When I graduated from college in 1960, I was draftable and I had two options. Wait until I was drafted for a two-year hitch or join the reserves. I chose to join the Army Reserve, which was a six-year commitment, but with only six months of active duty. The good news is that because I was working for a bank, I was put in the Admin Company of the 63rd Infantry Division, which means that during our two-week summer camp each year at Camp Roberts, California, I worked in an air-conditioned office and didn’t have to go out in the hot fields, get dirty and sleep in a pup tent. Instead, I was sometimes able to swim in the Camp Roberts pool.
I took basic training at Fort Ord, near Monterey, California (Fort Ord is gone but not lamented) during the summer of 1960. Since it was summer you would think that it would be hot, or at least warm, but I believe it was the coldest summer I’ve ever spent. I can only remember one warm day, and that was when I was on guard duty all alone at a remote area of the Fort, enjoying the weather. When we had night training, those of us who didn’t wear our issued long johns would freeze.
I had been in the ROTC for two years in college, and during my second year I had acted as guidon bearer for our company. When the Senior Drill Instructor of our company at Fort Ord asked if any of us recruits had experience carrying a guidon, I raised my hand. The general advice in basic training is to never volunteer for anything, but this was the smartest thing I did during my two months of basic. The guidon bearer marches in front of the company carrying a long stick with a flag on it (the guidon) and raises it when commands are given while marching.
I have a long stride and occasionally the SDI would yell at me to “stop taking those damned 90-inch steps,” but since we were often yelled at in basic, that didn’t bother me. The guidon bearer doesn’t have to eat the dust of the soldiers in front of him or run to catch up with the rest of the company. Recruits in basic are not the same quality as the soldiers you see in parades, marching in perfect step and order. I found that out on the days I reported to sick call, joined the company later, and had to march at the rear of the company.
You would think I’d have made a good soldier. I did well in the classes we took, I was okay if not brilliant during physical training tests (although a young Pfc. attached to our company who was trying to get into Officer Candidate School told me I was as graceful as a baby giraffe).
I didn’t flinch too much when we had to crawl through a close-combat course while bullets were fired over our heads. The teargas hut left me tearful but not unhappy. I watched the live grenade I threw over a wall for so long that the sergeant who was coaching me yelled at me to hit the ground. I almost shot expert with my M-1 rifle. I silently accused somebody unknown of giving me one eight-shot clip of blanks, causing me to miss expert by a small margin. However, the M-1 was also my undoing.
Growing up, I had a lot of ear infections. The diary I kept during my freshman year of high school mentions five times that my right eardrum ruptured because of fluid pressure behind it. This alone should have been enough to permanently affect my hearing, but when I graduated from college my hearing wasn’t bad.
There was a history of late-life deafness in my mother’s side of the family. My great grandmother was quite deaf in her old age, and my mother and her siblings were too. A doctor told me that I should be 4-F (unfit), for military service, because of chronic otitis media (ear infection), but when I took my army physical exam a doctor said my ears were clear.
The method for soldiers in basic training to learn to shoot the M-1 rifle was to pair off recruits, so that each shooter had a “coach” who sat with his ear six inches from the barrel of the gun. When the recruit I was coaching fired his rifle, it felt as if I was being punched in the ear. I immediately began to suffer hearing loss.
When I went to the base doctor, he said I had some hearing loss, but not enough to do anything about it except wear ear plugs. However, the rest of the army apparently hadn’t heard of earplugs yet in 1960 (they were not issued to us), and the doctor didn’t write me a prescription for wearing them.
There were other irritations in basic. Because our company was composed of all reservists, half of us had just graduated from college and half from high school. This made a difference at night when us old folks were trying to sleep and the youngsters were playing their transistor radios. And we didn’t get enough sleep, anyway. In addition, if we were ever caught playing bridge or otherwise loafing, we would immediately be put to work.
To attempt to compensate for the hardships of basic training, I ate a lot. I would often attempt to go through the serving line twice, even out in the field, and whenever I had a free hour I went to the post exchange and ate whatever I could purchase. As a result, I weighed 180 pounds when I finished basic, the most I have ever weighed. When I graduated from high school, I weighed 143 pounds, although I don’t think I was at my full height of six feet, one inch yet.
After basic training, I never talked on a phone using my left ear again. My hearing has grown progressively worse over the years, and I have worn hearing aids since 1999. One of my brothers also wears hearing aids.
The commander of the 63rd Infantry Division, was a reserve major general who I believe worked for the gas company in real life. He volunteered our division for Viet Nam, which would have given him the perks of an active-duty general, but, fortunately, we were the worst equipped division in the country and never made it past Camp Roberts. The division was disbanded in 1965.
Let’s face it, war is noisy. In an actual combat situation, I would have been completely deaf within one day. War has always been noisy, but I probably would have fared better as a bowman shooting a longbow, than a rifleman shooting a rifle. It’s a good thing we didn’t go to Viet Nam.
I had to prove to myself that I was smarter than the teachers who said I was destined to be a failure at everything. I went back to my old high school to tell them so as the graduation speaker. Unfortunately, they were all dead. I just wrote an essay in which I said I would describe our biggest economic problem, and show how to solve it, in one page. Then I succeeded. I guess nobody is interested in actually solving issues.
I started college in 1961. There was one older student with a car that bragged about being in either the reserve or the National Guard. Within a month, his division was the first called up from Wisconsin. He was angry but had to go. I never saw him come back to school again.
In 1968, after I had received my Masters degree in engineering from Stanford and had a job, I drove down to Monterey and into Fort Ord to watch the sports car races at Laguna Seca. I believe they are still held there.
In 1941, my father, like you, from ear infections and Golden Gloves (he had cauliflower ears from boxing without ear protection) and myopia with astigmatism, washed out in his physical at Milwaukee and sat out World War II. At the same time, a Marine with the same problems, sent to the Pacific where he wiped out a machine gun nest, received the first Congressional Medal of Honor for the war. Later in life, dad was asked to join the VFW and the American Legion, even though he had never served in the Armed Forces.
With hearing aids, my father functioned well up until his death. But my mother, completely lost her very sharp hearing by the time she died at 95. I am experiencing the same nerve loss and will be probably like her when I die. I have not started using hearing aids yet, but I have to use closed caption for all my viewing or have trouble hearing everything said.
I'm glad you never had to face combat, like me. All the people that I knew we did go and faced combat were forever changed.
Ron