Navy SEAL Museum Celebrates US Navy Birthday with Russian Cruiser Photo

[Ping Tung]

15. I'm ex-marines.

We actually got a beer ration of sorts. We were deployed to Taiwan to Ping Tung airfield for a few weeks.
Middle of nowhere. We lived in tents. Liberty was limited to having NCO guides to steer us away from the naughtier part of town and it was Cinderella liberty. There was no EM club/tent on the base. So we started to explore the immediate are rice paddies where we found the Taiwanese base guards who welcomed us with home-made "Plum Brandy" we could buy for about $2 a bottle. Or, we could trade for them. The squadron was suddenly absent blankets, spare clothes, watches, and everything else that could be stolen for trade. Braver souls would also find that women brought from somewhere were available for cash. The brothel consisted of a couple blankets laid on the ground. Note: I wasn't THAT brave. There was an outbreak of gonorrhea and a lot of marines were wandering around rice paddies. Many were getting sick from the homemade brandy. Warnings from the CO had no effect. So they started to assign some Gung-ho types to be MPs and chase the drunks around the rice paddies. To little effect. Then they tried to give us an EM club which consisted of bamboo fences in abut 30 yards of bare land with a sort of bar set up with planks. They sold us beer for small change and even gave it away to keep us away from the rice paddies. It did work pretty well.