Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Return to Phucat

I recently connected with an old AF buddy I flew with in '69-70.who sent me a screen shot from a YouTube vid he stumbled across before Christmas. The winds of war have diminished significantly over the years for those of us who flew the not so friendly skies of SEA but to revisit my home base as it looks today was a step back in time for me and quite the departure from how I remember it...The old base is readily accessible by commercial service these days as are most of our abandoned air bases but sad to see what remains of a once very active projection of air power...I always thought if given the chance I might like to return but now after seeing the vid it would just be another old ghost from the past..

Yup. You really can't go "home" again. If you dink around on Google Earth, it's hard to find many of the war bases. Even some of the runways are gone.

On a related note, I was watching a different documentary the other day, and in it, they said that after the end of the war, hard-core communism only lasted about five years in Vietnam. After that short time, the government instituted limited capitalism, which immediately took over and overran the communist system. Today, Vietnam is thriving and one of the fastest growing capitalist economies in the world.

I would not want to go back. That shot of Phu Cat during the war shows the Caribous of my squadron. My son went over there for three weeks a couple of years ago, was mostly in the northern half of the country. He related to me that it is becoming a modern country.

Yep we were parked close by but you guys had way more tail numbers most of the time ! Only three alert AC 47's in my timeline but we traded tail numbers and crews with Pleiku on occasion.

I went back to Fort Ord a few years after the BRAC closed it. It was saddening. Weeds growing through cracked pavement and broken windows on my old barracks.

So I will keep the memories. Speaking of which, I remember jumping from a Caribou over Camp McCall in '95. Good times.

hate to think we did all that, spent all that, expended all those lives for nothing. America has suffered terribly in our life time for bad policy decisions.

T'wernt "for nothing".....

No, it wasn't. Because in the long run (and not very long at that) we won.

I can show you a list of 58000 reasons it twasnt worth it. Biggest FUBR ever.

What the F U C K did we win????

Then I guess there were six million reasons we should have surrendered in WWII, huh?

We went there (and I fully admit it was the most fooked-up war we ever fought) to stop the spread of communism.

Today, communism is dead, even in Vietnam.

We won.

WWII was a little bit different if your remember

Where was the Viet nam communism going to spread?

Glad all you's that made it home Woody, and God Bless the One's that didn't too.

Thank you Gunner

Yo Welcome Friend.

Can't argue over the Vietnam War here... out of the group of 200 I went thru with...199 went to Vietnam, and one
was sent to Ft Lewis instead... so I served, but my ass wasn't on the line..

I have a life long reverence for those that did serve.. my best friend growing up never came home...
on my bended knee. and the sign of the cross.. thank God for those that served and came home alive..
and for the 58,000 who never saw home again alive..may the Good Lord bless them all..

I know a sense of emptiness of seeing military bases closed, which were once bustling places..

As Ranger Green Mentioned, Ft Ord.. never stationed there... but if you've ever been around one Army base
or Air Force base or Marine Corps base.. or Navy... pretty much everything is the same architecture etc..
all designed by the same people... Ft Ord looked as if in a Science Fiction Movie, aliens came down and
just evaporated every one there, and left everything standing.. and it was left to the elements..
Slowly deteriorating in oblivion...

I have a sadness of being any place that was once a military installation and see it being nothing now..
Like even March AFB when I go to see the Air Museum when I am in So California.. drive thru deteriorating
streets, with names still on them, but no buildings.. places that use to be base housing...places like that
I grew up in and around..gone all gone..Any military dependent, no matter what branch of service our parents
served in, or where it was.. it was like we all grew up in the same big town.. and just never knew each other.
But regardless our lives were the same, that civilians would never understand...

Greatest Sadness to me, is the many Air Forces bases that were once so active when I lived over there from
1963 to 1966...Most are pretty much gone.. torn down and handed back over to the civilian world.. bases that
were built in WW 2, and some dating back to WW 1...Air Fields that held huge air armadas, that fought WW2
and then fought the stand down of the Cold War...Skies that were always full of Aircraft, where ever you went..

Places were thousands of men and women served.. just gone... with little remaining of what once stood..

all ghosts towns, torn down by the elements first, then bulldozers...Always gives me a sense of emptiness and
loss...But a sense of pride still remains of being a part of it all..from my youth, as my Dad served his nation for
26 years... and myself for the much shorter time I served... People who all did their jobs, and what they were
trained to do...

Guess it gives us a sense of history, that those who just read about it in the papers, or watched it on the news
on TV, could never understand... the Campfire Trolls are a perfect example of that..

Our military has left 'ghost towns' all over the globe.. places once important.. and now unimportant, that they are
just torn down and a faded memory...

To all those that served in those now Ghost Towns.. a Salute of Respect and wishes for God's Blessings to be upon
you and yours...The Freedoms that so many take for granted in today's society, are clueless of each of your parts
in providing that for them...and to the memories of those forgotten Ghost Towns, where you did so...

Thanks for posting Woody, and to each of our service veterans on the campfire.. Thank you for your service..
and to those that returned home safely, from being in harms way.. Thank God, your sacrifice was your time..
and not your life...

We quit. You might want to update yourself:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-16567315

We did, and the proof of it is my bedroom furniture which was manufactured in Nam. And my tee shirts. The list goes on and on..........