Our First Night Involved Fleas

We entered the Oakland Temple the morning of August 31, 1968 and when we came out we were husband and wife, married for time and all eternity by the proper authority in one of the many Sealing Rooms in the Temple. It was a beautiful day and it was all we had dreamed it would be. It would be the only August 31st we would spend together for the next three years.

Almost six months later, to the day, February 26, 1969, I entered active duty in the Untied States Army. Jannie took me to the induction station early in the morning where I boarded a bus, bag and baggage, for Fort Ord, California and basic training. By the end of April I was at Fort Rucker waiting for my Advanced Individual Training to begin. I was scheduled to go into Aviation Maintenance, but because I had a high enough GT (General Technical) score on the battery of tests we took in basic, I qualified for Air Traffic Control operator and I was selected to change to that MOS. . Before I entered the Army I worked at the Hollywood – Burbank Airport in Burbank and had become friends with a couple of the controllers working in the airport control tower. Being former military controllers, they told me that I should get into the ATC School, but when I asked about that option when I enlisted, I was told that I had to have a secret clearance to be in ATC, which could take 6 months, and I had to be on active duty by the 27th of the month. So when I was offered ATC, I jumped at it. Training would be at Keesler Air Force Base at Biloxi, Mississippi.

I was supposed to graduate the end of August and would be home just in time for our first anniversary. Then we were visited by a lady named Camille. The hurricane came ashore at Gulfport, just a few miles west of Biloxi on August 17, 1969. This was a category 5 hurricane, the second of only three Cat 5’s to make landfall in the United States in the 20th Century. Camille was the only Atlantic hurricane with official winds reported to reach 190 mph until Allen in 1980.
As you can imagine, the damage was devastating. Base housing was heavily damaged, off base housing was even worse, especially those in the path of the storm surge. The first priority of the base officials was the safety and housing of military members and their families. A few days after the hurricane the military began to organize work parties to help with the clean-up of the local community. We were assigned to assist in the Gulfport area. The clean-up took nearly three weeks, and was another week after that before training resumed. Accordingly, our graduation date was moved to the end of September. August 31st came and went. We were able to talk on the phone for a few minutes.

Following graduation I was headed to Vietnam. But before I was to head off to war, I had six weeks of GCA training at Fort Rucker. We graduated on Wednesday and were scheduled to leave KAFB Sunday. Our report date at Rucker was the following Wednesday. I asked to speak to the Commander and explained that I would like to fly to California and pick-up my wife and then drive directly to Rucker. He told me to get an airline ticket and a ride to the airport, and I could go. So I arranged for a ride, picked up a ticket from the post travel agency, and I flew to San Jose and picked up Jannie.

We drove to Fort Rucker and arrived Tuesday evening. We found a place to live and I reported for duty. I in-processed and spent the next three days in POR (Process for Overseas Replacement) training. Then I was assigned to a GCA shift and we had to complete 50 GCA runs before we could move on to our assignment in Vietnam. POR training involved training us in the use of our weapon and then we ended with a “patrol” through the “jungle” of Fort Rucker. We tromped thru the under brush and then into bodies of water up to our chest. Had to keep our weapons out of the water. We were issued several magazines of blank ammo rounds (each held 30 rounds), and when we were ambushed we had to defend ourselves with our ammo. I remember one of the Cadre Sergeants and I had become pretty good friends for the few days we were together and he told me that instead of doing a lot of shooting, dump the rounds because blanks really dirtied up the rifle, and we had to clean them. I remembered cleaning rifles after expending lots of blank rounds in basic training, and the carbon from the round did leave the rifle very dirty. So as we tromped thru the swamps of Fort Rucker, I was pushing rounds out of my magazines and letting them fall into the water. When we were ambushed, I “dry fired” a lot. I knew I was going to get caught and have to do it all over again, after I received an Article 15, but I didn’t. At the end of training we had to clean our weapons. Mine was easy and my friend was inspecting the rifles, and he passed me right off. Jannie was waiting for me in the car and I left, POR completed.

The next few weeks involved radar training at sites that I would, in future years, work at and be in charge of. I was assigned to a shift and we worked the final approach position for the next 4 or 5 weeks and eventually I logged 50 approaches. At the end of the training I took 30 days leave prior to departing for Vietnam.

During our time together Jannie and I became very close and really got to know each other again. We had rented a small trailer, one that could have easily been towed by a pick-up truck. Our first night Involved lots of fleas! Our bed was infested with fleas! The next morning we complained to the landlord and he brought us a new bed, at least a different bed, and it had no fleas. That was not the end of our infestations, although now it was a different critter, or critters. Cockroaches! We didn’t have cockroaches in California, but I had become acquainted with them at Keesler. We used to say that Cockroaches were protected by law in Alabama because they were the State Bird! Sort of like mosquitoes in Alaska. We had roaches everywhere. We would carefully lift the toilet seat to make sure we didn’t have roaches on our fannies! They were in the kitchen, mostly. All we could do was kill them when we could. I felt bad leaving Jannie in that trailer every day when I went into training.

That was a time we were also very poor. Jannie has quit her job in San Jose to come to Alabama with me. She had $700 in her retirement fund and she cashed it out and we were going to live on that for the six weeks we were in Alabama. That was plenty of money in 1968 dollars. But it hadn’t arrived yet. We had just enough money to get into the trailer, but none for food. I told my sergeant and he sent us to The Red Cross, where we received a $50 grant. It held us over until we got the other money. One weekend I had KP (Kitchen Police). This was a payday weekend and not a lot of soldiers were eating in the dining facility. At the end of the day we had pans of fried chicken and uncooked hamburger patties that I was supposed to throw in the “edible garbage” bins. I told the mess sergeant that my wife and I had very little money and if it were possible, we could sure use the food more than the garbage could. He told me to wrap it all up and to take to home, but if I got caught I was on my own because it was against regulations to do that. So at the end of my shift I put the food in my car and went home. What a blessing that food was!

As I said, we got to know each other well over those few weeks. We had no money to spare, so we spent our time doing things together. One night we wanted to go to the Post Theater and see Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid; admission was 50 cents each and we didn’t have a dollar between us to go to the movies. We did purchase a television from Sears on credit, but ended up returning it a couple of weeks later because we only got one channel; cable did not run to our area. So we played a lot of games and spent a lot of time just talking. I honestly think that experience strengthened our love and friendship. After nearly 40 years of marriage, Jannie is still my best friend and I would rather do something with her than with anyone.

But we still had not celebrated an anniversary together. Our six weeks came to an end and we left Alabama for California and Idaho on leave. After arriving in San Jose we spent a few days there, and then drove up to Boise. We spent a week or so there, then drove back to San Jose. Don’t remember much of what we did, but soon it was time. During our time together in Alabama, Jannie became pregnant with our first baby, and I think she was beginning to feel the early effects of pregnancy. We celebrated Christmas early on Monroe Street, and then Jannie took me to the Airport in San Francisco where I boarded a flight to Seattle and my deployment to Vietnam. I arrived in-country early in December of 1969.

Before our 2nd Anniversary, July 18th arrived and so did our first baby, Heidi. I received a telegram from the Red Cross telling me of the arrival of my daughter. The telegram told me wife and daughter doing fine, but didn’t mention her name. My sergeant asked me if I knew the baby’s name, and I said I did. What I didn’t learn until much later was how close Jannie came to dying. Her doctor was out of the country when she delivered and the doctor who was on duty butchered her pretty badly. Later when he was on his rounds he walked into her room and when he looked at her he immediately ordered two units of blood. She was so pale that the lines in her hands were not visible.

August 31st found me with my unit in Chu Lai and not with my honey. So now we had been married for two years and had yet to spend an anniversary together. In fact, the six months between the time we got married and my induction into the Army, was the longest period of time we had been together since we had been married. When Heidi was six weeks old, Jannie brought her to Hawaii and our R & R. I cannot remember the date, but it was close to our Anniversary, but we missed the date. R & R was a week, then back to Vietnam. I departed first, and then Jannie and Heidi flew back to California.

My tour in Vietnam eventually ended and I returned home. We spent our 30 day leave visiting family and then we headed to Fort Rucker and our next assignment. I was there only a few weeks and we decided to reenlist and take the bonus and an assignment in Hawaii. We had fallen in love with Hawaii when we were an R & R and jumped at the chance to go back. So in April 1971 we left for our first assignment where we could actually be a family. Our first anniversary together was our third and on August 31, 1971 we celebrated in Hawaii. Not much, though, because Jannie had just delivered our oldest son, Brett, just a few weeks earlier, on August 2nd.

Since that third anniversary, we have been spent every anniversary together but one. In 1976 I was deployed to Korea and we were apart for that one. In 2006 I was TDY in Utah and it looked as if we might be apart one more time, but then Jannie was able to come to Utah in late August and we spent our 38th Anniversary in Park City, Utah. We cannot tell what the future will bring, but I don’t plan on spending a third anniversary apart from my bride.