Clyde69 (From Richard Reynolds)

RJR-Clyde69, originally uploaded by bucklesw1. Corbett’s or Indochinese tiger (Panthera tigris corbetti). That is what we see in those recent blog site photos of the tiger encounter at the Theraveda Buddhist Temple in Wat Pha Luang Ta Bua, Thailand. This subspecies ranges from Malaya up through Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and into Viet Nam. The closest I ever got to one of them is shown in this photo. It was taken on September 5 1969 at the Atlanta Zoo (now Zoo Atlanta). It shows yours truly with “Clyde”, a female Corbett’s that had just been unloaded from Viet Nam. This is a rather long story but I think a good one. The mannish name was put her by members of Detachment B-51, 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne) of the 1st Special Forces (Green Berets). On April 12, 1968 they found her and two litter mates in a den while they were on combat patrol in South Viet Nam looking for the Viet Cong. “Clyde” was a common Green Beret nickname for the VC, so the troops penned it on the young female. She was estimated to be 8-weeks old when they found the litter. The mother was away either hunting or maybe killed by all the bombing and combat in the area. The Detachment took the cubs back to their cantonment area. There they raised them as pets. The men had war dogs which they trained to attack the enemy. For that the men donned padded equipment that looks like a baseball catcher’s chest protector and the dogs would jump them. They donned that equipment to engage in roughhouse play with the young tigers. When the cats outgrew that sport, two of them were given to the Saigon zoo. Since the unit’s home base was Columbus, GA, they wanted to give Clyde to the Atlanta zoo. But how to get her here? A plane ticket for a crated tiger from Viet Nam to Atlanta cost a heck of a lot of dough. That’s where I got involved. Zoo Director John Roth asked if I knew anyone with connections to the Air Force who could arrange to have her flown back for free on one of cargo planes that regularly came back empty to the States. I had an acquaintance who was an aide to Georgia’s powerful and influential Senator Richard B. Russell. We batted it around for some time with correspondence between the Senator and me. However, Russell had just left the Chairmanship of the Senate Armed Forces Committee and averred that he no longer had the same influence in such matters (Yeah! - -with him one LBJ’s big drinking buddies). The Air Force was adamant that it could not be done. It seems they were always getting requests to bring back for free this or that including injured children in need of medical treatment etc. So they had a rule against all of it. Eventually, the zoo’s concessionaire agreed to foot the considerable transportation bill. The tiger was flown here from Saigon via Pan American to San Francisco and Delta from there to Atlanta, arriving September 5, 1969. She rode in a fine crate that the troops used to transport their war dogs. Zoo Director John Roth and I were at the airport to meet the tiger amid a lot of military ceremony. The photo was taken just after Clyde had emerged from her crate. Well, almost 39 year have passed since Clyde’s arrival. She is long gone, having died around 1974. She contracted some common feline malady like distemper. As for me I can only say poetically, “What ravages hath been wrought by the passage of the years.”