Mother, Please Let Me Go: An Air Force Career to Remember

By H. D. Graham

This book is about my exciting and wonderful career in the United States Air Force. I listed my various assignment in the order in which they occurred and outlined the major events in my life while at each base. Every assignment had a lot of good points and some that wasn’t that great but I tried to focus on the exciting things. A large portion of the book deals with my assignments in Vietnam and events that still haunt me today. The events in the book start when I was a senior in high school trying to talk my Mother into giving me permission to enlist just as soon as I turn 17 years old. I also wrote about some of the interesting things while in high school and about my large family. I felt that it might be of interest to the reader to know that between all my brothers and I we accumulated over 170 years of military service to our country.

I ended the book with some events that happened while I was teaching and the jetliner that I observed on 10 Sep 01 practicing for the flight across southern Pennsylvania that crashed on 9/11.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 28, 2010
• ISBN: 9781462807222

H. D. Graham

HD Graham is a retired USAF E9 and a retired educator. He enjoyed a distinguished and exciting military career prior to turning his attention to education. During his career as an educator, he taught nearly twenty years, mostly at Harrisonville-Scipio Elementary School. He graduated from Scipio High School when he was sixteen years old. He is from a his, mine, and our family that totaled twelve boys and five girls. He traveled extensively while in the military and especially enjoyed the island nations and the people throughout the Pacific area and Southeast Asia. He has two bachelors degrees and a dual masters degree. He had six brothers retired from the various branches of the armed forces. Between his brothers and himself, they accumulated more than 170 years of military service to the United States of America.

Book preview

CHAPTER I

Convincing My Mother

It was April 1960 and I was sixteen years old. I was a senior and would be graduating from Scipio High School in a few weeks. I had skipped my junior year because I had excellent grades and had earned the credits needed to graduate early. I just wanted to get on with my life. I had known for a couple of years that I wanted to make the USAF my career, but I was having trouble convincing my mother that I was making the right career choice for my future.

I was five feet ten inches tall and weighed in at l38 pounds. I had worked on our small farm for several years now and was very strong. I could throw hundred-pound sacks of grain around easily. I milked our family cow twice a day, sold eggs from my flock of chickens and dressed rabbits and sold them to my neighbors and the local Kroger store. I also raised a lot of white rabbits in the spring of each year. Then I decorated them with food coloring and sold them as Easter bunnies.

I enjoyed hunting and fishing very much but the only thing I had to hunt with was a single-shot 22 caliber rifle. I also enjoyed walking our hills and those of our close neighbors. I got a big kick out of watching the antics of the wildlife on our farm too. Most of the babies of those wild animals were very friendly but the mothers were not too friendly until I proved that I had no intentions of harming them.

I was pretty scrappy and active around the farm and in school. On the farm I was always outside finding something to do. I had played high school basketball for three years. Even though I wasn’t that good, I could jump almost high enough to touch the rim and was very fast. I played mostly guard on the basketball team.

I was a very good defensive player but passed the ball off too much instead of taking the shot myself. I had also learned to be a good loser since we seldom won a game. Although we didn’t win many games, we won the county sportsmanship trophy often.

My twin brother, Darold, didn’t play basketball since he had a fractured arm when in the eighth grade and always had problems with it after that. However, he was our team manager and our junior high basketball coach. He had some good teams over the three year period he coached and they won most of their games. One year his eighth grade team won the county championship. He graduated from Albany High School the year after I did, since our high school closed the year I graduated.

Our high school was the smallest one around. We had fifty-seven high school students the year I graduated. The parents of most of our students would not let us date until we were at least sixteen and then only by double dating with another couple. We didn’t see anything wrong with those rules because that is the way it had always been at our school. Our rival high school had a pretty rough reputation and our parents didn’t want problems in our school that were common at that school.

Our high school put on some great plays and usually our students in grades 9-12 had a chance to land a part. The people came from all over the area to see our plays. The performances were so well attended that usually they were performed on Friday and Saturday nights with standing room only crowds.

During my senior year we put on a play called, A Hillybilly Wedding. We were cousins from the city going to the country for the wedding. Since our aunt and uncle didn’t have enough beds for everyone, some of us were going to have to sleep on the floor and that was a new and exciting experience for us city kids. One of my many lines was supposed to have been, Sleeping on the floor will be a new experience, what fun! Somehow I said, Sleeping on the floor with a new experience, what fun! The audience really laughed over those comments but I couldn’t see what was so funny. None of the other kids on stage at the time could understand what was funny either. Shortly after that, the curtain closed after the 1st act.

As we went off the stage, Sadie Carr, our assistance director, was laughing so hard she was crying. However, Mr Peck, our drama teacher, was visibly upset to the point that his face was beet read. He started yelling at me and wanted to know why I would say something like that. Since I didn’t have any idea what he was talking about I told him I was just following the script. Then he understood that I had no idea that I had said the wrong thing and started laughing almost uncontrollably. I still didn’t have any idea what I had said wrong until Sadie told me. I was shocked that I had uttered such words. Keep in mind, I was only sixteen at the time and back in the late 1950s we were still in the dark ages in Scipio Township, Ohio. That was pretty embarrassing to me at the time. The other students didn’t let me forget it either, especially the girls. Some of those fresh girls would ask me what new experience I had on the floor last night. The first two or three times they asked me that, my face would get red and I couldn’t even respond. After a while it didn’t bother me nearly as much.

Our family was huge and a military family. My great granddads served in the Civil War, my granddads served in the Army, and my dad served in WWI as a NCO. My dad had been a widower with seven sons and two daughters. My mother had been a widow and had three sons and three daughters. My parents had known each other all their lives and his first wife, Pearl, was my mother’s best friend. But after my parents married, they separated when my brother and I were less than a year old.

Our mother told us that our dad’s boys, except for Tommy and Bobby, were rather mean and his older sons put the younger ones up to all sorts of mischief. We didn’t see my dad until his death when we were fifteen years old. He was a complete stranger to us and we had no emotional attachments to him at all. We grew up without a father figure in our home. I still don’t know if that was good or bad. However, I know my brother and I missed out on a lot of dad-to-son talks. When I got to Vietnam and was assigned to work with the Special Forces troops, they saw that I was educated on the facts of life real fast.

My twin brother and I favored each other in looks until we were six or seven years old, but never in actions. When we were babies I guess I would finish most of the milk in my bottle and then trade it to Darold for his full bottle. Of course I don’t remember that but I have included a photo at the end of this chapter when we were about a year old. The photo shows Darold with a nearly empty bottle of milk while my bottle is nearly full. Darold also looked very much like our dad and our other brothers, except for my brother, Jack. When I retired from the USAF on 1 December 1982 and Darold retired a few months later, we made the sixth and seventh sons of our parents to retire from the military services. Between my brothers and me we accumulated more than 170 years of military service to our country.

My mother went to work in the morning before Darold and I went to school each day. Usually, I got up before she did and finished my outside chores. Then I would go in and scrub up and prepare her breakfast while she got ready to go to work. Darold usually didn’t get up and get dressed until I yelled that the bus was coming. When he did manage to get up before the bus ran, he always wanted me to fix his breakfast for him. During my senior year I got tired of having to make an extra breakfast and started charging him a quarter. He didn’t seem to mind that and told me many times that I was a better cook than our mother was.

I usually had the evening meal ready when my mother got home from work. The only exception to that was when we had an away basketball game. Then I only had time to do my evening chores before rushing back to school. When I got home my mother would always tell me how much she missed me not having dinner ready for her.

I enjoyed canning vegetables and fruits with my mother. After marrying my wife, Janet, I taught her how to can and we always have a garden and can several hundred jars of vegetables, fruits and jams and jellies each year. I also make pickled corn and we both enjoy that very much. However, our children have never cared for pickled corn.

The day I graduated from high school, my mother told me to find a job and work at it for at least three months. Then, if I still wanted to make the USAF my career, she would sign my enlistment papers. I went to Newport News, Virginia, and stayed with my brother, Jack, that summer. The second day I was there I got a job in the produce department of the local Colonial Supermarket. I worked there until September 1960, and enjoyed it very much. I worked day shift and took care of my brother’s four children in the evenings and nights until he and his wife came home from working part-time jobs. My brother was in the USAF and stationed at Langley AFB at the time.

I was very successful in the short time I worked for Mr Collie in the produce department and I received two promotions. I saved my money and put it with the nest egg I already had stashed away at a bank in Ohio. Before returning to Ohio in mid-September 1960, Mr Collie tried his best to get me to stay there. However, I had my heart sat on a military career in the USAF. He finally gave up and told me that my decision was a solid one and that he was sure I would be very successful.

The arrangement with my brother and sister-in-law worked out very well. He worked part-time at Kroger and got home around 2300 hours. My sister-in-law was a telephone operator and got home a little after midnight each week day. I was trading my babysitting skills for meals and a place to sleep. His four children, ages four months to four years, were very lovable and easy to care for.

My brother, Jack, was my idol and always had been. He was twelve years older than me but we always got along better than Darold and I did. I looked almost like a carbon copy of him, except he was 6’1 and I was 5’10. We also favored each other in actions and choices of food. Neither of us drank, smoked or drank coffee, like our other brothers did. I still prefer ice water to anything and then skim milk, chocolate milk or tea.

I continually talked with my mother about her promise to sign my enlistment papers if I got a summer job and did well with it. I started dating one of my high school lady friends and my mother wasn’t too pleased about that because she didn’t like her dad. Then she started hearing some wild rumors about us and got very upset. That might have nudged her into signing. In October my best buddy from high school, Morton Butcher, enlisted in the USAF and that increased my desire to enlist even more. A recruiter came to our home in late October and my mother finally signed my enlistment papers.

I was sent to Columbus, Ohio, for a physical and passed that without any problem. I enlisted on 7 November 1960, and left for Lackland AFB, Texas that evening. During basic training, I was given three choices to consider as a career. Those choices included Administration, the Medical field and Personnel. I chose Personnel. After choosing Personnel, I wondered if I would have made a good medic. I was fortunate enough to get a chance to find out soon afterward. While stationed at Langley AFB and Naha AB, I worked as a volunteer in the emergency rooms and wards at each hospital. I learned a great deal as a volunteer, especially in the emergency rooms. The most important thing I learned was to never assume anything since that could cost someone their life. I also worked as a medic in Vietnam from December 1962 to January 1964 with the Special Forces and the Montagnards and enjoyed that very much.

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This photo was taken on our first birthday in

August 1944. My twin brother, Darold,

is on the left.

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This is a photo taken in August 1952.

My twin brother is on the left in this photo also.

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This is a school photo taken of me in 1956.

CHAPTER II

Basic Training at Lackland AFB, Texas

I went to basic training at Lackland AFB, Texas, and had eight weeks of really tough training and physical conditioning. But, I have to admit that I enjoyed that training very much. I was in good physical condition from all the work I did on our farm and helping our neighbors on their farms. That made things so much easier for me. The only area that gave me any trouble was the gas chamber. Somehow I got knocked down and was gassed far more than anyone else. I really got sick at my stomach and ended up at the clinic for several hours.

The obstacle course was great and a lot of fun. I could jump and climb very well and those skills came in handy. Usually, I would have to go back down the course and help less able troops over some areas. Some of the hurdles were too high for some of the troops, but fine for me. I enjoyed the ropes and hand-walking over the streams a great deal. I had to go over the streams on the ropes so often that I looked more like a monkey on a rope than a person.

Everyone had fallen off the ropes but me and I had to keep going over them until I fell into the stream. I think my TI, TSgt White, was really getting ticked at me for not falling in. Finally, as I started over the stream on the rope again, he said, Damn your skinny butt, Graham. and jumped up and grabbed a hold onto my legs. He told me if I let loose he would kill me.

I got about two-thirds of the way across the stream when my arms gave out and we both fell into the water. I didn’t get too wet because I landed on top of Sergeant White. He was very upset about getting soaked and said I did it on purpose. I said, No way Sarg. How in the world could a tired lightweight like me keep hand-walking over the stream, especially with a 175 pound gorilla hanging onto my legs? Then he grinned and told me to help him out of the water. When I got a hold of his hand to haul him out, he pulled me in and I got soaked too. In fact, he wallowed me around in the water until I was soaked from one end to the other. Then he laughed and told me that if I ever got him wet again he would drown me. I really didn’t believe him but I never had to hand-walk on the ropes over the stream again.

I loved the war games, especially crawling under the barbed wire and through mud during live fire. Although that was a snap for this old country boy, it was a major headache for many of the men. Even though those war games were exciting and extremely enjoyable, I came to realize during my recon missions with the Special Forces troops in Vietnam that the jungles and swamps were anything but fun. In fact, between the stinging bugs, the biting flies and ants, and the wait-a-minute thorns, trying to get through those jungles and swamps was a major pain all over.

I was eventually made a flight commander while in basic training. That was a lot of work, much more than I could have imagined. Not only were you responsible for yourself, but for 18-20 other men as well. As a flight commander, you had to help the men deal with personal problems that were often tough to solve.

Sometimes the TI thought that I was too soft on the men and would chew my butt for quite awhile. However, my flight won more honors than any other flight. Eventually, he started laying off of me for the way I did things but he told me my soft methods of dealing with people would get me in trouble on down the road. So far I have been lucky because being human and considerate to others has not got me in trouble yet.

When we went to the firing range, I scored 281 out of 300 points possible. I was very pleased with my score, but a few other men had higher scores than me. I had hunted with a single shot rifle since I was twelve years old and I had learned to hit what I aimed for. If you didn’t then the game was gone before you could reload. I had only fired a pistol once in my life and I was glad we didn’t have to qualify on hand guns. I don’t believe I would have ever qualified.

I had one airman assigned to my flight from east Tennessee named Jeb. He was a nice and very quiet young man, but with few friends. He scored almost perfect on the rifle range. When I congratulated him for being the top marksman in my flight he told me his dad would have been disappointed.

I asked him to explain and he said that his family had been feuding for so long that his whole family would have been disappointed with him for missing a stationary target two or three times. He went on to say that nearly all the shots that he had taken at home were at moving targets, but he just shot to wing, not kill them. I had an idea that he might have been talking about two-legged targets and not four-legged ones.

After completion of basic training and earning my first stripe, I moved across the base to attend the Personnel Technical Training Course. TSgt White wanted me to skip the training course and stay on as his assistant in basic training. I really couldn’t see any future in that. I talked with several assistant basic training instructors and none had advanced beyond A2C for their entire four year enlistment. I had every intention to be a Staff Sergeant by then.

Then the commander of our squadron talked with me about staying on. He said the decision had to be made by me because he could not hold me in the squadron unless I applied for release from the technical training. Again, I declined because it was a dead-end job with almost no future.

CHAPTER III

The Personnel Tech Training Course

I was in the last class of the Personnel Technical Training Course that was held at Lackland AFB, Texas. Future trainees would attend the course at Keesler AFB, Mississippi. I enjoyed the training very much and learned a great deal about maintaining the personnel records for members of the USAF. I put forth a lot of effort and was one of the five honor graduates.

The top five students went to Base Personnel to observe operations in a real Personnel Office. I enjoyed that very much, especially the Records Section and the Quality Control Division. I learned in the Assignments Section that our first permanent assignment would be of our own choosing, based on placement in the class when you graduated. I believe I went to Base Personnel five or six times.

During the weeks of study to become a Personnel Specialist, we had physical conditioning nearly every evening. Most of the time it was on the training field. Sometimes I was sent to the gym with one of the instructors and several other students to play basketball. I usually ended up being a guard. My skills in handling the basketball were getting better and better, but compared to some of the other men I wasn’t that good. I think most of the men wanted me on their team because I was a good outside shooter and could run and gun.

A couple of weeks before graduation we were permitted to pick our first permanent base from a list of vacancies. I chose Eagle Pass, down on the border near Del Rio, Texas, the first time. I thought I would enjoy that because it was a small radar station with only two personnel specialists authorized. However, we learned a couple of days later that the list given to us was from the previous class and many of the vacancies were no longer available. As a result, we all had to choose again. This time I chose Langley AFB, Virginia, since it was on the new list. We graduated two weeks later and I left the day after graduation on a ten-day leave. I had to report to Langley AFB no later than 28 February 1961.

The flight left San Antonio, Texas, on time, but I had a long delay in Chicago because of the weather. I finally arrived in Columbus, Ohio, and my mother and a neighbor picked me up. After having dinner at a nice restaurant, we finally arrive home well after dark.

When I got home after basic and technical school training, I dated one of my high school lady friends a couple of times. However, things didn’t work out too well for some reason. She just seemed to be less mature than I was expecting. I didn’t have an automobile then so I usually borrowed my mother’s car.

I wanted to go to a new John Wayne movie but my mother had already planned to go to a Tupperware Party that one of her friends was having. She must have been talking about me wanting to go to the movie while at work because one of the ladies she worked with offered to pick me up since she was going to the same movie. I wasn’t too sure I wanted to do that, but my mother told me she was a nice and settled lady with two school-age children.

We never did get to the movies. We went to her home and she taught me a lot more than I would have ever learned at the movies. She ended up bringing me home well after midnight. We dated a couple of other times after that with the same results. My mother started hearing some rumors at work about the lady and me and she wasn’t a happy camper at all.

My mother carried on about that for several days. I told her she was the one that set up the whole thing. Then she told me that the lady was a little loose with her moral standards and that she had seemed to be so nice. I found out a day or two later that the lady had never been married and her two children belonged to different men. My mother never complained about my immature high school lady friends again.

I was glad when my ten-day leave was up. I was looking forward to my assignment at Langley AFB and all the new experiences that assignment would bring. I was also looking forward to being assigned on the same base as my brother, Jack. My mother and one of my high school lady friends drove me to Langley AFB in late February 1961. I checked into the 4505th Air Refueling Wing and received a nice welcome from the First Sergeant and from SSgt Platt, my first supervisor.

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Taken at Lackland AFB in Jan 61 while attending

the Personnel Tech Training Course.

CHAPTER IV

My First Permanent Assignment

Langley AFB, Virginia

When I arrived at Langley AFB, Virginia, on 26 February 1961, I was assigned to the 4505th Air Refueling Wing. The assignment was wonderful and I enjoyed it very much. The Wing had three squadrons of KB-50 refueling planes. Those huge old converted bombers had seen better days and were left over from WWII. They had been converted to refueling planes by adding a couple of 5,000 gallon fuel tanks that were not always safe.

SSgt Platt was my first supervisor and he was a great guy. He was an x-officer that had lost his commission due to cut backs in the active duty force. After being told how hard it was for him and his wife to raise a family of four children on his much reduced pay, I felt sorry for them. He had been a Major at one point but was reduced to an E-4 before getting promoted to Staff Sergeant. He still had a year left in the Air Force before he could retire with twenty years of active service.

My first duty was being appointed as the caretaker of the coffee pot. I was told that it was going to be my job to come in early every morning to make coffee and have it ready by the time the rest of the Personnel staff arrived at approximately 0800 hours. I found out the first day that the USAF troopers take their coffee drinking very seriously.

The next morning, after my arrival at Langley AFB, I went to the chow hall to have breakfast before going to the office. I had a great breakfast consisting of bacon, eggs, fried potatoes, toast, strawberry jam, donuts and milk. The bear-feet, as most of the troops called the donuts, were delicious. I also talked the mess sergeant into giving me a dozen of those wonderful donuts for the eight or ten troops that I was going to be working with.

When I got to the Personnel Office I found everything and started to make the coffee. I was a little nervous about the whole thing because I didn’t drink coffee and had never made it before. The coffee pot was so dirty and seemed to have a nasty looking crust in the bottom of it and what appeared to be mold in several places. I got busy and cleaned that old pot so well that it looked like a new one. Then I made the coffee based on the instructions I was given.

When the men came in to work that morning, after hanging up their hats, most of them headed for the coffee pot. While one or two of them started drinking it black, most of the men were putting cream and sugar in it. CMSgt Maderra said, Graham, what in hell did you put in this coffee? It tastes like blank! Before I could answer, all of the men were raising hell about how awful the coffee tasted. I told them I cleaned the nasty looking pot before making the coffee. The Chief told me to never touch that blanking pot again or they would have me court-martialed for trying to poison the troops. SSgt Platt said they appreciated the donuts, but even they didn’t make up for that nasty coffee. I was never ask to make coffee at Langley AFB again.

While stationed at Langley AFB, my brother, Jack, picked me up after work nearly every evening so that I could babysit his kids while he and his wife worked part-time jobs. I took care of those kids in the evenings after work until they brought a four year old boy, by the name of Butch, into their home a couple of months after I got there. That little boy was mean, very unruly and a total mess. A few days later I refused to babysit for my brother any longer.

While stationed at Langley AFB, I purchased a farm in Ohio in April 1961. At that time land was very inexpensive and I paid less than a hundred dollars an acre for it. There was approximately 248 acres initially, but I eventually kept purchasing neighboring farms until I had over six hundred acres and several houses. Gradually, land prices increased and I paid more than two thousand dollars an acre for the last farm I purchased a few years ago. When I retired from the USAF in late 1982, we had a new home built on the original farm from money I had saved over the years and we enjoyed it very much.

I loved working in the Personnel Office. I had the responsibility of taking care of the personnel records for an entire squadron. I had reaccomplished every Air Force Form 7 and my records were always current and up to date before I left the office each day. I made Airman of the Month several times and received three-day passes for that. I used those passes to work as a volunteer at the base hospital in the emergency room and in a couple of the wards.

My first experience with an Inspector General (IG) team was at Langley AFB. We had three inspectors that went over our entire Personnel shop with a fine tooth comb. Out of more than 4600 entries I had made, those inspectors found only one error. I had missed typing an old US Navy service number on one of the new forms. I was selected as Airman of the Quarter during the next board meeting. My reward was a $25.00 savings bond, a three-day pass and a flight on one of our KB-50s. I kept the savings bond until it matured, the flight on the KB-50 was a pretty bad experience and I used the three day pass to work at the base hospital as a volunteer. My buddies thought I was crazy to waste a three-day pass like that.

I had many friends while at Langley AFB. On Christmas Day in 1961, the Krammer family invited three of us single guys to their home for dinner.