You have a great web site. It is hard to draw away from it because Clark shaped my life to this day.

Here is my story submitted to you at your discretion to share.

I also have it posted on the 3SPG k-9 site on military.com with some pictures. I maintain that page and have invited you to it. Once K-9 always K-9!

Story follows---------------

#1

For a moment in history we converged in time and space at Clark AB Philippines. Life long Friendships were forged. Fear was admitted and faced, uncertainty was the name of the game, and we all got high on adrenalin.

For a time, we were the backbone of law enforcement on Clark.
We were despised by those we protected, those we hunted in the tall grass in the darkness, those we worked with, and even those among our own elite ranks.
For a time, we suffered, we excelled, we achieved, we failed, we emphathized, we laughed, we pained, we cried, we fought, and we died.

For a time we were caught up in time, in politics, in ourselves, in the experience, in sensation, and in honor, and in humiliation.
For a time we were the difference and then it was over.

As Clark individuals and families slept, worked, and played, Dog Teams humped the perimeter, elephant grass, washouts, ditches, housing areas, compounds, entrapmemt areas, flightline, jungle of Clark Air Base.
Looking back in mental snapshots I remember LAX.
I remember first smells of the Philippines (burning grass).
I remember the day I got married.
I remember the day a friend was gunned down.
I remember the fear and excitement and the impending doom I felt as Gerald Basset and I drove into the path of weapons fire.
I remember feelings of frustration, anger, pain, love, sickness, disgust, apathy, empathy, sympathy, sorrow, laughter, dread, exhaustion, and determination.
I remember trips, balut, ice-candy, pork sticks, pan-de-sol, pan-de-coco, adobo, asado, sisig, pulutan, San Miguel, Red Horse, Olives, DiDi's Pizza, Jeepneys, trikes, the colors of the sky, Dau Market, The Space Lounge, Docs, Gold Coast, The Viking, The Holy City Zoo, The Yellow Submarine, The Third Eye, Makati, Cubao, Manila, La Union, Long Beach, and McDonalds French Fries cooked in banana oil.

#2

My tour began at LAX with Kevin [Crockett] and his then wife of a few months, Mona. I said my goodbyes to my family. Kevin and I were to meet Corey [Zimmer] at the airport as well but he never showed, unknown to us, he'd already departed for the "PI."
Kevin, Corey, and myself had gone through Patrol Dog School [Lackland Medina Annex] and our first duty station (375th SPS, Scott AFB IL) together. Now we were on our way to the Philippines as good friends and cocky dog handlers. We would end up spending the first 5 years of our Air Force careers together. I had been best man at both their weddings; which is probably the reason why both never invited me to their second marriages.
As we walked into the gated area for our flight we noticed several young Lackland fresh Security Police recruits laughing it up. I shot Kevin a glance and from his reponse I knew we were thinking the same thing; "Jeeps!" we thought. We, having our first base under our belts thought that we were above newbie "Jeep" label, but the reality was that duty at Clark is what it took to weather you to the point of being a seasoned professional.
I heard that Howard AFB in Panama was like Clark, but Clark was the pinnacle of MWD operations and all other bases and assignments paled in comparison (or so I am told).
But we had yet to experience Clark AB as K-9 handlers and so Kevin and I mentally labeled the fresh out the academy newbies as "Jeeps."
The "Jeeps" were Timbush, Trenor, Woska, Tate, and Faust.
Gradually we all began talking and found out we were all K-9! Urah! Little did we know that one of us would be the second K-9 handler to be killed while stationed at Clark; but many would die at Clark in out tours of duty, not just us Security Police.
I immediately hit it off with Tate and Faust who seemed the more mature of the bunch.
18 hours after LAX Kevin, Mona, and myself stepped off the Flying Tigers "Freedom Bird" and into what I felt was like "The Land That Time Forgot" or a bad movie.
It was February 19th 1986 and we landed right in the middle of Edsa, The Peoples Revolution that ousted then President Firdinand Marcos.
We were whisked away off base because there were no rooms available on Clark at the time. So for the next week the Marlim Mansions on MacArthur Avenue became our home.
Upon entering the hotel the smell of marijuana slapped me in the face; I was instantly worried I would show up positive on a urinalysis even though I knew better. You could see the haze hanging in the halls. "What is the Air Force thinking sticking me here?" I can vividly remember asking myself.
No one approached me selling the stuff, but I saw someone that I thought looked like he wanted sell me something and shot him a pissed off look and then shrunk into my room. "OSI has got to be all over this place!"
I also remembered the bug I found in the SP dorm hall phone at Scott AFB in 1995. When I turned it in there were mumblings about the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (OSI) had probably put it there having busted some SPs for dope usage prior to my arrival at Scott and the 375th SPS.
Not even an hour off the plane and already the propensity for getting into trouble circled like a vulture eying carrion.
I walked out onto the balcony from my room and heard a cacoaphony of sound come up from the street. Girls were shouting "Hey Cherry Boy!" at me from all over the place.
Civilian, Police and Philippine Military were everywhere. Pedestrian and vehicular congestion as I had never seen it. The punget smell of exhaust was stifling at first.
I scrambled off the balcony and laid down for a while. One of the "Jeeps" had been put into my room and was out until his buddies woke him up. Good thing he stopped sucking his thumb before I opened the door. I wondered if this kid was ready for a city like Angeles.
That night Faust, Tate, Timbush, and Woska went out on the town. Kevin Crockett, Mona, and myself stayed at the hotel. Overwhelmed by it all I asked myself what I had gotten into by volunteering. For the first time I really felt alone but I never let anyone know. What put me kind- of at ease was the fact that most of the population spoke english and there were no names of Ling Wah or Kim Lee as my ignorance told me to expect. But names like Rudy, Pete, Mel, and Andy. Angeles City was a mini America.
My first San Miguel beer was consumed that night at the Marlim Mansions Hotel in the midst of a cannibis smoke filled dining room; Angeles City, Philippines had just served its first wake up call on me. It was the 19th day of February 1986. There would be many more. Most good...
I met the love of my life and my much better looking as well as better half there, and am still married to her this day, some 14 years later.
We have two children a girl 11, and a boy 3.

#3

The following story contains excerpts and memories about another handler assasinated at Clark, this time in 1987.

SrA Steven Faust

On October 28, 1987 just 14 days after I spoke with him about his new wife and puppy, Steven Michael Faust was gunned down in a cowardly act that also took the lives of Sgt Randy Carter (I think) from the 3rd CRS, Retired TSGT Herculano, and a civilian Filipino whose last name was Porter.
Word had it that Mr. Porter was trying to help Steve when he too was shot fatally. One Captain Pellitier barely escaped with his life having recognized or watched what transpired with Steve and Mr. Porter and sped through the scene in his old porshe, dodging a hailstorm of gunfire.
A .45 caliber round would later be pulled from Captian Pellitier's wallet which had been in the chest pocket of his flight suit.
Steve, like many other dog handlers, lived in an off base housing subdivision. Only this one was primarily populated with USAF officers and their families. Carmenville and Timog Park were the subdivisions.
Eerily I can remember all of us riding in the bed of someones truck going to see Gary Johnson, a fellow K-9 handler who lived in Carmenville, casually commenting about the intersection where the incident was to happen as being a prime site for an ambush.
I never liked passing that intersection, just too much jungle right up to the road. I noted this and when I began looking for an off base residence, made sure the officer population was non existant or very small and that there were good escape routes.
I mentally charted escape routes out of my house and the path to the safety of Friendship Gate just incase. Again I chalked this up to my paranoia, which looking back at all that happened...was a good thing to have. Even so, during my stint, I would survive having an M- 16 shoved into my forehead off base twenty feet from the front door of my house by four men screaming at me in a car, become the unwilling participant in a standoff between myself and a drunk Philippine Officer threating me with his with his .45, two robbery attempts on my person, a shooting where I was one of four in the line of fire, an assault on my package by a Billiboy while I was in a drunken stupor to which my buddies came to me rescue me from killing myself while trying to kill him..or should I say, her? And a few more in there somewhere. Funny thing is I had an uncanny knack for feeling trouble coming just before it happened and made it a point to avoid it if possible. This ability was not 100 percent as the paragraph above uncovers.

A little more on Steve and the events of 28 October 1987.
What I remember about Steve was that he always had a smile. He also always spoke his mind so you either got along with him or you did not.
I have always had a nagging suspicion about the events of the 28th.
I felt like the NPA (New Peoples Army) was the quick blame for what happened. But Steve had had some run-ins with Philippine Air Force (PAF) or the Integrated National Police (INP), to the point where guns were put to his head. Those who know how PAF and the INP operated at the time know what I am talking about.
It may have been NPA Sparrow Assassins that carried this event out but there was something never quite right with the explanation given by local authorities.
Steve and I were not as close as he was with what became his running buddies, but we ran together for awhile and cracked each other up and got along and developed a strong bond; his life and death impacted my life and still do to this day. He handled Bandit.
One of the hardest things at the time for me was the gathering where we all saw his wife off with hugs. After that I went outside in private, got in my M-151, drove to a secluded spot and lost it.
During the coups attempts and assissinations of American Military Personnel, I remember vetrans from the VietNam conflict who lived outside Clark saying it felt like Saigon 1968 all over again.
I can remember being kind of freaked out which led me to speak with the enlisted "Daddy" or "First Shirt." MSGT Durbala, the SPS or LES First Sergeant recounted his memories of a rocket attack that he lived through but killed some of his friends while in VietNam; how he felt similar at the time. I listened.
He told me to give myself a week and my head would clear and I would adapt. He was right. But from that point on, I was different. Something inside me just changed. Things felt different. Smelled different. Looked different. I became set on wanting to thump an intruder as "pay back."
Sensing I was not the only one dealing with these emotions, we had a Group Commanders Call that attempted to calm us all down. I accepted the situation.
The rest of my tour I would, in some cases put myself at risk as a way of affording me control over a situation if it and when it became explosive. I wanted the crap to hit the fan only if I was around because I was confident that I would and could snuff it out.
I became resolved that the young kids I supervised as Top Dog or Top Dog Alpha would ship out of Clark breathing. It meant the stuff I had let slide before I would no longer. It was selfishness on my part. I just did not want another person I knew to die on or around Clark. Not all under me took to this philosophy.
A Dog Handler whom I supervised brought it to my attention that several of "my" troops were calling myself and my supervisor SSgt Randy Sanders assholes on a power trip and that he echoed the feeling.
Randy and I shared the same feeling that the new generation of K-9 handlers were soft, complained, and expected pampering. But what Randy and myself did not tell him was that we considered ourselves personally responsible not just for his backside, but for everyone who was under our supervision.
We wanted to get all their minds right. Our attitude was "you need to be like us", in a 24 hour combat mode mindset on and off duty. A hard target.
Two days later I woke this Dog Handlers butt up sleeping on post being bathed in the pink light of the base supply compound. I looked at him and shook my head and never mentioned it again. If I recall, I even think he had a pillow!
Randy and I had always been hardcore about mental hardness and readiness. But we also did the things dog handlers did on duty to relieve stress and quite frankly screw off; like the flightline party we had in the Barrier Alert building during a typical Philippine deluge. But after the assassinations we stepped up the pressure. Iron sharpens Iron. Some just never got it though. So be it. We understood where they were coming from and just hoped they would realize, in time, that we did not want what happened to Steve to happen to them.
If we were dubbed assholes for it, no problem. I was happy with my status as Associate Sphincter. I did find that what I felt I wanted to do what I would do were two different things.
Revenge is truly the Lord's and not mine.
I got my opportunity after helping chase and catch an intruder.
At first I wanted to butt stroke him. Thump him hard. But I could not. I understood why he was trying to steal from the base. He was trying to survive and the base held a gold mine of stuff worth "marami datong" on the black market. If I was in his shoes I'd probably do the same thing. But I saw a face. I saw him as a human being and at that point, not a faceless ghost and immediate threat to me.
I found myself actually empathizing with him. I told him he'd be ok with me, searched and transported and treated him with respect without putting my safety in jepoardy or violating my own principles or the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).
However I was transporting him to Investigations (SPOI) and I had seen those guys at work, and their work. I felt sorry for the guy. He knew what was coming, his terrified tightly drawn expression said so.
Throughout all of this I gained new love for the country and its people. I can honestly say I love the Philippines, the culture, the people. I would do it again.
There are also still alot of things that I feel strongly about to this day. I felt at the time and still do, that intelligence handling in the weeks, days, and hours leading up to the assassinations was handled with ineptitude by Clarks leadership.
The taking of the bolts from our M-16s by our leadership, "so your weapons cannot be used in case the intel is correct and an ambush takes place" and sending us "defenseless" save for one M-60 on a humvee and a two of M-16s to the firing range off base through ambush paradise, in a duce and a half, and a cramped, glass laden, blue Air Force school bus when more intelligence said we would get ambushed, and the flippancy with which it was done knowing the possible or probable outcome disgusts me to this day.
Funny how the senior NCOs and Officers scheduled to go with us somehow were allowed to reschedule while the rest of us were threatened with Article 15s if we refused to go.
The good or stupid troop I was, I followed orders, again absolutely believing that we were going to die.
Some people basically said "Article 15 me then" by not showing up. Nothing ever happed to them. No one said a thing. Everyone just breathed a sigh of relief. Some of us were shaking nervously but played it off.
Thank God for watching over and protecting us from the fatal consequences of ignorance and arrogance.
Nothing happened.
But Kevin was on the following [second] convoy some months later and that was a different story. During my tour at Clark I visited areas inside myself that I never knew existed, never want to visit again. I expected that I would never live past 23 and at 23 the crap was seemingly flung my way.
I took extra life insurance out on myself and forgot about it until the next incident. No days off for 8 months in Threatcon Delta, 16 hour shifts with an M-9 and M-16 full combat loads, slap flares, a dog, "kevlar pots", and flak jackets.
Thats how October 1987- July 1988 passed for me.
From July to when I left in Feb 1989, we were allowed one day off a month. Things were still hairy, but it did not seem like it at the time...you adapted to it.
This story is proof that what I expected never took place...although I had some close calls due to my job description and my own stupidity. My tour ended with memories me feeding a young street kid until I was stopped by the Filipino adults runninng the food stand, buying a Bible, and Sea Snake custom hand made boots.
I remember staring out the cabin window out over Mt. Arayat for the last time, feeling torn as the Hawaiian Air I had searched so many times as Commando Plug, lifted into the Philippine Sky bound for the USA and my retraining into the B-1B Bomber Avionics Career Field.
Clark either made you or broke you as a reputable K-9 handler. Out of 120 plus Dog Teams, the pressure was on to be superb, and the need to establish a reputation and level of respect and trust was key.
The reality that you could "really die here tonight" was always there in your mind. If it was not then you were dangerous to be around.
As one who patrolled the jungled areas and washouts with fellow "Guardians of the Night" I salute those with whom I worked side-by-side as a team, respected, some whom I miss, and/or served under or with.
If I left out a name below it is because it has been over 10 years and I can't remember them all.
Ranks are based on the time-frame of 1986-1989:
Group Commanders
COL Fadal
COL Gerald E. Ingalsbe
COL Tex Hawkins
Section/Shift Commanders
CAPT Alice M. Dean
CAPT Washburn
(Two of three officers In my 12.5 year career I found to be outstanding; B-1B Bomber Pilot Maj. Craig Taylor was the only other.)
First Sergeants MSGT Durbala (First Shirt)
Flight Officers
CAPT Joyce LT ????
KennelMasters
MSGT Rogers
MSGT Shedd
Flight NCO's & Airmen
MSGT Sadowski
TSGT Tommie WIlliams (LE Flight Chief)
SSGT Randy Sanders (MWD Gavin)
SSGT Melodie Buchannan (Law Enforcement)
SSGT Leon Lake (Security)
SSGT Jackson (K-9 Trainer)
SSGT Charles Chapman (MWD ?)
SGT Nunally(Law Enforcement)
SGT Greene (Security)
SGT Greg Walker (K-9 Trainer)
SGT Kevin "Davy" Crockett (MWD Tommy)
SGT Corey Zimmer (MWD Zeus)
SGT Mark Franzoni (MWD ?)
SGT Sam "Starlight" White
SGT Mitchell (MWD Gavin)
SrA Liliquist (MWD Raider)
SrA Hurley (MWD ?)
SrA Tom "Slaughterhouse" Slothower (MWD ?)
SrA Greg Johnson (MWD Beowulf, MWD Baalam)
SrA Gerald Bassett (MWD Marko)
SrA James Blanford (Law Enforcement)
SrA Garavalia (Law Enforcement)
SrA Dale Dye (MWD Rudy)
SrA Tiege (MWD ?)
SrA Hubbard (MWD ?)
A1C Ken Baptiste (MWD ?)
A1C Fowler (Security)
A1C Arnone(Security)
A1C Langlotz (Security)
A1C Richard Dickhausen (Security)
A1C Chris "The Terminator" Kliet (Roomate & Security)
A1C Jernigan (MWD ?)
A1C Steven Michael Faust (MWD Bandit)
A1C Kevin Tate (MWD ?)
A1C Wolff (MWD ?)
A1C Ken Haynes (Law Enforcement)
Kennel Attendants
"Kuya Nardo"
Pete
Manny
Rolle
Rocky
Eferen
Duke
Hermie
Manny
Doming
Romy
Emer
Who poured their sweat into keeping the dogs medical and living conditions up to snuff.
Lastly, to the memory of the smartest, most loyal, partner I ever had. Kona B090.
Kona saved my life (Cobra Den) at least once that I know about and most likely more than I am aware of.

Incanes Confiderus!

Rusty Prince - February 2001 Rushton (Rusty) Prince CEO/Chief Architect "Got Intelligence?" X-tier.Com