Always at the infectious disease roulette table

Those days before AIDS. I've written about them before, but this time from a different perspective. I'm currently in Singapore on another visa run, and something took my mind back more than 40 years to when I was with the British Army about 100km north of here, at Kluang in Johore State. I was then working for the Army Air Corps (AAC), and the base in Kluang was used for 'theatre conversion.' This involved young lads who had gone through basic helicopter flying training at the AAC base in Middle Wallop (yes, that's really the name of a village in Southern England), but we're still wet behind the ears - "a year ago I couldn't even spell 'Heliocopter Pilot' and now I are one."

Of course, flying over Salisbury Plain is a tad different from flying over a tropical jungle, so they had to learn about this - hence theatre conversion (theatre of war, not other forms of drama). So these kids, most of whom had never been out of Europe before, spent a month or so flying all day over the local jungle. Of course in the evenings they were ready for anything.

But Kluang didn't offer much in the way of exotic entertainment. So we used to bundle them into our cars of an evening, and drive for about an hour over to the west coast, to a small town called Batu Pahat. In theory this was out of bounds, but since there was no garrison near, that was never a problem. We'd always end up at the Hawai Kedai Kopi (Coffee Shop), a dingy place with the floor covered with peanut shells - and 'waitresses' who would do what I think now is called 'lap-dancing.' After a few minutes of this came the offer: 'ten dollars, upstair, you come?' Of course, our intrepid helicopter drivers, having imbibed more than a few cans of Tiger, were ready for anything.

Next morning, over the hangover breakfast in the Mess, we'd start talking about the local prevalence of pox and other nasties, and tell them that we were sure they'd used condoms last night - of course they hadn't. The fact that our mess was shared with the local military hospital, so usually there were one or two doctors present, added spice to the discussion. I never heard that any actually picked up any disease, but they were sure worried for a couple of days.

One certainly wouldn't want to play that form of Russian Roulette today...

Babé