SAN MARCELINO
By Don Wagner
My description may not be accurate, but I remember our base at San Marcelino was in a valley north of Subic Bay, and west of Clark Field. The landing strip was fashioned out of a north/south road, and when taking off north you made a turn west out through an opening between two low mountain peaks. I always worried about losing power on take-off, and the possibility of having to jettison
the bomb load on the village off the north end of the runway. Our tents were set-up on rising ground to the mountain ridge east of the runway.
There wasn’t a helluva lot to do when not flying missions for entertainment. We did jeep down to Subic Bay and were permitted to use the Navy clubs where you could buy a highball for 25 cents. We did, of course, fly to Nichols Field in Manila and take guys down for a few days of R & R. The drive from Subic Bay to Manila was over mountain roads and took four to five hours, so the Navy guys would
drive to our strip, and as reciprocity for use of their club, we would fly them to Manila on our R & R trips. We used to scare the hell out of them when we hit the deck and jumped over sunken ships in Manila harbor, on our way to Nichols. I remember one white-as-a-sheet Lieutenant as he got out of the airplane asking why we didn’t put up a periscope coming across the harbor.
When the next day was a mission stand-down day, we would gather in somebody’s tent and sing songs and tell jokes until the wee hours. One day a barrel of Filipino booze was located and before it was bought a sample was brought into Doc Fleury for testing to make sure it wouldn’t kill us or blind us. We mixed it with dried lemon powder, sugar, and the chemically treated drinking water and
drank from our canteen cups. You talk about hangover? You had to bang your head on the tent center pole to get the pain on the outside. The experience was enough to make you quit drinking all together. It couldn’t have been all-bad though. Our singing voices never sounded better, or so we thought.
I’ll never forget Eichten chewing my butt out for setting a brake and tire on fire on landing. He allowed as how he didn’t need that lousy bit of flying adding work to his already over - worked schedule. With the throttles all the way back, the right engine continued to operate at high RPM’s. Before I could kill the engine, I burned out the brake and set it and the tire on fire trying to stay on the runway. It turned out that the throttle linkage disconnected, and as programmed if the linkage had been shot out, the engine was giving me an automatic RPM setting to bring me home. The great guy that he was, he sought me out later that day to apologize, after he discovered the disconnected linkage. I told him the apology was not necessary. It really was my fault for not recognizing what had happened and killed the engine sooner. I’ve always had a great respect for Gene Cole, Eichten and all those guys who kept our birds flying.
Don Wagner
THE THOUSAND YARD STARE
The Thousand Yard Stare
Yes I saw it over there,
I sat with a young lad
I old enough to be his dad,
We sipped our brews
And watched the crews,
Scurrying around the bird
I wanted not to disturb,
One with who's eyes shown
So Much pain, and hurt his own,
With him looking through me
I felt so bare
Him with his Thousand Yard Stare.
Harlan Hatfield
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