A Journey of Service: The Story of Susan Fellows

Greetings, all. My name is Susan Fellows. My journey into the military began when a coworker, who an Air Force recruiter had approached, told him she wasn’t interested but knew someone who might be: me! The Navy had previously turned me down, so she figured I might consider joining the USAF Nurse Corps.

I am a nurse and have worked in operating rooms for many years before my service. My Officer Basic Training took place in Wichita Falls, Texas. From there, my first assignment was the OR at a base in O’Fallon, Illinois, just east of St. Louis. After a year or so, I was off to Clark Air Base in the Philippines, just north of Manila.

I have always enjoyed traveling, so throughout my duty stations, I took every advantage to visit places I had never seen. During my time in the Philippines, I traveled as much as possible and went on R&R to Hong Kong and Bangkok.

The Return of the POWs

My time in the Philippines spanned 1972 to 1973, during the Vietnam War. My most memorable experience, aside from my travels, was when the POWs from the Hanoi Hilton returned. They arrived first at Clark and received a wonderful, massive welcome from the families on base as each plane landed.

One plane brought young men from South Vietnam who had been captured by the Vietcong and held in “Tiger Cages”—bamboo structures so small that these young men could not even stand up. Only once did I see a POW unable to walk off a plane, and it was one of those young men from the south.

One officer from the Hanoi Hilton returned with a puppy, which the Veterinary clinic staff immediately placed in quarantine. They told him they had to keep the puppy for six months. The officer looked at them and said they had better find him a place to live, because he wasn’t leaving without that dog. When the officer was ready to depart four days later, the clinic brought the puppy back; he had been found free of disease, received his immunizations, and was ready to go.

Life in the Philippines

There were several other events I found deeply interesting. Shortly after I arrived, a terrible monsoon caused massive flooding and hardship for the local people. Whole villages were destroyed. In one village just north of Clark, a school was filled to the windows with mud and silt. To ensure the children could return to class, the villagers took shovels and whatever tools they could find and manually dug all the mud out of the building.

While stationed there, I also had the opportunity to visit the family of the young lady who cleaned my room in the officers’ quarters. Her father was a rice farmer, and he invited me to his barrio (small village) and his nipa hut (a small two-bedroom home).

We visited the rice paddies many times. I saw the men planting the rice and watched it progress through various stages of growth until the harvest. Afterward, I saw men placing rice on a tarpaulin on the road, covering it with another tarp so vehicles could drive over it to “thresh” the rice from the stalks. Farmers who could afford it, like my host, sent theirs to a real thresher. I often shared lunch with this man and his family; usually, it was rice and mudfish caught from the irrigation canals.

I truly enjoyed my time in the Air Force, especially in the Philippines. I still hold very fond memories of the people I met and the fascinating places I visited.