OUT HERE IN MOROCCO

(Sung sadly to the tune of "On Top of Old Smoky")

"Oh, the heat in the daytime will wither your soul,

And through the long evenings, you will shiver with cold.

It's so dirty and sticky, with the heat and the smell;

You'll think you've been buried and you've gone straight to hell."

It's been over 50 years now but some events are so etched in your memory that you never really forget. My father served in the United States Army Air Force in World War II, took his discharge when that conflict ended, started a family and was minding his own business when the North Koreans crossed the 38th Parallel in the summer of 1950. Dad had joined the Pennsylvania Air National Guard for some needed extra cash and his unit was called to active duty in what had evolved by then into the independent (since 1947) United States Air Force. When that Korean War wound down three years later he decided that he then had so much time in service that he might as well go for a pension. He also went through OCS ("Officer Candidate School") and took a commission as a 29-year old 2nd lieutenant and communications officer with the then awesomely powerful and now defunct Strategic Air Command ("SAC"). That is briefly how, after an initial, blissful civilian existence on the mean streets of Philadelphia in early childhood, I became an "Air Force Brat".

In the mid 1950s, the backbone of the Strategic Air Command was the Boeing B-47 "Stratojet", a medium-range jet bomber whose range and efficient Cold War use required a chain of overseas bases to be maintained, with aircraft perpetually flying towards their "Fail Safe" points, encircling the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. After stateside postings in Washington State and Texas, my mother, siblings and I finally got to enjoy the frightfully painfully swollen arms associated with overseas shots to inoculate us from all those dread foreign germs. In May of 1956, we flew over the Atlantic, with a refueling stop in the Azores, courtesy of the then-titled Military Air Transport Service ("MATS") in a World War II vintage C-47 "Gooney bird", complete with jump seats and boxed rations of antique vintage for our delicious complimentary meals, to Sidi Slimane Air Force Base, located in scenic Sidi Slimane, Morocco, which was, basically, a wide spot in the road back then. Morocco had become independent from France just a few months earlier.

The base was home to a wing of B-47s, a squadron of F-100 "Super Sabre" fighters, various detachments of reconnaissance aircraft and the then ubiquitous propeller-driven KC-97 tankers for aerial refueling. The commander of the bomber wing was the colorful Major General Keith Karl Compton (1915 – 2004), who was noted for his part in "Operation Tidal Wave", the daring low-level Ploesti raid in 1943, where he had taken a wrong turn with his 376th Bomb Group that was at least partially responsible for the air controller's nightmare that occurred over that target. For families, there was the older "Capehart Housing" (named after a then-prominent U. S. Senator) and the new "Flattop Housing" (shiny white, Spartan and utilitarian), of which we were the first residents in our unit, located less than a mile from the flight line. The front yard was all sand except for one scrawny tree and an outline of "ice plant". "Ice plant", apparently, is immortal and can grow anywhere, even flowering from time-to-time. Amidst a plentitude of sand and the painted white rocks that mysteriously appear on all U. S. military bases, there were the usual amenities, such as the Base Commissary, Base Exchange ("BX") and the ubiquitous outdoor ashtrays made of real bomb casings filled with sand. The Commissary tried to carry familiar American foods but much of the boxed stuff (such as cold cereal) was so pounded during shipping that the contents were the consistency of powder. Then, there was the comfortably familiar brick Sidi Slimaine Elementary School (complete with modernistic green "blackboards") that permitted us to move out of the Quonset Huts used as a school when I first arrived for the last few weeks of the Fourth Grade. This was not quite frontier living but seemed that way at times.

 There was no television, but, in 1956, we had only owned a TV-set for a couple years, so that was not considered much of a hardship. We had been told before shipping out that there were plans for a television station in Morocco and, as a result, had shipped over our unwieldy 13" set with blonde wooden cabinet and probably possessed the only TV in North Africa in 1956. We stored it in a closet and, after explaining what it was to our indispensable Moroccan maid, Fatna, she quickly turned it into a local tourist attraction as she repeatedly showed it off to other "Fatimas" (as we called the Moroccan maids). Since the BX seemed mainly in business to sell cheap cigarettes and liquor, at Christmas we always knew that our toy selection was necessarily coming from the Sears Catalogue. Needless to say, the Base Library did a brisk business with the bored and lonely men, women and children trapped out there in Morocco. For further entertainment, we got by with the Base Theater, where I took my kid sister and brother to see a serial, the news of the day, several cartoons, previews of coming attractions and a double feature of movies which mostly seemed to come from Great Britain (thanks to some top-secret NATO treaty?) every Saturday morning. We had organized Little League Baseball (the Sidi Slimane team took the Moroccan champions at the Rabat playoffs in 1957) and Little League Basketball to play, various squadron teams to watch, USO Shows, Sunday School classes and arts and crafts classes. When the base ran out of Christmas decorations, you could use "chaff" (anti-radar metallic strips) to trim the tree and spoof enemy radar. There was also the Armed Forces Radio Network, featuring music, adventure shows, soap operas and the "Joy Boys of Radio" (don't ask, although I can still remember their theme song and it haunts me to this day).

Sturdy young lads like me even learned how to curse in the colorful Moroccan patois during jocular exchanges with the "Mos" (short for "Mohammeds", which is what we called the male Moroccans who worked on the base) who picked up the garbage. We all learned to love the huge (like a softball), delicious, locally grown tangerines, which could be had three to a net bag for a nickel. It was, in short, a little piece of the good old USA set in a sandy foreign setting, and we soon settled into an almost small town routine.

The Base Pool was a joy and a story in and of itself. When we arrived in 1956, there was a small base pool that everybody used. Then, they built a new, Olympic-size, pool and designated this as the "Officer's Pool" to keep the enlisted men out. This outsize creation, surely one of the largest bodies of fresh water in Morocco, was protected by a high chain-link fence with panels of heavy tent canvas hung on the outside to prevent sand blowing in from the Sahara from clouding the pool. One day, in broad daylight, what everybody assumed was a work detail of "Mos" removed all the canvas, which weighed many tons, loaded it all on trucks and the canvas was never seen again. It was replaced, but after that there were constant Air Police patrols.

Of course, travel can be broadening. Our Fifth Grade class went to see the Sultan pray and his bodyguard rode the beautiful white Arabian horses as shown in the later movie "Patton". We took family road trips to Tangiers and a ferry ride over to Gibraltar. The American Embassy there was then the oldest one in the world, as Morocco had been one of the earliest nations to establish diplomatic relations with our new Republic and there were some interesting artifacts there. During a trip to the spectacular ruins of Volubolus, westernmost city of the Roman Empire, I was also able to stand on the nearby African side of the Pillars of Hercules and take two photographs from the same spot, one of the Atlantic Ocean and one of the Mediterranean Sea plus watch a snake charmer in the nearby holy city of Mulay Idris. In 1957, just to help us remember how grass looks and smells, we went for three weeks vacation in West Germany, which included a cruise down the Rhine, visits to the many castles of Mad King Ludwig of Bavaria and the fortuitous decision not to buy any lederhosen. On the way back we spent a night boiling water for drinking in a stopover in Generalissimo Franco's colorless Madrid, Spain. All I can say is that time flies when you are having fun but, enough of background, I need to move on to the crux of my tale.

Considering that the Rube Goldberg nature of some of its systems - the six-engine Boeing B-47 required JATO ("Jet-Assisted Take-Off") units to get off the ground when fully loaded during frantic alert-status scrambles and often needed a drogue chute (a parachute deployed from the tail to slow the aircraft) to land safely without plowing up the landscape - this sleek Boeing product had a decent safety record. General Curtis Lemay had given SAC the nickname "General Leemeeys Circus" and decreed constant drills and provided all of us who watched the runway with hours of entertainment during the endless practice for World War III. Some 2,042 of these early jet bombers were built. After a maiden flight in December 1947, the bomber entered squadron service in mid 1951 and the last bomber version was retired in 1966. The F-100s, being single-engine fighters, had more problems due to the ever-present sand (grit was a major part of our diet) and seeing a column of smoke over the flight line was unfortunately, not that unusual a signal that we had lost another one. A captain just across the street was the first man to survive a crash-landing in an F-100 (the aircraft's flat belly under the scoop caused it to break in half right under the pilot with bad consequences) but he was hospitalized for months. At the time, the SAC bombers were our only strategic nuclear deterrent force – the Navy "boomers" and the ICBMs were still in the future.

On January 31, 1958, what is still enigmatically called the "North African Incident" or the "B-47 Overseas Base Incident" in many sources actually happened there at Sidi Slimane Air Force Base. I was an eleven year old student in the Sixth Grade uneventfully sitting in class. This was not always the case as, occasionally, some mischievous spirit would bring a smoke grenade to school or a poisonous snake would slither in seeking cool shelter from the merciless African sun. My class included General Compton's daughter and the Base Commander's son but none of us received an early clue. In addition to the air conditioning that was still considered unnecessary in 1950s schools, the elementary school lacked another common amenity and that was a lunch room. The drill was we could get junk food and drinks from a base mess truck that showed up at lunch time and picnic on the surrounding sand or asphalt or go home to eat – the lunch break was a generous hour-and-a-half long to give us the choice. There was a black cloud over the runway that we assumed meant the loss of another Super Sabre. I guess to avoid any undue excitement, at the usual lunch time, we were dismissed and told that we should all go home for lunch without any other explanations.

B-47 taking off using JATO assist!

At the time, I was the proud owner of a gearless, fat-tired, J. C. Higgins bicycle that seemed to weigh only slightly less than a Harley-Davidson "hog". The one advantage of this mode of transportation was that the balloon tires allowed me to peddle home over a half-mile of sand short cut rather than being forced to follow the paved streets, as were the kids with the skinny tires on their geared "English" bikes. Since there was plenty of time and no one at school had communicated any sense of urgency, I dawdled on the trip, studying various interesting bugs, birds and snakes that interested my young trash can of a brain and, being out of sight of civilization, I was completely unaware of the heavy traffic on the more civilized asphalt roads.

The first inkling I had that something was wrong was when I peddled to the end of the sandy shortcut and could see that the smoke was rising from the nearby runway to truly enormous heights. Then, I came in sight of the old homestead. The 1954 Nash was in the driveway with the family, Koko the dog (from "Kokiwee" = "Little Brown Brother" in Moroccan) and my father all gathered around it. Although I was too far away to hear him, it was obvious that Dad was hollering at me and was red in the face the way he would get when pointing out my many annoying childish foibles. "Where have you been? We have to go!" Fatna, our beloved maid, showed up the same time as I did; she had been taking the clothes off the outdoor lines to keep it from being stolen while we were gone. Then, Dad hustled us all into the car.

It turned out that the smoke cloud was from a B-47 that had been simulating a take-off during a routine practice alert. A wheel casing had failed at about 80 knots per hour, the tail struck the runway and a fuel tank ruptured. The bomber caught fire and burned for seven hours. From that day to this I have never discovered if the crew got out. The firefighters fought the blaze for the ten minutes prescribed for staying in proximity to burning high explosives and then cleared the immediate area. The problem was that the high explosives on board were part of the detonators for (we were told then) three hydrogen bombs (later reports varied the reported number of bombs). Later, the wreckage and the melted asphalt beneath it were removed and the runway, a crash truck and some firemen's uniforms had to be washed down or otherwise decontaminated due to the radiation. Although the contamination of the wreckage was described as "high", the radiation was reportedly not as bad as feared as neither the high explosives nor thermonuclear devices had detonated. Something else to keep in mind is that many SAC bases were honeycombed with underground tunnels where additional munitions were stored. Of course, at first, all we knew then was that we were less than a mile from burning H-Bombs!

Orders were to evacuate the base and that no one was to bring their pets or maids. My mother wouldn't even consider not bringing both with us, so Dad disregarded military orders and followed those of a higher authority, Mom. There were three adults (one clothed from head-to-toe in those small tents Moslem women wear in the street), three children and a dog crammed in that un-air conditioned 1954 Nash – 50s cars were roomy and had lots if windows to roll down! Since we were later starters, we joined near the tail end of a convoy of hundreds of civilian vehicles and dozens of base trucks and buses. Everyone left the base except the Air Policemen who stalked the perimeter fence and patrolled for looters. Looting turned out not to be a problem, although, in a precedent, during a turn-of-the-century French Navy bombardment of Casablanca, the locals had single-mindedly dodged the high explosive shells while thoroughly looting the city.

There was no panic in the convoy; remember, a large percentage of the men were veterans of World War II and Korea. Moroccans lined the road to watch the show the entire way, trying to figure out what was going on. The convoy was calmly and methodically directed to safety at Port Lyautey and by the time we arrived several hours later every square foot of available space was filled with parked vehicles. Mission accomplished, except that word soon arrived that the wind had shifted and we were directly downwind of any potential nuclear fallout. While some necessary refueling went on and some food was distributed, I'm sure that there was some discussion about moving elsewhere, but, in the end, we just stayed put.

Maybe, by then, word had reached the convoy commanders that the fire was ending and no mushroom cloud had been spotted back at Sidi Slimane. In the end, the fire burned out, and the radiation was found to be localized near the wreckage. The convoy unraveled and we all traced the route back returned to our homes that night. All-in-all, it seemed rather exciting and interesting while on the road but quite commonplace by the time I was back in my cot. Base routine returned to normal and I was back in class the next day.

I finished the Sixth Grade and we moved on to our next assignment in May. As might be expected, the Moroccan government seems to have been less than pleased to discover that, however statistically unlikely, Sidi Slimane might have become the next Nagasaki. This is undoubtedly a factor in the fact that Sidi Slimane has been a base for the Royal Moroccan Air Force since the early 1960s. However, another factor was the introduction of the much longer-ranged B-52, which replaced the B-47 and removed the necessity for many of the overseas SAC bases. From time-to-time I have seen mentions that the radiation released was much worse than admitted. I don't know about that and no connection has ever been proved, but I do know that my brother Scott, who was five years old at the time, died of cancer (leukemia) when he was 31 years old. Was that just a coincidence or a lingering souvenir of the most memorable day of my life?