THE ARMY YEARS 7

New Recruit

Winter uniform at end of Basic

Basic was over and we had graduated and were moving on to our next duty station.  Here are a few snapshots of some activities of Basic.

Dave and Rudy playing the same guitar.

Dave and Rudy were both excellent musicians and we were lucky to have both of them in our barracks.  Here they are both playing the same guitar at the same time.  I don't know where Rudy went but Dave came to Signal School at Fort Gordon when I did.

Dave and I

Rudy, Me, and Dave at a GI Party

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Shoe shinning was one of our main hobbies.

Notice the cool way of putting our hands under our belts.

Dave and I doing a GI Party on the floor.

THE ARMY YEARS 6

The last big event in Basic was a thing called "Bivouac".  That translates to mean an army sponsored camping trip in the December snow after a 15 mile hike in Kentucky.  At least we weren't bothered by mosquitoes and ticks.

We each had a shelter half tent that you buddy up with another guy and button the half's together to have a pup tent that will hold two guys.  I know we had it soft compared to many guys but it made our barracks look good.

By the time you finish basic you automatically dive for the ditch when you hear any gunshots.  We were walking along this dirt road in the snow at night when a machine gun started firing.  Everyone dove for the ditch and we heard someone scream and water splashing.  One poor guy had dove over the side of a bridge into a large creek.  We stopped and they got him out and wrapped him in blankets from an ambulance that followed us on long hikes.  He stripped down and got in the ambulance and was taken back to post.  He may have gotten cold for a short while but he slept warm that night back in the barracks. 

We finished basic, had our parade, packed up and headed out to our new station.  I was going to Fort Gordon and got to fly for my first time.  We had a DC-3 from Dutch Overseas Airways.  Never heard of them before or since but the flight was a great experience.

We landed at the Augusta, GA airport, Bush Field.  President Eisenhower's plane, The Columbine, was parked by where we got off while he played golf at Augusta National.  I guess it was a government area of the airport and you could see the civilian terminal from where we were.  They now call any plane the president fly's in "Air force One".

One guy from the Midwest was amazed to see that we had paved roads, telephones, and electric power in the south.  All he knew about the south was from some old movies.  We went to the "Receiving Company" for processing and then to our student companies.  I have already been over the schools before.  

Dave Rogers out of uniform.

I met Dave Rogers in Basic and we were both from Atlanta. He and a guy named Rudolph Thomas kept us entertained with their music and our barracks was usually full of guys from other platoons listening to the free concerts.  Dave was a good guitar player and singer and he thought he had it all planned.  Dave had volunteered for the draft and everything was supposed to be arranged for him to go to Special Services at Fort Mac in Atlanta.  Special Services was the unit that had the Band and other non soldier type stuff.  Dave was sent to Fort Gordon and Signal School with me.  He kept checking with the Special Services unit and they kept telling him that to be patient and they would get him in their unit.  Didn't happen.  Dave kept requesting a transfer and, I guess, the brass got tired of it and transferred him to Fort Bragg as a Link Trainer operator.  (A Link Trainer was the simulator used to practice instrument flying back then.)  Nancy and I spent an evening at an American Legion Post as Dave's guest and sat at the table with Dave, his wife Barbra, and Joe South when they were the entertainment.  Joe made it big and Dave did get a recording contract and made many albums.  He moved to Nashville after the army and was in music until his death a few years ago.

One of Dave's record albums.

Dave and I would go home to Atlanta any weekend that we could and we were both in the Instructor Company at the time.  Neither one of had any students the last hour of the day on a Friday and we decided to "Bug Out" and go home early.  The barracks were on one side of a huge parade field and the schools were on the other.  Anyone walking across could be spotted from a long way off.  I always carried a clipboard when we called it an early day.  We saw Colonel Rose, The Training Center Commander, ride up and tell his driver to stop.  He got out of the car and waited for us.  We didn't change our direction as some others who had gotten caught had done.  We walked right by him, saluted him, and said "Good afternoon Sir".  He returned the salute and said "Carry on men".  Had we changed direction we would have been caught, or maybe it was the clipboard. 

If Dave had been a little more patient, he would have been able to transfer to Fort McPherson when I did at the start of the Avionics platoon. 

"That's not enough, Madam, we need a majority".  Supposed response to a woman who called out to him: Senator, you have the vote of every thinking person."  Adelai Stevenson

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THE ARMY YEARS 5

SMITH- The Legend  (Not his name).
I met a lot of great guys in the army.  One that stands out is Smith.  He was from Tennessee and had a EE degree when he was drafted.  He was a sharp guy, intelligence wise, but, I'm sorry to say, he was very uncoordinated.  He was a nice guy and tried hard but you could always see his head bobbing up over the formation as he tried to get in and stay in step with the rest of the company.  

They had what they called "Memory School" every evening after chow.  It was actually extra drilling for the guys who screwed up that day and Smith was usually present for something.

Our first marksmanship (shooting) training was with the M1 rifle.  Smith had a reputation by the time we fired live rounds with the M1 but he didn't shoot anybody.  Firing the carbine came next and it felt like a toy compared to the M1.  The carbine weighed 5.5 pounds and the M1 weighed in at 9.5 pounds. You could easily shoot it like a pistol.

After firing the carbine we were supposed to open the breech and prop it on our hip to be inspected for being empty before laying it on the post.  As Smith was standing there with the carbine on his hip and the barrel pointed just above the horizon, he began to turn one way and another.  The CO was in the tower behind the firing line and he yelled "SMITH, KEEP KEEP THAT WEAPON POINTED DOWNRANGE!  Smith turned and the muzzle of the carbine sort of swept the area behind the firing line and he said "SIR?"  The CO jumped out of the tower as the muzzle pointed in his direction and the range officer, not knowing what was going on, also jumped to the ground.  The tower was only about 6 feet above the ground but the CO fell in the dirt.  Yep, back to memory school!

Grenade training.  We threw dummy grenades to practice and then we threw the real thing.  Yep, the kind that kills you.  We were all lined up behind a wall and one guy at a time would go around the wall and into the "pit" that was a bunch of sand bags in a "U" shape with the thrower and range officer inside the U.  You were handed a concussion (flash-bang) grenade and a fragmentation grenade and told to put down the fragmentation grenade in a box and throw the flash-bang grenade first.  Being the army, it was all on command.

First "prepare to pull pin". (Getting ready to throw.)  "Pull pin".  (You pull the safety pin and the grenade was armed.)  "Throw".  You throw the grenade and try to hit inside a tank turret that they had for a target.  When you throw it you were suppose to watch and see where you hit and trust that the fuse was long enough before you duck down behind the wall.  Smith's first throw went okay with the flash-bang grenade.

On Smith's next throw with the fragmentation grade as he put his arm back for the throw he dropped the grenade in the pit.  The range officer told him to pick it up and throw it.  Smith instead jumped over the wall and left the range officer in the pit with the grenade ready to blow.  The range officer picked it up, threw it, and it hit in the tank turret before it went off.  Smith and the range officer were both lucky that day.  The rest of the grenade training went off well. 

In bayonet training we learned how to disarm a guy who is trying to stick a knife in you and how to stick a knife in him with it in your hand or on the end of a rifle.  As the recruiting poster said, "Join the army and learn a trade".  Thrust and parry, whack him with the rifle butt etc.  We got to try it on each other with the scabbard still on the bayonet, thank goodness.  The last part was to run down this course with a bayonet on our M1 and fight these dummies along a path in the woods.  They had wooden heads padded and mounted on big springs and holding wooden rifles with bayonets on the end of sticks.  We were to run through through the woods screaming at the top of our lungs, parry the bayonets, whack the dummy in the head with the butt of the rifle, and slash them across the chest or stab them with the bayonet.  I think I could kill the enemy every time if he just stood there like that and didn't fight back.

I was all through with the course and standing around as the rest of the guys ran down a hill with the last dummy at the end of the course.  Smith ran down the hill with a half hearted scream and bopped the head of the last dummy.  The CO was standing there watching and he yelled "SMITH, THAT MAN IS TRYING TO KILL YOU", "GO BACK UP THE HILL AND KNOCK HIS HEAD OFF THIS TIME".  Smith ran back up the hill and ran back down screaming "AAAAAAAAAAAAA" and hit the dummies head as hard as any of us had but the CO still wasn't happy and sent him back to do it again and said "Smith, break the rifle stock on that guy's head".  That was just what happened.  Smith ran back down the hill again and slammed the rifle but into the dummies head and the rifle stock broke at the small of the stock.  What could the CO say?  I think Smith was already in Memory School for something else anyway but he had done exactly what he was ordered to do.

I don't know where the army put Smith but he didn't go to signal school with us.  That would have been in his already chosen field where he would have been useful.

(Smith was not his real name)

It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.
Thomas Sowell Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/t/thomas_sowell.html#3l0PuM6wFU5lXDLp.99  

THE ARMY YEARS 4

We soon fell into a routine of getting up way before the sunrise and marching out for training in the first light.  We were kept busy all day and into the evening every day except for Sunday.  Sunday we could sleep late and, if we wanted to skip meals, we could sleep all day.  That is, until "The Letter".  It seems that one guy's mother wrote and asked him if he was attending church.  He wrote back and told her that they kept him too busy with all that army training stuff on Sundays to go to church.  Bad move!  Well, she wrote the company commander a letter stating that her son should be let off long enough on Sunday to go to church.

 You guessed it.  No more sleeping late on Sunday.  Up before dawn and then fall in before going to chow.  Then back to the barracks and dress in class A uniform and a quick inspection in ranks.   It was still too early to go to the church so we had classes or something and then fell in to march to church.  After church we were marched back to the company area and allowed to change clothes before they thought up various duties for us to do.  We never knew who wrote the letter and I guess it's a good thing because it would have been pretty rough to be him.

The barracks at Ft Knox were in a high area and all the training areas were way down two hills fondly known as "Agony hill" and "Misery Hill."  If you marched down one in the morning you marched up the other one in the evening.  The training areas all had dirt and gravel roads that were used by tanks and were not in very good shape.  (Fort Knox was the Armour training center.)  Of course, we were always very well armed with a rifle with bayonet affixed but no ammo and sometimes a full field pack and usually wearing that steel pot.  Hey, you never know what you may run into out there. 

Our first hour of C.B.R. training was first thing one morning (Chemical, biological, radiological ).  They had issued our gas masks that morning before dawn as we were ready to move out to training and gave a quick demo of how to put it on.  We marched out to the training areas for our first class.  We fell out in a cleared area front of a podium and set down on the cold ground.  A lieutenant was standing at the podium and welcomed us to his class and said that he didn't see any pencils and paper out to take notes with.  Guys were unzipping field jackets and dragging out paper and not paying attention to the Cadre. ( Another army word that means staff.)  The sergeants were all fanning out around us with tear gas grenades and started to throw them all around.  The tip off to what was about to happen should have been when the Lt. put on his mask.

After WWII war surplus equipment was dirt cheap and I was the proud owner of a gas mask, pup tent, pack, entrenching tool, jungle hammock, trench knife, canteen, and a mess kit.  Most of the surplus stuff was used many times going camping in nearby woods but I will have to admit that the gas mask didn't make much sense.  Don't ask why, it seemed like a good idea at the time.  Anyway, I already knew how to put the mask on.  As the tear gas billowed from all around us some guys put their mask on and cleared it in the proper way.  I saw one guy unsuccessfully trying to put it on over his steel helmet.  Another crawled into a ditch.  He later said that he thought that the gas would just go over him.  Sorry, it didn't.  Most of the company had panicked and ran into the woods while knocking some sergeants down.  It took a little while for them to restore order and get the guys back and the class started again.  Anyway, it was a good object lesson. 

After that lesson we had to go into the gas chamber with our gas masks on and learn to trust the masks.  After a short while they made us take the mask off and get a good shot of the gas by giving our name, rank, and serial number to the sergeant as we went out the door.  One poor guy got a big dose because he had a mask without a filter on it and had just a big hole to the outside.  He figured it out and left the chamber quickly and showed them what happened.

After the tear gas we had the same thing with chlorine gas.  Yes, that will kill you but we didn't get much. It was a good thing that the guy realized he had no filter before the chlorine chamber.

(All images from the internet.  I didn't have a camera with me.)

It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages.
Henry Ford 
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THE ARMY YEARS 3

I'm not going to give a minute by minute account of three years in the army but I will tell about things that stand out in my memory. As I go on with this I will make fun of the army and some of the guys that I served with but I will tell you that I believe in universal military service and the draft.  They say that only 8% of the population are veterans of any branch and I think the nation suffers because of it.  Okay, enough. 

We stayed at Jackson for two or three days for processing and then on to Fort Knox, KY for Basic training.  As usual the army timed it so that the bus arrived at Fort Knox in the middle of the night.  We had been in the army for a few days but they still treated us like we were outsiders by yelling and cussing at us to get off the bus faster and fall in.  Same thing.  Make up the bunks and they kept tearing them up and telling us to make them up again till they were pleased enough with them.

I had Junior ROTC (Reserve Officers Training Corps) in high school and knew how to march and the manual of arms, etc. so they made me a squad leader.  No more rank or no more money, I just got yelled at if anyone in my squad screwed up, and when they didn't.  Oh yes, I did get to march in the front.  We learned helpful things like which end of the rifle the bullet came out of and how to strip down an M1 rifle and drilling, drilling, drilling.  (Drilling is marching) 

Every morning the CQ (Charge of Quarters) would turn the lights on and scream and blow his whistle.  One morning he walked in and stood by this one guys top bunk and blew the whistle right in his ears.  The guy, in one beautiful motion rolled over and slugged him.  The CQ went down like a rock and we all thought that there would be hell to pay.  Guess what, the army says that you are not responsible for what you do being woke up like that and there was no action taken on anybody.  Good thing the guy didn't have a gun.  After that they would still wake us up by blowing the whistle and yelling but they did it from the doorway for a few seconds.

They told us to start with that any theft would not be tolerated.  We found out that they were serious because there was a thief in the company and things and money would be missing.  Finally one night they caught him.  The MP's (Military Police) were called along with an ambulance.  The story was that the thief tried to steal a footlocker and fell down the stairs with the locker on top of him.  No investigation and we never saw him again.  No more theft either and I believe that after that you could have left a few hundred dollars on your bunk and it would have been there when you came back.  Actually, when they caught the guy a bunch of guys had beat him with their boots and threw him down the stairs.


Firearms are second only to the Constitution in importance; they are the peoples' liberty's teeth.
George Washington 
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THE ARMY YEARS -2

Induction day arrived and My Mother, Father, and Nancy drove me to the induction center in Atlanta.  Hugs and kisses all around and I went in.  We set around in normal army fashion for a while and then they swore us in.  I was officially in the army.  Hours more of waiting and they loaded us on the bus to Fort Jackson, SC.  That was before expressways and the bus had to go through every little town with a 25 mph speed limit in GA and SC.  After a long drive we finally arrived at Fort Jackson.

I saw that a movie and the PX was near where they stopped our bus.  I thought that would be convenient to our new home of a few days. The army times such things so that you arrive in the middle of the night as we did.  They got us off of the bus and lined us up.  We were taught the basics of marching and they "marched" us into the supply room to draw bedding.  At about 3 am, we started learning the army way to make up a bunk.  Long story, bounce a quarter, hospital corners with perfect 45 degree corners, etc.  When they were satisfied with everyone's bed making they let us tear the bunks down and go to sleep at maybe 4 am. 

It was a short night as they turned on the lights and came through yelling and blowing a whistle.  The sergeant was yelling things like "OFF AND ON" and "RISE AND SHINE" to the top of his lungs.  It was maybe 5:30 am and one of my fellow soldiers yelled at the sergeant "Hey, you better get to bed because tomorrow is going to be a big day."  The sergeant yelled some choice words at him and got him up instantly and braced him at attention.

I looked both ways down the rows of bunks and saw a bunch of cussing sleepy guys and I wondered if maybe I didn't make such a good decision.  I was 17, what did I know. 

We quickly dressed, made the bed, and fell out in the fire break.  They marched us around in the dark a while, yelled some more, called us every bad name in the book, told us how dumb we were (Probably right, there),  Told us we were the worse looking bunch of recruits  they had ever seen, and other things to made us feel really wanted like "drop and give me 10" (means do 10 push ups).

They finally marched us to the chow hall.  In front of the door was an iron pipe mounted across two posts and you had to do some pull ups before you went in the door for breakfast.  If you didn't do them well enough they got you out of the line.  They did finally let those guys eat later. We found out that they didn't eat all the powdered eggs during WWII as they still had some left for us. 

Alright, after "chow" (see, I was already using real army words) they marched us down to draw clothing and then we were moved out to the fire break behind our barracks to mark all our cloths and then we were allowed to change into a uniform.  They called us back in formation and told us we were going to get the "Flying Five."  Huh, five fingers or maybe something worse.  We found that that was a $5 advance on our monthly pay of $79.  Wasn't that nice of them.  I guessed that was so we could go to a movie or get a coke or something. Wrong again.  They marched us to the PX (Post Exchange) to buy stuff for a foot locker display that the commander desired that we have. (I cheated and took the extra time to buy a beautiful satin pillow cover for my sweetheart while I was at the PX.  It was very romantic with tanks and cannons embroidered on it and fringe all around.  She still has it and remembers what the verse on it said.)

 There was a tray in the top of our foot locker that was only used to hold the "display" of toilet equipment that was never to be used.  Razor, brush, soap, towel, wash cloth. tooth brush, tooth powder, etc.  We were then taught how to make the display.  How far from what to what, etc.

Okay, we still had a little money left, maybe they will let us go back to the PX and get a coke or go to that movie.  Nope, they marched us to the barber shop.  Elvis was popular then and the duck tail haircut was common.  Everyone lined up in single file and went in the door.  The line moved fairly well and I thought that they probably had a lot of barbers working in there.  Wrong again, they were just quick barbers.  You can cut hair quickly if you put the electric clippers up to someones head and turn the chair until they are skinned bald.  One guy with an Elvis style haircut got in the chair beside me and the barber asked him "Son, would you like to keep some of that hair?"  The guy said that, YES, he would.  The barber smiled and buzzed him to the skin but he caught a handful of the guys hair and handed it to him and said "here you go".  I'm sure that that barber used that joke many times every day.

After we paid at the barber shop we still had just a little of that $5 left.  By then I had given up on that coke.  It was just as well because next we "fell in" (Don't ya just love these army words?) and marched down to order our name tapes to sew on our uniform.  $5 all gone now.  Luckily, I had brought some money but some of the guys were broke.  It didn't make much difference because we were not allowed out of the company area that day.

A pint of sweat, saves a gallon of blood.
George S. Patton 
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THE ARMY YEARS -1

I touched on my time in the army in the last post.  I was in the army from September 24, 1956 to September 23, 1959.  I would like to call your attention to the fact that no country even tried to attack us while I was in the army.  Of course, I don't claim the total credit for that but you do have to wonder.  

I took my physical a couple of months before I actually went in the army.  I took my physical at 12th corps in Atlanta.  They gave you a stack of different colored papers and told you to strip down to your underwear and follow the colored lines painted on the floor in the hall.  You would be walking down the hall with women going from one room to another.  How friendly.  You may be following the blue line into a room and some guy in a white coat suddenly gets very personal and tells you to turn your head and cough, writes something on your forms and tells you to follow the red line.
  
The red line, for example, may turn into a doorway and in that room they were drawing blood.  I entered the blood drawing room and one guy wrapped a rubber band around my arm and another one stuck a needle on the end of a hose leading into a test tube kind of thing into my arm and told me to hold the tube and stand over there.  I looked and there were a line of guys standing there bleeding in their tubes.  I moved over and lined up with the rest of them.  It all happened so fast that I didn't realize what was happening until I was bleeding into the tube.  Suddenly a big guy rounded the corner and they stabbed him the same way and told him to hold the tube and stand in the line.  He looked down and saw his blood running into the tube and passed out.  They quickly caught him before he hit the floor and they acted like it was just a normal thing.

The rest of the physical was conducted normally with different stations checking for normal things like weight, temperature, blood pressure, do you like girls, do you hate your mother, etc.  At the last station they told us to get dressed and the guys who were going in the army that day to go through one door and the ones like me who would be going later to check out through another door. 

The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
George S. Patton
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