My Unforgettable Southern Experience I Cautiously had to Put Up With
This was #5 on my post about 14 Unusual Things on my other personal blog. I transferred it here because it was too long to include in a short (you gotta be kidding!) list. Here recounts my unforgettable Southern experience.
Welcome to Fort Campbell, KY
by Fort Campbell MWR
Published on Youtube on Aug 8, 2016
Note that I was stationed here in the early 60s. We trained at Ft. Benning Georga and jumped out of airplanes. Things are much different now. I liked Ft. Campbell. It was just my particular situation with my sergeant that spoiled most of my time there, which was almost 3 years.
For more information on Fort Campbell you can visit www.campbell.army.mil and www.campbell.armymwr.com.
Read about my unforgettable southern experience here.
User:Astrokey44/CC BY-SA 3.0
Sounds rather ordinary right? Not if you were a minority, even if you weren’t a minority but came from California you could have problems back then.
Fortunately things are not as bad now as they used to be when I was in the service in the early 60s.
Note: This was one of my experiences. Not all experiences in the south were bad. However, back in those days, 1961-64, if you were a minority you had to be careful what you did or said. It was definitely not an ‘Equal Opportunity’ era.
- Numbers 1-4 are on my Charles Harmon blog. See link at bottom of page.
- I hated Southern California so I enlisted in the Army to go to Germany…
- but went to the South (of the USA) instead of Germany which I signed up for.
- Numbers 6-14 are on my Charles Harmon blog. See link at bottom of page.
I jumped out of airplanes!
I volunteered for 3 years in the Army. So I spent about 3 months in Basic training. After that I didn’t have 3 years left to serve. Re-enlisting for at least a year just to go to Germany was out of the question.
It turned out after my Basic Training the Army had changed their policy. In order to be eligible to go overseas it now required people going overseas (except Korea) to spend a minimum of 3 years in the service.
I Volunteered for the Shortest and Hardest Duty the Army Offered
101st Airborne Division. Photo by Raymondstaley / CC BY-SA 3.0
I volunteered for the Paratroopers.
Bad Luck because I was stationed in the South near the Kentucky Tennessee border at Ft. Campbell Kentucky! It was a great base, but unfortunately it was in the south or southern states.
Me being from the North and also California, that didn’t sit well with me. My unforgettable southern experience I encountered in the South began when I was assigned to headquarters company Assault Platoon.
Unfortunately my Sergeant disliked me and my best friend and busted both of us for essentially nothing, a made-up reason. But I made the best of a bad situation. I vowed to get back at him.
After all, what’s a 19 year old college student to do? I said college student because I had completed two years in Junior college. Although I was in the Army, I was also taking a University of Wisconsin correspondence class.
Getting Punished for something over 100 others did without Punishment
It’s a bad deal when a 28 year old high school dropout punishes someone for a non-event that also applied to well over 100 others. That non-event was not being in formation for a company roll-call. It was on a Saturday or Sunday, our day off. They had a 12 hour alert call and we got there about 10 minutes before the roll-call.
My friend and I were a few minutes late. My Sergeant wouldn’t let us in formation. We had to stand behind it in the background while roll-call was taken about ten minutes after we arrived. Of the three hundred or so soldiers in the company, less than half were present.
No one else got busted or punished but us. Pure discrimination and unfairness! That situation ultimately forced me to take action on my part. After ignoring my sergeant’s orders to remove the wheels from my car, I took action. Note that one could be put in jail for disobeying a superior’s order.
I quickly disappeared as soon as we got off duty each day. In addition I also applied for a transfer to Signal platoon directly above us in the barracks. Fortunately I had friends there who put in a good word for me.
I showed movies using a movie projector like this to troops in my battalion.
Being in Headquarters company, I was the only one in our entire battalion with a projectionist license who could show movies. That enabled me to be away from my sergeant quite frequently.
I Snuck off the Base to Avoid getting Put on Various Details
So I was absent for a lot of details my sergeant wanted to put me on.
I also had an Amateur Radio Station similar to this back home.
As soon as I turned 21 I bought a new car .
It was a new 1963 Pontiac with a hot engine and a stick shift transmission. My Sergeant was really pissed off then. How could a measly private out-due him with a newer car. Too bad! He couldn’t catch me.
There was only one of my many friends in my platoon and the signal platoon who had a car other than me. I left the Army Post virtually every night with some of those buddies. They always paid for my gasoline which, although very cheap compared to today’s prices (2024) really helped me a lot. We went to Nashville Tennessee or Evansville Indiana and other places much further from the base on the weekends.
My sergeant stayed upset, to put it mildly. That’s because I almost always would sneak away before he could grab me for some menial detail to punish me. Leaving the base was a major part of dealing with my unforgettable southern experience.
Luck was with Me and I got Transferred to Signal Platoon
Finally to top it off, I finally managed to get transferred from the Assault Platoon to Signal Platoon. In the Assault Platoon I had been a gunner and later a driver for one of the big guns we had that were dropped from airplanes.
An old fashioned machine for coding messages
With my secret clearance I was able to get my own mobile communications vehicle. It was a three-quarter ton truck, loaded with radios, transmitters, a teletype machine and other goodies. I had to brief the important officers about the coded messages I received. That kept me busy and away a lot of the time.
In the cold weather I had a warm (it had a heater inside) communication center in my vehicle. When we went to the field for training exercises I dished out hot coffee to my friends. My former sergeant could only look disgustedly at me since I would not give him any coffee.
No one could come close to my vehicle because it was off limits due to the secret communication equipment in it.
[I also used those transmitters to talk to my buddies over amateur radio frequencies in Chicago, Southern California, and around the world (don’t tell anyone) using the military equipment] I did this once our exercises for the day was over.
I was a gunner and a driver for a lightweight anti-tank gun that looked sort of like this.
The big long-barrel 7 1/2 ton guns, larger than in this picture, were also dropped out of airplanes.
Unfortunately I never make rank due to my former sergeant busting me. He was surely upset because I seemed to outsmart him in almost every way. No new allocations for promotion came down the rest of the time I was in the service.
I managed to have a lot of fun in Signal Platoon and taught electronics to the guys there
. I managed to get out of the Army three months early to go back to college. It was a real relief to get away from the South, although once I got out of the Assault Platoon things were good for me.
The GI Bill was Good for Me
Fortunately the GI Bill easily paid for my last two years of college. In addition I used my VA benefits to buy my first house with “no money down.”
Also I used if for VA benefits for the current house I live in. But I had to put $30,000 down because my house was too expensive for the VA to approve the loan unless I added that huge downpayment. That was a huge amount for me because during that time period I had short term contract jobs where I was off more than I was working.
I was in the 101st Airborne and I can tell you freedom is not free.
Later I also bought a townhome in Montclair CA with a new VA loan on it. I then sold it “no money down” to an investor. He shortly thereafter turned right around and resold it to another investor. I kept the mortgage (an assumable Trust Deed that I created) for 17 years and made a total of about $80,000 off that one deal.
It was a $5100 “no money down” deal I bought from a young college student. I didn’t follow the “rules (location, location, location)” but still made a bundle. You can read something about that deal here.
Uncle Sam wants You!
Read more about my 14 Unusual Things
