It’s May 12th of 1969 and Dad and Mom are dropping me off at Fort Wayne. Not the city in Indiana, but the old military installation outside of Detroit, where I and many other guys and girls will be taking their physicals and being sworn into the U.S. military. It started at 6:00 am and we finally got sworn in at about 3:30 pm. We took a short bus ride to Detroit Metro Airport and then took a “milk run” group of flights to San Antonio, Texas where we were met by another short bus ride to “hell on earth”, or so it seemed. It was one guy yelling at us until we were handed-off to another. All this at about 2:00 am Texas time.
There were 50 of us herded into a barracks and told to get some sleep. Of course after we had all undressed and jumped into bed, the Training Instructor (TI) said, “I hope you paid attention of how your bed was made because you’re going to have to make it that way in the morning!” Hospital corners? Never done that before! Fortunately, I had only undone one corner of my bed to slide in so I had the others to use as a guide that next morning, which came about 2 hours later! To this day, I still remember the awful noise that trash can made as it tumbled down the hall after our TI kicked it and yelled at the top of his lungs, “Get your a** out of that bed!”. Almost everyone was out of bed and getting dressed in a fraction of a second, almost, I said. I’m sure the TI was just waiting for that one guy to pop his head out from under the blankets like a turtle so he could rush to him and physically flip his bunk and the troop into the air! He was not disappointed! No one ever did that again! Trash can kicking lasted a couple of days, but what really woke us was the not so subtle humming of the florescent light fixtures ballast and 100 feet hit the floor. I’m still that way. Hate that sound!
Our group of 50 guys, known as a “flight”, were mostly from Michigan, Wisconsin, Nebraska, and Florida. There was another flight started that night, our sister flight. We didn’t see each other very often but our TI had fun comparing us all the time. A little sibling rivalry I think. There were a lot of hard lessons that first week or so. Mostly what you couldn’t do or what you had to do. Like 50 guys showering and shaving at a handful of sinks and showers in 15 minutes or go to sleep at 8:00 pm with the sun still high in the sky because the next day would be there shortly, and that marching isn’t quite as easy as you would guess. Then there were locker inspections and your undies had to be folded just right and for heaven’s sake, hang your uniforms correctly or you would be totally humiliated by the punishment chosen by the TI. Classes were started a few days into training. You would learn military history, reporting, how and when to salute, and parts of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. If you failed any of these, or acted up in any way, they sent you back to a flight that wasn’t as far along in training as you were. So your six weeks just turned into seven or eight.
We marched everywhere, to chow, to physical training (PT), to get our uniforms, to the medical facility to get our shots or learn our blood type. Our longest trek was to the firing range or the confidence course. Most knew that as an obstacle course but the USAF liked to make you feel confident, I guess. At all times, we were keeping an eye out for coral snakes and listen to the weather report for red or black flag days, those to hot to spend time outside. The biggest worry though was meningitis! If anyone got the sniffles, everyone was quarantined until tests showed we were clear. During our 30-days of training, we lost 1 to being sent back two weeks. I think it was for doing something wrong and then talking back to the TI. On the 28th day of training, we lost one to medical reasons. He had asthma and should never have been enlisted in the first place, so they said. Our 26th day of training was the day we got to take the bus to San Antonio. I got to go through the Alamo and walk what was soon to become the River Walk.
Those were some pretty quick days now that I look back upon them, time flies when you’re having fun, but it sure didn’t seem that way for the first 20 days or so. At the 20-day mark, KP day on the 25th and Base Leave on the 26th day were very much in sight. There were our written exam and physical testing days in there somewhere. The last couple of days were pretty simple, just keep our noses clean and don’t make any waves. Our orders came down around then. Some of us were sent to our next permanent station where we learned our jobs through “on the job” training, some stayed there for training in Security Police K9 school or crypto coding, but most went on to technical training bases like Chanute AFB, Illinois, Lowry AFB, Colorado, or my orders to Keesler AFB in Biloxi, Mississippi.
So at 2:00 am after that 30th day of training, we headed to our staging area. Buses were waiting for those that would head to their next training station. All the Airmen were waiting with their duffle bags stuffed to the brim with the uniforms they had received while there. Lets see, three sets of fatigues, four sets of 1505 khaki summer uniforms, 1 summer blues class A uniform, 1 winter blues class A uniform, 1 “horse blanket” class A winter coat, 1 fatigue jacket, 3 pair of shoes (1 dress shoes, 1 chuka boots, and 1 combat boots), our government issued under garments, and of course, the civilian clothes we had worn to Lackland that first day. The only change in the uniforms from the day we had been issued them was the stripe that we were now authorized to wear on our sleeves. We were now called Airmen, not Airmen Basics. Another notable fact was that our staging area was right next to the area where we were first “greeted” by our TI’s on our first training day, and we were witnessing the arrival of those that were now beginning the 30 days of basic training just like those Airmen that were there when we arrived.
I boarded the bus with 20 to 30 other Airmen, all carrying our fully loaded duffle bags, and headed for Biloxi. With stops on the way for meals and driver changes we traveled until about 11:00 am the next day. There are only two things I remember about that bus ride. First, was the stop in Austin, Texas for breakfast about 2 hours after boarding the bus. It was a little diner somewhat like todays Denny’s or Village Inn but more mom and popish. We ate, re-boarded the bus and hit the road again. The rest of the trip is a blur. After being awake for over 24 hours, I was in and out of sleep for almost the entire trip. The second thing I remember was the beautiful beaches along Highway 90, following the Gulf Coast (Gulf of Mexico) from eastern Louisiana to Biloxi. Beautiful white sand, tall palm trees, amazing southern plantation-looking houses lined the highway. It was truly beautiful. I thought we had been the luckiest guys on the planet to have been selected for this duty station! Unfortunately, this was very short-lived. But I remember it very distinctly.
Today, that bus trip would have probably taken under 12 hours, with the Interstate Highways with speed limits of 80 mph in some areas but at least 70 without construction. We probably wouldn’t have stopped in Austin for breakfast. That would have cut at least 4 hours from our trip to start. But the rest of the trip was mostly on 2-way highways, with speed limits from 30 to 55 mph, traffic, traffic lights, you get the idea. It was a much longer trip with mostly strangers. There were a couple of guys from my flight and a couple of more that I recognized from my sister flight, but none of us were too talkative.
The bus entered the base at its main gate and we were taken to an indoctrination location where we were checked into the base, informed of places that were off-limits to us, and then assigned to a specific squadron. I was assigned to the 3402nd, known as the “Oh-Second”. That squadron was one of 8 in the “triangle area” of the base while others were located in the “Main Base” area. Triangle squadron buildings were three-story “T” shaped buildings comprised of around 12 3-man rooms on each floor of each of the bays. I remember 2 bays on each wing on 3 floors, so 18 bays. So maybe 600 to 630 Airmen housed in each squadron in the Triangle area. I never got into a Main Base dorm so I don’t know how they were set up or how many troops they housed.
So, once again we jumped on a bus and were taken to our squadrons. Dropped off at the front walk to the squadron, we walked towards the offices for another “indoctrination” by the squadron Officer-In-Charge, (OIC), First Sargent, and the Non-Commissioned Officer-In-Charge (NCOIC). While we were walking to the building, we kept hearing voices yelling “Ping” “Ping” “Ping”. We later found out that they called us that because ” if you listen really closely at night, you can hear our hair growing, ping, ping, ping. Of course that was in reference to our haircuts coming directly from basic training where we were practically bald. So they called us Ping Wings referring to our hair and single wing chevron on our sleeves, or just Pings, for short.
Along that same line, we were called “Rainbows” when we first got to Basic. That was because they first gave us bright yellow U.S. Air Force T-shirts to wear so we wouldn’t be confused with civilians on base. The Rainbow comes from the many different color of pants that were worn by the troops until the day that we were given our uniforms and got dressed in fatigues. Until then, we looked like marching rainbows when marching down the streets.
For the first two weeks after arrival at Keesler, we pulled squadron details, picking up cigarette butts, buffing floors, mowing grass, things like that. During that time we were told what our training was going to be. I was to be a “Technical Control Specialist”, a “3-0-7-X-0”! Some of those around us were going to be “tape-apes” or “ditty-bops” or “scope-dopes”, and we kind of knew what they were but a Tech Controller, nope, no one knew that one. We heard we were to be “glorified telephone operators”, but that was it. But we were now going to go to school! As a tech controller, I only needed to complete the first six blocks of electronics training, not the whole 9 that radio repairmen and the like were required to complete. Just DC circuits, AC circuits, Tubes, Transistors, Servo Transformers, and Heterodyne Receivers.
The first block was ok. Nothing to write home about but the second block was interrupted for two weeks by a little storm called Hurricane Camille, a Category 5 hurricane. At the time it was one of the worst storms to ever hit the U.S. mainland. Its eye came ashore about 27 mile down Highway 90 at Pass Christian and Bay St. Louis. The destruction was horrific! That beautiful beach was destroyed. Many of those beautiful southern houses were washed away and hundreds of souls were lost, many because they didn’t believe what they were told about the danger because they had heard it before and it didn’t turn out to be as bad as thought. This time, it was.
It was a tough couple of weeks for us, but not even close to the people of coastal Mississippi, Alabama, or Louisiana. I got back to that area a couple of years later and the beaches were still closed because of all the “junk” from the bottom of the gulf that had washed up onto the sand. Most of the palms were gone at half of the beautiful houses were now vacant lots. Heart breaking!
School started up two weeks after the storm and we all picked up right where we left off. That wasn’t good for me. I was just barely getting by and now, after a two week pause I was to start in the middle of a class. Not good. I got through it, barely. Then Tubes, Transistors, then Servos. One of those, I didn’t get through. I failed. I was given one more chance, fail again and I would be washed out of electronics and given something else. I envisioned Cook, Cop, or maybe Exterior Protective Coating Specialist (painter of building exteriors). Somehow, all of us passed. That meant we were headed home for a two-week leave! First leave I ever got so I jumped on a plan and went back to my home knowing that I had to return to start my tech control training. I couldn’t wait!
Leave was what it was expected to be, lots of meet and greets, stories of my short military career and theirs, and family reunions. Thanks giving was in the middle of it so there was lots of eating. It was good to head back to the base and to the training for the job that we had no idea was.
There is obviously no baseball in the near future so I’ll end this inning here with the promise that there is more to come. We’ll visit many parks, eat many hot dogs, and even play some very meaningful games, to me anyway, before this is over.