The Summer of '63 - US Army or How I Grew Up

When I was a senior at Olympus High School (Utah), some of my pals and I figured out that it might be fun to join the National Guard. We found that we could join while were seventeen if we were in our senior year and, after graduation, go on six months of active duty. I looked into it and went along.
This was 1963 and Viet Nam had not become much of an issue and being drafted wasn’t even on my radar because I was still only seventeen years old and that wasn’t a big deal at the time anyway. It just looked like a fun thing to do and for whatever reason my parents went along with it.
The plan was we could join with parental consent upon reaching the age of seventeen and then go on six months of active duty for training upon graduation. After that we had to stay active in the Guard for the remainder of a six year obligation. Realistically, I was such a poor student that I believe my parents hoped that a stint in the military might actually be good for me. I’m not sure why they agreed to let me go, but I think that was a big part of it.
I turned seventeen on January 2nd, 1963, during my senior year at Olympus and went with several classmates and enlisted in the 144th Evacuation Hospital, Utah Army National Guard.
We graduated in May and I believe we flew the next day to Fort Ord, California. Some of the guys who went with me were Larry Ludlow, Richard Mott and John Jackson (all from Olympus High), as well as John’s pal, Steve Rippon from East High School. There were several others from our unit, but their names escape me now. It was a sizeable group though and because of that and our life styles we became known as “those Mormon kids from Salt Lake City.” We pretty much stayed together through Basic Training at For Ord and then Medical Specialist Training at Fort Sam Houston, Texas.
Upon arrival at Fort Ord we were assigned to the Reception Center for the first week while we got shots, received indoctrination about Army “Opportunities” and other things to spend our money on. We were not treated with much respect, not that we expected to be. At the end of each day we had to stand in a formation and several of us were picked out to do extra details (mostly picking up cigarette butts and other trash). After two days I realized I was always being picked because I’m so tall and my head stuck up above the others making me easy to see. So I started falling in at the rear and bending at the knees until I was about 5’8” instead of 6’7”. It worked for the rest of my military career.

The second week found most of us assigned to C Company, 1st Battalion, 1st Brigade, also known as C-1-1 or colloquially as “Charlie Run Run.” That, of course, meant that we ran everywhere. It was a great physical training tool because we really did run everywhere. We ran to eat, we ran to training and it seems like we ran whenever we were together as a company. We lived in what were then new Company Barracks that were three stories high. There was a platoon “Bay” at each end of each floor where we had our upper and lower bunks and foot lockers. That was it. A foot locker where underwear, socks and personal hygiene items were required to be situated exactly the same as everybody else. We also had a shelf with a bar under it from which we could hang our uniforms. Each hanger had to be spaced equidistant from all other hangers.
We were told to pack up all of our personal civilian property and clothing and it was all shipped home.
We were issued everything we would need including all uniforms, an M-1 Garand rifle, two pair of combat boots and a pair of “low quarters” (shoes). We learned how to make bunks so that a quarter, when dropped on it, would trampoline back into the inspecting officer’s hand. We learned to spit shine our boots and shoes and stage them for daily inspections. At first we would come back to our barracks and find all the boots thrown in a pile in the middle of the floor, and our bedding torn from our bunks. We didn’t really find out until later that, by definition, no one could properly shine their shoes and the bunks could not possibly be properly made up until you had at least four weeks in training under your belt. Piling our shoes in the middle of the floor helped us learn to put our names on things that were ours. Fortunately, my size 15 footwear made it pretty easy to pick out my stuff but some guys had real problems.
The pay was $72.00 a month, which seems like not much, but if you didn’t drink beer or smoke, there was very little to spend money on. We got paid once a month in cash so there was no need for checking accounts or other financial complications. I think the pay went up to $83.00 by the time our six months active duty tour was over and I actually owned one sixth interest in a car and had saved about $100.00 by the time we went home.
I think we mostly learned how to do “Close Order Drill,” (“Left Face,” “Right Face,” “Column Left,” Etc.), Physical Training (pushups, pull ups, burpees, etc.), shooting (we could knock down silhouette targets at 400 meters) and other things vital to knowing how to be a grunt soldier. Some of the highlights include the “infiltration course” where we had to low crawl for I think 100 meters with live machine gun fire being sprayed at about three feet above the ground we were crawling on. There were also pits along the way with explosive charges going off that simulated artillery rounds hitting. We were advised to stay out of those pits for obvious reasons. A twenty mile march with full packs (tents, sleeping bags, food, ammo, etc.) was done on one nice day.
After eight weeks we were trained and salty soldiers. We got a leave of one week and then it was on to Fort Sam Houston where we were going to get eight weeks of Medical Corpsman Training and an additional eight weeks of advanced Medical Specialist training. Our MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) was Medical Specialist which qualified us to be assigned to a military hospital if we were ever on active duty for other than training.
So I returned to Salt Lake City for my leave and a couple of us figured out that we could trade in our plane tickets to San Antonio and get cash. We then bought train tickets for a lot less money and we took the train to San Antonio. This turned into a tortuous journey with stops at Denver and about 2,348 other places that had places for trains to stop. Our accommodations didn’t include sleeping quarters so we slept on impossibly uncomfortable seats in pretty crowded conditions. I wouldn’t do it again, but at seventeen years of age, it was one of those educational experiences.
At Fort Sam, life got a lot better. We had fewer than half the soldiers in our barracks bay than we did at Ord and all of our bunks were single level. We also got to have a few “civvies” to wear playing golf or going to church or other places we got to go from time to time.
The training was actually useful and I was able to later work in hospitals with my military training. We learned to give shots, draw blood, do suturing, and other interesting skills. One of the axioms in the army medical community was “pain are good,” which was the sum total of our “Bedside Compassion” sensitivity training. “Hey doc. This really hurts!” The response is “Pain Are Good.”
Another fascinating thing we learned was that whenever you leave one post and arrive at another, you are given a Physical Fitness Quotient (PFQ) test that consists of a 40 yard Low Crawl, Obstacle Course, Grenade Throw (for accuracy), Hanging Ladder (where you hang by your hands and then moving them from rung to rung see how many rungs you can go before you drop, and a mile and a quarter run.
You could score up to 100 on each of the five tests (total score of 500), but had to score a minimum 300 to get a passing grade.
When we arrived at Fort Sam, we were put through this ordeal for the third time and as I recall, our unit averaged somewhere north of 490 which was a Fort Sam record. I assume that a bunch of seventeen year old Mormon guys were in above average condition.
As we neared the end of our training, it became known that we would again be subjected to a PFQ. Judging from the interest from some of our Regular Army leaders we strongly believed there was some sort of betting pot being run to see if we could beat our earlier score. Steve Nelson and I had the bright idea to start a pot of our own. For a nickel, any of our guys could join, only the goal was to get the lowest passing score rather than highest. In the event of a tie, the person getting the lowest score in each event (60 being optimum) would win the pot.
Almost everyone joined and the total amount of potential winnings was somewhere north of three dollars, maybe four.
Bottom line, we, as a unit, scored lower than any unit in the history of grand old Fort Sam Houston, causing the puzzling result of one unit going from best to worst in 16 short weeks.
I think we were right about the betting at higher levels because an investigation ensued the surprised us all. If you can believe this, no one copped out and Steve and I were done with the rest of the group.
Another thing that has to be recorded for posterity is the “Great Blue Cadeuces,” a truly ugly, blue 1950 Buick. We determined that a car would be needed to get to Church, Corpus Christi, Mexico, etc. and we found this thing that ran and a guy wanted $60.00 for it. Six of us kicked in $10 each and it was ours. Then we found out we had to get it insured in order to bring it into Fort Sam. Believe it or not, that cost us another $7.50 each (good old days). We had a lot of fun in that car that we would never have had without it including, as I mentioned earlier, trips to Corpus Christi, Mexico (Nuevo Laredo), and several fun Church functions.
When we went home, two or three of the guys decided to drive it to SLC. I wasn’t one of them, but it was later reported that they had transmission difficulties. They actually had to back into Cedar City. They apparently used almost as much transmission fluid as gasoline to get that thing home and we sold it for $21.00 ($3.50 apiece).
So that was how I spent the summer of ’63.
The day after I got home, I went to meet Steve Rippon (one of the group who flew home) and he told me that President Kennedy had just been shot. That was pretty troubling for even seventeen tear old me, but I remember being glad I wasn’t still on active duty. I probably did a large part of my growing up that summer, including the events of November. Onward and upward.