Jeff
Sharlet hoped to be shipped to Europe, but landed on the shores of the South
China Sea. He had enlisted in the Army Security Agency (ASA), a semi-secret
communications intelligence outfit, the military arm of the National Security
Agency in Washington. ASA sent Jeff to the Army Language School (ALS) in sunny
California.
By
late ’62 he’d completed the 47-week Vietnamese course, received Top Secret and
Cryptographic clearances, and was soon dispatched to the 9th ASA
Field Station at Clark Air Force Base (AFB) in the Philippine Islands (PI).
Life
in the islands – a quiet backwater of the global Cold War – was relatively pleasant
for ASA personnel. Across the South China Sea a low intensity civil conflict was
underway in Vietnam, and the Pentagon was gradually stockpiling Vietnamese
linguists (lingys for short). ASA was temporarily parking most of them in the
Philippines out of harm’s way.
With
so many interpreter/translators on hand, the workload at the 9th ASA
was not heavy, and the troops enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle. But for the war
looming in Vietnam, one might call it an extended spring break in the South
Pacific.
For
the young college-boy lingys, it was something of an adventure. While they bided
their time waiting for the call to war, daily life in the tropics resembled scenes
from From Here to Eternity without
the romance – a sprawling military base, a nearby GI town, palm trees swaying
in the breeze.
Excerpts
from Jeff’s letters home trace his carefree time as a GI in the PI during the
early months of ’63.
13 Jan 63 – from Honolulu enroute to the Far East
Hawaii
is beautiful and warm. I’m on a Super-Constellation. It will take 30 hours to
get to the Philippines. The South Pacific looks enchanting.
29 Jan 63 – at 9th ASA Field Station, Clark AFB, PI
This
base is like a little piece of America. It has everything. We live in a fairly
new billet in three-man rooms. Outside walls, and inside walls as well, are
louvered for ventilation. We have houseboys at $2.50 a month to make beds and
shine shoes as well as clean rooms, the billet, and its grounds.
Jeff (r) &
Fred Baumann outside barracks, Clark AFB, 1963
The
pool is across the street, tennis courts are nearby, and the enlisted men’s open
mess, called the Coconut Grove, is next door.
The pool across
the street
You
hear music everywhere on base. It’s from Armed Forces Radio (AFR), which we get
on our transistors, and you can also hear it through speakers in the clubs and
the rec areas.
It’s
a strange combination of Country Western and Rock ‘n Roll, everything from
‘Your Cheatin’ Heart’ and ‘Oklahoma Hills’ to Little Richard’s ‘Good Golly,
Miss Molly’ and lots of Ray Charles.
♫ I’m an old road-hog/I drove a big truck
Shot the pinball machine, but it brought me bad luck†
The
work is interesting, informative, and not too hard. I work the mid-shift from
Midnight to 7:00 AM. The place where we work, called Operations (Ops for
short), is a windowless, concrete building in a heavily-guarded, barbed wire
enclosure in the middle of an enormous field.
When
I wake up in the afternoon, I do errands, read in bed, or go to the pool. I
generally go to Happy Hour at the Airmen’s Club from 4:30 to 5:30 afternoons. All drinks are only 10 cents,
normally 20 cents, while weeds run 95 cents a carton. I either stay there for a
while or go into town with a buddy.
The
town called Angeles City is right outside the base. It’s like something out of
Susie Wong’s world, just like those Far Eastern army towns you read about in
war novels. All the joints have American names.
A GI joint,
Angeles City, PI, 1963
It’s
one huge collection of bars, whores, beds, Jeepney taxi drivers, horse and
buggy conveyances, and the most poverty stricken people I’ve ever seen. The
girls are mostly young.
Thus
far when I think of this country, the R&R song ‘Babycakes’ (Ooooh, baby,
oooh), the dance ‘Mashed Potatoes’, strong San Miguel beer, as well as comments
in the bars like ‘Hey Joe, you buy me a ladies beer’ – come to mind as
representative of the PI.
♫ Hey Mama, don’t you
treat me wrong
Come
and love your daddy all night long††
15 Feb 63
The
Filipinos and the bar girls don’t need any information. The first night I went
to town, all the girls asked me if I was ‘9th ASA’. I’m trying to
organize the girls into an entertainment union so they can get a guaranteed
wage for hustling drinks.
Jeff (2d on l)
& buddies, Angeles City, 1963
Manila,
the capital, is 65 miles away. I just got back from there. It’s just like any
large city in the States, a total imitation of the US with gangs, the PTA, an
American Legion, and a Chamber of Commerce. English is the common language, and
just about everyone speaks it. The University of the Philippines even has
sororities.
I
like it here, but I don’t know why.
24 Mar 63
I
have a chance to get a hop to New Delhi next month, but I’m going to pass it up
for a while. They have space available on planes to India once a week and to
Saigon, Bangkok, Taiwan, and Japan every day. They also have a ship, which goes
to Hong Kong 4 times a year, expressly for guys going on leave.
I
might go out for football because they go on game trips to Japan, Korea, and
Okinawa. This station has a good team. They almost beat the Far Eastern
champions last year.
11 Apr 63
Some
friends and I took a train to a place called Dagupan, a few hours from here.
Just beyond the city is a beautiful white sandy beach on the South China Sea
where we rented a hut for a couple of days, took in some sun and surf, and
drank a lot of beer.
♫ Where the deep blue pearly waters
Wash upon white silver sands
We watched the sun set in the evening
In a far and distant land†††
I
cut it too close getting back from town last night and almost missed the
shuttle to Ops for mid-shift. If a guy’s had one too many in Angeles, the flood
lighting around the Ops building for night security definitely has a sobering
effect.
28 Apr 63
The
PI is quite different from any other environment I have ever seen. This country
is a cross between the 20th and 19th century. Even in
Manila, a large (pop. 2 million), Westernized, and extremely dirty city, one
will see horse-drawn carts on the streets with old WWII jeeps used as taxis and
private vehicles.
Manila Bay
About
85% if the people are extremely poor, ill-fed, ill-clothed, and unhealthy.
Begging for money or cigarettes is very common here.
A
strong national police force secures the peace. In the expensive commercial
sections of Manila, there’s a cop on duty every hundred yards. There are guards
on all the trains. Most cops carry submachine guns or shotguns.
It’s
starting to get very hot now with the rainy season approaching soon.
17 May 63
Some
of us took a bus to Baguio, a mountain resort about 120 miles north of Clark
AFB. It’s about 5000 feet up in the clouds and nice relief from the heat of the
plains.
♫ I’m gonna climb that mountain
Walk
up there among the clouds††††
On
the way up – before the steep ascents – we passed many poor farmers and their
water buffalo. The trip was one of the most beautiful as well as the most dangerous
bus rides I’ll probably ever take.
Perilous Baguio
road, 1963
In
the Philippines, Jeff availed himself of the Army’s recruiting slogan ‘Fun,
Travel, and Adventure’ or FTA,* but the bloom was beginning to fade. The weather
in the South Pacific – rising temps and drenching monsoons – was a damper, but
he was also finding the repetitive classified work less challenging, while the
allure of an endless party life had begun to pall.
As
will be apparent in the next post, it was war just over the horizon that would
dramatically change Jeff’s experience in the military.
____________________________________________________________
*With
the later rise of GI anti-Vietnam War protest in which Jeff was a principal
player, the Army’s slogan FTA became ‘Fuck the Army’.
Links
to music videos:
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