The year was 1950. I had a great job in an aircraft factory, owned a nearly new Oldsmobile, and had a neat girlfriend. One day, a large brown envelope came in the mail that would upset my life completely.
It read, “Greetings, your friends and neighbors have selected you to go to Korea and get your butt shot off." No, those were not the words, but the meaning was pretty close. As directed, I went to St. Louis, had a physical examination, then back to St. Louis again for a swearing-in ceremony in the U.S. Army.
Next, our group traveled to a small Army post near Joplin, Mo. Here, we’d receive our Army clothing, got our shots, and tons and tons of paperwork. After about a week, we were on a special train that would take us to Fort Bliss, Texas. Fort Bliss, if you don’t know, is located in a section of El Paso. We arrived about 2 pm and I remember that day as if it were yesterday. A dust storm was in progress, the first one I’d ever seen. The temperature was 100 degrees. Several cadre with large sticks in their hand came on board and started screaming for us to get, you know what, off the train. All the journey from the train to the trucks we’d be riding on, they beat on our duffel bags and spoke to us as if we were slightly less than nothing. The trucks took us to an area called Logan Heights. It was meant to be a temporary area that was erected during WWII. The buildings were little 4-men shacks with one window and a door. The siding was wood covered with black tar paper. Buildings like the orderly room, mess hall and latrine were some distance away. The terrain, which was located in the foothills of the Franklin Mountains, was rough and rocky. A briefing by the CO told a message I didn’t want to hear. He told us how this company had placed No. 1 during the last training cycle. He went on to say that our group would be No. 1 also. What this really meant was that while other units walked, ours would run. One of our field cadre was a rather small corporal who had just returned from a combat role in Korea. He could whip the tar out of any two men in our outfit, so he said. I believed him. The other cadre was an ex-University of Arkansas football lineman. I’d soon find out that he continued to use his football tackling skills on who ever got out of line. Yes, this was permitted back then. After about a week, we strapped our field packs, that weighed 80 pounds, to our backs and started our journey to the rifle ranges, which were about 4 miles away. As promised, yes, we ran most of the way. I remember the pre-briefing: “Men," they said, "if you fall out of this formation, you’d better fall face first.” It was always easy to know when someone fell out. You could painfully identify the sound of his steel pot and rifle hitting the rocks. I was thankful that I’d arrived in good physical condition and could withstand most of the marches. There was this one little guy from St. Louis, only weighed 120 lbs. and was very frail-looking, we would always help as best we could. One guy would lift one corner of his pack and another would lift the other side. This little frail subject put on about 30 lbs. of muscle and made graduation with flying colors. One phase of training I remembered, was to crawl about 100 yards under barbed wire. Machine guns were firing live rounds over us and after making that crawl, both my elbows and knees were bleeding from wounds because of the sharp rocks. The bad part, we all had to repeat the process after darkness set in that evening. I tried to wrap my worst wounds with some wool socks, but the padre made me remove them. One of the low points of that 8 weeks was the day I received a letter from my girlfriend saying, “she’d found someone else.” Yes, a dear John letter. These were very common back then and probably still today.
Those 8 weeks were very demanding and painful at times, but now I’ll have to say, I left there better than when I arrived. Maybe, just maybe, I was conditioned for what was laying ahead. I guess it was. I remained in the military for 21 years and served 2 tours in Vietnam.