A couple of years ago, my wife Nina gathered together some things she had been saving for more than 30 years from my time in the United States Air Force, put them in frames, and gave them to me as a Christmas present.

We spent that Christmas down in North Salt Lake at our daughter’s house with her family. After we got back home, we couldn’t find the pictures. For more than two years the pictures have been something we’ve commented about, but they were gone … until April 20th. Nina dropped her iPhone down between the bed and the storage bench at the foot of the bed. She pulled the storage bench away from the bed and there were the pictures underneath the bench.

Someday I’ll put scans of the pictures on my blog. Today, though, I’ve scanned the picture taken of me when I was selected as Airman of the Quarter for Yokota AFB in Japan in the spring of 1967. A few interesting things about the picture:

• I was really skinny back then!
• I didn’t have any hair then, either.
• The badge over my right pocket was my “Combat Crew Badge” which was awarded to airmen flying as part of a combat crew in southeast Asia (specifically, Vietnam). Nina saved the badge. The rule then was I could wear that in place of a name plate.
• The wings over my left pocket are permanent wings awarded after three years of flight status. The fact that these wings were awarded to enlisted airmen was quite controversial. A couple of times as I was transiting between Japan and Vietnam, I got confronted by some officer who demanded that I remove the wings because I was an enlisted person. For a while I actually carried the orders with me to show the officer who then became rather befuddled (a usual officer state).
• The two rows of ribbons weren’t all the medals I was entitled to wear. However, it was considered austentatious for a lowly enlisted man like I was to wear more than two rows of ribbons except when wearing a formal dress uniform. There was also lots of protocol about which ribbons one should wear and what order they are displayed.
• Top row: Small Arms Expert Marksman (I was dead-eye with a .45 caliber pistol, marksman with a .38 pistol, and expert with the M-16), Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal (with a cluster),  and Air Force Good Conduct Medal
• Bottom row: National Defense Service Medal, Vietnam Service Medal with three clusters, and the Air Medal (a very special medal)
• Other medals awarded, but not worn in this picture: Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medal, and the Air Force Outstanding Unit Award

Thanks, sweety,  for the re-find!

TTFN!