Grass Planting
Sometime in the fall of 1967,
the Thais made an effort to plant grass between the two main FAC barracks.
I don’t recall ending up with any kind of a lawn.
This picture is taken from the
elevated walkway that ran in front of our building. You can compare this shot
with the picture of monsoon rains taken from almost the same point.
These barracks are down the hill from the Invert Radar Site on the east
side of Nakhon Phanom RTAFB. In the later years a great deal of building was
done north of our barracks off to the left of this picture. You can see how
well the area had been cleared out, which helped keep the snakes at bay.
When we visited NKP in Aug/Sept 2000, open areas such as these were
totally overgrown with underbrush and had new trees up to 30 feet tall. The intervening years since the USAF pulled out of NKP in
1975 likely had brought nearly 2,000 inches of monsoon rains.
* * * * * * *
Your photo of "Grass
Planting".
The same thing was done in 1969 in
and around TUOC and Base Ops. Guess they (??) put out the word down town that
they wanted some women to lay down sod at the rate of 1 Baht an hour, what was
that, 20-25 cents an hour.
Was told that almost 200 Thai
women showed up at the Main Gate that morning. Most had to be turned away,
just too many. I was at TUOC that morning and saw them laying sod, sure was a
happy bunch of Thai women.
Ken Griswold, A Secret War Veteran
& NKP Class of 68-69
