It Wasn’t Always Glamour … In fact, It Was Seldom Glamour!

By Steve Hock

Not every day was filled with fun and excitement for Combat Photographers assigned to Korat RTAFB in the early 1970s.

In fact, most days were pretty routine.

A typical day might begin with studio hours in the morning at the Base Photo Lab. Usually at least a few folks showed up for a variety of reasons. Official photos of one sort or another, passport and visa photos, SAR photos, perhaps a small piece of broken equipment would be brought in to document some damage … nothing really special.

If the black and white printing department was backed up or if a photographer had a pet project that was of particular interest to them, they might spend a few hours in the darkroom taking special care to make their prints “just right”. Nobody could print as good as us!

Of course there were always those instances in the day when we heard that plaintive yell, “grab a camera … Security Police will be here in five minutes”! We never new exactly what that might mean. It could be a “fender bender” on the base, a collision of vehicles into vehicles, or vehicles into planes, vehicles in a ditch or an occasional aircraft accident! One thing was for sure, when you went out you had to be prepared for pretty much anything

Photographing battle damage was another pretty routine job. Someone, usually from Flying Safety, would come by and pick us up and drive us out to the flight line. There we would photograph little holes in airplanes. Once in a while a really big hole, but usually little bitty holes … It was not exactly inspiring photography.

Another real winner of a job was photographing vandalism for the Security Police. There were always a few boneheads on base that enjoyed breaking soda machines, damaging vehicles or destroying some other form of government property. All had to be “documented” by us.

To help break the routine there was of course the occasional murder! Yeah, that’s right MURDER!

One day I was hanging at the lab keeping cool in the air conditioning and that famous “Somebody grab a camera” yell shattered my thoughts. I was told to go on the job and when the Security Police arrived I of course asked what was the subject and where were we going. I was told simply, ” we’re going off base … bring plenty of film”. By the look on the SPs face I got the feeling that this job might not be pretty.

We jumped in the jeep and as we jolted and rattled our way around the perimeter road I attempted to pry more information from my tight-lipped SP chauffeur. Finally he said ” a GI was murdered by a “poo-ying”. ( A “poo-ying” is a Thai word meaning a Thai female.)

My first thought was .. ” Oh s**t, I hate the sight of blood”! After passing out both Thai and American gates and a bumpy 10 minute ride “downtown” we lurched a stop in a bungalow district. Looking around, it was immediately obvious which bungalow was the center of attention. Fifteen or twenty Thais stood in various spots looking laser like in one direction. They all had a look of distress and shock on their faces. Nobody was talking. A tall Air Force SP stood at the top of the steps on one bungalow.

“This must be the place”, I thought. My driver and I exited the jeep and walked over to the bungalow steps. I stopped suddenly and recoiled. There on the steps were fresh, bloody footprints! The tall SP called down, “Don’t step in the footprints.”   I thought to myself, “Oh brother, this is gonna be bad ..”. And it was! The scene was quite shocking to say the least. After a quick instructional conversation with the OSI representative in charge of the investigation, I went in, did my job and got out as fast as I could. Forty one years later and I can still see those bloody footprints and that guy laying there on the bed with blood EVERYWHERE! Jeez …, He had over 30 stab wounds. She must have been really pissed!

It was a quiet ride back to the base.

Steve is originally from Pennsylvania. He joined the USAF in 1968 and was stationed in SEA  from 1971 -1972.