Traveling First Class

In November of 1951 they caught me! I was in an Air Force Reconnaissance Squadron and had re-enlisted in the Prefecture of Aomori Japan on 7 February 1951. The Korean War was going hot and heavy and I had been stationed in Japan since early 1949. I didn’t want to head off to the land of the Multi- Colored Staff Cars just yet.

When I re-enlisted they were talking about sending me home soon. Having learned the ropes during over six years in the Army and Air Force, I asked one of our Squadron Clerks if he could possibly help me stay in Japan a bit longer. When our Squadron moved from Misawa AF Base in the north of Honshu Island, and regrouped down in Yokota Air Base near to Tokyo my records somehow were missing. Unfortunately the clerk who had misplaced my records had a family emergency and was sent home, and never came back to Japan. As the Months passed and we were coming into Winter I began wondering if I had been wise in wanting my records to disappear. I didn’t want to mention records, and I had been promoted to Sergeant, but some times late at night I’d wonder where my paperwork had gone.

In November 1951 a team of Pentagon Inspectors descended on our unit and started searching for paperwork problems. They found that I was still in Japan and asked why I had not rotated stateside. When they asked for my records they discovered that they were missing along with the entire folder, and had been missing for some time. I was called on the carpet and asked where my records might be. My honest answer was that I had absolutely no idea, and they began to move heaven and earth when they found that another fellow in our unit had missing records too.

One of the Inspectors was a long time paperwork jockey, and when they put him on the case, he simply went to the file cabinet where all the S’s were supposed to be and started yanking drawers out and setting them aside to be searched. I am told that when he pulled out the bottom drawer they found my file folder sitting there on the floor.

I am pleased to say that when my Commanding Officer asked me if I knew where my records were I replied truthfully: “I do not know where they are sir!” After a long hard gaze, this man who knew me as a teller of truth gave me the rest of that day’s drill. Right now Sergeant he informed me, there are a small group of guys turning in your bunk, getting signatures on all your clearance papers and getting you ready to go home. You will be off this base and down at Haneda Airport before the moon rises. Oh what a rush! I had always hated those long boring days getting ready to transfer, and now I was to be on the fast track.

In a few hours I was aboard a C-54 Aircraft, curled up in a luxury seat and reveling over the fact that I was traveling first class, while many of my buddies were on a Military Transport Ship enduring a long ride to stateside. Mere hours later we were in Hawaii and soon enough they had searched all our bags and we were headed for Fairfield Suisun Air Force Base, California.

Fairfield Suisun had a deadline as to when I must be out of there and on my way to Denver, Colorado. Leaving Denver by Bus I was on the last leg of my journey home. For some reason I began to feel quite lonely. In Pueblo, Colorado we changed busses and to our everlasting surprise, my friend Cyrus Waggoner, who had attended high school with me, was also going home to Farmington, New Mexico. We talked far into the night.

As the bus crawled slowly up Wolf Creek Pass through a kind of tunnel that had been plowed out by rotary plow, one could not see anything except for snow banked very high. Near the top of the pass I realized that “I had to go” and that there was no bath room on the darned bus. I got up and made my way forward to explain to the driver. He saw me coming and eased to a stop on a bit of a parking place, and with a smile, handed me a sheaf of papers. Outside the bus with a fierce wind blowing snow all around us, my diarrhea and I suffered. Shivering there between the bus and the tall snow bank I was almost out of sight. When I climbed back onboard, several people smiled, but during three more stops on that cold windy pass they quit smiling.

A few hours later we pulled into Farmington, New Mexico and my family met me. That trip was one I will never forget. A long furlough at home convinced me that I could not live in this little town of 3,300 souls, and, some men do fall in love with military life. I have now been retired from the Air Force for forty two years, but the memories last forever, and coming home “traveling first class” was really great.

Bruce L Salisbury