I can remember driving into Washington DC. It was early in the evening, just after dark, but the fragrance from the cherry blossoms that DC was known for were in full bloom. I’d been around cherry trees before but they never smelled like that! It was an invigorating aroma that was greatly needed after the long drive from Michigan to DC. I remember taking a drive down Pennsylvania Avenue past the White House even though I was ready to park and take a nap. It was still going to take probably an hour or so to find Andrews AFB and a place to crash. But I had made it to DC.
It did. It took me a while to find the base and then some temporary housing so I could get some sleep. Tomorrow was going to be a hectic day. I was going to have to find the 2045th Communications Group, move into a barracks, and find where everything is on a very large base. It was going to be fun?! I hoped! After getting all situated on the base and a bunk in the barracks, I was going to have to check in with CBPO so they could get my pay to me, and get my security badges so I could get into tech control. I needed a Top Secret with Crypto clearance to even look inside the door. I didn’t know it at the time, but all communications to “Air Force One” went through my station. If the president was traveling, we were on a mission, and he was always traveling.
The security clearance came through in a couple of days. The FBI had questioned all the character references I listed way back before I enlisted. So I got my first look at real tech controllers at work fairly quickly. Let me tell you, this place was not anything like what I saw in the mock tech control at Keesler. That mock up was the size of a 3 or 4 man station. This stations day shift had 8 or 9 techs working their own stations, a supervisor, an assistant supervisor, a 3 man crew to install new circuits, 3 high ranking administrative supervisors, our Officer-In-Charge (OIC), and a number of repair-type techs on the floor. Everyone was calling on phones or teletype printers were chattering. Utter chaos! I wish I had pictures of it but it was a secure station, so not a chance. Just picture those wall street trading floor scenes in a movie and change the characters to uniformed servicemen with a phone in one ear and typing on a teletype machine to some tech in another country while running tests on a circuit that was “down”. Now multiply that by eight! Ok, that’s close!
Ok, finally after a couple of days in meetings and briefings and the such, I was assigned to a shift. I believe it was “D” team under TSgt. Hesse and SSgt. Thacker. Keeping in mind that this station would be operational 24-hours a day, 365 days a year, our work schedule was dependent upon the number of tech controllers that were assigned to Andrews tech control. When I arrived, there were four teams so that meant one of the teams would work day shift, one would work evenings or “swings”, and one would work nights or “mids”. The fourth would be off. These shifts would last for three days then we would change to another shift. This worked out to being 9 days on and 3 days off. This was the typical situation. If the manpower was up, then our supervisors could give us a day of during the 9 days so it wasn’t always that bad. As long as we had coverage for all the positions at all times, we were good.
When I started my first shift, I was told to “shadow” one of the guys that had been stationed there for a while to learn a little about what was expected of me. He was working one of the DC stations, meaning he was troubleshooting teletype circuits from one of our main neighboring stations. I don’t remember if it was Lajes, in the Azores, Croughton, England, McClellan AFB, California, or Ft. Allen, Puerto Rico, but it was one of them. There were others like Pirmasens, Germany, Thule, Greenland, or Kindley AFB, Bermuda, but they weren’t usually very busy so the learning curve would have been slow. So I stood behind him and watched as he received messages on the teletype about circuits from the tech at, lets say Croughton. Ok, so a circuit going to Croughton was bad at the other end. So we would send a test message from our station towards England and they would check to see if it was good coming in from us. If not, we had a transmit problem. If it was good, we would check to see if we had a good signal coming from where ever that circuit came into our station by requesting a test from them. Our station was 99% a through station. In other words, not many circuits terminated at Andrews, they came in from one place and we sent them to another place, mostly military bases in the DC area but sometimes to one of the other locations listed above. So maybe Croughton to Clark Air Base in the Philippines by way of McClellan. So, some communications were made with teletype devices and some with phone, dependent of the circuit. In this station, all teletype devices were on one side of the room and the patch panels for all of the circuits were on the opposite side of the room, maybe 15 to 20 feet away on a 20 foot wide wall of nothing but patch panel jacks and test equipment. Now where on the wall were the circuits from Croughton and where did they go to leave the station? That was the fun of it all! It should also be noted that the person watching Croughton was also watching Lajes and the person watching McClellan was watching Ft. Allen.
One of the techs was just answering direct phone calls from tech controls at some of the local bases (Ft. Ritchie, Ft. Meade, Ft. Detrick, Ft. Belvoir, Langley AFB, Ft. Myers, and others) concerning circuit issues. He would look-up the important information on that circuit and pass a trouble ticket to the tech that would be working that circuit. Notes were kept on that ticket so we could track its status. My mentor and I would check those circuits just like we did on issues received from Croughton which we had opened a trouble ticket on also. We usually had a fist full of trouble tickets. As the problems were resolved the tickets were closed out and we moved on to the next trouble ticket or we annotated what was done to verify the issue was still present. Some tickets were open for days and passed on to the incoming shift that was relieving us at shift change.
I’m glad I was assigned to Andrews right out of tech school. I don’t think there would have been a better place to learn all aspects of tech control anywhere else. When I left there, I was well equipped to go just about anywhere. I wasn’t going to be a “jeep” in my next station! I was exposed to everything except “Auto-din” (automatic digital network) and “Auto-von” (automatic voice network) although I was indirectly expose to auto-din because there was a station in the same building I was in at Andrews. I knew the techs there and had had a tour of their facility.
After nearly two and a half years at Andrews, I got my next assignment. I was headed for Germany. My orders read 1945th Communications Group, Detachment 25, Operating Location ‘B’, Bann, Germany. In order to accept those orders I would need to extend my enlistment an extra year. Done! I was headed overseas in October 1972, Just one thing though, in August of 1972, the Olympics was shocked by a terrorist attach in Munich that killed the Israeli delegation. All installations in Germany were now on high alert. I was headed for a small hilltop facility where I was going to have to be armed for my own protection.
One of the benefits to being stationed in Washington DC area was the close proximity to two MLB stadiums, both in the American League where I could see my home team, Detroit Tigers play. The Washington Senators played at the Robert F Kennedy (RFK) Memorial Stadium and the Baltimore Orioles played at the Baltimore Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. I remember RFK looked like a newer stadium than I was used to seeing because Detroit had opened in 1912. It was nice, but I didn’t have much to compare it to other than Tiger Stadium. The hot dogs, eh, they were ok, just not any comparison to Detroit’s. I saw a couple of games there in 1970 and 1971 but then the Senators move from Washington to Arlington, TX and became the Texas Rangers. This was the second time a Senator’s team had left Washington DC. The first was in 1961 when the original Senator’s moved to Minneapolis, MN and became the Twins. I got to see Denny McLain pitch for the Senator’s in 1971 after he had been traded from Detroit. I guess the Tiger’s were tired of McLain’s attitude. He only pitched there that one year, he was out of baseball completely after the 1972 season.
The Senator’s were one of the worst teams in the MLB but if you drove an hour north from DC, you would be in Baltimore, home of one of the best teams, the Orioles. In 1971, the Orioles boasted 4-20 game winners on the pitching staff. A total of 81 games credited to their staff. That is exactly one half of all games played that season. I made that drive a couple of times in 1970 and 71. I only remember two things from those visits, the stadium seats in the outfield were all bleachers (extremely uncomfortable) and the hot dogs were terrible! As much as I loved dogs at the ballpark, I couldn’t eat these. I’m not sure how you can ruin a hot dog, but they did!
I’ve not been back to either city so I have both the National’s Park to see the Washington Nationals or Orioles Park at Camden Yards to see the Orioles. They are on my bucket list.