re: #127 Croc-Wearing Authoritarian

A while back I was chatting with a Walmart greeter, a man in his 60s. He had a USAF unit cap and I asked him about it. He explained that he had been in the AF in the early 70s and had been at a base in Thailand that was right on the Mekong River and from which the Air Commandos took off to hit road traffic and cover rescue missions in Laos and points north. I had not mentioned my own service to that point, and he had not named the base, but I said, “That has to be Nakhon Phanom, ‘naked fanny,’ been there many times.”
To my amazement, he hugged me and said, ” Welcome home, brother! Nobody else would know that!” A well-informed historian would know, of course, but there are a lot more veterans than historians. A long and detailed reminiscence followed until he noticed the manager giving us the evil eye and said he had to go back to work.
Don’t know what else to say. Turns out he was an ordnance tech, a bomb loader, which is heroic service at a forward base in my book. Working the door at Walmart is honest work, and I would not belittle it, but it is not what he deserves at this stage in his life.