So there I was, balancing myself on ceramic footpads, in a full squat, while trying to hit the target hole in the dark. I couldn’t even estimate the last time this place had been cleaned. The stink was like a living organism. I only managed to survive it by mouth-breathing. This was not for the faint of heart, but when nature calls …..
When I finished, I availed myself of some of the industrial strength sandpaper that they used for toilet paper and cleaned up as best as I could. My one concern during this process was keeping my flight suit out of the line of fire. I zipped up and made my way to the aircraft for the next leg of the trip.
Once airborne, we all noticed a strong, foul odor, like a St. Bernard had taken a dump in the cockpit after eating some bad Indian food. All nonessential activity stopped until we could locate the source of this rank obscenity.
After an hour of searching, the source of the smell was found. It was under the collar of my flight suit. It seems one of the previous users of my stall didn’t have the same accuracy as I did, and my collar had picked up a brown souvenir from our stop at Dhahran. I set some kind of record unstrapping from my seat and peeling off the flight suit. I actually thought about throwing it away rather than washing it, but since I only had four of them, I kept it. I wrapped it up in a plastic bag and stuffed the fowl package into my suitcase.
The next day we arrived in India. Our destination was an Indian airbase in Gauhati, in the state of Assam in northeast India. Assam sits just southeast of Bhutan and our view of the Himalayas was spectacular. Earlier in the trip I had been very impressed with the Alps. The Himalayas, however, were the major leagues of mountain ranges. They were massive in both height and width. These mountains were at least twice as tall as the Alps and the chain seemed to stretch to infinity. Even though we didn’t have to fly over them they were nonetheless awe-inspiring.
In stark contrast to the mountains was the jungle. Gauhati sits along the Brahmaputra River with jungle bordering the other side of town.
After landing, we secured the aircraft and met representatives of the Indian Army and Air Force. These gentlemen would be our guides helping us acclimate to life in India. Since the British Raj ruled India for so many years, these officers mirrored their British counterparts, from the handlebar moustaches to the uniforms. The first order of business was a tour of our quarters.
This is where we would be living for the next six weeks. The officers would be in one building, the enlisted men in another. The buildings were not modeled on the Taj Mahal. They were originally meant as barracks for the Indian Army, whose standards were nowhere near the ones for the US Army, much less, our Air Force. These were cinder block buildings. Each room had built-in shelving on the walls, and a single bed, equipped with a mosquito net. The communal bathrooms had the same ceramic footpad arrangement as the ones in Dhahran, but at least now I had some practice. The communal showers came with an unlimited supply of cold water. There were hot and cold faucets but they both yielded only cold water.
The windows of our barracks were covered with chicken wire. When we asked our Indian government representative about it he assured us it was meant to keep out bugs. It turned out he wasn’t kidding.
Once we settled into our new home, we attended our newcomer briefing. The Indian officers talked about the weather conditions we would be dealing with in the Gauhati area. The word “thunderstorm” was use quite frequently. High heat and humidity also figured prominently in the briefing; so we had that going for us.
The discussion then turned to the local wildlife. We were warned not to go out alone because there were tigers roaming through the jungle and they would occasionally come into the outskirts of town and carry off the unlucky villager. Snakes, particularly cobras, were part of the landscape, along with various and sundry bugs. I don’t ever recall the subject of man-eating tigers coming up while I spent twelve months in pilot training. Live and learn.
We were also instructed on how to deal with the cows. Cows were sacred in India and they had free reign over everything. Cows had the right of way every time. If a cow felt like lying down in the middle of the street, which they often did, the traffic would have to go around them. We were not allowed to impede them in any way. We were also warned to steer clear of the hashish vendors who prominently displayed their goods on many street corners in town.
We went to India to fly and boy did we. We flew every day, with an occasional, very rare, day off. Our day started early and went on until dark. Luckily, we were young, eager pilots looking to build flying time and experience. India provided both of those.
The airplanes were loaded in Gauhati with pallets of rice. Our pallets were flat, rectangular metal transport structures with locks on the side. The rice was loaded on the pallets and secured with a tie-down strap. The pallets would slide into the airplane on a built in roller system on the floor and then lock into position. This roller system made loading and unloading a snap. A guy on a forklift and a loadmaster on the plane could finish the job in 15 minutes. After loading up we flew across the border into East Pakistan. We landed at a forward operating base and offloaded the rice. The rice was removed from the pallets and then the empty pallets were placed back on the aircraft.
Now came the fun part.
On our return trip we loaded up with refugees who had assembled at this operating base hoping they could make it to India. The problem was that there were only the flat pallets for them to sit on; and there was no shortage of refugees. These people had been driven from their homes. The majority of them were Hindus fleeing the wrath of the East Pakistani Muslim Army. India was the only safe haven they could hope to reach. They fled with only what they could carry, and some had been on the road for weeks. There were thousands who wished to go. International aid workers picked the lucky passengers who would go with us.
The refugees streamed into a temporary camp, which had been set up near the airfield. They were given the basics of food and shelter until it was their turn to be transported to more permanent camps in West Bengal. International aid workers from the UN interviewed the refugees and established their priority for evacuation. Our job was to take them safely to the refugee camp in West Bengal. Of course the term “safely” encompasses many items when discussing airplanes, especially those operating in remote areas of India.
Just as with the LAPES (low altitude parachute extraction system) drops the loadmaster had to worry about getting the center of gravity just right, which could be somewhat tricky to do with dozens of refugees filling the airplane. All had to be calculated by the loadmaster to ensure that our center of gravity was “in the green.” To seat all these people, the loadmasters had to be creative. We were working with the flat metal floor of the pallets, and we wanted to carry as many refugees as possible. But these were small people; there were no overweight refugees.
We were able to jam many in the plane and still stay within our CG limits. The loadmaster would start at the front of the cargo compartment and sit them in a straight line across the pallet, facing forward. As soon as one line was seated, he started in on the next and so on until we reached the maximum number that could be carried on that particular flight. The loadmaster would take a cargo strap and run it across the passengers’ laps and secure it on the other side. Voila! Instant all coach accommodations.