An Experience in Sardinia

[Barbasiewiczfan]

An Experience in Sardinia

By Bruce Stark

2 Jan 24​

I was stationed in Spain at Torrejon Air Base just outside of Madrid. It was in early 1974 when someone came thru the Avionics Maintenance shops asking for volunteers. This was rather common as the Air Force kept figures on how many Airman would volunteer for a blind mission. Blind meaning a mission to an undisclosed location for an unspecified amount of time.

I volunteered for every one of these missions as they usually ended up to be rather exciting experiences. Once we were all aboard a C-130 Hercules, an announcement was made that we would be going to Sardinia to participate in a NATO exercise.

We landed at an air base just outside of Cagliari, Sardinia. We were taken to a grassy football field jut off of the runway. The Air Force did not do field operations very often but they were very prepared for this and almost everything was new or in near perfect condition. We were taken to a new 40 man tent that contained cots with down sleeping bags, pillows and space heaters.

The Air Force always had good food and this was taken care of by them building a kitchen on the grassy field that was a sight to behold. We sat at tables with GI mess kits to eat from. An assembly line was set up to sterilize your mess kit, dry it off and put it back onto the pile where you got it.

The pride of the field operations group was the field latrine they set up. It had everything one would need. Sinks, mirrors, hot water and showers. There were canvas walls set up around the latrine.

The Army, Marines and the Navy were also there. We never saw many Navy personnel as they were kept on their ships circling the island. When we went into the coastal town of Cagliari we did see Navy shore patrol personnel in Jeeps looking for Sailors who had jumped ship.

On the other side of the field where the Air Force was bivouacked, there was an area where someone was growing Christmas trees. The small pine trees were only a few feet from each other. This is where the Marines were set up. A one man pup tent was squeezed between the trees and two Marines were assigned to each tent.

There sure was a lot of screaming coming from the direction of the Marines. These guys were being yelled at continually just as if they were all still in basic training.

When the Marines were woken up before dawn, they had to do exercises while being continually yelled at. It was a noisy group.

Well, the Marines discovered our latrine with the showers, sinks and hot water. The second morning the Marines invaded our latrine. It would have been overlooked by us, but the Marines were ready for a fight and openly hated the Air Force. They would steal soap, razors and anything else they wanted. There were fights

Our commander went over to the Marine encampment and had a meeting with their commander. He told them to do their morning exercises somewhere else as the Air Force personnel needed their sleep. He also told them to stay out of our latrine as they couldn't act like gentlemen and the fights were hurting his men.

The Marines got up earlier in the morning, put on full field gear and were marched to the other side of the flight-line to do their exercises. There were also two armed Marine guards assigned to prevent the Marines from using our latrine.

Some unfortunate Marine was caught in our latrine and the guards beat the hell out of the guy before dragging him back to the Marine camp.

The Army had a camp not far from us but they were a quiet group and only a few guys who walked around from time to time. They were a friendly group who were following the latrine drama very closely.

As far as what we did, we supported a group of F4 Phantom Jets that were participating in the NATO war games. One had an antenna problem. A ladder couldn't be found for me to fix the problem that was in the tail of the bird. I carefully walked on the spine of the aircraft from the cock-pit to the tail. I straddled the tail, removed a panel, repaired the antenna connections and Bob' your uncle. There was a grand-stand set up for the dignitaries

The British showed off their vertical take-off fighter but the off-shore war games were the main attraction. Other than the repair one aircraft, we were not privy to any information about the NATO exercises.

Now we heard about the Army's commander having a meeting with our commander. He asked our commander if his men could use our showers. The Army was told it was ok. WE had no problems with the Army people.

The last night we were there, the Army invited us to movie night at their camp. Many of us watched a movie shown in a make-shift theatre set-up on a grassy field. At intermission, the Army served ice-cream to the whole audience.