Basic Training....

[Jarhead1775]

Parris Island, South Carolina 1976 FEB. Love those sand fleas!

[Bill J. from Austin]

Where Did You Go For Basic Training................

Attachment 100754

Lackland AFB

Lackland AFB, July 1974. I was seventeen years old, but the stewardess served me and my fellow enlistees all the Coors we could drink on the flight down from Newark. As a result, I was more than half in the bag by the time I was standing at the top of the stairs that led from the airliner to the tarmac. I stood there in that blast-furnace wind coming off the scrublands beside the airport, watching the heat roil up off the pavement in shimmering waves, and thought to myself 'I like Texas!'





Me at Keesler Field in Biloxi after Basic Training



Seriously, I fell in love with Texas in that moment, and after deployment elsewhere, and a little bouncing around the country doing my best Jack Kerouac impression, I returned to Texas in '77 and have been here ever since!



My father at an airfield in Lincoln, Nebraska, in 1945

My grandfather (West Point, 1920) and father both served in the Army Air Forces during WWII, and Granddad was still a Lt. Colonel in the USAF Reserve when he passed away in 1960, so I was kinda sorta carrying on a family tradition.

[Jarhead1775]

FEB 1976 Parris Island South Cack-a-lacky. 3rd Battalion, PLT 3015. Got to love those Sand Fleas. The Drill Instructor would say "okay you ate now let my sand fleas feast". You stand in formation at attention waiting for the last recruit to finish eating in the chow hall. While these sand fleas perform sneak attack and crawl into the corners of your eyes, your nostril and inside your ears. Lord, forbid you move while at attention. And if your caught swatting one, everybody is on their knees trying to find that dead sand flea on the ground. Oopps too long fond memories.

[520fd]

Great Lakes Naval Training Center. Great Lakes, Ill. 1968