Fifteen months before I joined the Air Force for what would turn out to be a long and enjoyable career, while I was still in high school, General Douglas MacArthur delivered an oft-quoted speech.

I remember the first time I read it with youthful eyes. It was two years later, just before my birthday, and I was stationed at Carswell Air Force Base, Texas.  The General had died and his death was a major news item with many references to his farewell address at West Point.

Since that time I have re-read it often and each time it stops me in my tracks and makes me think.

The troop train odyssey was over.

No, it wasn’t really a troop train as there were a lot of civilians who had been on board and had wished they could have flown to their destinations too, but the large number of us in military uniform lent an overwhelming flavor to the mix and the conditions we all endured, both military and civilian alike, were those I imagine a troop train may have been in earlier days.

August, 1966

The tour in Vietnam began with mixed omens.

First was the bad omen.

There was an airline strike going on when it was time for me to leave home, where I’d been on leave for a few weeks prior to the move between Carswell and Vietnam.

So, despite being a member of a railroad family and having spent my fair share of enjoying free train rides between New Orleans and Lafayette, I was now facing a train ride of a totally different character – cross country, not an empty seat, and in an era when my father swore the railroads, at least the one he worked for, were trying everything they could to dump passenger service because it wasn’t nearly as profitable as hauling freight.

Prelude 

May God, if such a being exists, have absolutely no mercy on Lyndon Baines Johnson, and Robert S. McNamara, nor on their lesser cohorts.

On a daily basis over a very long time, they knowingly caused the death, capture, and maiming of many of my generation, not as a result of the inevitable losses of war but as a result of playing political games with our country’s future.

To begin this chapter, to understand the enormity of the loss, the willful squandering of human life, before discussing anything else, this is what it was all about, and still is, with many of us.

When I was promoted to Staff Sergeant (E-5) in January of 1968, only a few months after arriving at Perrin, I had already been thinking of renting an apartment in Sherman, but I couldn’t afford it until I was actually promoted. The dorm just wasn’t for me anymore, so I had been searching for a place on the cheap, and I do mean cheap.

What I found was, hopefully, one of a kind.

Being single and with flexible time on my hands occasionally, I got to do some work for at the chapel and for the base recreation center. I’ve always liked driving so I got to do a lot of that by taking people to various events, mostly sports, in Dallas.

Driving for the base recreation center, usually on a Saturday, my “pay” consisted of a ticket to whatever the event was; I had to pay for my own food. Sometimes I attended the event using my free ticket sometimes I just waited in the vehicle; there were certain events that just didn’t interest me, and those made for a very long trip.

I’m not sure if it was a good thing in the end or not, but it at least was a bit of variety – the shop chief came to me one day and told me I had to go to the ejection seat trainer because I was picking up an additional duty of “mobile maintenance.” Huh?

Yes, I need someone I can count on to handle just about any problem on the Tweets and can go on no notice. See so and so and he’ll set you up for the seat trainer so you can get certified to fly.

1967.

After serving a tour in Southeast Asia, Vietnam, South Vietnam, whatever the term of the day for it strikes your fancy, I went home to New Orleans on leave enroute to my next duty station. I had arrived back in the States at McChord AFB, Washington and flown out of Seattle-Tacoma Airport to New Orleans, arriving New Orleans on 18 August.

Strategic Air Command (SAC) was a unique command, to say the least, and to understand the atmosphere under which we trained and worked, one must understand a little of the command.

SAC was the was the child and charge of General Curtis E. LeMay.
Click for picture and biography

He was a truly historic figure whom I had a chance to meet many years later in his retirement years not long before his death in 1990, and of all places, in the waiting area of a base hospital pharmacy. Unfortunately, a young airman at the pickup window microphone had no sense of history and that shortcoming was augmented by the fact that she worked in the hospital, which is somewhat its own world.

My memories of working at Carswell are such a swirl of events that I don’t know where to begin.  Perhaps the best place to begin is with that first day of being truly assigned to the 7th Bomb Wing, Field Maintenance Squadron, Accessories Branch, Instrument Shop.

………………..

Pike borrowed a truck and we drove around the massive hangar toward the B-52 parking area.  Having stopped once for another security badge check at the end of the parking apron, we drove out to an aircraft where no maintenance was being performed and parked.
As we had approached the aircraft, it looked larger than life, and a parking apron of several of them was truly a sight to behold.  As we got out of the truck and walked up to the aircraft there was a sense of being overwhelmed — the aircraft was huge! 

________________________________

HEADQUARTERS CHANUTE TECHNICAL TRAINING CENTER
SPECIAL ORDER AC-246   11 February 1964

…graduate of course Nr ABR42230 effective 18 Feb 64… relieved from assignment 3357th School Sq, ATC; assigned 43 Bombardment Wing (M), SAC, Carswell Air Force Base, Texas, reporting NLT 9 Mar 64.

………………

So there I was, on my way to my first base.

I had said my goodbye’s and left New Orleans on a Greyhound bus at 3:45 in the afternoon of March 8th and would arrive Carswell, located at Fort Worth, Texas, early the following morning.  I took a cab to the base and arrived at the personnel building that looked like it was a converted barracks, at 0700 on my reporting day, March 9th.  I had used every day allowed for my time at home and was ready to go.