Basic Training

During basic training, I was the second squad leader of flight 5110. We had one bad egg in our group named Walters, also from St. Louis. This white boy caused our group to be placed on punishment many times because he wouldn't take a shower and his uniform was always a mess. I even remember this kid's Air Force serial number AF17279664 because it was one digit in front of mine.

Sergeant Brown and his little mean corporal would take turns running him around the parade field with a broom handle. Everytime he slowed down, they would beat him with the stick until he started to run again, but Walters became more distant and refused to wash or iron his wrinkled uniform.

Sergeant Brown would punish our entire group for the nonconformity of Walters. One day Sergeant Brown called me and the other three squad leaders together and told us that if Walters wasn't clean in the morning, we were going to pay the price. That night the four of us got naked, one of us had a large bar of soap, another had a large stiff brush, and together we pulled Walters from his bunk and dragged him into the large shower room. While two of us held him down, another would apply soap while the other airman would scrub. We scrubbed him until he was raw. Flight 5110 became one of the best training groups at Lackland after we solved the Walters problem.

On completion of basic training and promotion to Private First Class, I went to see Bubba and told him I was to report to Sheppard Air Force Base, Wichita Falls, Texas, for aircraft and engine mechanics school. I had finally been accepted to a school to study aeromechanics. He informed me that he was to be assigned to flight engineers school at Chanute Air Force Base in Illinois.

Aircraft and engine mechanics school was exactly what I had wanted to attend. Similar to the facilities at Hadley Technical in St. Louis, I attended classrooms filled with instruments, propellers, engine test rooms, and I learned to start up and run my first jet aircraft, a Lockheed F-80 Shooting Star. A single seat Interceptor which replaced the Lockheed P-38 Lightning, it was America's first operational jet aircraft. To my pleasure, I started up and ran a B-25 Mitchell Light Bomber, the same airplane that I had seen in "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo"
the story of General Doolittle's raid on Tokyo starring Van Johnson and Spencer Tracy.

It was during A&E school that we were allowed to spend a week at home for Christmas, 1950. A white sergeant from St. Louis, two of his friends, and I shared the expenses of the trip home. Enroute home, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, I had my first encounter with blacks eating in white restaurants. We were all in uniform and I was the second ranking airman of the group. We pulled into this restaurant for dinner. As we entered, I noticed everyone staring at our group. As we sat down to this large table, for some reason the waitress kept ignoring us, even though other diners that entered after we did were being served.

Our sergeant, whose name I am sorry to say I have forgotten, put his cigar down, stood up on his chair, and yelled at the top of his lungs, "I want someone to wait on this table of United States Airmen before I tear this fucking place apart!"

A hush fell over the dining room. A black cook peeped around a door, some diners dropped their forks. Then a young white waitress holding a pad in her trembling hand rushed to our table after she was pushed by what appeared to be the manager.

From Tulsa to St. Louis, we talked of the war raging in Korea and were hoping that the war would be over before we finished school. Sergeant dropped us at the bus station and told us to meet him for the return trip at a certain time on a certain date. He said "Merry Christmas" and drove off.