2016-05-02-0038
Air Force Basic Training, Lackland AFB, San Antonio, Texas
July-August 1977
When I was in my late teens, every Spring I would get from my mom what I called the "What are you going to do with yourself this summer, you lazy kid?" lecture. She didn't phrase it that way, but she made it clear that my teen summer job of mowing lawns and doing other gardening and odd jobs for the neighbors was not a suitable career.
I agreed. I was in college pursuing a business degree, but I had no desire to get a fast food job or something similar, which were the main options for a first time real job.
In Spring 1977, I was finishing my second year of college, and had taken 2 semesters of accounting, which I found insufferably boring. If the rest of a business degree led to a job as boring as that year of accounting, I wanted another skill.
I talked to a few friends about their military experiences and decided to check out the California Air National Guard. The local Air Guard unit was a combat communication squadron with radios, Teletypes, phones and a switchboard, trucks to transport the gear and ground power to energize it. I first considered being a truck mechanic, as I was working on my own VWs at the time, but after my Armed Forces Qualfication Test came back, the recruiter asked me if I'd like to lerarn how to repair Teletypes.
He showed me one www.youtube.com/watch?v=mP9LWUIWvpU and I said something like, "You mean I learn how to fix these things??" and he said yes, and I was soon in the squadron commander's office, promising to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States.
When my mom started her lecture that Spring, I told her that I was planning to join the Air National Guard that summer. About the only thing she could say was mild disappointment that it wasn't the Navy as both Mom and Dad were Nave vets.
Then i spent June 1977 travilling around the country on a USARailpass before flying to Lackland AFB in San Antonio, Texas in July to begin basic training.
The Air Force and its reserve components, such as the Air Guard, run all of their enlisted people through basic at Lackland. It ls like every military movie you've seen with sergeants yelling at the recruits, trying to turn a bunch of kids into people the military can use, or weed out the misfits. Every flight had people who would drop out and other people who would screw up badly enough at something to be set back to another flight and repeat a few days of training to try to get it right.
Basic took 6 weeks in 1977. I don't know if it is the same today. We did not really learn how to be soldiers as most Air Force people were going to be plane mechanics or electricians or ground communications technicians or civil engineers or medics or cooks or admin clerks any number of other skills that had nothing to do with being an infantryman. So, rather than learning how to field strip, clean and reassemble a rifle blindfolded, we learned to fold our underwear 6" wide and other skills that would have made us great Pullman porters if the Pullman company had still been around. We did have physical conditioning every morning and 4 weeks in ran a confidence (obstacle) course one day and fired M16s the next, but that was about it. We did learn to march and marched everywhere. I have no rhythm and my sergeant knew me as "2nd man, fourth row get in step" before he knew my name.
I was a setback myself, but not from screwing up. On the Saturday after my 19th day of training, I felt sick and wound up in the hospitial for a week with pneumonia. I had just bought a camera the day I went into the hospital as I did not bring one with me from home, so my basic training photos start that Saturday.
After the hospital, I wound up in a flight that was at the same point in basic as mine had been when I left, so I just joined them and finished off the last two weeks. I had a medical waiver for PE, the confidence course, marching in parades, and KP, so I rather enjoyed the last two weeks at Lackland.
One night, we were loaded on buses and went to see a football game between the San Antonio Charros and another team. They are not NFL, more the football equivalent of AAA league baseball, but it was good to get off base for an evening.
We went to the firing range a couple of days after I joined my new flight and when we got there, Elvis music was playing on the PA system. The range officer announcd that Elivs had died that morning and we would observe a moment of silence for our King, which we did before firing 80 rounds of .223 downrange.
Evntually, most of us graduated basic training and moved on to our tech schools. A few people stayed at Lackland for tech school, including the security police, while others flew to Lowry in Denver or Chanute in Illinois. People going to Keesler in Biloxi, Mississippi or Sheppard in Wichita Falls, Texas, had all day bus rides and that is when we all learned that our short sleeve blue uniform looked pretty much like what the Continental Trailways bus drivers wore.
2016-05-02-0038
Air Force Basic Training, Lackland AFB, San Antonio, Texas
July-August 1977
When I was in my late teens, every Spring I would get from my mom what I called the "What are you going to do with yourself this summer, you lazy kid?" lecture. She didn't phrase it that way, but she made it clear that my teen summer job of mowing lawns and doing other gardening and odd jobs for the neighbors was not a suitable career.
I agreed. I was in college pursuing a business degree, but I had no desire to get a fast food job or something similar, which were the main options for a first time real job.
In Spring 1977, I was finishing my second year of college, and had taken 2 semesters of accounting, which I found insufferably boring. If the rest of a business degree led to a job as boring as that year of accounting, I wanted another skill.
I talked to a few friends about their military experiences and decided to check out the California Air National Guard. The local Air Guard unit was a combat communication squadron with radios, Teletypes, phones and a switchboard, trucks to transport the gear and ground power to energize it. I first considered being a truck mechanic, as I was working on my own VWs at the time, but after my Armed Forces Qualfication Test came back, the recruiter asked me if I'd like to lerarn how to repair Teletypes.
He showed me one www.youtube.com/watch?v=mP9LWUIWvpU and I said something like, "You mean I learn how to fix these things??" and he said yes, and I was soon in the squadron commander's office, promising to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States.
When my mom started her lecture that Spring, I told her that I was planning to join the Air National Guard that summer. About the only thing she could say was mild disappointment that it wasn't the Navy as both Mom and Dad were Nave vets.
Then i spent June 1977 travilling around the country on a USARailpass before flying to Lackland AFB in San Antonio, Texas in July to begin basic training.
The Air Force and its reserve components, such as the Air Guard, run all of their enlisted people through basic at Lackland. It ls like every military movie you've seen with sergeants yelling at the recruits, trying to turn a bunch of kids into people the military can use, or weed out the misfits. Every flight had people who would drop out and other people who would screw up badly enough at something to be set back to another flight and repeat a few days of training to try to get it right.
Basic took 6 weeks in 1977. I don't know if it is the same today. We did not really learn how to be soldiers as most Air Force people were going to be plane mechanics or electricians or ground communications technicians or civil engineers or medics or cooks or admin clerks any number of other skills that had nothing to do with being an infantryman. So, rather than learning how to field strip, clean and reassemble a rifle blindfolded, we learned to fold our underwear 6" wide and other skills that would have made us great Pullman porters if the Pullman company had still been around. We did have physical conditioning every morning and 4 weeks in ran a confidence (obstacle) course one day and fired M16s the next, but that was about it. We did learn to march and marched everywhere. I have no rhythm and my sergeant knew me as "2nd man, fourth row get in step" before he knew my name.
I was a setback myself, but not from screwing up. On the Saturday after my 19th day of training, I felt sick and wound up in the hospitial for a week with pneumonia. I had just bought a camera the day I went into the hospital as I did not bring one with me from home, so my basic training photos start that Saturday.
After the hospital, I wound up in a flight that was at the same point in basic as mine had been when I left, so I just joined them and finished off the last two weeks. I had a medical waiver for PE, the confidence course, marching in parades, and KP, so I rather enjoyed the last two weeks at Lackland.
One night, we were loaded on buses and went to see a football game between the San Antonio Charros and another team. They are not NFL, more the football equivalent of AAA league baseball, but it was good to get off base for an evening.
We went to the firing range a couple of days after I joined my new flight and when we got there, Elvis music was playing on the PA system. The range officer announcd that Elivs had died that morning and we would observe a moment of silence for our King, which we did before firing 80 rounds of .223 downrange.
Evntually, most of us graduated basic training and moved on to our tech schools. A few people stayed at Lackland for tech school, including the security police, while others flew to Lowry in Denver or Chanute in Illinois. People going to Keesler in Biloxi, Mississippi or Sheppard in Wichita Falls, Texas, had all day bus rides and that is when we all learned that our short sleeve blue uniform looked pretty much like what the Continental Trailways bus drivers wore.