BANGKOK – A group of American Vietnam War veterans landed in Bangkok on Christmas Day with a singular mission: to mark the 50th anniversary since the day they were choppered out of the Thai capital after a sometimes violent and chaotic monthslong R&R tour at the end of 1974 in which they lost their good bud and fellow GI, “Scranton Stan.”
Joseph Detzlaff, the leader of the six-man group and a former staff sergeant who served did three tours of duty in Vietnam, with the last coming as most U.S. troops were pulling out of the country, said the reunion was intended to keep the embers of their Scranton Stan memories alive – although they had not completely given up their hopes of one day finding him, even though he was long ago officially declared Missing In Action (Bangkok Blowjob Bar) by the U.S. military.
“Those were some rough days, and even tougher nights,” Detzlaff recalled to a Breaking In Asia reporter at the Tickle Me Belly café in Bangkok’s Lower Sukhumvit district. “Many of us had come over to Bangkok on a break from a war that we would never return to with obvious combat-related afflictions that we would never recover from. But Bangkok served to heal our psychic, spiritual and physical wounds in ways that may sound rather strange today but were considered, back in the day, wholly healthful and regenerative pursuits.”
Detzlaff said one of Scranton Stan’s regenerative pursuits involved lush, lavish and extended Pabst Blue Ribbon drinking and bathing sessions at Ho Chi Bling’s blowjob bar, which is today known as Lolita’s and services a broad multinational clientele rather than solely U.S. military personnel. But back then, Ho Chi Bling’s PBR Sex & Suds Specials were wildly embraced by American GIs, who came for the beer and then came again in the bathtub with their newfound ga-ree mamas.
“You see, what happened to Scranton Stan could have happened to any of us,” Detzlaff explained. “He just got in too deep and it seemed like there was no saving him. And then when it came time to pull out of Bangkok, Scranton Stan just kept going in for more, more, more. It’s like he couldn’t let it go – any of it. He kept saying, ‘Man, I could do this every day the rest of my life and never get tired of it. Why would I even want to return to Scranton?'”
“And then,” Detzlaff continued, “we were all on a flight back to Honolulu, except for Scranton Stan. He told us before we left that he would be seeing us again and that we should come back every five years or so for some kind of 11th U.S. Infantry Brigade reunion, but we all thought that was a bunch of B.S. and that he would probably be lost forever.”
“As it turns out, though, we all did finally agree to come back to Bangkok on the 50th anniversary of leaving Scranton Dan behind, and what do you think we find?” Detzlaff asked. “Of course, it was Scranton Dan in the flesh at Ho Chi Bling’s, or should I say ‘Lolitas,’ and by ‘in the flesh’ I mean surrounded by an enticing barely clothed clowder of sex kittens, each of whom Scranton Dan had meticulously tutored in the art of PBR S&S Specials, as he has been doing for the past five decades!”
“It was an emotional reunion, of course,” Detzlaff said. “All this time we had Scranton Dan marked down as just another casualty of a long-ago conflict we had all permanently buried in our subconsciouses, but then there he is lining up Nom Yen Benedictines as we walked into the old Ho Chi Bling’s.
“The tears did flow as we greeted our long-lost war buddy, and then one PBR S&S Special turned into another and another and another,” Detzlaff sighted. “It was then that we realized our good friend Scranton Dan had never been lost, but that he had been living the dream life in Bangkok, where we had left him some two-score and 10 years ago with the most profound hope that somehow and in some fashion, Scranton Dan would finally come home.”
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