Last Updated June 25, 2006

Bangkok Reunion 2002

The RETURN TO SEA 2002 Reunion is over.  If numbers are the sign of success we did very well.  An even 200 signed in for the reunion and 232 more signed in for the banquet.   

1.          Air America was well represented with the entourage being led by none other than Jack”69”Knotts.  Lots of mini reunions took place among the AAM attendees, both Thai and American.

2.          TLCB was well represented.  Not only the organizers but also quite a few other brothers and sisters were in attendance. Most obvious were John and Nancy Sweet.  We can expect a few new members to sign on as a result of the reunion 

3.          China Post 1 was well represented with the group being led by none other than Post Commander and Adjutant Fred Platt.  Fred was actively recruiting as was Jim Lint who came from Korea. 

4.          The Air Commando Association and the USAF contingent was headed by Gen Heinie Aderholt and Hap Lutz and included several Ravens and other notables.   

5.          Among other groups represented by both Thai and American participants were:  CASI, Embassy, USAID, IVS, SKY, Army, Marines.  

The organizers showed up at the Ambassador Hotel on Tuesday the 24^th to make sure that arrangements were in full swing.  Turned out that there were quite a few attendees already ensconced in the hotel.  This led to a bit of bar hopping that ended for some of us at 0330 on Wednesday morning after doing some serious meeting and greeting in the hotel coffee Shop. 

Wednesday was more supervising of the set up of the Hospitality Suite and meeting and greeting of early arrivals.   

The Hospitality Suite was to be a bright, glass enclosed room with a round bar in the center of the room.  Just outside was an aviary with large, tree trunk furniture that added to the atmosphere and gave the non smokers an escape from the profusion of cigar smoke.  (Sorry about that but the hotel did not get the exhaust fans operating until Saturday morning.) 

Thursday finally arrived and the Hospitality Suite was being stocked with the party essentials (BOOZE, delivery of which was arranged by Mac Thompson), the bar was set up and finishing touches being applied.  Some early comers tried to crash the gates a bit early but they were held at bay until 1200 when Mayuree Strouse opened the Registration Desk and Sunee Thompson and Bob Vaughn opened the bar.  It did not take long for the Reunion to get into full swing.  (Really it had gotten started earlier in the Lobby Bar but the prices in the Hospitality Suite were more to everyone’s liking!)  

To the disappointment of a few hangers-on the bar was closed at 0100 that evening. 

Friday was Bloody Mary morning……well, Jeff Johnson was kept busy keeping the bar stocked with his tasty Bloody Mary mix all day.  More new comers, more meetings and greetings and a full house until the wee hours when we again had to run out a few so that we could get a bit of sleep. 

Saturday,  The BIG DAY.  Bloody Marys all day.  The Thai started showing up in numbers before the banquet.  One of the highlights were the reunions between old friends and co-workers.  Even some of the Thai had not seen one another for almost 30 years. 

We had planned on having 320 people attend the banquet.  We ran out of name tags, tickets, and patience after 432!  Yep, some got to eat free.  And the comments about the “hotel” food indicated that it was really top notch.  The hotel kitchen managed to have enough food for all even with the tremendous overage. 

Saturday had the only formal activity of the entire reunion.  The Banquet, complete with speeches.  Bill Lair was the featured speaker, followed by General Pichit Kulavanich, a member of the Thai Privy Council .  Heinie Aderholt also made a few comments. 

Jack Knotts was presented with a photograph of LS20A taken in October 2001.  The presentation was made by Tom Claytor who is flying his Cessna 180 round the world and took the picture. Jack then made a few appropriate comments. 

Before and after the speeches the banquet attendees were entertained by Thai Classical Dancers.

 The Hospitality Suite overflowed and the bartenders were almost overwhelmed with the crowd after the banquet.  Many back slapping and hugging reunions were observed throughout the evening.   

At 0030, Les Strouse gave the “30 Minute Notice”.  At 0100 he went around the Hospitality Suite giving everyone last call.  Well, one of the hangers-on turned out to be Thai Royalty.  HRH Prince Yugula.  Hey, if Les can throw out a real Prince, he can throw out anyone! 

Sunday morning Jeff Johnson cranked up his Bloody Mary mix again and Mac Thompson made yet another booze run and then another for more Vodka as the Bloody Marys became the best seller.  When last call was given many stocked up on beer and drinks and adjourned to the aviary outside the hospitality suite to carry on their social activities while we, the organizers, began dismantling things and looked for rest, after a full and eventful five days.  We've agreed amongst ourselves to host another such reunion in 25 years. 

As an aside, the youngest attendee was 4 years old and the oldest rapidly approaching 90.

One attendee is reputed to be the youngest China Marine.  I have to tell one of his stories.  He is a double amputee but only wears one artificial leg.  The reason for this…..”if you wear two artificial legs and fall down everyone thinks you are drunk and will make no effort to help you get up”.  “If you only wear one they quickly come to your aid.”  And you can imagine what happened when he removed the artificial leg and asked Sunee Thompson to take it for a massage.  “Just tell the girls that I will pick it up in half an hour!”

Bangkok Reunion 2002

Date: 10/2/02 4:00 PM

RE: SEA 2002 Reunion Article


South China Morning Post, Monday, 30 September 2002

BKK-AIR AMERICA REUNION
Sep 28, 2002
BY VAUDINE ENGLAND IN BANGKOK

The hospitality suite was humming with the thump of incoming, as
rotor-heads and customers landed for a reunion this week in Bangkok.
The gathering was a first major effort to bring together veterans of the
CIA's secret wars in Laos, Cambodia and not-so-secret actions in the
Vietnam War, at the scene of so much of their earlier rest and recreation,
Bangkok.

These are the hard men of Air America, the CIA's secret airline, and its
cousins the Continental Air Services, the civilian Bird Air, and the
Customers -- namely the CIA agents who directed the secret war.
The coded language seems part of the mystique even now, after archives have
been opened and books written about one of the largest covert operations
ever.

Numbers of aircraft, codes for hidden airstrips and the nom de guerre of
the helicopter pilots known as rotor-heads jostled for attention as these
scores of men shared memories and legends of their high times in the wars.

But time has wrought its work on these one-time macho men: "Now what was
the name of that place. I can see the topography clear as anything, just
can't think of the name..."

"We're just a bunch of old farts getting together to talk about the good
times," admitted one large man, who has flown for the "free world" in Laos,
Vietnam, the Congo, Angola and Iran, and still carries a selection of
mysterious namecards.

But not every geriatrics' reunion features Bloody Mary's from breakfast on
through three days of "attitude adjustment sessions" (that's happy hour)
until a rowdy closing after midnight each night.

"Actually I was there for the money," one pilot said, as he greeted
"Wolverine Sam", the Thai who ran a legendary bar of the same name.

At first, such men are cagey about discussing their experiences with a
journalist. They remember getting burned, they say, by reporters who sought
to expose their actions in a CIA-led war deemed illegal by the US
government, and the target of mass anti-war protests back home.
Lots of them recall a woman called Ann Darling who thought she was onto
something through chatting up the pilots, some based in Udorn, northern
Thailand. After she wrote a story exposing their exploits, an Air America
notice board featured photos of any new journalist in the area, with the
caption, "Remember Ann Darling!".

They are also outraged, to a man, by a movie, "Air America", with Mel
Gibson, which purported to expose Air America as an airline formed solely
to ferry opium out for profit, from the Hmong tribes people used by the CIA
as front line troops against communism.

"The only thing that's right in that movie is that we had great parties,"
said a chopper pilot, now pushing seventy and pacing himself on heart
medication and Singha beer.

The drug traffic undoubtedly occurred, some admit after imbibing some more:
"We couldn't avoid carrying it sometimes. Some old Hmong guy would get on
with a sack and we weren't going to ask him what was in it. Or we'd find
out on landing we had to land somewhere different where some jeeps were
pulled up, and then we'd realise."

Far more pertinent to these flying aces is the work they did moving people
out of range of enemy fire, and especially their ferrying of hundreds of
South Vietnamese out of Saigon as it fell on April 29, 1975.

That's what makes one photograph so sacred -- the one taken by Hong
Kong-based Hubert Van Es. He immortalised the last chopper out that day,
and the line of Vietnamese climbing into it from the roof of a CIA
apartment building.

Only last year was it confirmed which Air America pilot was the rotor-head
in that famous picture, but many of his colleagues want the identity kept
secret, so that the picture may continue to be an "unknown soldier" kind of
tribute to all Air America's men.

This reunion in Bangkok gave the pilot Bob Caron a chance to reunite with
his Thai mechanic, and with the colleague who had rescued him when he had
been shot down back in 1971.

Other exploits are better known -- such as that of Air America Association
president Jack "69" Knotts who flew the Laotian General Vang Pao and his
CIA case officer Jerry "Hog" Daniels out of Long Tieng, Laos, on May 15,
1975.

Now wheelchair-bound but smoking large cigars, Knotts has lost little of
his verve. Asked by a friend how the dental work was which he'd just had in
Bangkok, he replied:

"Oh yeah, it was great. She had beautiful delicate hands, the price was
right, and she had a fine sense of location."

Political correctness was not on the agenda. These men agreed it would be
best to just "take out" Saddam Hussein instead of mounting a vast war.
"Hell I'd do it right now if they asked me," said one.

And far better to have fought and lost -- as did the US in every war which
Air America has ever been involved in -- than never to have flown at all.
"We were all out here trying to do the best job we could, and we've gotten
a lot of flak for it. But hell, if you discount the bad stuff, did we have
a good time!"

ENDS.


Soap
May do
For lads with fuzz
But sir, you ain't
The kid you wuz

Burma-Shave 1951

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