A26 Special K wrote:
Bob, do you have any recollection of listening to the Armed Forces Radio station located at NKP?
Sorry to take so long to answer, but there were Margaritas and a beach getting in the way. Well... in reality, you sparked me to write more than just a couple of lines. So here goes...
We listened to AFN all the time. It was all we had. A lot of folks think we got Hanoi Hanna, but not so. At least I never listened to her and don’t know anyone that did. So if we were going to have anything it was AFN. I should qualify that a little bit. Guys bought a load of stereo equipment while they were there. Nearly everyone had an amplifier, reel-to-reel tape machines, turn-tables and massive speakers in the hooch. Most of the stuff was stuffed in their lockers. So the music played at the hooch was whatever music the guys liked best.
That said, most other places had some kind of radio tuned to AFN. For those of us humping bombs out on the flightline there was nothing. But the guys working in the ammo shack, the fuse shack, end-of-runway (arm/de-arm) there was always a radio blaring out AFN.
Most of the music was top 40 of the day. There was no one as talented as Adrian Chronauer (Good Morning Vietnam) but most of the DJs were pretty good. Of course there was the “Country & Western hour” every day (we turned it off)… some soothing music Sunday mornings (at least I think so; I never knew when it was Sunday; every day was like every other)… and I suppose there must have been a polka hour and a Laurence Welk hour but I never listened to those either.
There was the news every hour and every half hour (I think). We all listened to that. It was sort of sanitized, but not as much as portrayed in Good Morning Vietnam. We seemed to get the good, the bad, and the ugly of the news… just like now.
NKP got one of the first (if not the first) radio stations in Thailand. The daytime and evening broadcasts were from the local station. The rest of the time the broadcast was linked into other locations. I remember working in the fuse shack during the wee hours of the morning and the broadcast was from “AFRS Radio Saigon”.
NKP also got a TV station while I was there. It wasn’t much good to most of us because no one had a television set. Slowly a few TVs started to appear in day-rooms and such… but there just weren’t very many around. My only memory of watching television was during a chow break… I only had a few minutes and there were a lot of guys crowded around a very small black & white TV. It was the first moon landing in 1969. I didn’t get to watch the landing or very much at all… we had bombs to load… trucks out on the trail to kill.
I’ll share a couple of very vivid memories of AFN radio with everyone. As I mentioned, the radio station played “Top 40” types of music. They would also mix in an “oldie” or two. But it was mostly stuff from only a few years back. In 1965 the Animals recorded a song and you always knew when it was playing… even if you were working on the flightline. You would hear it start at the end of the flightline near the maintenance hooch where the radio was always playing… even if no one was in there. You would hear guys on the flightline start singing it. Pretty soon everyone up and down the flightline would stop what they were doing and sing at the top of their voice:
“WE GOTA GET OUTA THIS PLACE,
IF IT’S THE LAST THING WE EVER DO
WE GOTA GET OUTA THIS PLACE
GIRL THERE’S A BETTER LIFE FOR ME AND YOU”
The other memory is ummmm… well, it’s about what young GIs sometimes do in far off lands. (I’ll try to keep this as “PG” as I can.) At NKP, young men being young men, would often seek female companionship in some of the local establishments. Some of the places had names like the “Boom-Boom Club”. (I don’t think there was actually a place with that name, but you get the idea.) Each of the “ladies” working in the establishments were required to have a “health card” and each card had a number. The “ladies” were required to have frequent “check-ups”. If the “lady” was found to need “medical treatment”, the health official would hold on to the lady’s card during treatment and report the card number.
Each day the list of card numbers for the ladies undergoing treatment was read on air. Rather than some announcer just reading a list of numbers, there was “appropriate” music played in the background. So imagine if you will, Jerry Lee Louis’ “Great Balls of Fire” playing as the numbers were announced. Other music I remember with great amusement was Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire”, and the Rolling Stones “Honky Tonk Women”.
It seems that when the numbers were read, a lot of people stopped doing whatever they were doing and listened intently to the numbers. (Never me of course.) The procedure was; if you had “been with” one of the ladies whose number was called, you were to report to “sick-call” the next morning. I look back on this with a grin on my face these days, but for some back then it was no laughing matter.
(The TLC Brotherhood web site used to sell recordings from AFN of the “numbers” being read. They don’t list it any more but perhaps if someone were to contact Bill Tilton, you may be able to come up with one.)
As far as a play list for when working on Kay, a good start would be the soundtrack from Good Morning Vietnam. Then there are several lists on the web of hits during the years. If you pick all of the top 40 songs from June ’66 through October ’69 you would be doing good. Then add in everything prior to ’69 from Johnny Cash, the Beach Boys, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, all “girl band” songs, and all Motown. I’m sure I’m leaving out some, but this should give all some mighty fine listening in the hangar.