Columbia - Mid 80s
By far the worst det ever was disaster relief in Columbia in 1985. We flew 2 Pumas from Belize all the way through Central America. It started great, Honduras was a breeze, Nicaragua was interesting as the rebels were shooting down helicopters at the time using US Stingers. Costa Rica and Panama were acceptable, then we arrived in hell. The officers and SNCOs were ok in the messes, we were put in with the conscripts and were treated as such. The food would have been rejected in a vietnamese POW camp and we were ordered to eat it so as to avoid 'insulting' our hosts, there were maggots in the food. We asked to eat our compo rations and it was refused. On day three, 2 of the lads were close to exhaustion as they hadn't eaten, permission for compo rats was refused again. One of the ALMs, who shall remain nameless (thanks Sweaters) distributed the compo against orders which caused hell with the det commander. I could write a book about other things that happened. I very nearly PVRd that year.