The Nimrod Song

submitted by: Alva Leon Matheson


I looked up the Nimrod song in my personal memoirs. The words were written on November 20, 1966. The memory of it was written some time in the 1970s. Jack Taylor and Hatfield were the guitar-playing musicians of the ‘66 crowd, and Taylor had much to do with the original Cricket Lament – I suspect he basically wrote it. He also got Disney to design the original Cricket patch. He lives on the West Coast. Hatfield was very clever and very musical, but had not been with us very long, having come in from way South in Vietnam.

Editors Note: “Hat” Brubeck was a compatriot of Viper 7, Charlie Pocock from the 19th TASS, and features in Charlie’s Book – “VIPER 7”.
Here’s what I wrote about it:
“That evening a few of us were sitting in the porch area in the center of the building drinking some beers and talking about the A-26 bunch, whom we admired generally very much. We decided they needed a song, and chose the tune to “Ghost Riders in the Sky.” The typed result says it was “Written by four old Gombeys in the Naked Fanny Cricket hootch lounge.” It was probably me and Jack Taylor, Marty Engelken, and Hatfield Brubeck. When we had composed it, we walked up the road (which was by now heavily oiled to keep down dust) to the Eagle trailers, to the Operations Officer’s (Joe Kittinger) trailer and pounded on the door. He got up and let us in, and we sang our ditty for him. He thought it was great, he said, and we left so he could go back to sleep for his night mission. Somebody typed them a carbon copy next day.”

Glenn Bremenkamp remembers...
“One thing I am certain of, Hatfield Brubeck played the guitar and sang country. Bill, Hatfield, myself and possibly one or two others made up the lyrics one afternoon while sipping kool-aid as usual. We thought it was so good that we decided to go to Joe Kittinger’s trailer, he being the most rambunctious Nimrod. We had to wake him up in the middle of the afternoon to do the song. He did not know why we were there and probably quickly realized the condition we were in. He was PISSED that we had awakened him since he had to fly that night. He let us sing the song and was impressed. But I will always remember how stirred up we had him at first.
In the picture above, on the left is Charlie Lutz and next to the O-1 is me, Bill Tilton. Charlie and I went through Hurlburt together, same class as Bruce Hoon, Jonathan Myer, and Willy Wilbanks (MOH). He was to go to Song Be and I was on orders to Hon Quan, whose ops area was just west of Song Be’s. But we both got sent TDY to NKP as soon as we checked out, though at least he did spend one night at Song Be.
Charlie was the wild man of the outfit until he figured out that he just might survive the tour. Then he became the exemplary cautious pro. He took the radio jeep so often that they put a sign on it, “Charlie’s Jeep.” This was the 23rd TASS at Nakhom Phanom, Thailand, April ‘66 through Jan 9th of ‘67. Charlie and I shipped over there on the same contract airliner, and we left NKP on the same Huey and a day or two later we left Bangkok on the same Continental Air Lines contract liner home.