Air Mail Special Delivery

Any serviceman or woman will tell you that getting mail is one of the highlights of any day. That is especially true for those who are overseas. It may be that the isolation from all that is familiar when immersed in a different culture elevates the importance of mail call.

Two incidents that occurred while I was in Dak Pek reinforce the notion that the best intentions can go wrong. Both involve mail of a sort.

Having arrived at Dak Pek during the first week of December, 1965, Christmas promised to be just another day in what may have been the most isolated A camp in Nam. We had little to remind us of our families and to help us celebrate Christmas. Mail was the one real way we had to connect. The cards, letters, occasional reel-to-reel audio tapes, and especially “care” packages were eagerly anticipated.

One of my Special Forces Officer Course classmates, Lieutenant Colonel Snowden, was stationed in Pleiku. He knew that I had been assigned to Dak Pek. Knowing that there would not be much of a celebration at Dak Pek, he decided to give me a surprise Christmas gift.

On Christmas Day, an aircraft buzzed the camp. When we ran outside, we saw a caribou cargo airplane circling back toward the air strip. Since the airstrip was at that time closed to fixed wing aircraft and the plane’s rear ramp was lowered, we knew that we could expect an air drop. We raced to the airstrip in time to see a bundle tossed off the ramp. A brightly colored G-13 cargo parachute appeared, but not in the intended fashion. It was a streamer; that is, it came out of the pack but did not open. We watched in dismay as the bundle fell gracefully to the gravel airstrip, landing in a cloud of dust and gravel, bouncing along for quite a distance.

Since we hadn’t expected any supplies and had no advance notice, we were puzzled by the drop. When we opened what remained of the bundle, we found a soggy mess. Of two cases of beer, only one can survived. But the frozen turkey fared even worse--nothing recognizable was left.

A few weeks later, an O-1 bird dog observation aircraft buzzed the camp. When it circled back, it flew right over the camp at about a hundred feet. A mail bag flew out of the window and landed with a thud near the team house. Someone at the B team in Kontum was looking out for us, or so we thought.

When I was growing up in West Tennessee, one of the autumn highlights was damson jam. Damsons as we knew them were small, sour plums that grew wild. I knew of only one damson tree, and when they were ripe, would strip the tree before the ‘possums found them. My mom would make damson jam, which I thought was just about the best stuff on earth.

My sister Bess knew how much I loved damson jam, and knew where that one tree grew. She had picked a mess and made some jam. She thought a pint of damson jam would be welcome in Dak Pek, and was absolutely right. She used a gallon molasses bucket, like a gallon paint bucket, to pack it in. The pint fruit jar was surrounded in the metal bucket with popped pop corn since plastic peanuts were not all that common in 1966. She then packed the bucket in popped popcorn inside a box, then packed that box in pop corn in a larger box. Under ordinary circumstances, that would have been more than sufficient.

But not when the mail comes air mail special delivery.

Copyright 1999