The Military Years:
I'm Available! Selma Field, Lousianna - Pope Field, Fort Bragg
After I had the very stringent required psychological testing at Nashville, we went to Selma Field, Louisiana which was a cadet training center. We were all at the same level, all being air cadets. We were trained by officers who were experts in their field, taught details of meteorology and weather reporting. We were given a course in celestial navigation. In effect we were trained in a six-week period to be navigators in the U.S. Air Force. One feature of cadet school which I was not accustomed to was the demanding athletic program. We would run for miles each day and end up at a soccer field where we played soccer for an hour and half. An episode that I remember distinctly early in my training was running in formation to the athletic fields. Very frankly, I just felt I couldn’t keep up. The minute I saw the officer who was bringing up the rear of the formation look the other way, I ducked behind a building and went back to bed, where I showered and decided to take a nap. At this point the officer of the day walked in and told me that I was out of uniform, and being a wise guy New Yorker, I replied, “Sir, I am wearing the uniform of the activity in which I am involved, namely sleeping”. He laughed and said “Well, that is funny but I am going to have to give you two weeks of kitchen police, I hope you enjoy it, so keep up the humor”. For two weeks I peeled potatoes, cut onions, cleaned up the latrines and other tortures, which I was not used to. Nonetheless it was one way to become acclimated to military life. I certainly did not step over that line again.
One of the training missions we took was to Dallas Texas, I had a lot of trouble with celestial navigation because I wore glasses at the time and I found that the eye piece of the sextant with which we took our star shots kept bouncing against the round glass astrodome so that my aerial shots of the stars did not come true. In the midst of my check up flight I realized that I wasn’t doing very well and just hoped that some break would come my way. About forty minutes later peering out of the astrodome I saw a lot of lights to the left and front, which had to be Dallas. I guessed at my air speed and came out with a mathematical equation that we would be entering Dallas Airport in fifteen minutes, and that we were flying about forty degrees to the right. To my pure happiness it turned out I was correct, and I was able to graduate navigation school.
After we graduated as air cadets we went with the squadron to Poke Field, Fort Bragg, where we were trained for both night and day operations as well as how to work with gliders and paratroopers. Our 100th Airborne division trained all the time with the 101st Airborne Division, which was stationed nearby at Camp Mackall. Training days were so long and combined with night missions that sometimes I just slept in a plane and didn’t even return to the barracks. In August 1943 the squadron was assigned to participate on temporary duty in the final week of training for a class a paratroopers going through the Fort Benning School. Ten planes and crews from the squadron were sent over to Fort Benning for the second week of August. During the Monday to Friday period the entire class of 1200 paratroop students completed their qualifications, making nearly 6,000 jumps from the aircraft of the 100th squadron. This training was continuous including athletics, exercising, practice with carbines, pistols, machine guns and work on a course of hazards - jumping over fences, climbing over rocks and doing a lot of things I had certainly never experienced before. As luck would have it I never had to use any of this after my training. But the Air Force in its wisdom prepared us in the most extensive and the most exhausting way.
It was after that that we were ordered overseas. We took the flight to England. Due to the fact that our planes did not have very much gasoline capacity, the trip was taken in short stages and we sometimes used the gas tanks that were in our cabin to refuel.
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"LIFE IN THE MARGIN" by Morton Gladstone