I was so happy to be home in Des Moines again. I spent a week just getting my old 1964 Mercury Park Lane running and hanging out with my friends. I looked for work a little each day starting the first week.  I had just completed one the Army’s most intensive electronic repair courses so I thought I was ready to take on the world and show them all my skills.  Little did I know that finding work was not going to be all that easy no matter what I though I knew.

            Since I was still in the National Guard I had to report back to my unit, Company A, 234^th Signal Battalion and let them know I was back and give them the sealed envelop that I got when I left Fort Gordon.  Reporting in was quite different than with the regular Army. I wore my civilian clothes and simply walked into the orderly room.  The sergeant there was Sergeant First Class (SFC) Davenport he had helped me in so many ways to get the waiver I needed to join in the first place.  For the first time in 9 month I was speaking with a sergeant man to man and becoming friends.

            SFC Davenport went through all my records now and took out dozens of papers he said he would not need. He also gave me folders for my pay records and personal records he gave back to me along with copies of everything he kept. He told me something that day I would remember my whole career to make sure I kept a copy of every single paper the Army ever gave to me. No matter how good a company clerk was he would never be as interested in my welfare as I would be.  So from that day I made it a point to keep copies of everything, from every leave and earnings statement, to every single written order I ever received.  Every 3 years after that point I saw exactly what SFC Davenport told me was true. The Army seemed to always want to cut me short a year or two of service and the orders I kept along with the pay records kept every one straight.  It never ceased to amaze me how often everyone wanted to cheat me out of my years of service time after time.  I will always be grateful to SFC Davenport and the advice he gave to me that day and for the next 3 years we worked together.

            By the third week at home and not finding a job I was getting pretty worried that I would be joining the regular army much sooner than I ever planned.  I could not find a decent job at all. I went the Armory that Friday afternoon to talk to SFC Davenport and I met my company First Sergeant, (1SG) Chuck Gibson, I have to tell you I was still a private and what I had been through in the first 9 months of active Army training you did not ever speak to the 1SG unless spoken too and you came to your feet and to parade rest when ever he came into the room.  He was a little surprised at first because he had been the National Guard now himself about 10 years and was not use to that. Things were a little more relaxed shall we say.  1SG Gibson soon learned of my plight about work and offered me a job at the company he worked at.  He called the owner and I went down to meet him and was hired on the spot for a whopping $150.00 a week. Yes that was a lot of money back then I had just left the Army and was only clearing about $320.00 a month when I left. I would also be getting another $65.00 a month for my drill pay. I was rich or so I thought.

            1SG Gibson was my supervisor at my job we installed background music (Musak) all over Des Moines along with alarm systems, telephone systems, and basically any thing else having to do with electronics and wiring.  It was not exactly as technical as I had hoped for but it was a good job and I worked with some great people.

            1SG Gibson quit about a month after I started working there to go back on active duty as a recruiter for the National Guard he and I became close friends and I learned a lot from him about leadership and loyalty over the next 3 years.

            By December I was promoted to Private First Class, not a lot of money but it was a promotion non the less.  Duty with the guard was very routine on our weekend drills we either did repair work or got ready for our two week summer camp.  I was about the only one in the entire to spit shine my boots and always wear a starched uniform except the 1SG and the Company Commander. 

            By December of 1975 I was also dating my first love again. Things worked out after everyone learned and accepted the truth about my problems enlisting. Her parents actually liked me. We were an item again and I could not be happier than when she invited me over to her house on Christmas Eve.  I was on top of the world now, I was in love, I was spending my first Christmas with my love I had a good job and good friends I was thinking this is the life and I was only 19 years old.

            February 1976 came along and my birthday. However my birthday is on the 13^th and for the some reason when my birthday falls on a Friday terrible things tend to happen to me.  This year was no exception at all. In fact it was the worst birthday of my life up until then.  The afternoon of my birthday I got into an argument with the owner and my bosses were not there to protect me from my self and I ended up quitting on the spot.  He had called me a liar and I had never told a lie in my life I had quit one other job for the same reason when I was 16.  Then with in a couple of hours of that disaster my girlfriend and I broke up once and for all. Both events were totally out of the blue and the last thing I was thinking when I woke up that morning.  Here I just turned 20 years old and I lost my job and my girlfriend both in the span of 3 hours.

            Finding work was not as hard this time.  1SG Gibson was not only working full time on active duty but he was working a deal on the side with a company out of Kansas City where he and SFC Davenport would take a week off about every other month and install teletype systems around the Midwest reporting on commodities in local grain elevators and brokerage houses.  He was getting more jobs than he could keep up with so he contracted with me to do the work from then on. I took 50% of the money for my labor, and he took 50% and furnished me with a truck to drive, the tools I needed and covered my expenses.  For the summer of 1976 I was working maybe 2-3 weeks a month all over the Midwest from Ohio in the east to Nebraska in the west and Minnesota in the north and Texas in the south. I was making now anywhere from $500 to $1,000 a week very good money for 1976 for anyone not to mention a 20 year old.  I loved to drive and I loved to climb to put up antennas so it was great time.

            By September the company we contracted with most wanted to hire me full time now. Only one system I had installed in all that time failed and it only failed because a tornado took out the antenna.  They wanted to hire me as a supervisor but wanted me to move to Kansas City to live and work out of there.

            At any other time I may have accepted but that summer my company commander in the National Guard had talked me in to going to Officer Candidate School. I had planned that ever since I heard of it when I enlisted in the National Guard in 1974; he just talked me into going a year earlier than I had planned.  I could not move to Kansas City and give up my life’s dream of being an Army Officer so I declined. 

            1SG Gibson being the loyal friend he was and having a lot of faith in me talked the state recruiting office into putting me on active duty helping out with administrative work until I could find a job.  Before I could find one on my own Gibson found one for me out of Champaign Illinois. They had called him because of the good work I had done for their competitor all summer long and wanted to hire me. The difference was I could come back to Des Monies every weekend and the goal was to open an office for me by January 1977 in Des Moines.  That worked for only 3 months before they decided they wanted me to move to Illinois full time. Again I had to decline my Officer Candidate School (OCS) was to start in January 1997 and I was not going to quit before I started.

            I promoted to Sergeant the day I started OCS in January. The pay difference helped me through for my weekend duty and 1sg Gibson kept me working as much as he could I even went and got a license to drive a taxi and I did that until April of 1977.

            In April of 1977 I was selected to drive the Deputy Adjutant General to a nation-wide National Guard conference and dinner being held in Des Moines.  My state OCS program was one of I believe 3 that were authorized to wear the cadet uniforms of West Point while we attended OCS. The night of the dinner I wore my cadet grey uniform with all the trimmings and look very sharp. I was to pick up and drive the general and his wife to the dinner that night. I was allowed of course in those days to bring my own date as well. Needless to say her mother and her were both pretty excited when I pulled up to their house driving the staff car.  I picked her up and we went out to Camp Dodge to pick up the General and his wife.

            The general was one of best officers I had ever met. I had met him a year or so earlier because 1SG Gibson wanted me to meet him.  We talked small talk on our drive to and from the dinner where the General learned I was having trouble finding decent work. I told him it looked like I would be quitting OCS after all and going back in the Army and serve as an enlisted man.  He told me not to give up that easy and also ordered me to report to the civilian personnel office Monday morning and tell the Colonel in charge I sent you and to find a job for me.  I always did seem to be lucky with having friends in high places.

            I dropped the General and his wife off at home and my date and I stayed out in the staff car for several hours after that.

            Come Monday morning I did half of what the General told me to do. I did in fact go to the civilian personnel office and I did see the Colonel and told him I was looking for a job. He quickly told me there were non to be had for Sergeants at the time.  So rejected I went home.  1SG Gibson not one to give up as easy as I was called me and asked me what kind of job I got that day.  He and I had talked that morning so he knew what the General told me Saturday night. He was mad at me for not telling the Colonel exactly what the General told me to say. I told Chuck (we were on a first name basis now) that I felt bad about using the General like that to get a job. He corrected me and told me that the General liked me and had liked me every time he met me. He wanted to do anything he could do to help me become an officer and to stay with the National Guard.  So Chuck called the General and an hour later I was called and told to report to the recruiting officer the next day. I was ordered to active duty as a sergeant and finished that year out on active duty as one of two active duty sergeants for the National Guard in Des Moines that year.

            During the OCS training late in the summer of 1977 there was one incident that occurred that I will never forget.  Like most soldiers going through that kind of training we did not get a lot of personal time during our weekends at OCS to do things like shine boots or make beds the way we were required. So we all would sleep on the top of our bunks and the top blanket and never between the sheets it would take too much extra time in the mornings to make our bunks if we did.  Well that weekend we were warned repeatedly that would no longer be allowed and we were to sleep between the sheet or else.  We went to bed as usual that night at 10:00 and not one of us crawled between our sheets it simply would not work in the morning to make our beds in time so no matter what we figured we would be in trouble.  We were often given no win situations in OCS to see how we would work through them. 

            The next morning about 02:30 in the morning the Tactical Officers came through our barracks. The problem is they were both very drunk. I slept at the far end of the bay so as soon as they came in I heard the commotion and slipped very quickly between the sheets. At the front end of the barracks the Tactical Officers were dumping men out of their bunks that were not sleeping between the sheets and then tipping wall lockers over on them. The lights came on and we saw what was up and those of us awake were in shock. We were use to shouting and yelling and abuse but normal military training abuse; this was not normal and was abusive to the man.  They would only dump the men that were asleep onto the concrete floor just to watch their heads bounce.  I was very angry along with my friends near by we were trying our best to wake men up to get them between the sheets but these officers were fast.  They came to the bed across from me and dumped out our biggest man. He came up surprised and almost decked the officer before he woke up and stopped his swing an inch or two from his face.

            The officers continued on with their destruction until they had pushed over and emptied every wall locker, dumped out every foot locker, and tore up every bed and put it all in the middle of the floor. They left after that cussing and swearing and telling us that next time they told us to sleep between the sheets we better do it.

            We spent the next two hours sorting through all our things and getting our displays in the lockers and foot lockers back in order. We may have gotten 2 hours of sleep after that.  We talked the whole time about what had happened and what could we do about it. Most just resolved themselves that it was part of the training and there was nothing that could be done.  That was not good enough for me what happened was wrong and it was abuse of power. One other cadet agreed with me so the two of us went to the commandant’s office the next morning to resign from OCS. When we told the Major we were quitting he quickly called in his deputy and we told them both the story. They asked if anyone else would come forward and we said no they believed it was part of the training and fair.  I told the Major if that is the kind of officer you want me to be I would rather be a civilian. He spoke right back to me and asked if I really believed that is what he wanted. I said no. He asked us next if anyone would back our story and we said no would lie but no one else would volunteer any information either.  He made us promise to give him the morning before we would be allowed to quit.

            All morning during our classes each man was asked out of the classroom one at a time until either the Commandant or his deputy asked them about the events in the barracks the night before.  By 10:00 they had talked to each man and we were on our break now very nervous about what kind of trouble we would end up in for telling what had happened.  We went back to class with no resolution until 10:30. We were ordered to take another break and led to the front of our complex of buildings. We never were allowed in the front until after the weekend training was finished. To our surprise we saw the Commandant, his Deputy and the MPs the two Majors were throwing the two tactical officers out of their rooms along with their personal belongings into the yard. They were told to report to state headquarters on Monday morning and turn in their resignations or face court martial. Then the Major ordered the MPs to take the men off the base and not allow them back on until Monday morning and then to escort them straight to the Commanding General. We never saw either of them ever again.

            Both Majors had us fall into formation and they told us what had happened was not acceptable and was not something they wanted us to carry away as acceptable. As officers they told us it was our sworn duty to protect our soldiers that were under our command as our primary duty and to ever abuse them was the worst crime an officer or anyone in authority could ever do

            I of course did not quit and finished out my training and was commissioned a Second Lieutenant on 5 February 1978.  With my commission I had to give up my full time job as a recruiter but I was not too worried I had a couple of weeks of leave built up that I was paid, the general found another weeks active duty for me to do and I was reporting to Fort Gordon on the 24^th of February 1978 to attend my Signal Officer’s Basic Course.  I was 21 soon to be 22 and I was a Second Lieutenant life could not be better.