Spent
a glorious (?) year at Nakhon Phanom working as a Dental
Technician (AFSC 98150) in a cramped, two-seat dental clinic housed
inside a trailer similar in many ways to what cruised our highways at home in
the 1960s. The thing was painted the same AF Blue color that all our vehicles (crackerbox
ambulances, etc) wore and it WAS airconditioned.
It
was also situated just beyond the old mess hall near the flight line at a time
when boardwalks were the only option to walking in the glorious red mud of NKP
directly.
We had one dentist assigned (the 1st was, I believe, a Major R Strunk who went immediately to the Civic Action program when it began) he was almost immediately succeded by Capt Theo Gullatt. Dr. G was a former AF enlisted man who went to college & dental school before donning Captain's bars.
When
Civic Action began it also took 3 or 4 other career NCOs and left us with
myself, a Tsgt Clifford and A1C Jerry Ray (a real Oklahoman who knew how to
consume his beer) and later a Ssgt Jacobo.
Prior to Civic Action there were so many Dental types we actually worked 1 day on and 1 day off for about 2 weeks. I was a lowly A2C with a five level in my AFSC but not good prospects of promotion due to being a Air Defense Comand refugee (and back then we got v-e-r-y few stripes when they came down every 3 months).
Most
of my time at NKP was spent cleaning teeth, as that was what I had done at other
duty locations, and I also had to be one of the luckiest(?) guys around since I
came to SEA from radar site circuit duty in Minnesota and South Dakota. My 1966
saw me enduring a blizzard in February after sub zero temps most of
January. Chandler, Minn and Pickstown and Gettysburg, SD were the lovely
locations I escaped by coming to NKP.
I
eventually became a 98171 (Preventive Dentistry
Technician) which was the AF equivalent overseas of a Dental
Hygienist. Typically, when the AFSC was created the AF allowed a lot of
old-timers to change to the AFSC on paper only, and THEY took stripes for the
job title as well.
When I eventually wound up in Germany (69-72) it was obvious from WAPS data that years and years of time-in-grade were to be a necessity before reaching the magic point cutoff for promotion (lets face it, a Medal of Honor counted 25 points, I believe, towards a WAPS total score, and they were a little hard to come by for dental types).
Hence,
I called the AF a career immediately afterward. But I DID enjoy the year at NKP!!
(Scumguppy)