Soon after they landed, Horner and Myhrum were met by a friend from McConnell AFB in Kansas, Major Pete Van Huss. Van Huss was the ops officer of the McConnell squadron at Korat; the other squadron came from Kadena AFB in Okinawa. They all piled into a jeep and drove to where the hooches were located, which was about a mile off the flight line where the jets were parked. Van Huss dropped them off in a dusty stand of grass. They set their bags down and watched a flock of Thai carpenters set to work nailing and sawing.

The Thais put up a hooch frame, nailed screening all around it, put up boards along the sides at an angle—to keep the rain out and let the air in—put on a tin roof, hammered on the doors, and then went to the next open space and started on another hooch. Horner and Myhrum walked in, dropped their bags, and set up the cots that services had left for them. Then they unpacked and slipped into flight suits to go over to the officers’ club (a couple of hooches with a bar tacked together inside), run by hired Thais. Since they were the FNGs,9 they kept their mouths shut, except to welcome old friends as they filed back in from flights or other duties. Since the fighter community is very closely knit, and Horner and Myhrum were experienced fighter pilots and had some reputation, it was easy for them to fit in.

They very quickly picked up a pretty good idea about what was going on at the base: who was there, the kinds of missions being flown—bombing targets in North Vietnam like ammo dumps and bridges—and what were the gripes and good deals. The bad news was that the pilots at Korat were not willing to let the new guys fly with them . . . at least not then. Horner and Myhrum were there as staff, and in those early days of ROLLING THUNDER, operational tempos were not active. There weren’t enough sorties to go around.

That was to change a few weeks later as the flying tempo increased and some of the pilots got shot down. The resulting shortage meant that nobody could go on R & R unless Myhrum and Horner took up the slack in the flying schedule. But for the first couple of weeks it was very frustrating.