Team medic = free travel

I took this picture in London in the fall of 1967. I managed a quick visit when I accompanied the Bitburg football team to play at RAF Mildenhall. Those kids are sitting on a cannon overlooking Tower Bridge.

On a late summer morning in 1967, the 36th Tactical Hospital's chief surgeon mentioned to a few of us that the base football team was looking for a medic. The job would mean going to practices and games to handle first-responder medical aid. But he warned us that whoever volunteered would not be relieved of any of his regular OR duties. "And there's no extra pay," he said.

Nobody leaped at the opportunity.

The OR lounge was beginning to clear out when I asked out of curiosity who the team would be playing this season. He told me the schedule included a handful of other air bases in Germany. And a game in Naples. And another in Mildenhall, England.

I immediately volunteered.

It turned out to be a far different job than working in the OR. I treated a slew of minor injuries that season, and one or two major cases that required hospitalization. I learned a lot about emergency first aid. I also had to learn the difference between football-player patients who were stoic and those few who were complainers. The two groups required different approaches. The stoics thought they could play with a broken arm. The complainers were more focused on minutia. It took me a few games to master the art of persuading the stoics that they needed treatment and the art of calming the unfounded fears of the overly fearful. (Did I say that diplomatically?)

The weekend trip to Naples with the team was an adventure in more ways than one. We used Bitburg's Gooney Bird, a two-engine prop plane that had been around since World War II, for the trip to Italy. On our approach to the airfield at Allied Forces Southern Europe Command, the right engine burst into flames. We landed with flames still leaping from the cowling. By the time we drew to a stop, firemen in what looked like space suits were swarming the engine and we quickly deplaned.

After practice the home team gave us a tour of Naples, and both teams were guests at a dinner hosted by the commander at a restaurant in the hills overlooking Naples' harbor. The lights of the city below us stretching down to the waterfront in the distance were magical. After dinner, it was back to our rooms so the teams could get some sleep before the game.

After the game, which we lost -- Bitburg didn't win many games that season -- we had the evening and the next morning to explore Naples on our own. A couple of us hit the PX, which was far larger than Bitburg's, and then headed off to town. We strolled around Piazza Garibaldi, walked the congested and animated streets of the old city, and had an amazing lunch at a pizzeria. We also made a quick visit to the 13th-century Duomo before we had to catch our flight back to the Eifel. The Gooney Bird had been repaired.

We lost the game at RAF Mildenhall, too. Mildenhall was a British air base during World War II, but by 1967 it was a joint USAF-RAF operation. Mildenhall is north and east of London in Bury Saint Edmunds, Suffolk. After the game, I set out alone for London. I had to change trains at least twice going and coming, but I managed to spend an afternoon at the Tower of London and see the crown jewels.

European currencies were not as strong against the dollar in 1967 as they are today, and for an American, traveling was relatively inexpensive. But as a two-striper in the Air Force I wasn't making much money, so the free trips with the football team to Naples and London were a big bonus.