MAKING ‘HEADLIGHT’ HEADLINES IN…
1986
A look at interesting copy that grabbed our attention “back in the day.”
The Libyan targets struck by U.S. air strikes last week were more than just spots on the map, for a rural Tracy man.
In 1954-55, John Cambronne spent 18 months serving in the United States Air Force in Libya. He was stationed at the former Wheelus Air Force base near Tripoli and another base at Benghazi. Both areas were in the U.S. air strikes last week.
“When I left Benghazi, we were just starting to build some barracks. I think those barracks were some of those hit,” Cambronne said.
Cambronne served as an electronics radio specialist. Some of his work involved maintaining radio contact with converted B-17s that were conducting aerial reconnaissance work.
During Cambronne’s Libyan stint, the country’s government was pro-American and allowed the bases.
But Cambronne said that Americans and Britains, who also maintained military bases in the coimtry were not well liked by the Libyan people.
“I really don’t know why. Maybe it went back to World War II.” (For several years, Libya was a battle ground for Allied forces and German and Italian armies),” Cambronne said.
The Libyan people were very, very poor. “The people had very little,” Cambronne said. When U.S. servicemen hauled loads of garbage out to a dump site, the truck would be mobbed by Libyan people looking for scraps of food, he recalled.
Farming methods were primitive. Grain was threshed, he remembered, by horses trampling over the grain and then being thrown into the air.
