This one took some time with a few revisions to keep from getting into too much military detail that might lose the reader.
February
1966 to February 1968
In September
of 1964 I started classes at Chico State College studying agriculture. My studying habits dissipated quickly as
many of the classes reminded me of high school, which I never enjoyed and I
started skipping classes. Farm work was
more interesting, since I was more the hands on type than academic. After
the first semester I dropped out. The
best thing about being a student was having the student deferment to keep me
off the 1A list of the local draft board.
It wasn’t until November of 1965 when the draft board found out I was no
longer a student. I tried to get an agricultural deferment, but
they did not go for that and classified me 1-A, available for military
service. In December Uncle Sam sent me
an induction notice with a date to report to the military induction center in
Oakland, California for a physical.
This place was like a livestock processing facility where you stripped
down to your shorts, got in line and proceeded through different medical
exams. My conclusion when it was all
over was if you could walk you were fit to serve. Some people had x-rays of broken bones or
some past injury, they really did not care as long as you could walk. We returned home after this to await our
fate. Some enlisted in the Air Force or
Navy for three years to avoid being drafted into the Army for two years with a high
probability of going to Vietnam. Not wanting to enlist and serve three years, I
just waited and sure enough a letter arrived in January 1966 with my report
date back to the induction center for another physical exam and afterward
officially inducted in to the US Army. From
there we were bussed to the reception center at Fort Ord, California where we were
tested for different skills, indoctrinated about military life and asked what
kind of training we wanted to receive. After a week or two we were sent to different
military posts around the country for eight weeks of basic training. I ended up at Fort Hood, Texas in the 41st
Mechanized Infantry Battalion of the Second Armored Division. Fort Hood was as big place and had modern facilities,
it was almost like living in college dorms, and even the mess halls were
nice. The daily routine was an early morning mile
run, marching out to the rifle range, classes on how to maintain your M-14
rifle, how to march in formation and all the ways to do harm to the enemy. I don’t recall much harassment from the
drill sergeants. During my 4th
week of basic training my left arm broke while doing pull ups before entering
the mess hall for dinner. The drill
sergeant sent for the company medic who got me into an ambulance and off we
went to the hospital. After x-rays
they discovered it was a bone cyst in my left humerus that caused the
break. I was placed on the orthopedic
ward on the 3rd floor of the hospital. The next day the chief military surgeon, a
colonel, paid me a visit to inform me my arm would require surgery and a bone
graft. After the surgery a hospital corpsman was
trying to wake me up in the ICU. I noticed a big heavy cast from my hand to my
shoulder and all supported by a rope around my neck. The cast was intended to be heavy enough to
keep the humerus straight as there was no way it could be pinned. A week or so later I was sent home for 30 days
of convalescence leave. When I returned
to Fort Hood the cast was removed along with the wires that stitched up the
incision that ran from my left shoulder to the elbow. I went through a therapy program for a couple
of months to regain strength in my arm.
After rehabilitation and being found fit for duty I was transferred out
of the hospital to an old WWII barracks where hospital personnel lived. I was assigned as a hospital corpsman on the
orthopedic ward where I had been a patient.
It was on-the-job training and being low man on the totem pole my first
assignment was taking care of bed pans used by bed ridden patients, many who
had been wounded in Vietnam. I took
orders from everybody, including the head nurse, a female First Lieutenant, the
senior Non-Commissioned Officer (NCO), a Sergeant First Class and all others
that outranked me. About 75% of the
patients on this ward had some kind of injury from the war, mostly land mines,
booby traps and a few gun shots. It was
customary that the wounded would return to the nearest military hospital closet
to their home until they were well enough to go home. Over
the next few months I did a little of everything from treating bed sores,
changing bed linen, taking vital signs, issuing mediations, including two beers
a day to bed patients and assisting the medical staff with all kinds of procedures
. I was told the beer helped flush out
the patient’s kidneys. It was Budweiser
beer which today is the last beer I would ever drink.
Somewhere
during all this I was promoted to Private First Class (PFC) where you get one
stripe to wear on your uniform. By
December orders came from above for me to return to basic training at Fort
Polk, Louisiana. This place had to be
the armpit of the world and made Fort Hood look like a vacation playground. The facilities were WWII vintage and it was
cold and wet in the winter. The senior
drill sergeant had special names for us that I can’t repeat here. The barracks were drafty with little or no
heat that I can remember and the bathrooms were one big room with toilets and
showers, no privacy here. Since I was a
PFC they bestowed upon me the rank of acting platoon leader, but soon was
demoted to a squad leader since nobody could keep in step with my stride when
we marched. We were up at 4 am and had 15 minutes to wash,
get dressed, make our beds and be ready for morning formation. For those that did not get up promptly the drill
sergeant would turn their beds over for a rude awakening. After the first week maybe four to six people
couldn’t take it anymore and deserted. Each
morning we ran a mile, ate breakfast in the mess hall where no talking was
allowed and then the five mile march out to the rifle range. Lunch was usually rations or a hot meal of
swill from canisters.
Some of the
most exciting times were out on the rifle range where we were provided with a
warming tent that had a pot belly stove in the center. The tent was so full of people that by the
time you got near the stove the drill sergeant yelled at us to get out and let
the next squad in. We were constantly cold. At the end of the day we had the privilege of
riding back to base in trailer trucks covered by a canopy. The front of the trailer was left open to allow
the cold air to blow through the trailer for added excitement. In many ways we wished we could have hiked
back to the main post.
After
completing eight weeks of basic training we were assigned our advanced
individual training (AIT) assignments.
Since most of us were draftees we had little or no say so in what kind
of AIT we would receive. It consisted
of infantry, artillery, armor or becoming a medic. Some of us were assigned to Fort Sam Houston
in Austin, Texas for 10 weeks of combat medical training. Life was much more pleasant here with little
harassment from the cadre. Each day consisted
of class room instructions, watching horror films of combat casualties, practicing
different medical procedures, such as dressing wounds, applying splints, IV’s,
morphine and much more. At the end of
each day we were free to do as we pleased, except we had to remain on the
post. The choice of many was the beer
garden for few rounds before having dinner in the mess hall. Weekends we were able to venture off post
into Austin.
After
completing this 10 week course I was assigned to Fort Stewart, Georgia as a
medic with the ambulance section of the hospital that provided medical rescue
support for the training of helicopter pilots.
Fort Stewart was the biggest military reservation east of the
Mississippi River consisting of pine forests, swamps and surrounded by small
farming towns. This place was hot and
humid. Every afternoon thunder storms
would develop breaking the humidy build up, then it would all start again. We
lived in a mental ward of an old WWII hospital with no air conditioning. The non-commissioned officer (NCO) in charge
of us was a Sergeant First Class named Sergeant Farley. He had 27 years of service, including a
veteran of WWII and Korea. I suspect he
may had a drinking problem, as he told us to come to his office any time if we
had a problem where he had a bottle in a desk drawer. As
long as we kept the barracks fairly clean Sergeant Farley never inspected it
and even allowed us to have beer after work hours in the barracks. All he asked of us was to follow his weekly
work schedule. It showed our
assignments where we were required to go to the motor pool every morning, get
our ambulance, convoy with a military fire truck and a flight control truck out
to a staging field where helicopter flight training took place. Two medics were assigned to each ambulance,
one as the driver, the other as the attendant.
There would be six to eight staging fields operating at once with up to
100 helicopters flying. Most accidents
were fatal where fire was the end result and usually no survivors. The
ambulance was required to park alongside the fire truck during operations. If
there was an accident a horn would be sounded by the flight control truck and
the ambulance would follow the fire truck to the scene of the crash. The days were hot and there was not much for
us to do. A helicopter would bring
canisters of hot food out to the staging field for lunch. Usually the bugs were so bad it was hard to
swallow anything without a bug going down with it. It was tempting in the afternoons to lay
down in beds in back of the ambulance and take a nap. This happened once during a drill, the horn
was sounded and off went the fire truck with no ambulance following. The flight officer in charge, a major, came
to the ambulance and told the two of us to stand at attention the rest of the
afternoon in front of the ambulance—not fun.
After work hours most of us went
to the Post Exchange, better known as the PX to buy beer and spend time in our barracks
playing poker before dinner. All our meals were served in the hospital
dining hall and the food was not that bad, since officers and doctors ate there
too.
With only
eight months of active service remaining I was promoted to Specialist 4
(equivalent to a corporal). Most of the medics on this unit were draftees
and had over a year of active duty to serve and a few received orders to go to
Vietnam for a year of duty. The Army
had a weekly newspaper, the Army Times that Sergeant Farley would share with
us. The paper had a death list of those
that had died in Vietnam over that week.
One afternoon he informed us that one of our medics, which we all had
known was on the list after only two weeks in Vietnam. It was
a sobering experience.
During my
last month of active duty the US Navy ship, the USS Pueblo was seized off of
North Korea. There were rumors I might
get extended and my beer consumption increased. Finally
I was down to my last week with no threat of being extended. My last assignment was to visit the company
First Sergeant, the top NCO. He tried
to get me to reenlist, telling me I could be promoted to Specialist 5 (equivalent
to a sergeant) if I signed up for three more years. I was not interested and few days later was officially
discharged from active duty and on my way home.
P.S.
Looking back
on what happened to my arm it may have saved my life from not having enough
time in my two year tour of duty to go to Vietnam. It was known that during combat the radio
man and the medic were usually the first to be shot at with high probability of
being killed or wounded.
After two
years of active duty I still had four years of reserve duty, which included two
years of active reserves and two years of inactive reserves. I only received one notice to report to Fort
Carson, Colorado for two weeks of training exercises in the summer of 1968 and
that was followed with another notice that it was cancelled. I
never heard any more from my reserve units and was honorably discharged
February 1970.
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