I guess you could say it all started with me not wanting to get shot. I always thought that was a good enough reason for what I did. Getting shot was likely to, at best, hurt a whole lot and, at worst, have a good chance of killing you. So any alternative would be a good one, yes? Right?
I certainly thought so.
In 1965 I was coasting through the end of my senior year in high school, dating a bit, working after school slinging hamburgers, tooling around town in my '56 red and white Victoria, being a semi-normal teenager in Middle America. I was what you might call a middle-of-the-road student or maybe a little below that. Proficient enough with my studies that I was definitely going to graduate, but definitely not with honors. The big worry for us guys graduating in 1965 was that doggone war. It overshadowed pretty much everything. Vietnam was heating up big-time that year and all the senior guys in school were aware that they would be required to do something about it after they graduated, even if it was just crossing their fingers and hoping they wouldn't get drafted. Oh yes, the draft was definitely in full bloom that year and it seemed, at least to me, that they were grabbing pretty much everyone who waited around and hoped they wouldn't get 'em. I knew I wasn't smart enough or rich enough to go to college. I knew I didn't want to run to Canada like some of the draft-dodgers were doing in those years. Too cold and I didn't particularly like hockey. I knew for sure that I didn't want to start a family and get a deferment that way. And I didn't want to get drafted.
So I did some investigating.
I figured that if I enlisted in one of the branches of the military other than the Army or Marines, maybe there would be a better chance of not meeting a communist bullet with my name on it. I narrowed the field down after visiting several recruiters and settled on the Air Force. Being in the Air Force wasn't a guarantee that I would stay safe, but the odds were a lot better there than in the Army or Marines – or even the Navy, I thought.
I graduated from high school in June of that year and, while I was waiting for my departure date to enter the Air Force, I went to work in the factory where my father was employed. I worked on an assembly line where they were making Post Office trucks. The company bought the truck chassis from Chrysler and Dodge and built the bodies and cabs for them. I worked on the Dodge truck line from right after my graduation in June until November, when I left for basic training.
I left my hometown on a sunny, late fall day on a Greyhound bus. One of my classmates from high school had enlisted at the same time I did and was sitting next to me on the bus. He looked as green around the gills as I was feeling. This was real. We were actually going. We were on our way to the military, during wartime, and it was exciting and terrifying in equal measure.
The bus pulled out and headed up the familiar city street, my folks standing there at the bus stop waving, teary-eyed, as we rounded a corner and proceeded up the highway. I figured it'd take us an hour to an hour and a half to get to Cleveland.
I was wrong.
The bus did not go directly to Cleveland. It went to every single city, town and village between my home and Cleveland. Pick up folks and drop them off. Pick up some more and then drop them off. The 60-mile-trip took four hours or more. I saw a lot of little downtowns through the dirty bus windows. My initial terror was beginning to evolve into acute boredom.
Finally we arrived in Cleveland and made our way to the recruitment center where our papers were checked, we were given physical exams, immunized against this and that and finally sworn in. I could go into great detail about those procedures, but suffice it to say there were a lot of mostly naked men walking around in corridors with papers in their hands going from room to room. It reminded me of a locker room after the team had lost the big game. Smelled like it too.
I watched a tough-looking guy faint dead away when they drew blood from his arm. His Air Force career was starting with a bang.
Finally we raised our hands and read the words that were on the paper in our hands, repeating the oath of enlistment from a lieutenant who was administering it. It was actually pretty anticlimactic. We'd just sworn to protect our nation with our lives and it seemed so mundane, like we'd only promised to behave ourselves until next Thursday. We looked at each other and grinned shakily.
Four years active service, baby. That's what we signed up for. Oh boy. We were in it now!
We were marched down the street to a restaurant for our first meal as Air Force recruits. We went into the front door. It was a very nice restaurant. Linen on the tables, nice silverware. We thought to ourselves, “hey, this isn't so bad!” We continued marching through the front dining room and were led through another door into a back room. There were picnic tables set up back there in what looked like a storage room, and that was our “mess hall” for the meal. Reality had arrived with a vengeance. The meal was so-so, on paper plates and with plastic utensils, filling and plain. We were then marched back to the recruitment center where buses were waiting to take us to the airport.
Our flight to Texas where the basic training would be given was interesting. As it was my first airplane flight it was exhilarating and scary too. We flew on a Delta Airlines turbo-prop (don't forget this was the mid-60's). Noisy, bumpy, shaky and more than a bit unnerving. And, of course, we didn't just fly directly to Texas. Nope. This was a puddle jumper flight. We flew from Cleveland to Detroit. Then from Detroit to Indianapolis. Then from Indianapolis to Memphis. Then from Memphis to Shreveport. Then from Shreveport to Austin. Finally we got off the Delta turbo-prop in Austin and boarded a 727 jet liner for the last leg from Austin to San Antonio. It was like going from a Model-T Ford to a stretch Cadillac limousine. Smooth, quiet and fast. It was probably only an hour flight. We'd taken off and landed six times. I was an experienced flyer by then.
On arrival at San Antonio we were loaded onto buses and driven to Lackland Air Force Base, some miles outside the city, where Air Force basic training was given. Our bus driver told us to smoke 'em if we had 'em and to enjoy the ride, 'cause the fun was going to be over very, very quickly.
His observation was dead on.
Most of the movies and TV shows about military basic training are close to being accurate, at least for the first few days of your residence. The bus stops, an angry-looking sergeant with a flat-brimmed instructor's hat and crisply ironed fatigue uniform comes aboard and starts yelling. We later learned he was our T.I., the Training Instructor. Chaos then ensued. You're roughly herded off the bus and made to stand in yellow footprints painted on the parking lot. The bus leaves. The sergeant yells some more. Then he lines you up and marches your raggedy group off into the darkness for a long time until you arrive at your barracks – your new home for the next six weeks. For us it was the wee hours of the morning. He assigns each of us a room with 3 other recruits and we got into our bunks, shut up as ordered and, surprisingly, fell asleep quickly.
I got an upper bunk.
It was a newer barracks. Two wings to the building with the Training Instructor's office in between. Two stories, somewhere around 25 men per story, per wing. About 100 men in the barracks in 4-man rooms. The rooms had 2 double bunks and lockers. The floors were shiny green tile. There were showers/latrines at each end of each floor on each wing. They were very clean. We were to learn very quickly who kept the building so clean and shiny.
Three guesses who.
At five o'clock in the morning the lights all came on and more Training Instructors came running through the barracks screaming at us recruits, beating on the walls, shaking the bunks, shouting at us to fall in, fall in, FALL IN! We soon found out that “fall in” meant to run out to the sidewalk in front of the building and form up into four lines of 25 men each. We didn't do it right the first time. Or the second time. Or the eighth. Or the tenth. We practiced “falling in” a lot that first morning. Get in your rack. Listen for the command “fall in”. Race to the front walk and stand in attention at your designated spot. Get yelled at for not doing it fast enough. Run back to your room and do it again. Finally we got it down to about 60 seconds to get 100 men from their racks into silent ranks on the sidewalk in front of the building. It might have taken us a dozen tries. Or more.
We didn't know it, but this was our first lesson in teamwork. You worked with your fellow recruits and you helped each other do what was required.
The next days were a blur of marching to the mess hall, eating whatever was put on the plate in front of you and eating it fast. More marching. Going to the huge supply buildings, getting your uniforms and putting them in a big duffel bag. Haircuts. Marching. Doctors and dentists. Marching. Learning how to march correctly, to hear the commands and to execute them perfectly. Practicing. Drilling. Marching everywhere. Going to school, sitting quietly in your classroom and learning many things, from how to fold your underwear and place it in your locker, to who your next-in-command was. To learn rank designations, how to salute, military courtesy, Air Force history, how to wear the uniform properly, how to clean the barracks perfectly. We had physical fitness classes twice a day and began hardening our bodies. We sweat a lot. We cleaned the barracks over and over and over. We stood guard duty during the nights. We put up with the hazing the instructors did to us, teaching us, toughening us. We did more and more each day until we thought we couldn't do any more. Then we did even more the next day.
There were tests to take and you had to pass them all. If you didn't, they “sent you back”. This was the bitterly hated consequence of failing tests or not keeping up on your physical fitness, where you were removed from your present group of trainees and transferred to another group which was “behind” yours in training. It meant starting over and it meant you wouldn't be leaving after six weeks. Maybe it'd be 8 or 10 weeks. Or longer. Nobody wanted to do that. We lost a few of our men that way. Some even had to go to a special “fitness” flight where they would be worked harder and harder until they were able to pass the physical fitness tests. Or flunked out and were discharged from the Air Force. That happened occasionally.
Not anybody's idea of fun.
We had our first cigarette after the fifth day. Smoking was quite prevalent in those days and a lot of us had quit cold turkey when our buses had arrived at Lackland that dark morning. There was a contest that fifth day of our training where each of us had to locate as many inspection tags as we could find on our new uniforms. As a point in fact, new military uniforms are literally peppered with inspection tags. A pair of pants might have 2 or 3, some ingeniously hidden in seams or wherever. The dress blues coat might have a dozen. They all had to be removed. We found as many tags as we could, added them to a pile with ones from everyone else on our floor and wing.
Our guys won and we had 10 minutes to enjoy a cigarette in front of the barracks under the watchful eyes of the T.I. I will never again in my life taste a cigarette as wonderful as that one!
After five weeks our titles changed from “recruit” to “airman”. We were learning and had progressed to the point where we were a cohesive unit and were gaining pride in the skills and knowledge we had acquired
The total training lasted six weeks and changed us from recruits to airmen. We were a disorganized mob of individuals when we arrived and when we left we were a united group of airmen, aware of what was expected of us and proficient in the traditions and mores of the United States Air Force.
Some memories of those initial, formative weeks:
Marching to the mess hall for breakfast the first day and seeing the banana trees growing outside the door. This was Central Texas and the beginnings of the tropics, at least as far as this Northern Ohio boy was concerned. I watched the fruit grow on those trees during my time there.
Having to get another haircut on the last week just before leaving basic. We would all depart with our hair in buzzcuts. I wouldn't be able to part my hair until my 3rd or 4th week in Tech School.
Carrying our cigarettes in ankle holders or in our socks. We were not allowed to carry them on or in our uniforms.
Marching three miles in the rain to run the obstacle course and finding out the course was closed as it was too muddy. Thanking God we were in the Air Force where things like this happened, as opposed to the Army or Marines where we would have had to run the course wet and muddy. Many times.
Getting our pictures taken for our hometown newspapers and being told to NOT smile for them. We all looked so innocently fierce in our scratchy brand new blue uniforms.
Learning how to shoot the M-16 rifle and enjoying the hell out of blowing holes in paper silhouettes
Listening to a tough T.I. with halitosis who was 2 inches away from your face describing your deficiencies, background, ugliness, mental insufficiencies and wildly inappropriate parentage in the most colorful language you'd ever heard.
Learning that President Lyndon Johnson was in your chain of command. He was your boss's boss's boss's boss's boss's boss's boss. We actually had orders on what to do if he showed up at the barracks in the middle of the night when we were on guard duty. I think my reaction to that unanticipated occurrence would have been to faint dead away.
Visiting the base movie theater during an off Sunday afternoon to watch whatever was playing and fighting gallantly to stay awake past the opening credits. And teasing your fellow recruits who had failed in this task.
Learning that I could do all the required push ups and sit ups and that I actually could run 2 and a half miles. A couple years before this time I had to run one mile for my Eagle badge in the Boy Scouts and I thought that feat was the pinnacle of my athletic prowess. I surprised myself.
Finding out how great any food tasted when you were really, really hungry and discovering how quickly you could fall asleep at 9 o'clock in the evening when you were bone weary.
Learning you could wake up at 5 am, make your bed, hit the can, get dressed and be ready to fall out in 5 minutes.
Listening to your head Training Instructor's radio playing the Statler Brother's “Flowers on the Wall” song almost every night before you went to sleep. And ending up dreaming of some flowers on some wall. I still know the lyrics to that song, word for word, 44 years later.
Meeting other recruits who were vastly different from anyone you had ever met. Ones who were walking encyclopedic baseball statistic freaks, real Southern hillbillies with near undecipherable drawls, poor guys from Appalachia who were the next thing to barefoot when they arrived wearing their bib overhauls and not much else, guys from every corner of this country and from every social strata.
Marching proudly with your flight of a hundred airmen and hearing one sound as your feet hit the asphalt crisply, simultaneously, left-right-left-right, your T.I. counting cadence, you and your one hundred brother airmen moving as one.
The pride you felt on your graduation day when all the training flights that were graduating held a grand parade and you marched in review past the commanding officers and any visiting dignitaries who were there, along with families.
At the end of the six weeks Basic Military Training we all received our orders for our technical schools.
I was chosen to attend the...
to be continued...
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