From: Steve Smith
Sent: Thursday, August 07, 2008 1:09 PM
Subject: The Dispensary
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Marko Pasa (pronounced Pasha) Dispensary was named
for the first military
doctor of the Ottoman Army who reached the rank of
general. It was located
on the "main drag" on base between the
chapel and Diogenes Theatre. You
could spot the dispensary by the two white crackerbox
ambulances with big red
crosses painted on the sides. We had our CPR dummy
(originally male)
converted to a Resusci-Annie complete with wig,
dress, falsies and bra. I
used to like to strap Annie in the passenger seat
whenever I drove the
ambulance around the base. I loved the stares I'd get
from the Turkish
civilian employees that abounded on the hill -
"Those crazy Americans".
>
We were pretty well staffed for the less than 100
military on the hill at the
time - we were on caretaker status during my tour in
76-77 because of the
Cypress Embargo - the U.S. was always trying to keep
our NATO allies Turkey
and Greece away from each others' throats. We usually
had a doctor, a
dentist, an NCOIC, a medical records technician,
pharmacy technician, dental
assistant, lab technician (me), x-ray technician, and
two or more medics
(91B's or C's). When our NCOIC cycled out he was
replaced by TWO SFC's who
constantly argued about which one of them should get
to go home. Sometimes I
think we treated more civilian employees and Turks
than we did soldiers. We
were all considered "medics" regardless of
MOS. We all pitched in with sick
call, minor treatments, and the seemingly endless
shots required in Turkey.
We loved to scare the troops who came in for their
biannual Cholera shots by
showing them an Adrenalin syringe with a huge needle
meant to pierce between
the ribs and enter the heart (think Uma Thurman in
Pulp Fiction). One
soldier sighed, dropped his drawers, and said,
"OK, get it over with". We
also all had to take turns taking call after hours. I
remember carrying a
huge radio (by today's standards) that kept us in
contact with the MP's -
"Tango Yankee, good buddy". We had a
bastardized set of 10-codes I think was
borrowed from the truckers' CB lingo.
My lab was smaller than most kitchens and pretty
rudimentary. I could
perform basic lab procedures by hand - nothing fancy.
I think the two main
tests I did were white blood cell counts (WBC's) and
throat cultures. I once
had to do a series of sperm counts after an air force
NCO got a vasectomy in
Incirlik. I pretended to spit after using the
mouthpiece to draw semen into
the cell-counting pipette - the dental tech watching
me gagged and nearly
puked. I made my own bacteriology media plates with
sheep blood sent up
regularly from Incirlik. By the end of my tour, my
lab was a fully-equipped
çay shop. The abi assigned to clean the dispensary -
I think his name was
Hassan - would accept a few lira from me every payday
and add to our
collection of teapots, thimble-shaped çay glasses,
tea and sugar cubes. We
were served çay made on a bunson burner in the lab
every morning (and
whenever Hassan could get takers) along with fresh
ekmek (bread) Hassan would
pick up on his way to work. I heard that Hassan cried
when my replacement
evicted him and all of his apparatus from the lab
after I left.
I have read elsewhere on this site about the famous
steno pad we kept in the
public restroom in the dispensary. The idea was to
keep graffiti off the
walls and to collect the jokes, poems, and thoughts
of those who visited.
Here's my contribution:
Ataturk's Revenge
Listen my children so hard at your work
Of the mighty revenge of Ataturk.
For where you sit many have known
The great affliction he has thrown.
Be yeni, be eski,
Be strong or weak,
You will be matching
Porceline with cheek.
For you came here unwanted
You're foreign and foul
This great ex-leader
Will haunt your bowel.
Kaopectate be ready
Have knees like a hinge
Here's your porceline throne
And Ataturk's Revenge!
We called the gastroenteritis that most everybody
eventually suffered from -
especially after eating the local food - the Turkey
trots or Ataturk's
Revenge. We kept cases of Kaopectate on-hand - just
add water to the plastic
bottle and shake.
One of my tasks as lab technician (92B) was to
regularly check our water
supply for chlorine level and bacteria content. I'd
strap Annie into her
seat and load up my collection of sterile sample
bottles once a week and make
my rounds around the base, collecting water and ice
samples. We had to test
the ice from all of the ice machines on base to make
sure the Turkish food
service workers washed their hands regularly. There
was a rumour that Turks
used to wipe their asses with the fingers of their
left hands - that's why it
was considered an insult to offer your left when
shaking hands. I don't know
if that's true, but I often did grow e-coli bacteria
from ice samples. We
made all of the food facilities keep the ice scoops
in a chlorine solution
rather than throwing them into the ice bins. I also
assisted the Doc in
performing inspections of the mess hall and other
areas on base where food
was prepared. This included finger cultures on all of
the food service
workers. I remember how pissed the Turks who ran the
Snack Shop were when we
closed them down over a long weekend for excessive
unsanitary conditions.
Friday nights were Steak Night at the Snack Shop -
their biggest opportunity
for tips. I asked for (and received) the secondary
MOS 91S - Environmental
Health Specialist (now called Preventive Medicine
Specialist) due to this
work outside of my Primary. Where else can you get an
extra MOS with the
stroke of a pen?
The "medics" were known for our great
weiner roast parties. There was a
picnic pavilion with a barbecue pit on one of the
back roads on base - near
Ops I think. Any excuse for a party was good enough
on the hill -
promotions, birthdays, minor holidays, etc. At one
such party - I think it
was when I made SP4 - we invited one of the local
Turkish doctors. He asked
the NCOIC (wish I could remember that prankster's
name - SFC V-something)
what kind of meat was in the hot dogs. The SFC
assured him they were
all-beef. After the doctor left the sarge snickered
and said, "I wonder if
that Muslim is going to hell because he ate a little
pork". The beer flowed
freely and I was well anesthetized by the time I
walked the gauntlet and
received punches on both arms to "pin on my
stripes". I was among the three
or four die-hards still partying late when we packed
the left-overs and
equipment into the ambulance (Annie was left at the
dispensary). Somebody
got the bright idea to ride out to Hippy to see if we
could get through the
gates. The Hippodrome (also referred to as The Point
elsewhere in these
posts) was always a big mystery to us support cadre.
We all figured those
big golf balls on the horizon was where the REAL top
secret stuff happened
once upon a time and few of us had ever been out
there. It had it's own
compound of double fences with Turkish guards. We
sped down the long road
with lights flashing and siren whaling. The Turkish
guard threw open the
gate without stopping us. Now what? We circled the
parking lot once and
headed back out the gate. About this time I decided I
had to pee real bad
and stood up in the back of the ambulance and started
to open the back doors,
intending to pee out the back onto the road. Somebody
jerked me back onto
the bench seat by the seat of my pants - "Smith,
you fool! You wanna get
shot?" We never heard any repercussions about
our midnight rescue mission.
When Dr. Love went to Germany on leave to escort his
wife back to Sinop, our
prankster NCOIC dreamed up another plot designed to
welcome the Doc back and
rush his wife through the Turkish security at the
main gate. We faked an
ambulance crash with severe injuries. The story was
to be that my best
friend Thom Cartwright - the medical records tech -
and I rolled one of the
ambulances several times and were in dire need of Dr.
Love's attention. I
was equipped with a cast on one arm, some fake
scratches and bruises, and a
sad look for my buddy Thom who was placed in one of
the hospital beds in the
ward in back of the dispensary. We got some sheep
blood from my lab and
coated the inside of a drainage tube placed just
inside one of Thom's
nostrils. A suitably bloody drainage bag and a
catheter bag with fake urine
hung at the side of the bed. I believe we also put a
cast on one of Thom's
legs and suspended it from a traction rig above the
bed. IV bags were hung
with a fake line taped to his arm. His disguise was
topped off with bloody
bandages on his head and cigarette ashes on his face
to make him suitably
pale. The MP's were in on the prank and met Doc and
his wife at the
airfield. He was rushed through the main gate with
siren and lights. As the
Doc began examining Thom with a grave look on his
face, Thom started choking
on some sheep's blood that had run into his nose and
down the back of his
throat and he sprang upright in the bed.
"Surprise!" Doc forgave us for the
practical joke and once again - no repercussions. How
ever did we get away
with this stuff?
We all griped and moaned about our hardship tour in
Sinop, but I'm sure we
all look back on it with some fond memories. Soldiers
sharing hardships
develop some strong bonds - too bad most of them
dissolve over time. Thom
and I kept in touch for awhile after Sinop - he went
to Walter Reed and I
went to Ft. Meade - 30 miles apart. We became
roommates in San Diego after
we both got out in 78. I moved back to Ohio in 1980
and I saw Thom twice
more in the mid 80's and early 90's. Now we too have
lost touch with each
other.
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Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2008 10:31:31 -0400
From: Steve Smith stevesmith@byteone.com
Subject: WBOK radio
To alleviate some of the boredom of the hill I
volunteered to be a disc jockey for the base radio
station - KBOK. Bok is sh-t in Turkish. We had a
small broadcasting studio close to the main
quadrangle and closed circuit transmission lines (no
radio antennae) strung throughoit the base. Your
radio had to be within so many feet of one of the
lines to pick up KBOK.
When one of the volunteers wasn't broadcasting we
piped through the Armed Forces Radio Network. We had
a real loose schedule - if somebody felt like doing a
show, we each had a key to the studio and would just
drop in and broadcast.
My DJ name was Rip Van Smith because I was known for
sleeping away most of my tour. If I wasn't in the
Sportman's Club hoping for a "Rock Call"
and a free beer, I was usually in my bunk snoozing. I
used to love to do George Carlin's Hippie-Dippie
Weatherman routine on KBOK:
"Tonight's forecast: Dark. Continued dark
throughout most of the evening, with some
widely-scattered light towards morning. This is staff
meteorologist Rip Smith reminding you - if you don't
like the weather here - leave".
I'd get phone calls asking for airline tickets.
One night I was in a particularly playful mood - may
have been after a fruitful string of rock calls at
the club. "I'd like to dedicate this next tune
to Uncle Sam and the Army Security Agency". I
then proceded to spin Ringo Starr's "No No
Song". For those of you not familiar with the
lyrics:
-------------------------------------------------------------------
A lady that I know just came from Colombia
She smiled because I did not understand
Then she held out some marijuana, oh ho
She said it was the best in all the land
{Refrain}
And I said, "No-no-no-no, I don't smoke it no
more
I'm tired of waking up on the floor
No thank you please, it only makes me sneeze
Then it makes it hard to find the door"
A woman that I know just came from Majorca, Spain
She smiled because I did not understand
Then she held out a ten pound bag of cocaine
She said it was the finest in the land
{Refrain with [sniff]}
A man I know just came from Nashville, Tennessee-o
He smiled because I did not understand
Then he held out some moonshine whiskey, oh-ho
He said it was the best in all the land
{Refrain with drink it}
{Refrain with "I can't take it no more"}
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Needless to say, my heels were locked before the
company commander the next morning. The base
commander - a Colonel - had tuned into my show and
asked the Captain to take care of it. It seems they
were more upset about me mentioning the ASA than
playing the song about drugs. I played dumb and told
the Captain I was just a medical lab technician at
the dispensary and didn't understand why I needed a
top secret clearance for this tour anyway.
He patiently explained the mission of Tuslog Det. 4
and even though we were on caretaker status at the
time (the Cypress Embargo) we preferred to let the
Turks continue to refer to the hill as the
"American Radar Base". And closed circuit
transmission notwithstanding, we had a ton of Turkish
civilian employees on the base - some of whom liked
to listen to American music.
Well, needless to say, I never played that song on
the radio again - nor did I utter those three words
as long as I was in Turkey. And they didn't hold it
against me. I came to Sinop a PV2 and left as a SP4
less than 13 months later.
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Here are some links you can use with my story
about KBOK radio.
Picture taken by Lt. Col. Don MacKinnon, Deputy
Commander of Det. 4, 72-73.
Shows location of KBOK near the PX.
http://www.tuslogdet4.com/days/days141/det472-73.jpg
KBOK Radio Studio
http://www.ultimatesacrificememorialsupportcenter.com/images/xx1972%20Tuslog%20014.jpg
George Carlin - "The Hippie-Dippie
Weatherman"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1uaw3WIOlc
Ringo Starr & the Smothers Brothers - "The
No No Song"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVGerWFYotQ
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From: "Steve Smith" stevesmith@byteone.com
Subject: ASA - The Dogs of Det 4
Date: Sun, 3 Aug 2008 10:50:56 -0400
I just came across your site and wanted to comment
about "The Dogs of Det. 4" section. I
was stationed on the hill in 1976-1977. I was a
lab technician - 92B - at the dispensary. I
remember assisting in the euthenasia of a large old
yellow dog that was the mascot of the Hippodrome
techs. I can't remember the dog's name (Mark?),
but I'll never forget the funeral. The dog was
posthumously promoted to First Sergeant and was
buried with a sash with the stripes sewn on. We
had a big service inside the Hippy compound where he
was buried - I remember it was one of the only
two occasions I was ever inside those
gates. I have a picture somewhere of me in
whites standing at parade rest next to the crackerbox
ambulance that served as his hearse. The base
chaplain presided over a graveside service that was
worthy of any human and most of the base (less than
100 military at that time) attended. I'll be
watching your site and sharing more anecdotes of my
time on the hill.
Regards,
Steve Smith
Massillon, Ohio
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Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2008 13:58:10 -0400
From: Steve Smith stevesmith@byteone.com
To: sinop2@eccoh.com
Subject: ASA - The Crash of Esek 011
I was recently reminiscing about my Army days and my
tour at Tuslog Det. 4 in Sinop, Turkey and decided to
try Googling it. I was very surprised and delighted
to find your site and I've been reading the archives
all weekend. Of particular interest was the section
on the crash of Ashak (Turkish spelling Esek) 011.
I was stationed in Sinop 76-77 as a lab technician
(92B) at the dispensary. I was actually transported
to Sinop aboard one of Esek Airlines' two
twin-propeller planes when the crew found me at an
Ankara hotel awaiting a next-day THY flight to
Samsun. I gladly accepted the ride after hearing
horror stories about THY and their part-time Turkish
Air Force pilots, and my flight from Rome to Ankara
aboard a Pan Am flight had been especially turbulent
with a passenger very close to my seat making liberal
use of the air-sickness bags. We flew from Ankara to
Istanbul to pick up mail and then on to Sinop. My
first sight of the hill was from above as the pilot
buzzed it to let those below know that mail was
aboard.
Over the course of the next year, I flew with Esek
Airlines many times to Incirlik and back. At that
time they made bi-weekly trips to the Adana air force
base, and somebody from the dispensary was always on
board to transport specimens and pick up medical
supplies. Sometimes the rides were smooth, sometimes
very turbulent - I'm sure you remember how bad the
weather could get in Turkey. I also remember being
asked to go along on a nighttime medevac of an
American civilian employee. While waiting to take off
I saw the pilot throw down his headset and start
cussing up a storm. The Turkish soldier guarding the
airfield had locked and loaded his weapon and was
pointing it at the windshield. We had to idle until
the soldier got the OK from HIS commander before we
could take off.
I also remember the Mexican-American crew chief - I
think his name was Cruz. He had his wife and son with
him in Sinop at his own expense (unaccompanied tour)
and was renting a small house off-base. I was once
invited to a party at his house and remember eating
some of the best Mexican food I've had to this day.
I first heard about the crash from my buddy Thom
Cartwright - a medical records tech in Sinop during
my tour. My next duty station after Sinop was Ft.
Meade and Thom went to Walter Reed. We were only
about 30 miles apart and kept in touch (and later
became roommates in San Diego when we both got out).
Thom told me one of the small planes we were on in
Turkey went down and that there were no survivors. I
seem to recall that a WAC we both surved with at the
dispensary was also aboard, but I can't remember her
name.
I'm wondering if anybody out there has a full list of
the victims of that fateful crash? I've tried
searching the net and all I can find is the reference
to Walter Penchikoski on your site. I think it would
be a fitting tribute to those who lost their lives to
have their names listed in memorium.
Please keep up the great work with your site and
thanks for the work that you do to maintain it.
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© Steve Smith, 2008. All Rights Reserved. |