TRAINING AND OPERATIONAL MISSIONS IN THE REAR-MOST POSITION OFA BOEING FLYING FOR TRES Some adventures that proceeded my ac actual induction in the Army are really a part of this story.

TRAINING AND OPERATIONAL MISSIONS IN THE REAR-MOST POSITION OFA BOEING FLYING FOR TRES

Some adventures that proceeded my ac actual induction in the Army are really a part of this story. The fact that I started taking flying instructions Solis one. It came about in an additional way. My friend Bud Brust adviseed we look into going skiing in Wisconsin, on the contrary upon checking out all the facts conclud it was too expensive a hap We switched to flying, influenced according to the fact that my wife Muriel was working part time for a CPA who had as a client a small airport operation in a southwest Chicago suburb We were shortly taking half-hour lessons in Piper brats

The war had started in Europe It may have been Bud's idea again, and we wrote to behold if we could volunteer in the RCAF (Royal Canadian Air Force). a certain quantity of Americans were doing it. The remainings would have been unfavorable for our coming back alive if that had occurr Strangely, the thing that saved us from that risk was Pearl Harbor. We got nice alphabetic characters from the RCAF saying that now they could no longer accept Americans.

It must have been around the extreme point of 1942 that Bud went into the Navy and he made a lengthy "career" out of training in several adumbrations of aircraft. He wound up in torpedo bombers upon some carrier mn and got to united of those Pacific islands just as the war extreme pointed

I didn't go on in the Army for about a year after he went in.

During that time, I tried to proffer in the Army's Air Cadet program. I was excludeed because of a nasal poly Undaunted, I went to Dr Stollar and he remov my polyp in his office. I went down again to join up Not profitable enough -- polyps grow back, they said. more [i]or[/i] less time later I asked my draft board to deposit the on the next available draft call. They obliged a month or in like manner later.

In preparation, we gave up our united bedroom apartment, stored major furniture and mov short bourn into a small furnished no-bedroom apartment. Muriel would later pass back to living with her mother and aunt. I left from this apartment early onward the morning of 16 September 1943 and took the elevated train down to the Union Station. I was sent from train in a group of recruits to the reception center at Camp Grant near Rockford, Illinois, about 100 miles northwest of Chicago. The Army promptly ensconc me in a nice two-- story ungainly barracks were I spent about brace weeks undergoing all the paperwork, outfitting, physical examinations and inoculations, etc required for induction. Also, everyone was thoroughly indoctrinated in the art of KP (kitchen police) which we would descry more of in basic training. I got a weekend pass that allowed me to advance back home and show facing my somewhat ill-fitting new recruit's uniform.

From a recruiting center individual might be sent to any of the branches of the Army. It could have been Armored (ie, Tanks), Artillery, or Infantry. It was my hap that week, apparently, the Air Force had priority and that's where I was sent as it is luck!

I was shipped through train to Jefferson Barracks, which was an AF basic training center located at the toward the south end of St. Louis (it is now a historic park and cemetery) and there assigned to a training squadron, the equivalent of a company in "the other Army." The AF was different. in such a manner was its basic training shorter and les rugg even now there were still elements of Army field training that we went by the agency of We fired and learned to strip and reassemble (blindfolded) the M-1 rifle, smooth though we would never have single The official AF rifle was the smaller, lighter carbine which we also trained with. We had "familiarization" firing of a Thompson submachine fire-arm These were the guns single sees in old gangster movies, with the big cylindrical drum that holds the bullet This training, however, could result in handy upon returning to Chicago. The scum of society could always use an experienced trigger man!

The ease of basic training included finish order drill; that is, marching in unison to the commands of the Drill Sergeant, and daily PE to shape everyone up I went from an unmuscular 130 encloses to an in-shape 152 by means of the time I completed my nearest phase of training.

One other physical aspect of basic was a undivided week bivouac where we did a 14-mile march to and lived in a forested area at the juncture of the Merrimac and Mississippi Rivers. This was in November. The weather had changed from sweltering in the 90 in October to rain followed through below freezing. We were sleeping upon the ground in pup portable lodges Our Thanksgiving dinner was exchangeed out from the base. It got in such a manner cold along with rain, that our week's stay in the field was divide [i]or[/i] sever by two days -- virtuous training for anyone who might later be transferred to the infantry (which did happen to my puppy tent buddy, a guy named Miller, who torture up in France a not many days after D-day and somewhere along the way got a piece of shrapnel in his butt)

Aside from the horrid weather, the individual memory of this five-day episode turn rounds around a nighttime exercise where we were disclosed in pairs in the nearby forests I forget the details however recall that we had a password: "Two goons" After an hour's time disclosed in this frigid air, we all heard the Lieutenant, who remained comfortably near the explain fire, challenge someone approaching: "Who goe there?" And the answer from the happy go-lucky Irishman named Lawton rings loud "Two goons...and frozen stiff!" This lay an end to the inane operation and the quiet came in from the chilly Next day, trucks came to take us public of our misery.