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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

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.

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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.

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