VETERANS DAY 2022

 This is a day I reflect back on the many people in my life that served in the military, especially those that saw the horrors of combat.   Of all the family members that served in WWII and the Korean War none ever spoke in detail about what they experienced.  When I was in the Army from 1966 to 1968 I was spared from going to Vietnam due to an injury to my arm during basic training.   Because of the injury I spent 9 months in an orthopedic ward at Fort Hood, Texas, including 4 months as a patient and 5 months as a hospital corpsman waiting for further orders from above.   During my time as a corpsman I worked on that orthopedic ward where most the patients received their injuries from Vietnam, mostly from land mines.   I do not remember any of them ever talking about their ordeals.   Most the home town boys that served in the military when I did and ended up in Vietnam have passed away, some from alcoholism and others from depression related to PTSD. 

 

THE LOSS OF AN OLD FRIEND

I received an email from Judy Barceloux, the wife of my old friend Alan Barceloux, informing me he passed away August 12th. Alan had been fighting stage 4 lung cancer for the last five or six months. Alan and I had known each other going back to our days as Boy Scouts in Willows, California in the late 1950's. We had many adventures together exploring the Mendocino National Forest during the summers in our high school years, including backpacking through the Middle Eel Yolla Bolly Wilderness Area. We spent some early mornings hunting ducks and geese in the rice fields south of town during the winter months. In 1966 Alan enlisted in the Air Force for three years during the Vietnam war at the same time I was drafted into the Army for two years. In the Fall of 1969 Alan and I shared an apartment together while we both attended Lassen College in Susanville, California under the GI Bill. Later he attended Chico State University then took over the family auto parts business of Baceloux Brothers Auto Supply in Willows and worked at the NAPA Auto parts store in Orland until he retired. No doubt we drank our fair share of beer together over the years. We kept in touch by email and in many ways Alan was like a brother to me. Whenever Celia and I were visiting family in Chico we would enjoy a meal and have a few beers with Alan and his wife Judy. RIP old friend!

8/16/2022

A TERRIBLE ACCIDENT

Baker Brothers Land & Stock Company was a large family farming and ranching enterprise in Glenn County, California.   They raised rice, alfalfa, barley, sheep and cattle.   The three brothers that owned and operated the business were John, who was the general manager, Deak, the rice dryer and storage manager and Willis, who supervised the labor force of about 12 full-time and 10 seasonal employees.   John had two sons that managed the livestock, Deak had a son, who was the lead mechanic and Willis had a son, who was a pilot. 

In the summer of 1962 John Baker and his son Jack were returning from their sheep ranch in the western foothills of the Sacramento Valley.   John was in his Cadillac car and Jack was following in his pickup truck on their way back to the company headquarters east of the small community of Artois, north of Willows along Highway 99w.   They were traveling on County Road 35 going east and John stopped before crossing Highway 99w with Jack right behind him.   Just beyond the highway going north and south is the Southern Pacific rail road going parallel with the highway with no warning lights or cross arm to stop traffic.   There was only the railroad crossing X sign.   According to Jack, who saw it all, said his dad crossed the highway and looked away from the direction he was driving to wave at somebody he knew in a passing car and ran directly into a passing freight train killing him instantly.   His car was carried down the track a few hundred feet and was a total wreck.   I believe John Baker was 60 years old at the time of his death.   His son Jack eventually took over as general manger at the age of  33 or 34.   

In the summer of 1964 I worked seasonally for Baker Brothers under the direction of Willis Baker doing tractor work, harvesting barley and rice in the fall of 1965 before being drafted into the Army in February of 1966 at the age of 20.    

2021

 After having my morning coffee I got to thinking of what this next year has in store for us.    Always scary when I get into deep thinking, so thought I would share what I know and don't know.   

My youngest sister, who is an RN in southern California informs me she has received the Covid vaccine and will get her second dose January 11th.   She says the hospital where she works is on the edge of a disaster due to all the Covid cases.    The experts tell us it will not  be until 2022 when we get this virus under control.   Just like the common cold and other flu viruses it will always be with us.  The only other person I know that has received the vaccine is a friend of ours working in a retirement home in Albany.   Not sure what the protocol or scheduling is for all the rest of us getting vaccinated or how.   Anybody else know?

It will take all kinds of medically trained people to administer and inject the population.   Even thought of volunteering myself as an old Army medic.   Can remember going through training at Fort Sam Houston, Texas and bending needles of each other as we practiced.    Not sure I want to do that again with the general public.   

Hopefully the new year brings us peace, hope and understanding.

Better get more coffee

Living on the GI Bill

 After serving two years in the Army I was entitled to two years of school under the GI Bill.   In the fall of 1968 I enrolled in a two year forestry curriculum at Lassen College in Susanville, California.  My monthly allocation was $130 to live on.    Initially all my text books and school supplies had to be purchased from this monthly amount also.   There was some savings I had that went toward these items and my 1963 Ford pickup cost me $800 from money saved up while in the Army.

My monthly rent was $50 for a small room behind a house where I had access to the landlord’s house through the back door to use a bathroom and utilize a space in their refrigerator.  This left me $80 to cover my monthly insurance premium on my 1963 Ford pickup, (don’t remember the amount) gas and grocery money.    My diet consisted of potatoes, cereal and a few can goods, don’t remember any fresh produce or meat.    I do remember the price of beer at $2.09 for a 6-pac of Hamm’s Beer and a $1.89 for a gallon of Red Mountain wine.   After making friends with some classmates we would combine resources and share a meal at their house a few blocks away once or twice a week.   Eating out was rare, but do recall eating hamburgers and French fries at the local Denney’s now and then.

After my first year I worked as a seasonal firefighter for the Forest Service on the Modoc National Forest as a GS-3 earning $2.39/hour.  There was still a food expense, but housing was free consisting of a bed, closet and wood stove in a cabin at the Hilton Spike Camp Guard Station.   Somehow I even saved some money for the upcoming school year.

During my second year of college a friend from Willows, who had served three years in the Air Force shared an apartment with me for $150/month which included a kitchen and all the furnishings.   Our monthly allotment from the GI Bill had been raised to $175/month leaving us $100/month for everything else.    Don’t remember going without anything, even had meat in our diet and no shortage of beer.

Life in the Military

 This one took some time with a few revisions to keep from getting into too much military detail that might lose the reader.  

For those of you that were in the service it may bring back memories, both good and bad.   I tried to inject some humor from looking back at it all, but at the time some of this was not funny.  

Something the younger generation and grand kids can learn from and hopefully avoid in a peaceful world. 

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 41^st 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 4^th 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 3^rd 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.