Following my tour in Viet Nam, I was assigned to the 7520th USAF Hospital at South Ruislip Air Force Base on the outskirts of London. Located in a World War II industrial complex, it was a non-flying base that served as headquarters for America’s 3rd Air Force which was responsible for operational control of our bases in the UK. Flight activities took place out of Northholt, a nearby Royal Air Force base. 

I arrived in early November 1966 shortly after Karen and I were engaged. Our wedding was set for January in Williston, North Dakota. While waiting for Karen to join me, I purchased a flat within walking distance of the base. It was just off the flight path into RAF Northholt. Planes coming in for a landing would pass so close to the apartment that I could see into our third story livingroom window.

When I carried my new bride across the threshold after a honeymoon in Jamaica, our only furniture was a bed and a 60 year old Ronisch baby grand piano that I had purchased as a wedding gift for Karen from a family in London. Added to the fact that no one in their home played the piano, they were selling it because it took up most of their living room and they were about to move to smaller flat. Purchase price £100 pounds! Weight 600 pounds!!! You should have heard the cursing when the movers tried to maneuver it up our narrow stairwell. The piano has followed us on all our moves after returning to the States. It continues to provide sweet music and fond memories of our first year together. 

In addition to our proximity to the base, we lived only two blocks from the Ruislip station on the Central line, the longest and most heavily traveled  route on London’s underground rail system. Downtown London was only 35 minutes away. For added convenience our flat was just across the street from a small corner market, a laundromat, a turf accountant betting shop and a Chinese restaurant where we shared our first Christmas dinner together. 

Besides my duties as a base Flight Surgeon, I was assigned part-time to the Command Surgeon’s office under a Mayo trained surgeon, Colonel Malcolm Sawyer. As he had advanced in rank, his administrative responsibilities grew at the expense of his clinical skills until he no longer felt comfortable in the operation room. As much as I enjoyed Air Force medicine, I could not picture myself relegated to similar bureaucratic duties. 

One of my responsibilities was to serve as the medical representative on the Command Tactical Evaluation Team, a 36 man group charged with the task of determining the overall readiness of our air force bases in England. Our entourage would arrive unannounced and put the base through a series of pre-arranged wartime scenarios. Jet fighters had to scramble and strike targets in the North Sea. Maintenance crews were evaluated on their ability to provide rapid turnaround. Medical facilities had to mobilize airborne contingency hospitals, respond to mass casualty situations, gas attacks and nuclear accidents.

The hospital and dispensary commanders outranked me and knew I was relatively inexperienced. Still they respected my position and responded professionally. Fortunately, my partner, Captain Richard Harman, was a well qualified bio-environmental engineer. At the end of each day, we sat in on the team debriefing which gave me a tremendous appreciation and respect for our military capabilities. 

To maintain the element of surprise, the timing of the visit was top secret. I could not talk about my itinerary beforehand with anyone, including Karen. She knew something was up when she saw my bags packed the night before. Once the exercises were underway, I would call and she would drive to the vicinity of the base. We would spend the next few nights together in local bed and breakfast inns while the games played out. During the day, Karen would travel the countryside looking for churches where she could add to her collection of brass rubbings. Many of these old sanctuaries had commemorative plaques imbedded in the walls or on the floor. By rubbing a wax crayon over special paper, the image from the plaque would be transferred much in the way that children reproduce Lincoln’s head from a penny. 

On one occasion the Vicar of a small church in Hemstead told Karen that the brass plaque she was rubbing honored Sir William Harvey, a physician who lived from 1578-1657 and was the first to anatomically  describe the circulation of the blood. Karen was not familiar with the name but eagerly  told me about her experience when we met up that evening.

Tactical evaluation exercises weren’t confined to our bases in England.There were joint USAF/Nato bases in Turkey that were visited on alternate years by teams from either Germany or England. The cold war was at its peak and the bases in Turkey were strategically located as a deterrent to Russian aggression. In 1967 our team traveled to Incirlik Air Force Base, near Adana, a town in south central Turkey.  F 100 Super Saber fighter squadrons rotated there on temporary duty from Wethersfield, England. 

In the middle of a simulated gas attack, I noticed a young airman walking across an open field. Needing a casualty for a test of the medical facilities response, I stopped him and asked if he had a gas mask, knowing full well he did not. He apologized saying he was a flight line maintenance mechanic who had just arrived with a squadron from Wethersfield and had not been issued emergency equipment. I am sure he was not long out of his basic training and found it very intimidating to be confronted by an officer. Nervously he repeatedly asked if he were in trouble. I tried to reassure him that he wasn’t but told him to report to the dispensary for treatment as a simulated chemically warfare casualty. The medical team must have used the appropriate nerve gas antidote because I encountered the same airman alive and well six months later at his home base in England. 

It was a dark, blustery morning when Captain Hartman and I arrived at Wethersfield with the team from South Ruislip. The first scheduled exercise was a mass casualty situation. As we were waved through the guard gate, Captain Hartman wondered out loud where we would find trauma victims for a simulated plane crash. We had a large set of moulages in the trunk to be applied to airmen recruited from the base. In the darkness we spotted three airmen trudging head down in the rain and Captain Hartman said, “I think we just found some casualties.” He stopped the car and asked if they would like a ride. They responded, “Yes, sir,” and piled into the back seat. When I turned around to introduce myself, one of the airmen immediately recognized me from our previous encounter in Turkey. His response was, “Oh, no, not again.”