While I was stationed at the Air Force ROTC unit of Texas Tech University in 1990 I was interviewed for the “Vietnam Project.”
Cut and paste this link: http://www.clemson.edu/caah/history/facultypages/EdMoise/thai.html
Then click on “The text” under David Howard Emery.
I had been at Craig AFB in Alabama for several years and saw many men return from tours of duty in Viet Nam and Thailand. They had all worked on “real” fighter jets, not just the T-37 flight trainers I’d been working on since Tech School. Many of them got quick promotions because of their experience on the front-line fighters of the day. I decided it was time to move on and get more experience on fighter jets so I submitted a request for reassignment. We could request certain locations in the US or overseas or we could just request to be sent anywhere in the world. The latter is what I did. A couple of months later I got an assignment to Korat Royal Thai Air Base.
I was single at the time I made the reassignment request and when I got the notification of my pending assignment. Soon after I got the assignment notification I met Deborah Smalley, who would become my wife after just 13 short weeks of courting. We got married on June 17, 1972. Three months after getting married Deborah became pregnant. Three months later, just after Christmas, I left for Thailand. Before I left I delivered Deborah to her parents’ house on Grand Forks AFB in North Dakota where her father was stationed. I left North Dakota a day or two after Christmas. I flew to California where I stayed at Travis AFB for a day or two to wait on a military contract flight. I then flew from California, through Alaska (a few hour stop-over), on to Guam, and then to Clark Air Base in the Philippines. I stayed at Clark for another couple of days and then flew on a C-141 Starlifter to Siagon, Viet Nam. We let some troops off and unloaded some cargo and then continued on our flight. Those of us who weren’t being stationed in Viet Nam were not allowed off the airplane so I was never truly “on the ground” in Viet Nam. We then flew to Takli Air Base, Thailand, and then on to Korat.
I arrived in Thailand on New Years Eve, 1972. It was a tradition to have the years of your service in Thailand sewn into the back headband of your military hat while in the country. As I had arrived on the last day of 1972 I could honestly put 1972-1973 on my hat.
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