Lewis O Brabham

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Rank: SMSgt Ret

Entered Into Eternal Rest
2004-09-06

Age 66. Heart Attack

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2 entries.
SMsgt PW Collins (ret) wrote on August 4, 2023
1966, I was with the 60th Aer Port CCT, and met Lew the first time a Charleston AFB where we were both to catch a C97 for a flight to Panama for Jungle Survival at Albrook AFB. Also met Bill Frankenberger for the first time there. Lew had been thru this once before, so when we were getting the class brief before the E&E portion, Lew moved us to the edge of the group next to the jungle. He said do what I do... Suddenly, some instructors popped a flare and ran into the clearing shooting blanks and hollering. Lew... Read more
1966, I was with the 60th Aer Port CCT, and met Lew the first time a Charleston AFB where we were both to catch a C97 for a flight to Panama for Jungle Survival at Albrook AFB. Also met Bill Frankenberger for the first time there. Lew had been thru this once before, so when we were getting the class brief before the E&E portion, Lew moved us to the edge of the group next to the jungle. He said do what I do...

Suddenly, some instructors popped a flare and ran into the clearing shooting blanks and hollering. Lew grabbed me and we ran into the jungle as hard as we could. When the flare died we went flat, motionless. The instructors rounded up those that didn't make it out of the clearing and they began the "interrogation" phase. We had only made it into the jungle about 20 feet and thought if it had been daylight we would have been caught. So began a miserable night of meeting taglefoot and black palm trees. Also would have been nice to have a ma duce to kill the dive bomber mosquitos.

Lew also had the unique ability to "throw" his shoulder out and he used that to smile at me when they took him to the hospital right after we were "captured" and sent to the "compound".

Another time, after Lew came to 60th CCT, we were TDY to the closed Wendover AFB, UT for C124 drops. One evening the local sheriff knocked on the barracks door. Did we know anything about a grenade out on the highway? Would we come and get it?

We thought it was a smoke grenade, so, OK. Lew went with the sheriff.

When Lew came back he handed me a WWII "pineapple" grenade body. When I turned it over, pink powder spilled out.

Wendover was a closed AF installation and a SF Reserve unit had used it as a training site two weeks before. Evidently, it was left over from them. Lew said when the spoon came off the striker had packed up enough snow to keep it from setting off the cap. Lew had unscrewed the body and buried the rest. We spent a week there and no drops because of WX. Drove our ARC27 equipped weapons carrier back across UT to Hill AFB for airlift back to Travis.

Lew had a crooked little finger from a knife fight when he was a teenager.

There is another story about Lew and Rommy J. Outlaw but that is for another time.

Lew was.one of my favorite TDY buddies.... Collapse
Gene Johnson wrote on March 21, 2022
I knew him as the ncoic of the McChord Air Force Base team. He was given a silver star when he was the last to leave the airport in Vietnam in 1975
I knew him as the ncoic of the McChord Air Force Base team. He was given a silver star when he was the last to leave the airport in Vietnam in 1975... Collapse