Fifty years ago tomorrow (Friday) marks an important day in my life. It will be etched in my mind forever.
It was on Dec. 4, 1970, that I first stepped on the base of Fort Polk, La., to begin basic training for the 95th Division Army Reserve unit in Shawnee. On March 7 of that year,
On March 7 of that year, I had signed up for a sixyear stint in the Reserve. I was in my senior year at Oklahoma University.
Eight months after being sworn into the U.S. Army Reserve, I finally received my orders in November to start basic training a few weeks later.
The guy who was sworn in right next to me, Mike Hair, also was from Shawnee. He received his orders to go to basic at Fort Lewis in the state of Washington two months later in May. He was already back before I even went.
There were four of us from the Shawnee unit who traveled to Fort Polk to begin basic training together.
The other three included Rick Brown from McLoud, Ron Meek and Larry Gordon from the Oklahoma City area.
Rick still lives in McLoud. I’ve lost track of the other two.
Why on earth the Army sent us to begin basic three weeks before Christmas is anyone’s guess.
They sent us home Dec. 17, 13 days after we had arrived, because the base shut down training for the holidays.
That year, Dec. 4 was a Friday, too. We arrived Friday evening in the Reception Station area and began in-processing on Saturday morning until noon. We cooled our heels for the remainder of that weekend.
We resumed in-processing Monday morning and completed that by early Thursday afternoon in time for them to ship us by truck to our basic training company, B-4-1, in the afternoon.
What I remember most about those 13 days is when they issued our clothing, they managed to measure my foot for shoes as a size 5 wide. My foot size is a 9 narrow. It was then, still is, I guess always will be.
Thank goodness I had been issued my correct boot size before I ever arrived at Fort Polk.
We had four days of training before coming home for the holidays. I was introduced to the low crawl and since my PT test in AIT, I haven’t done it since. The exercise I got during the training, though, helped me lose 22 pounds.
My AIT (Advanced Individual Training) was for a personnel specialist. Gordon and I stayed at Fort Polk, just moving a short distance away. Brown and Meek went elsewhere for finance school.
AIT was spent inside a classroom for eight weeks, with the exception of exercising for the PT test.
It wasn’t hard, just long days.
I was quite happy to return home in April. My home unit was located in the Reserve Center in Shawnee on what is now Airport Road. Six weeks later, Memorial Day Weekend, we returned to Fort Polk for two weeks of annual training.