CLARK AIR FORCE BASE PHILIPPINES

I spent about two months in the hospital at Clark Air Force Base from Feb '62 thru Mar '62. I had an eye injury and had to have complete bed rest for the retina to heal. The photo above was taken of me in the middle with the eye patch and Mr. Hill on the left who had just had all his lymph nodes taken out from his groin up to almost his neck. They found cancer in his testicles. I remember he was from Texas, but I can't remember his first name I may have been John. I don't know what branch of the service he was in. The other guy I think was in the Air Force and he had a hernia operation...not he's not sitting.

The reason I scanned this and posted the picture was in hopes maybe someone will run across this and know the people.

While I was there a young sailor form a carrier came through in a wire basket stretcher, He was 19 years old and he had walked into a prop on an airplane. He sliced off half of his head. They kept his chest open and would massage his heart every several hours. He lived for about a week.

When I was checking out of the hospital to return to Taiwan I saw his personal effects on the desk of the man checking me out. I asked if it was the young man that had the head injury and he said yes. We both were silent as we finished checking out. It was so sad. Now I know why they stressed that we should walk way around the plane when working on the flight line. I wrote about this in another post.
http://navy-photo.blogspot.com/2009/07/norman-ok-airman-training.html

Clark Air Base is no more since Mount Pinatubo erupted and over ran most of the base. It was the largest Air Base overseas at that time.