Wetherhorn

Shore Patrol Olongapo – 2
When I was liaison to the Philippine Police I witnessed a few interesting encounters.
During a SEATO exercise an Australian destroyer made a port visit to Olongapo. It was easy to predict what happened when the Aussie and American sailors were in a bar together. We started getting reports of fighting. The American and Australian shore patrol teams went to the scene. Participants were detained and returned to the base main gate. The American sailor lost their liberty time and had to go back to their ship. But the Australians were not subject to the same orders. They were released at the gate and immediately turned around and came back into town. A short while later there were new reports of quarrels. This cycle repeated itself throughout the entire night.
The streets and bars had plenty of unsavory characters. Pickpockets abounded. One sailor from my ship decided he was going to catch one of those thieves. He took twenty dollars in $1 bills. He put one of them in the breast pocket of his jumper and began walking down the main street. At the end of the night he returned, 20 dollars poorer, and without ever noticing when any one of the banknotes he put in his pocket had been taken.
Subic Bay was also a location where American pre-positioned logistics support ships were stationed. These ships were loaded with vehicles and heavy equipment that could be delivered to a potential trouble spot quickly. The men who would use this equipment could be flown out. Trucks and tanks were too heavy to make airlifting them a reasonable alternative. The crews of these vessels were regular merchant seamen, not military. Their job was boring. When they got paid they often ventured into town to spend at least part of their money on the local “entertainment” scene.
One such seaman came into town via the base main gate. He took a jeepny into town and got off near a bar. Then he noticed that most of his money was gone. He came to Philippine Police Headquarters and complained. The cop on duty asked if he could identify which jeepny he had been in. Most of them looked pretty much alike, and there were dozens of them. The seaman said he was sure he could spot the one he had been in and added that he was sure that it was the driver who had taken his money. The cop took him in tow and the two went out to search for the jeepny. They found it. When I next saw them they had returned to HQ with the driver. Of course, he denied everything. But the American was adamant. The driver was the thief. The policeman finally told the sailor to wait near where I was sitting, and the cop took the driver into the interrogation and holding cells in the back of the building. The sailor was in the merchant marine and technically outside the scope of my jurisdiction. We heard shouting, a few thumps that might have been blows being struck, and some screams of pain. When the cop returned he had a handful of American money. He told the sailor this was all he could recover because the driver had already given the rest to someone else in town. The sailor accepted this, took the money, and left.
But the story isn’t quite over. The cop went back inside and brought the jeepny driver back to the street. I could see them as the driver took out another small wad of bills and divided the money between the cop and himself before leaving.