Lackland AFB, Texas – 1959

Everyone who enters the Air Force goes to Lackland for Basic Training. Most of it for me is a blur. Get a buzz cut, your clothing issue, get settled into a barracks, indoctrination, and on and on. Basic is designed to break the civilian in you and make you a part of a team. Mostly, they do this without screaming at you too much. One thing that stuck with me, even today, is you have to do everything left then right. You put your pants on left leg first, shoes the same, marching left first, etc. The old stereotype of a rock in your left hand is true for those who can’t remember their left from right. I still do things left to right as I’m sure a lot of ex-military do.

After eight weeks, in the Air Force’s infinite wisdom, I was reassigned from weather observing to the medical field. I have no idea what qualified me for that other than that’s what the Air Force needed at the time. Everyone, regardless of which part of the medical field you end up in, attended a basic medical course. I was selected to be a Flight Leader. Probably due to my outstanding qualification primarily consisting of being taller than anyone else. Part of the course consisted of a disaster exercise that brought all of the flights together. Ours was an aircraft crash simulation with casualties scattered over a large field. Patients with various injuries were created using mucilage, makeup, and fake blood. I was selected to be a patient and was made up with a neck injury that included a severed neck artery. I was given a wound on my neck that included a tube running down my arm inside my shirt to a bulb in my hand that was filled with fake blood. When the alarm sounded to kick off the exercise, other students were to treat the casualties and get then evacuated by ambulance. I was supposed to cry out and pump the blood and the medics would treat the wound. Two medics came running up to me so I started my act (moaning, groaning, yelling for help, and pumping blood). Medic 1: “Damn, he’s big!” Medic 2: “F**k him! He’s dead!” Mind you, I’m moaning, etc., obviously NOT dead and they took off to treat someone else. Meanwhile, I’m still laying there moaning and pumping blood until it ran out. And there I lay until they blew the whistle to terminate the exercise. My critique unfortunately couldn’t include the names of the two assholes who left me laying there in the weeds.

Being a Flight Leader, I frequently had to go to various offices by myself to coordinate things. One day I was walking past the WAF training area. I went past a flight of young ladies and, being a randy 18 year old, I slowed down to look at the scenery. There was a female Master Sergeant DI that was chewing out her ladies for not marching to her satisfaction. I heard her say, “You will suck your gut in, stick your tits out, and when you’re marching all I want to hear is 60 pussies sucking wind.” I picked up my pace and exited the area because I definitely didn’t want her getting on my case.

I don’t remember too much about the city of San Antonio because we didn’t get off-base passes very often. I do remember on one pass we rented scooters at Breckenridge Park. It was fun zooming around the park generally making a nuisances of ourselves.

At the end of Basic Med, I was selected to become a Veterinary Specialist. The vet field is actually a public health organization that includes food inspection and food service sanitation inspection. It also involves the care of military working dogs. We also treated AF members pets when possible. It turned out to be more interesting than I initially thought.