A 315th Civic Action story, 1970

Welcome home. Being a navigator, I didn't work with aircraft records like the pilots did, so I may not have met you. But here's a story about some men you might know.

While I was on a flight to Okinawa, three of the maintenance troops made an appointment with a U.S. Army Colonel on the other side of the base -- subject: Civic Action.

When they walked into his office and saluted, he returned their salute and asked, "What can I do for you gentlemen?"

One of them said, "Sir, we want your building."

He said, "What?"

They said, "Not this one, Sir. That Jamesway out there" and pointed out the window. Then they told him about the little Vietnamese orphans' school that was being run by a couple of Buddhist monks with nothing but a few posts and scraps of tin for shelter, and said that's what they wanted to do with the building.

The Colonel looked out the window and said, "What building? I don't see any building out there." And by sundown, there wasn't any building out there -- it had been disassembled, trucked to the site of the orphans' school, and reassembled.

Everybody told me about it when I got back. I went to see the new school building, and got pictures of it and the monks and the kids, but now I can't remember the names of those three men, and I wish I had kept a full copy of the 315th Civic Action Program records.