I'll be starting a Mother of All Thump Posts sometime soon. The loss of my buddy Scottie has stirred up some memories and sometimes, just writing about issues can be therapy for me. I've dealt with some demons over the years and up until just a few years back, nobody knew anything about them. I was at the VA Hospital in Tampa complaining of memory loss. It was getting worse and worse until I finally decided to get checked out. A doctor was interviewing me and .... I don't even remember what she said, but she hit some sort of trigger and I busted out bawling like a baby. I mean, crying like I've never cried before. The biggest surprise is, I DON'T CRY! Not even when my mom and dad passed away. I just tear up and get to the point I can barely swallow, but I DO NOT cry like a boo hoo cry, just get the eye drips. Once the doc got me calmed down, she convinced me to spill the beans on what set me off. I told her of a mission I'd never talked about (I'd been instructed years ago to never discuss it) and I unloaded. Lynn was with me and I remember glancing at her as her eyes were as wide as saucers. In all the years we'd been together, she'd never heard the story. As it turned out, unbeknownst to me, this particular doctor was an expert on PTSD and told me I was a classic case. I was NOT there for a PTSD issue, it just kind of happened. With her report, the military granted me 30% PTSD related compensation (I have other service connected disabilities also, but I never tried to increase any of it).
After being in Intel, some things just don't get .... well, aren't "allowed" to be talked about. I remember during my debriefing, I was told not to discuss ANY of my missions for a minimum of 10 years (when they would be declassified). BUT .... I was also warned that SOME missions would NEVER be declassified. At that point, I asked, after the 10 years, how I would know what has been declassified and what has not? There was no answer to my question. WTF?
Speaking of "debriefing", I was "officially" stationed in Thailand for a little over 3 years. During that time, I had never been home. When I left Thailand, I was scheduled to exit the military once I arrived in Oakland, Ca. I had been debriefed and given a flight home on a COMMERCIAL (Pan Am) airliner. WOW! No web seat on a C141 like the one I arrived in! But the luxury was short-lived. We landed on Guam for refueling and next thing I knew, a group of MP's boarded and asked me to accompany them off the plane. Without an explanation, I was taken to the Commander's office and he told me he had a "package" that had to be delivered to some mucky-muck in Hawaii. He said he'd checked and I was the ONLY one passing through within the next 72 hours who had a security clearance high enough to handle the job. I informed him I had already been debriefed and he responded, "Then consider yourself RE-briefed!"
I was given a briefcase and a Colt .45 and instructed to release the "package" to ONLY this mucky-muck Commander in Honolulu and to not allow ANYBODY on that plane until I'd been relieved of the "package". Then ... you guessed it ... I was put on a frigging C141 and given a lunch box and a web seat headed for Hawaii! It was just the crew, myself and a bunch of cargo from 'Nam on board. So much for that "luxury" PanAm flight, complete with hottie stewardesses (now known as flight attendants). I got to Hawaii, the rear ramp dropped and a couple of dufes boarded with sprayers, spraying everything down. I ordered them off "my" plane and they threatened me with arrest as it was protocol to immediately spray down every plane upon arrival for pest control. (I don't know if this was just for military planes arriving from S.E. Asia, or all planes.) It turned into a standoff until I stood at the top of the ramp with my hand on the .45! I was finally rescued by the Commander, handed over the briefcase and the .45, then given a day or two to roam around Hawaii before continuing to California. To this day, I have no clue what was in that "package". Come to think of it, I was never RE-DEBRIEFED either! I wonder what that means?
Anyway, I've got a few things to write about and even if nobody reads it, it'll be "therapy" for me.
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) when he once told me I was the best wingman he's ever had. That meant a LOT coming from him. I felt like I was made of steel any time I heard him say, "I got 'yer six Kribbs!"
We came across quite a few government check-points along the way, but a bit of cash slipped into the right hands, always got the roadblock gates opened for us. It was a VERY interesting trip and once we got into the Hmong villages, we found them still using much of the old CIA equipment we'd given them. I have pics of little water-wheel generators in the streams that had wires running up to shacks for running a lightbulb or two. We'd given them those generators to power communications radios back in the day. They actually had fences around their shacks that were made from UXO's (unexploded ordnance) .... hundreds of them. I found one small kid running around playing with an old, live M16 round and bought it from him for a few cents (then threw it in the river). 
