Dave Corbin & The General


 Note: Although Dave Corbin isn't a PWG member, he is eligible.  I've lost  track of him since the San Francisco earthquake.  He used to live on  Lombard Street, two blocks west of Van Ness.  That area got hit hard.


Dave was an ex-Marine who switched to the Air Force.  He was a hard  partying guy who made A1C (and A2C) more than a few times.  This  incident was the one that got him kicked out of Command.

It was in 1962 and the dash ones (Russian Lingists) from Yokota had been transferred to  Misawa.  We all lived on the main base while those assigned to the  6989th Radio Squadron Mobile (RSM) and the 6921st Strategic Wing (First Radio) lived up on the hill where  operations were.  

One Saturday there was a big softball game played up  there between the base team (all PACAF troops) and those assigned to  First Radio.  Dave, Pete Ogaard, Mel Hamaker and I attended it along  with some other infamous types.  Also attending was a BG, the Commander  of the 3AD.  Dave had a big fifties Buick, about a 1950 or 1951  Special.  As per usual, Dave got himself stinko (Soppy would have liked  this guy) and decided it was nap time so he got in his Buick and  proceeded to drive down the hill to the main base.  The road is a few  miles long and not straight.  In heading back to his barracks, Dave  inadvertently and unknowingly, ran the general's staff car off the  road.

The general  and his Japanese driver got the staff car back onto the road and  proceeded to follow Dave down the hill.  Dave got to the barracks but it  was time for a whizzer, so he pulled out his shlen and proceeded to  relieve himself on the lawn in front of the barracks.  At this moment,  the blue staff car comes screeching up and the general gets out and  starts berating Dave.  Dave, shlen still in his right hand, turns to the  general and asks him, "Who are you to speak to me that way?".  The  general, in civvies, points to his car with the one star license plate  in front so Dave shifts his shlen to his left hand and salutes the  general.  The general was not amused but many onlookers were.  Dave lost  all three stripes that time, but he sort of liked it because he would  always get saluted when people noticed his wings and no stripes,  thinking he was an orifice.

He got shipped out to Andrews, eventually  made his three stripes back and ended up back in Japan, at Itazuke.  He  got caught one time trying to sneak back onto base after curfew and got  busted to A2C.  He told me years later that he was sure it was time to  get out, being an A2C with no time in grade and 12 years in.  He was a  helluva guy.


Gene is a retired librarian and lives in Philadelphia