1963 when Kennedy was shot I was a small child at this god forsaken place. 1961-64:
http://6937th.50megs.com/6937th_photos.htmThe russians sent two Yak25 over the place at low level around the time Kennedy was shot. I was standing in the middle of the bases sports feild as they buzzed the base at 500ft. The PAF drove them away in F86 launched from Peshawar airfeild. This was the place Gary Powers launched from a few years earlier when he was downed over russia. If you poke around in the linked picture's you will see an aireal view that shows the base with the Peshawar airfeild runway about 5 miles in the background. My father was freinds with the Mayor of Peshawar who taught him to fly Taylorcraft Austors.
No radio, no TV, no nothing. Occasional cobras, vipers, carats, camel spiders, jackels, rabies carrying bats and dogs. Got rabies that way. All of the mothers on the post knew each other so you couldn't pull any crap. All of the airmen and personel knew to just tell your father after getting your name and that night you came home to a kester whompin. You lived for saturdays and the afternoon matinee. Or summer for the pool. It was in the 90's all summer with two weeks of monsoon in july.
We had to make it up as we went along with lots of community things from the church womens organisations during the year to spending evenings watching the mens softball, touch football, and the movie theater/church. The saturday after "The 300 Spartans" showed, every garbage can lid and mop handel in base housing disapered while 20 small boys lined up and beat the crap out of each other for a day. Half the base made an effort to pass by the feild at some time during the day to laugh at us.
It was when we upped the arms race to bows and arrows that our mothers called a truce for us. They figured knocking each other down with mop handels and trash can lids was burning up our youthfull energy and the base dispensery was just around the corner. We did worse to each other playing contact football with no pads. But, arrows could take out eyes and some of our sisters were close enough laughing at us that a stray arrow was a problem. For todays PC hand wringers note, no mothers came shreiking out to save their offspring from getting cracked over the knoggin with a stick or sue anyone over it. They just pulled the plug on our fun when bystanders could get hurt. We also had to return everyones trash can lids and mop poles before we could come home that day.
About a month later I got shot in the leg with one of those arrows and got a butt whompin when I got back from the dispensery for pissing off the kid who shot me. While I was recovering from my whompin that night I could hear the whailing of the kid down the road who shot me while his father whomped him. A year later I fell in a foundation trench for some new construction on the post and broke my wrist. We kids had been warned to stay away from it. I was the third kid that month getting a cast for breaking his wrist. Some of us younger kids were too small to jump the trench like the older boys but we kept trying anyway. I got a butt whompin when I got home that night for being stoopid.
The service club scheduled year round saturday road trips to points of interest around northern Pakistan to give service members something more to do than go to India and get the clap. Two I remember going to were the Khyber Pass at Landi Kotal and the Taxila Ruins. Back then it was a badge of honor for boys to have broken a wrist/leg or get stiches at least once. Rabies or a snake bite were an exotic elective.
Taxali:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxila
