My grammar school classmate Larry Stephan was killed somewhere near the DMZ in Vietnam on May 1, 1967. In August, 1967 I joined the Air Force. I went into the Air Force because I had a 1A draft classification, I didn’t want to be drafted, I didn’t want to be killed, and I didn’t want to go to Canada.
In 1965 when the US was "attacked" in the Gulf of Tonkin I had been in favor of the war. At 18 I thought I would go when the time came. By 1967 I had no feelings of patriotic duty to save the world from Communism. It was pretty obvious to me by then we were fighting a colonial war in Vietnam and we were on the wrong side of history.
In December of 1966 I had fallen in love with Cathy Bruemmer, a freshman at Mount St. Mary’s College and joining the Air Force seemed the best way to stay alive and plan a life with Cathy.
I was 20 years old and not a deep person. I struggled some but when the time came, I just gave in. It was easy enough to go to a recruiting office and start the process and then it took on a life of its own. I gave in to my dreams of being John Wayne, a soldier, like my father in World War II, prove myself. It also ended any struggles I was having in school. The semester I joined I had a D average. It gave me a new start; let me run away from home.
In June I went to the Recruitment Center in downtown Los Angeles and went through the process. I got in line with a hundred other young men. We stripped down to our underwear and went from medical station to medical station. At the end of it, we took an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies. We got to put our clothes back on for the oath, but it didn’t make any difference, we still looked naked and vulnerable.
As only made sense in the Department of Defense, I was in the Delayed Enlistment Program, which meant I was sworn in in June, but didn’t actually go in the Air Force until August. In August I went back through the medical examination again. The night before there had been a going away party for me at home and I had gotten very drunk and spent the night groping Cathy before I had to show up. An Army doctor asked me if I was OK. I must have looked as bad as I felt. "I'm OK," I said, it was too late to go back and the process continued. At the end of it, instead of going home like I had before , I boarded a bus and we headed for the airport.
I remember when my father said good-bye to me that morning. He looked me directly in the eye and gripped my hand. I could see sadness, love, and fear in his eyes, felt it in the way his hands held on to mine. History was repeating itself in our family and it wasn't a good thing. My parents had been in favor of the War, it was a sore subject between us when I brought it up, but a few months later my mother was working for Eugene McCarthy and my father agreed with her.
We arrived in Amarillo, Texas in the dark hours of the morning. A couple of sergeants met us and took us on a bus to the base. We passed under a sign that said something like “Home of our greatest weapon.” I didn’t get it. Someone later explained to me we were the weapon. I never felt like anyone’s weapon. We had breakfast in the chow hall and then were taken to a barracks. Everyone was pretty nice to us. That was the end of that. No one treated us like human beings again for a very long time.
The next morning we started the process of becoming airmen. I found myself among 40 other young men from all over the country. There were a few of us from California and young men like ourselves from Kentucky, Georgia, and everywhere else. At 20 I was one of the oldest, most were 18, just out of high school. We told each other where we were from, what airports we flew from and what the trip to Amarillo had been like. We gave our names to each other and then we fell in line.
The first day we got haircuts and uniforms. The haircut was a buzz cut as close to the scalp as possible. I had gotten a haircut before I went, not a buzz cut, just short and ordinary. In 1967 the length of one's hair was an important marker. One or two of my fellow recruits had long hair and it ended up the floor along with everyone else's. When we were left free again that evening we were all shocked to see people we didn’t know. We had to reintroduce ourselves. We were bald headed young men in green fatigues and we had begun to look indistinguishable from one another.
The drill sergeants were mostly Southerners and had accents that sounded like the flat Texas panhandle of Amarillo. Our drill instructor was Airman 1st Class Steinberg. Later Airmen 1st were called sergeants. As we marched by other flights Airman 1st Class Steinberg was taunted by their drill instructors, all staff sergeants. They attacked his name, his heritage and his rank. Steinberg responded back in the same mean aggressive voice. Taunting, belittling, degrading were the language of basic training. Everybody did it and since there was nothing lower than an Airman Basic, we were taunted constantly. Foul language, racial epithets, regional slurs, homophobia were all practiced and allowed in those days.
It was a long six weeks. We marched, cleaned the barracks, got shots, took tests, attended a few sixth grade level classes, learned how to pull the trigger on an M16, got ready to do a one mile run in 8 minutes or less, smoked,” smoke if you have ‘em,” and went to the small BX near our barracks when we had free time, which wasn’t much. The last two Saturdays we had day passes to go to town. I stayed in the barracks the first Saturday because someone in my squad had screwed up.
We learned military discipline. Do what you’re told. The consequences of not doing what you were told were not good. There was a motivation flight where those who needed it were harassed constantly. Everywhere they went they marched double time. With their hang dog beaten looks, they looked like prisoners. Most of them got discharges after a few weeks in the motivation flight. It was a way out, but it didn't seem worth it. Whatever we were before we arrived at Amarillo Air Force Base, after that first day we were slicks, no stripes on our sleeves. At the end of basic training we were promoted to Airmen 3rd Class. We were congratulated and we had a single stripe.
In 1965 when the US was "attacked" in the Gulf of Tonkin I had been in favor of the war. At 18 I thought I would go when the time came. By 1967 I had no feelings of patriotic duty to save the world from Communism. It was pretty obvious to me by then we were fighting a colonial war in Vietnam and we were on the wrong side of history.
In December of 1966 I had fallen in love with Cathy Bruemmer, a freshman at Mount St. Mary’s College and joining the Air Force seemed the best way to stay alive and plan a life with Cathy.
I was 20 years old and not a deep person. I struggled some but when the time came, I just gave in. It was easy enough to go to a recruiting office and start the process and then it took on a life of its own. I gave in to my dreams of being John Wayne, a soldier, like my father in World War II, prove myself. It also ended any struggles I was having in school. The semester I joined I had a D average. It gave me a new start; let me run away from home.
In June I went to the Recruitment Center in downtown Los Angeles and went through the process. I got in line with a hundred other young men. We stripped down to our underwear and went from medical station to medical station. At the end of it, we took an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies. We got to put our clothes back on for the oath, but it didn’t make any difference, we still looked naked and vulnerable.
As only made sense in the Department of Defense, I was in the Delayed Enlistment Program, which meant I was sworn in in June, but didn’t actually go in the Air Force until August. In August I went back through the medical examination again. The night before there had been a going away party for me at home and I had gotten very drunk and spent the night groping Cathy before I had to show up. An Army doctor asked me if I was OK. I must have looked as bad as I felt. "I'm OK," I said, it was too late to go back and the process continued. At the end of it, instead of going home like I had before , I boarded a bus and we headed for the airport.
I remember when my father said good-bye to me that morning. He looked me directly in the eye and gripped my hand. I could see sadness, love, and fear in his eyes, felt it in the way his hands held on to mine. History was repeating itself in our family and it wasn't a good thing. My parents had been in favor of the War, it was a sore subject between us when I brought it up, but a few months later my mother was working for Eugene McCarthy and my father agreed with her.
We arrived in Amarillo, Texas in the dark hours of the morning. A couple of sergeants met us and took us on a bus to the base. We passed under a sign that said something like “Home of our greatest weapon.” I didn’t get it. Someone later explained to me we were the weapon. I never felt like anyone’s weapon. We had breakfast in the chow hall and then were taken to a barracks. Everyone was pretty nice to us. That was the end of that. No one treated us like human beings again for a very long time.
The next morning we started the process of becoming airmen. I found myself among 40 other young men from all over the country. There were a few of us from California and young men like ourselves from Kentucky, Georgia, and everywhere else. At 20 I was one of the oldest, most were 18, just out of high school. We told each other where we were from, what airports we flew from and what the trip to Amarillo had been like. We gave our names to each other and then we fell in line.
The first day we got haircuts and uniforms. The haircut was a buzz cut as close to the scalp as possible. I had gotten a haircut before I went, not a buzz cut, just short and ordinary. In 1967 the length of one's hair was an important marker. One or two of my fellow recruits had long hair and it ended up the floor along with everyone else's. When we were left free again that evening we were all shocked to see people we didn’t know. We had to reintroduce ourselves. We were bald headed young men in green fatigues and we had begun to look indistinguishable from one another.
The drill sergeants were mostly Southerners and had accents that sounded like the flat Texas panhandle of Amarillo. Our drill instructor was Airman 1st Class Steinberg. Later Airmen 1st were called sergeants. As we marched by other flights Airman 1st Class Steinberg was taunted by their drill instructors, all staff sergeants. They attacked his name, his heritage and his rank. Steinberg responded back in the same mean aggressive voice. Taunting, belittling, degrading were the language of basic training. Everybody did it and since there was nothing lower than an Airman Basic, we were taunted constantly. Foul language, racial epithets, regional slurs, homophobia were all practiced and allowed in those days.
It was a long six weeks. We marched, cleaned the barracks, got shots, took tests, attended a few sixth grade level classes, learned how to pull the trigger on an M16, got ready to do a one mile run in 8 minutes or less, smoked,” smoke if you have ‘em,” and went to the small BX near our barracks when we had free time, which wasn’t much. The last two Saturdays we had day passes to go to town. I stayed in the barracks the first Saturday because someone in my squad had screwed up.
We learned military discipline. Do what you’re told. The consequences of not doing what you were told were not good. There was a motivation flight where those who needed it were harassed constantly. Everywhere they went they marched double time. With their hang dog beaten looks, they looked like prisoners. Most of them got discharges after a few weeks in the motivation flight. It was a way out, but it didn't seem worth it. Whatever we were before we arrived at Amarillo Air Force Base, after that first day we were slicks, no stripes on our sleeves. At the end of basic training we were promoted to Airmen 3rd Class. We were congratulated and we had a single stripe.
During that six weeks, I scored the highest of any airman there on the language aptitude test. That week there were no slots for the foreign language training institute, a two year assignment in Monterey, California, studying Russian or Chinese or one of a dozen other languages. Instead I would learn Morse code at Keesler Air Force Base. I didn’t know it at the time, but that was in preparation to be a Morse Code Intercept Operator in the Air Force Security Service. Security Service is what they called the Air Force electronic intelligence gathering unit under the direction of the National Security Agency. They had bases all over the world most of them close to the Soviet Union or China. The NSA had convinced the Air Force to give them their top recruits. I was always good at aptitude tests and scored very high. When I arrived at my duty station I found myself with a lot of other college students now airmen who had also scored high. The job didn’t require much intelligence but apparently NSA convinced the Air Force it did.
At the end of Basic Training I won the Airman something or other Medal, a medal given to the best recruit of the period. I was selected to compete because as hard as I tried not to appear different, I was picked as being above average in literacy and then drilled on nonsensical questions, such as how many stripes on the American Flag, what color, and in what order? Airman 1st Class Steinberg had left on leave after a few weeks to get married, a welcome respite for us, the Sergeant from our sister flight who took over had a sense of humor. Steinberg returned at the end of our training when I went to the General’s office to get the medal. He was more scared than I was. I was pretty relaxed; he was a nervous wreck. Someone stole the medal from my locker at the next base I went to.
After graduation I stayed at Amarillo AFB for a few days and then boarded a series of planes from Amarillo to Midland to New Orleans to Biloxi, Mississippi.
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