 3-level apprentices fresh from tech school. They didn't have much in the way of 'experience' in working on anything. Anyway, I finally escaped the place and returned to Clark, over two months later than originally scheduled.

I'm told that they thought about sending me back to Easy Queen Mountain to help out, since the old Yoopsie turned really surly after I left. Maybe it felt abandoned again. But my tour on Clark was almost up and they had already involuntarily extended me once while I was on Easy Queen. None of them really wanted to die, so they reconsidered and I rotated back Stateside on schedule.