It is 9 January 1975 04:00 hours.  I am starting my first day in the Army. It is very cold in Des Moines this morning and very dark.   Getting up is not as much of a problem as going to sleep was the night before. In my mind, I am starting my child hood dream today.  From my very first memory of what I wanted to do I had always wanted to be in the Army.  I have to pack very lightly I have my orders, my bus ticket and meal vouchers along with one change of clothes.

            My mother of course is up like any mother she is not as pleased at my departure as I am.  She gets up and fixes breakfast for me and tries once again to convince me to choose another career.  I can only tell her the advantage of being in the National Guard is that I will come home with in the year to serve out my enlistment. My active duty would consist of only eight months of training and I return home to duty only one weekend a month and two weeks a year.  Of course my mother knew me better than that and no matter how it was going to start I would some day join the Army and be gone from her forever.

            My two best friends arrive at 05:00 to take me to the bus station.  My bus was to depart at 06:00.  My friends like my mother could not begin to understand my dream and were also trying to keep me at home as well.

I was going to Fort Leonardwood Missouri.  I think by actual road miles and a direct route it is like 300-350 miles. However as anyone who has ever had the pleasure of a bus trip it would be midnight eighteen hours later when I would arrive.

            The bus trip was nearly uneventful until the last 30 miles getting the fort.  By now everyone on this bus was going into the Army and going to Fort Leonardwood.  In the back of the bus was about ten or so men sitting around smoking a joint.  At some point I am not at all sure when the bus driver had managed to call ahead to the base and at the front gate we were met by the Military Police. We all had to get off the bus and after a brief search of us all those men were singled out and the rest of us allowed to proceed to the reception station.

            Of course it is about 20 degrees in Missouri at this time of the year and morning.  No one is welcoming us in a way we were use to.  Our welcoming was yelling, screaming and swearing like I had never heard before.  We were all quickly herded into a large room and our orders were collected.  After about 3 hours of filling in paper work we were taken to the dinning facility for breakfast.  After breakfast we were taken to our temporary barracks at the reception station for a generous 3 hours of downtime to sleep.

            The next week we were given haircuts, more paper exams, uniforms, ID cards, and a brief introduction to the Army and what our lives would be like in the future.  We were all given our serial numbers. By this time the Army had come to the conclusion that tracking soldiers by their social security number was easier than assigning yet another number to track us by.  Everyone all day wanted to know our social security numbers with in a day most of us had memorized them for life.

            The next step to the introduction to the Army was meeting our Drill Instructors  (DI) and transportation to our basic training barracks and units.  We all look like geeks now. All of hair has been gone for nearly a week. We are sitting on our duffle bags in the cold waiting for the arrival of our DI’s.

            Our wait in the cold was not long we were the first cycle of the new year and as such we were treated to the welcoming by not only our company DI’s but all the DI’s in the battalion came to meet us.  Of course for anyone with military experiences this meeting is far less than a welcome and much less than cordial.

            I never thought things could be worse by this time but I swear that not one of them could speak a single sentence with out at leas five swear words.  We were not human anymore and learning that was their first teaching objective to each of us. We were allowed to smoke and most were smoking when they arrived. I can thank God I had put mine out a few minutes before they arrived. Those still smoking learned to eat theirs.

            After a good half hour of screaming we were loaded in the back of semi trailers with seats know as cattle cars for our brief ride to our unit area.  Once there we were given the opportunity to exit the cattle cars on our own. For those that the DI’s felt did not move fast enough they were helped off.  We had in our arms all the Army had given us now. Everything we had brought with us we had to mail home while we were at the reception station.  As such we had a full duffle bag and an arm full of dress uniforms.  We were treated to a run around our barracks a dozen times and there was a DI about every ten feet to encourage every step we took.  If you weren’t moving fast enough you were encouraged by the boot of one the closest to you square in your behind. God help you if you fell. They swarmed around those few that did stumble like sharks in a feeding frenzy.

            Finally we were allowed to stop and they begin to teach us how to fall in and learn where we would stand for every formation after that.  Of course there were the few unlucky ones that the DI’s had all ready identified that would not make it and they were working on them.  Some men were peeing in their pants and we had not even been there a half hour yet.  I was too scared myself to do anything but try to be as inconspicuous as I could.

            For all the trauma that basic seemed to be at the beginning I actually soon took to it no matter how sore I was. The DI’s in those days would ride you all day long pushing you beyond anything you ever dreamed you could do. The difference between them and us was they knew better what we could be than we ever understood at the time. Their job, and they did it very well was to teach us how to push ourselves further and further every day and to learn to think as a team and act as one.  At night before lights out they would spend their time in the barracks with us sitting in the rooms reviewing with us what they had tried to teach us during the day. Not only were they reviewing it they would identify where we needed additional training and follow up. When ever possible in the evening they were human to us. Explaining many times why  they did what they did. It was important to them we understood not only what to do but why we should do it.

            One of the first goals of a leader in the Army was to teach a subordinate that the mission has to be completed no matter who survives a battle. The best and really only way to do that is first teach a solider what to do and when he has than down teach him why it is done the way it was.  Of course the end goal is that if a leader is killed in battle the soldiers will carry on as if he were still there and complete their mission.

            The second week I was in basic training I set my career goal. The White House Communications Agency was reviewing records and troops for assignment with the Agency.  I wanted very much to be assigned there after the orientation briefing. I was scheduled for training in one of the military occupational skills (MOS) they wanted.  I interviewed briefly with them and was quickly turned down. I was turned down because I was National Guard not regular Army. I told them my goal was to join the regular Army at the conclusion of basic training. That was not good enough too much paperwork and trouble for them to deal with.  I could envision then more hassles than it took to just get into the Army for me.

            None the less I set my goal that night that in time I would not only be assigned to the White House Communications Agency but I would be a Commanding Officer when I was there.  Pretty lofty goals for a young private E-1 would less than three weeks total service. But I knew and I would from that day on do every thing I needed to do to meet that goal.

            For the most part basic would be routine for me I did sustain an injury to my left knee that would stay with me through out my career and my life. During the live fire exercise where we run and work as  a fire maneuver team firing live ammunition I fell on my knee causing damage that would cause me pain for the next 23 years before it was finally operated on and repaired. The problem is in those days of course there were no MRI’s and x-rays could not identify the damage. Every doctor I saw for the next 20 years were very eager to perform what they called exploratory surgery so they could see the damage and repair it. I had the same response to all of them, I would tell them to cut their own knee open and when they explored their own knee well enough to know what they were doing then they could operate on mine.  In the end and 3 years after I retired an MRI identified the damage and the surgery was quick and left no scar.   I was so overwhelmed after 23 of constant pain that it could be solved so quickly. 

            Basic had helped me form my future and also gave me a life long injury as well. I did very well and was selected as a squad leader by the third week and stayed the squad leader for the duration.  I excelled in physical training in spite of my knee, ( I was good as sucking up pain) and in marksmanship I qualified expert with my rifle. I had excelled enough to be one of five soldiers selected for promotion when we graduated on 6 March 1975 and was promoted to Private E-2.  I actually got to wear one stripe now.

            One of the benefits of the modern Army then and being a member of the National Guard my follow on training was set in stone.  The night of graduation from basic training I boarded another bus this time headed for Fort Sill, Oklahoma.  The trip was actually further away than my bus trip to basic the difference was this was a chartered bus going from Fort Leonardwood to Fort Sill non stop.  We departed at 22:00 hours that night and arrived as I remember at Fort Sill the next day around noon.

            Fort Sill was the Army’s artillery training center.  There was one school there however that I needed to attend prior to my follow on training. I was going to learn how to be a Field Radio Mechanic.  In a front line combat unit like an infantry battalion, artillery or combat engineer battalion the radio mechanic was the first level repair for radios and all electronic equipment in the battalion. We were not allowed to do much actual repair but it was major in combat to have communications as soon as possible we were as good as it gets.

            The barracks there were very large buildings that had been around I believe 50-60 years very sturdy and 3 floors of open bay barracks where each bay would sleep 100 men. 

            The course it self was 10 weeks long mostly of basic electronic theory and specific training on many tactical radios including radio teletype equipment found in the Army’s combat units.  We were taught how to fabricate antennas, how to trouble shoot individual radios and radio systems found on every type of vehicle from a jeep to a tank.  I took to the training very well electronics had long been a hobby of mine.   Even my first job included learning how to repair televisions while I was only a sophomore in high school.  The biggest events I can remember during this training assignment  was not actually the training but the weather. We lived in tornado alley and we were living there during the peak of tornado season.  I can remember that for a two week period we had tornados every night. For myself and my friends we had all lived in the mid-west tornados were no big deal just another thunder storm. However for a lot of men they had never been in a thunder storm like we had much less seen or been around tornados.  My friends and I would do our best to sneak out on the balconies to watch the wind and lightning shows and smoke a cigarette.  While in the mean time men from the rank of sergeant on down were running around in the barracks putting mattresses up in front of windows and pretty much showing they had no clue what to do but they were determined to do something.  I still get amused to this day as I picture these scenes from my past.

            I graduated from this class  on 19 May 1975. I experienced another disadvantage to being in the National Guard at this point.  My next training class was going to be at Fort Gordon, Georgia.  Upon graduation my friends and peers that were in the regular Army were given a one week leave and travel time to get to Fort Gordon. I on the other hand was not allowed to leave and was assigned multiple extra duty tasks normally given to screw ups to keep me busy on the post for the next week.  My friends were going home for a week’s leave and I was stuck in Oklahoma with nothing to do of any value.

            I finally got my orders and was given a plane ticket to fly to Augusta, Georgia home of  Fort Gordon and I left Fort Sill on Saturday the beginning of Memorial day weekend 1975.  Not my idea then or now of a good way to start a three day weekend. 

I arrived at the Augusta airport just after midnight and it was hot and muggy and the weather actually never changed from the day I got there at the end of May until I left the end of August.

            I was at Fort Gordon to be trained as a Field Radio Repairman. Here I was trained to repair all electronic equipment to the actual component level. It was somewhat a self pace course with instructors and class rooms you move through at your own pace when it came to testing.  Again I excelled in this area and really enjoyed the classes.  Fort Gordon on the other hand was not the ideal assignment unless you were a freak on clean and power.  The leadership there had a major power trip that went through out the post.  A soldier was required to basically salute anything that moved. Most military bases you were only obligated to salute an officer when he was in uniform and you were in uniform or if you were out of uniform and he was out of uniform and you recognized him as an officer. That is also the way the regulation is written to this day.  Salutes are exchanged when you recognized an officer.  However at Fort Gordon there were many officer training courses going on there as well as enlisted training classes.  These young lieutenants and in some cases even captains would often wonder through the enlisted areas out of uniform. They would stop us for not saluting them and as far as any of us knew they were just another one of us until they pulled out an ID card and would chew us out for not saluting them.  Along with the chewing out usually came a night or two of  extra duty for punishment.  I got very discouraged at this behavior in the Army.  I never liked abuse of power before.  It certainly made me glad I was in the National Guard and my time left in the Army was now short.  It did also instill in me a different sense of right and wrong and how to control power. What I experienced at Fort Gordon was another major motivator in becoming an officer my self so I could at least control how soldiers would be treated under my command.

I tried as hard as I could to be invisible the last month I was at Fort Gordon. At the time I use to swear to my friends that I would sooner lie naked and starving in a gutter than ever go to Fort Gordon again.  I left at the end of August 1975 in hopes of a simple civilian life and doing my duty in the National Guard.

I never dreamed in less than 3 years I would be right back at Fort Gordon again as a Second Lieutenant. My opinion of Fort Gordon would never change no matter how many times I would go there in my 20 year career or no matter my rank from private to major.