Fun In place of sleep -- More than I bargained for...

1968, Vietnam. Just came off of the Midnight shift (Phantom Flight at CRB)... dead tired, crawled into my little bunk for a day of restless, heat-filled sleep. I finally fell asleep only to be awakened about 15 minutes later. An Airman from the Orderly Room was standing over my bunk, yelling my name loudly. I said, Wha', Wha', What do you want?  He said, "They want you over at the hospital right away." I asked him who wanted me at the hospital. "I don't know, but they said it was very important." O.K., I'm thinking maybe they want me to give some of my blood type for a newly arrived wounded man or something. They were always flying medical choppers in from the field right over our row of huts all day long.

So to cut to the quick, I drag my tired body over there and the Hospital clerk tells me to report to some full-Colonel in room 27. I walked in and this Col. is lying on a cot while reading (this is no lie) a DONALD DUCK Comic book. Turns out he is a Dentist. He directed me to the Dental chair while he washed his hands. Then he pulled an X-Ray of my teeth out of a drawer.  I'm sitting there and he tells me nothing, but sticks a Novocain needle into the right side of my mouth. Then he announces that he is about to pull a wisdom tooth. I told him that I have never had any problem with my teeth. I may as well have told him that I was really a Major General masquerading as a T/Sgt Ignoring my plea for mercy, he continued and finally got that deep seated tooth out. He said, "I see you have had teeth pulled before, so you know what to do" while he put a cloth swab in the hole where my tooth used to be. "That'll be all Sergeant". Then he went back to his cot and resumed the prone position with his comic book in hand as I went out the door holding my bloody mouth. Just another lovely day in the Combat Zone in Vietnam.

Glenn Wilson LM#117

Glenn,

I can completely relate to Dentist'R Us! Just out of boot camp I was summoned to the Dentist Throne to check out a painful jawtooth on the lower left side. The dentist said that he might as well take care of a few other potential problems, and pulled all four Wisdom teeth AND the jawtooth on the RIGHT side (wrong tooth)! This is not a problem... quit squirming around Airman! They later fitted me for what must have been a 'spacer' for the two jaw teeth suitable for a race horse, which I wore for years until replacing it with permanent capped teeth. Come to think of it... I never went to an Air Force dentist again!

Don Poss