RIPPLE SALVO… #859… “THE VARMINT CALLER”… HUMBLE HOST IS RECALLING A FOGGY FRIDAY MORNING AT THE OASIS IN THE SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY CALLED LE MOOR BACK IN THE MID-SIXTIES. A bunch of Tinker-Toy aviators were posted in the ready room milling around waiting for the Thule fog to lift. We needed four-pole fog. Enough visibilty to see four telephone poles in a row–about a half a mile. That was the minimum needed to brief and go flying. The mix of pilots was about half and half. Half of us were hardcore instructor pilots. The other half were FNGs, mostly young JGs and Ensigns from the training command on their way to the fleet to fly Skyhawk dive-bombers between the carriers at Yankee Station and the Bridges and Guns of NVN. On the Hardcore side of the ready rooom, I was all ears soaking up tales from the central blue of Southeast Asia. The speakers were happy warriors home from the sea and the war. All but one or two of us, the silent ones–Lieutenant Commanders with eight years of experience in the MK-76 wars at Pinecastle and Fallon, but nary a sortie of combat time, were accustomed to our lowly position in the pecking order. Listening was our forte. We wore lonely National Defense ribbons to signal our social status in the world at war. The guys doing all the talking sported Silver Stars, DFCs, bunches of Air Medals and Green Weenies bearing little gold Vs between gold stars on those few occasions you would see them dressed in something other than mouldy flight suits or bleached-out Levis. On that foggy day their coversation shifted to a favorite central valley weekend activity–varmint hunting. I was all ears. Golf was my game hunting was not. The conversation was captivating, informative and probably full of little white lies as four naval aviators took turns recounting great critter hunts from the past. I took notes and listened carefully. Now, I am glad I did.
For fifty years I have waited for an opportunity to put those lessons to work. I have all the right weapons and apparel, a map an old-timer here on the Wasatch front provided for the start of the hunt. All I need now is “a varmint caller.” In the San Joaquin Valley a human caller makes all the difference. The Wasatch Front and cyber-space is probably the same. Back in the day in the ready room session the hunters disclosed that they were aided by a varmint caller from Texas who specialized with infallible success in calling in coyotes for the gunners. His most successful call was that of a dying rabbit. They flew him in and paid him handsomely. As I recall, the four Light Attackers back from bridge busting and ducking big bullets racked up a fifteen coyote weekend. They swore by the guy from Texas who could duplicate the sound of a dying rabbit.
I have been looking for a different kind of varmint caller to assist in my hunt for an AXXHOLE HACKER. A lowlife who finds joy in destroying and rattling cages of normal folks. Specifically, I am on the hunt for the AH who has me sighted and is enjoying upsetting my applecart –ROLLING THUNDER REMEMBERED. I have put him on notice. Fight’s on… I have also found and contracted a varmint caller who is one of the most diligent, relentless, successful and brilliant hacker hunters in the business. I learned that from those guys in the VA-125 Ready Room. If you want the best, buy her a ticket, get her on the hunting grounds, and pay her whatever it takes to keep her on the scent. Of interest, I will be including employees of WORDPRESS.COM in my hunt. I have a domain– rollingthunderremembered.com –and I rely on three enterprises, including WORDPRESS.COM to put my product on the internet and into cyber space. At the present the product is unreadable… among the losses is my spell-checker…
Humble Host will continue to post, but alerts all that at the present time normal production has been interrupted and recovery is ongoing. I hope…
Meanwhile, for 12 JULY 1968… There were no fixed wing aircraft lost in Southeast Asia on this date, or any other 12 July during the four years of the air war.
RTR Quote for 12 July: STEVEN COONTS: Foreword for John Nicholls’ and Barrett Tillman’s ON YANKEE STATION: “The length and scope of the Vietnam War made it a national disaster. The stupendous casualty lists made it a national tragedy. President Lyndon B. Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara were pretty much run-of-the-mill incompetents, the kind that float to the top in peacetime political ponds. Johnson was a backslapping cloakroom politician who had spent his life bringing home the bacon for his constituents–McNamara was an automobile industry executive. Neither was qualified to run a difficult war, and neither was willing to allow the military professionals discretion to make military decisions. Indeed, in the four shooting scrapes since Vietnam, only in the 1991 Gulf War were politicians willing to allow the military to make war in a way to minimalize the loss of American life and maximize America’s military advantage, and even then the politicians were afraid to allow the total military defeat of Iraq. Rules of engagement have become endemic.”…. oohrah…
Lest we forget… Bear