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By Bonnie Bartel Latino

Columnist

Sometime after Tom and I returned to Guam from our trip to Yap, we learned that Tom had been nominated for Junior Officer of the Quarter for the 1958th Comm Squadron. His nomination would be forwarded to the Pacific Communications Division in Hawaii. On October 6, 1973, the Yom Kippur War began between Israel and Egypt/Syria. Withdrawals of the B-52s from Andersen Air Force Base, Guam escalated due to that war.
The U.S. increased its threat posture to Defense Condition 3 (DEFCON 3), an increase in force readiness above that required for normal readiness with the Air Force ready to mobilize in 15 minutes. Busy at work, Tom went into his squadron’s technical control facility, which provided a central location for the control of base and other required communications. The technicians were extremely busy making sure all circuits were operating properly and patching over circuits which had problems. As one technician patched a circuit, a speaker in the facility picked up a conversation. A strong urgent voice directed, “Don’t worry about doing any refitting of the bombers, just get the planes in the air and on their way back to the U.S. We’ll re-fit them from iron bomb capability to nuclear after they get here.”
While I knew the middle east situation was serious on the world stage, I didn’t yet realize how quickly the DEFCON 3 declaration would affect Andersen Air Force Base and my job at our small hospital.
Background: Following Operation Linebacker II at the end of December 1972, 153 B-52s had remained on Guam. In mid-July ‘73 one squadron of 15 bombers departed for the States. Still,138 B-52s remained at Andersen as some ARC Light missions into Cambodia and Laos were being carried out from Guam. Even those missions had come to an end before August1973, the date congress had imposed as the deadline to cease further military actions in Indochina.
With the Yom Kippur War, things at Andersen had gotten extremely serious in a brief period of time. When Tom and I left our jobs on base to go home on October 6, we saw B-52s in a continual take-off pattern much like the days of Operation Linebacker II. When we returned the next morning, the runway and base were quiet. Only six bombers remained.
I didn’t know then about what Tom had heard in Tech Control, but I did know the atmosphere on base had changed. We knew this was a serious time, not just for the middle east, but for the United States. I was in the seventh grade when the Bay of Pigs situation arose with Cuba. The atmosphere reminded me of that long ago time in Atmore. Both times, life had suddenly felt more fragile.
One personal memory of that time on Guam is of being told gas prices would rise the following day. Tom’s job certainly demanded more attention than mine did, so at 3 p.m., I left early for the day. I vividly remember sitting behind the wheel of our VW “Guam Bomb” in a line, which appeared to stretch for miles, at the base gas station. I finally arrived at the pumps around 5 p.m. and filled our tank. I hated knowing that the days of 25 cents/per gallon gas were likely over.
The only other way the Yom Kipper War, which lasted until October 25, 1973, affected me personally at work was that with most of the B-52 crews headed back to the states, the number of dependent medical appointments would drastically change. Many of the crews had brought their wives and/or families to Guam with no housing or any type of sponsorship from the Air Force. It would be a while before the wives could get out of their leases and mail their personal items and those of their children to the states, book flights and leave. Therefore, the unsponsored dependent population would remain a little while longer.
No military doctor was going to deny medical treatment to a dependent in need, whether they were sponsored or unsponsored and especially not small children. I understood and agreed with that personal philosophy, but it had been a tremendous strain on the small hospital for months. Mothers and sometimes even fathers on the crews brought their unsponsored minor children to the E/R at night for care. If a child’s problem was serious and the physician on duty felt his little patient needed to see a pediatrician, he or his nurse went to my office, which was closed, but the door was never locked. That wasn’t my policy. No medical records were kept there. However, all the physicians knew I kept my appointment book in the top desk drawer. The doc or his nurse from the emergency room often opened my book and wrote in appointments for children who needed to see a pediatrician the following day.
That meant major problems for our one pediatrician – and for me. Each weekday, our pediatrician should have had about 30 appointments available for that day. I began taking daily phone-in appointments Monday through Friday at 7:30 a.m. Some days the pediatrician himself had filled in some of the names of patients he wanted to follow-up on after previous visits. Adding the ones from ER, many days I opened my book and only had a handful of appointments available. My phone rang off the hook every single day at that time. Often by 7:35, I had no available pediatric appointments for that day. I felt for the mothers, who were likely living in the jungle as we had been our first few months on Guam. These unsponsored dependent wives had sick children. They had called in at the appointed time only to be told there were no available appointments. I often spent the next few hours explaining why. It was a gut-wrenching situation.
In that respect, the departure of most of the B-52 crews and their families soon brought blessed relief.