Floyd Brown wrote:
I served 59-62. Drafted, Ended up in Personnel of an Engineer Battalion. 2 years active reserves, 2 years inactive.
Did what was asked of me & was promoted in a timely fashion.
Didn't know if I could ever kill some one & was glad to have never faced the real issue.
In training did come to realized that in a combat situation would fire back in the hope of turning back any opposition.
Blood pressure was high during induction for a couple of days (I drank a bit too much) Decided to just cut back & serve my time.
Was on alert to ship out with in 24 hours. After getting ready loading up to go never left the Battalion staging area
This was during the Berlin Crisis. That qualified for action during war. I don't really know what that meant.
I as the driver of the sections 21/2 ton truck hauled empty wood crates. I had the task of driving that hydraulic transmission truck up hills with the tedious down shifting & up shifting. I guess that was the existent of my war experience.
I served 59-62. Drafted, Ended up in Personnel of ... (
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Floyd, I had a hell of a good time in the military. I went to Signal School for Radar and Missile Guidance Repair for 9 months. Got posted to White Sands proving ground. Numerous trips to Juarez Mexico, mountain climbing, boon docking in the New Mexican National forests, trips to Carlsbad Caverns and White Sands National park. I bummed around in El Paso and Las Cruces and followed the Trail of Billy the Kid through his old stamping grounds in Old Mesilla park.
I was a Science Fiction buff and I worked on radars primarily, and missile firings, Wac Corporals, Honest Johns, Nike's Able to Zeus, Hawks, Talos, and Falcon missiles. I watched at least a thousand Missile firings some guided at drone planes (B17) and others just Ballistic rockets. Met Werner Von Braun, became an early member of the American Rocket Society (Now Defunct).
Spent a lot of weekends exploring old mines and remote interior areas in northern New Mexico. Most of the trails we followed were labeled primitive which meant you brought shovels, guns and dynamite because you might have to build part of the road yourself.
"Volunteered" (the usual military volunteer) for the International Geophysical Year (IGY) Expedition at Ft Churchill Canada. We built our buildings, installed the radars, generators, optical trackers, plotting boards and site wiring. We installed most of the equipment in the Missile firing Silo. Then we provided tech support for various Universities Field teams, doing High Altitude research via Aerobee-Hi rockets fired into the Van Allen Belts with various payloads. We tracked the rockets with our Radars and provided positional data for their use in analysis of findings.
Did some skiing, hid from Polar bears, and learned first hand why you don't build fires on the tundra to burn off trash. Three weeks of constant monitoring to get it out. A lot of eating and working and even a little drinking, there was always something interesting to do. I jumped two grades in 6 months and ended up a Staff Sgt. (E6).
All in all, The good stuff outweighed the bad. I would have stayed in except I took stock of my proclivities and I realized that I was a Class A F---Up and sooner or later I was going to end up in the stockade or Federal prison. There are just too many draconian punishments for every infraction and no mercy whatever. The military was no place for anyone who rebels against authority and that was me to a T.