Life's school
My first year in the Air Force...
I was sworn in on February 6th, 1966.
Actually, when I went signed up, at the urging of my
WW2 Army Air Force veteran father, I
had kind of resigned myself to making a career out of it so I didn't feel too
bad about joining the Air Force to avoid Vietnam. Compared with civilian life,
Basic Training was bad but was about what I expected and I was sure, from what
everyone said, that things would be better once I got to tech school and even
better when I got to my duty assignment.
I was certainly wrong about tech school...
Social life and discipline at Chanute AFB in Rantoul,
IL. was a bad dream, if not a nightmare. Due to the increase in AF recruiting
during Vietnam, classes were accelerated from the normal 5 day a week, 9 months
of school to six days a week for seven months. Up at 4:30AM, march to the chow
hall at 5AM, march to class at 5:30AM with classes from 6AM until noon and march
to the chow hall. Lunch from 12:30 to 1:00 and then back to the barracks to
clean, press and shine barracks and clothes and get inspected. Uniforms so well
starched and ironed that they had to stand by themselves. Shoes polished like
mirrors. Shoes and heels were double souled and wore out twice before we left.
One Squadron called the chrome domes was required by their commander to starch
their hats filled with a balloon so that they were perfectly round.
We did get to walk alone to the chow hall for supper
instead of march, but had to be back in the barracks at 8PM to have time for
mandatory homework and lights out was at 9PM.
The chow hall and snack bars all served beer so most
recreation consisted of drinking ourselves into a stupor in the chow hall or
into a frenzy at the airman's club on Saturday night.
Many of the kids, like me, were within driving distance
of home with a two day weekend which might have relieved some of the tension
but, with only Sundays off, there was no break. Some went nutso... One big guy
got drunk and tore all of the pipe out of the showers in a couple of barracks
and flooded them both before someone stopped him. Another put his fist through a
window and nearly bled to death before they got him to the hospital.
Speaking of the hospital, there was a guy in the first
room of our barracks that always got to sleep in and, when awake, did pretty
much what he wanted to do. I found out after a while that he was recovering from
botched medical care. Shortly after he got to Chanute he complained of a belly
ache. He reported to the hospital several times but they only gave him
medication for the pain. One day they couldn't wake him up because he was in a
coma. Turns out he had appendicitis and it had burst. When he was well enough to
leave, rather than give him a medical discharge, they gave him the duty of his
choice. I think he played some sort
of horn and he chose to become a member of the AF Band. I think his rank was
also changed from from E1 to E5. When he left Chanute though, his stomach was still so
distended that he looked pregnant.
The break at the end of June between Electronic
Principles training and Minuteman Missile school was a couple of weeks but not
nearly enough time to unwind from four and a half months of stress. I also spent
much of my break time replacing the engine in my Renault so I could drive it
back to Chanute. That didn't leave me much time to socialize. Being summer, it
was also hard to find anyone I knew to socialize with. I did run into Joanne at
a teen night spot and she broke away from her date to talk with me while we
danced. It was good that we talked. She was very sweet and, since I was more in
lust than in love, her departure from me was easy but it was still a sad loss at
a time when things were already not going so well. In all, I didn't have near as
much fun as I expected to have and was just as lonely when I left Midland as
when I got there.
Though having a car made it possible to get around
Rantoul and Champaign-Urbana where the college and all the girls were, GIs, with
our short haircuts which made us stick out like cue balls in a shag carpet,
weren't made to feel welcome many places.
In those days shortly after the Beatles came to town,
short hair was a real show stopper with college girls and the drive-in crowd. It
also didn't help that there were probably hundreds of transient GIs for every
local girl. Aside from the guys who could afford to bring their wives back to
Chanute during the break when they were allowed to, I only new two guys who ever
had a date. One was a guy from Detroit who had a Corvette and the other was a
guy who started an affair with the local uniform seamstress whose Tech Sergeant
husband was off in Vietnam. Oh, and there were some who paid for the privilege
of dating the local "Lady of the Evening". From the stories I heard,
she was a real busy gal.
There wasn't much happiness or joy in the off hours,
but the Tech School classes weren't too bad. The technical instructors treated
us much more like human beings than the training instructors and, through the
stories of their AF lives, gave us a glimpse of what we could expect once we got
to our duty stations. Most really did enjoy their service lives and that gave me
some optimism that my decision to join might not have been that bad.
By the time I left Chanute for a short vacation at the
end of Tech School (in late November, I think), my expectations were high for my
next stop at Francis E. Warren AFB in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
As with the summer break, my time in Michigan was also
something of a disappointment. My car's engine broke again in Rantoul just
before it was time to go. With no money to repair it, I had to abandon it there
and had no transportation when I got back to Midland. I was only able to borrow
my dad's car a couple of times so I ended up spending most of my time there
hanging around the house and the local neighborhood.
My brother had a car that would start but only seemed
to run on half of it's cylinders and backfired like crazy. I heard one night
about a dance (at the City Forest, I think) so I took a chance and drove it
anyway. I managed to make it to the dance and was pleasantly surprised when
Connie Williams walked in with some of her friends. I think that Marlene Beavers
was there
with her but am not sure.
I
fell in love with Connie when we first met and, at the
time, she was the love of my life. I didn't fall out of love with
her for a long time, even after we fell apart. I'm afraid it was one of those
unrequited things. [After 40 years apart, Connie and I met again recently, and though I remember almost every
minute I spent with her when we were kids, she remembered almost none of those same minutes.]
Anyway, that night I waited for a slow song and asked her to dance with me so we
could talk (and I could hold her, of course). She went back to the girls after
that and I waited for slow music so I could ask again but, to my enormous
disappointment, she left. That left me feeling even sadder.
My flight to FE Warren AFB was standby, which was usual
for military folks back then I think, and I got bumped. I didn't get into
Cheyenne until the middle of the night and had to wait until a couple of
transportation guys came to get me in a pickup truck. They didn't know what to
do with me so I ended up in some VIP like officers quarters for about a week,
which was great.
I eventually got a barracks room, which wasn't bad, and
met up with some of the guys I'd known from Chanute, which was good. As I got to
know my way around, and learned where all the base recreation facilities and
downtown hotspots were, I started to feel much better about my situation, . The
food at the chow hall was even pretty decent. I wasn't 21 yet, so the bars were
still off limits, but since most GI's had better cars and more money than the
local kids did, for them (not me yet), meeting girls at the drive-ins and other social places was easy
and fun.
Although most of the 1966 was pretty rough for me,
things were beginning to look up for 1967.