1971 March: Getting Settled in MPCO, SBNM

Posted on October 14, 2020 by Mike

The top secret base that welcomed the public. Continue reading →

The army allowed us a few days before to transit from Fort Gordon to Sandia Base (SBNM) in Albuquerque. I flew from Augusta to KC and stayed at my parents’ house in Leawood, KS. At the time my sister Jamie was a freshman at Bishop Miege High School. I cannot remember anything that we did. I remember that a photo was taken of me and my dad standing on the patio in back of the house. It is probably in a bag or a box somewhere in our house in Enfield, CT, but I have not seen it in years.

Bob Willems drove his Volkswagen from his house in New Jersey to our house and stayed overnight with us. The next morning we began the 780 mile journey to Albuquerque. Riding with Bob was a big advantage for me. I could easily bring a lot more stuff than I could take on an airplane. I loaded my golf clubs, my set of posters, my stereo with the AR speakers, all of my record albums, and some books.

Bob did all the driving. Since we were required to report on the day after the morning that we left, we were in no great hurry. Nevertheless, we never considered taking the scenic route down from Colorado Springs to Albuquerque. The route we took offered no scenery to speak of. We took I-35 south to Oklahoma City and then I-40 west to Albuquerque. On the drive through Kansas we saw virtually nothing but farms on both sides of the road. Oklahoma was similar, but there were more oil “crickets”. New Mexico was mostly the parched landscape shown in cowboy movies. At least 90 percent of the drive on I-40 was uphill, not steep, but steady. At times Bob’s car seemed to be struggling.

We had a lot of time to converse in the car, but I cannot remember that we conclusively addressed any of the pressing issues of the day. We knew almost nothing about Sandia Base, and so we did not know what to expect when we got there. There was no Internet, of course, and so we had no way to get much information about it in the few days allowed for travel.

Perhaps we should have been alerted by the word “Base”. Most US Army installations are called forts or, less commonly, camps. The other clue was that our orders told us to report to “the MP Company”. Usually a military company is designated with a number as well as a number for the brigade and battalion. Neither the brigade nor the battalion was specified in the orders.

In point of fact, SBNM was not an army base. We later learned that it was run by a separate organization called the Defense Nuclear Agency (DNA). It was part of a large military complex that occupied the southeast corner of Albuquerque. Situated between SBNM and the Sunport, Albuquerque’s airport, was Kirtland Air Force Base. Kirtland had everything one would expect in an Air Force base, including runways. No one talked much about the other base, Manzano. It was in the southeast corner, and very secret stuff reportedly transpired there. Policing and a few other things at SBNM were assigned to the Army. The Navy and Air Force had their own assignments.

Why would anyone stay at this horribly overpriced motel in Tucumcari?

We decided to stop for the night at a ma-and-pa motel on Route 66 in Tucumcari, NM, 234 miles east of the base. At one time Tucumcari was rather famous for its motels. When I googled the town in 2020, it still showed a motel sign as the image for the town. We found one that neither of us could believe. We were smart or lucky enough to make our way from the interstate to Route 66. It was lined on both sides with motels with “Vacancy” signs. We picked one of them more or less at random. My recollection is that we only paid $6 to stay the night. They gave us a suite of two rooms with a bathroom that was accessible from both rooms. In the morning they brought a newspaper, coffee, and donuts. What an enchanting welcome to the Land of Enchantment!

The drive to Albuquerque was a little tense. We did not know what to expect. The city lies at the foot of the Sandia Mountains. Its elevation is 5,312 feet, a little higher than Denver. Sandia Peak, 10,679 feet, is just off to the northeast. You never lose your bearings in Albuquerque. If you feel disoriented, just look for Sandia Peak. It is almost always visible. Clouds are rare in New Mexico.

We found our way to the base’s main gate on Wyoming St., which is one of Albuquerque’s principal north-south arteries. I had assumed that SBNM would be a little way out of town. It was not. Residential Albuquerque was right outside the gate. Furthermore the soldier standing guard on the gate, who was wearing an MP arm band, just waved us—and everyone else—through.

Bob parked his car somewhere, and we made our way to the MP Company, where we were warmly welcomed. We learned that the company was horribly understaffed. We were the first group of new people that had arrived there in many months. The guys in some platoons were not allowed to take days off. If anyone got sick or injured, they had big problems. Fortunately a fairly large number of new people arrived within the next few weeks.

Four platoons did all the police work in shifts. A platoon worked the day shift (6:00AM-2:00PM) for three days, then the swing shift (2:00-10:00PM) for three days, then the midnight shift (“mids”: 10:00PM-6:00AM for three days), then three days off. There was also a traffic platoon, a headquarters platoon, and a platoon for guys with special assignments such as security escorts.

Al Williams, who had driven down from Boston in his Toyota, and I were assigned to the second platoon under Sgt. Glenn. Bob and Dave Zimmerman went to other platoons; I don’t remember which ones. In some ways Ned Wilson got the best deal of all. He was assigned to traffic duty, which meant that he worked only in the daytime and had weekends off. He lived with his wife in an apartment that was near the base.

The above image is the part of the former Sandia Base that functioned as a town center. I labeled the old MP building in area #21 with “PMO”. I lived in the west wing of that building and worked in the Provost Marshall’s Office in the center. The similarly shaped building across the courtyard and the tan building on Texas St, were not there in my day, but a much smaller library was. I think that the MP building and the similar building across the courtyard are now dormitories. The Air Force moved the police headquarters to the building labeled #11.

The library was a stone’s throw away. Within a few blocks were the mess hall, the commissary (grocery store), BX (department store), a small gym with all kinds of sporting equipment, the ANAF club for enlisted men and women (weekly bridge games), and a bowling alley. When we arrived a nine-hole golf course far to the south had just been completed well to the south.

This is a military base?

I was astounded to learn that the largest buildings on the base belonged to a private company, Sandia Laboratories. They still do. Its facilities are a few blocks southeast of the above map. Everything done on the base was top secret, and so I may still be prohibited from revealing what they did there. I am allowed to tell you that the building in front of the Sandia Labs complex had a big sign on it that said, “Nuclear Weapons School”. Also, of course, all of the military personnel wore a Defense Nuclear Agency patch on their sleeves.

I did not expect the base to have so many permanent residents. Surrounding the business area depicted above were three nice residential areas. Most of the inhabitants were families of retired military personnel. Few were senior citizens; you could retire from the military after twenty years. So, nearly all of these people were under sixty. There were a lot of children. It felt like a suburb in which Beaver Cleaver would be comfortable.

The base itself was huge. It occupied 47,000 acres, which was over 73 square miles, over 39 percent of the total land area in Albuquerque. This did not include the 3,000 acres each contained by Kirtland AFB and Manzano base. Most of SBNM was several miles south of where we entered and consisted of undeveloped desert.

At some point we were also provided with MP arm bands and patches for our uniforms with the DNA symbol on it. They also gave us a little card with the ten series used on the police radio transmissions at SBNM, a nightstick, a holster with places for both a .45 caliber pistol and the stick, and a white MP hat.

Someone escorted me to my room, which was in the middle of the south side of the first floor on the west wing of the MP Company barracks. From the outside it looked flat, but there were two or three steps to the left of my door. I could hardly believe it. I had a room to myself. The door could even be locked! There was a dresser, a closet, a couple of chairs, a desk, and a bed. It was even air conditioned. By army standards of the sixties it was luxurious.

Everyone who lived on our floor was in the second platoon. When our group moved in there were quite a few empty rooms.

The first night in my room was memorable. About 2:00 in the morning I heard a pounding on my door. I stumbled over to the door. Two guys were there. One, a guy from another platoon named Grandmaison, brought a bottle of Kentucky bourbon. They both had already obviously consumed quite a bit of it. They demanded that I take a couple of tugs on the bottle with them. I had never tasted bourbon before, but I was a little afraid to turn down their offer. They let me go back to sleep a few minutes later. I think that they stopped at Al’s room next.

Al and were I scheduled for duty on the midnight shift the next day. There was no orientation, no handbook, and no training. Before going on duty we had to report to the armorer to check out weapons. We each got one Colt .45 model 1911 and one clip with six bullets. If we faced seven or more bad guys, we would need to depend on the nightstick.

The gate shack looked pretty much liked this.

During the first night I was stationed at the main gate on Wyoming St. My instructions were to wave everyone through. That’s right; in those days Sandia Base was a top secret security base that was almost always open to the public twenty-four hours a day. My instructions had three other components: 1) If an officer in uniform was driving, I was required to turn the wave into a salute. 2) We were supposed to write down license numbers in a log. The guy who drove me out to the gate told me not to worry about it. If I missed one, I should just make up a license number. 3) For other issues I could call the police desk from a phone in the booth.

I guess that I should mention that the gate could be closed and locked. Someone would call to tell the guard to begin that process, which required about ten minutes. Such a call only occurred a couple of times in the ten months that I was at SBNM.

Gate duty on the midnight shift was extremely boring. Cars were few and far between. The only diversion was the police radio. I had only been there for a few minutes when the man at the police desk, Sgt. Lorenzo Bailey, ordered Al and his partner to deal with a domestic dispute. This had a big impact on me. I did not want to deal with things like domestic disputes. This was a military installation. The people who lived here were mostly lifers. Lifers love weapons. I was strongly motivated to do whatever I could to avoid going on patrol. I did not want to get shot, and I definitely was not going to shoot anyone.

Mine was three eggs with ham and Swiss.

At the end of the shift Al, who had stayed on patrol all night, and I walked over to the mess hall for breakfast. Because it was so early, most of the diners were from our platoon. They made omelets to order at breakfast. It was the best meal of the day. To tell the truth, the food at the mess hall was pretty good. Most guys only went out to eat when someone had a craving for Mexican food.

My first time on patrol was, I think, on a day shift with Russ Eakle. Most of the time there was not much to do on patrol. We occasionally had to escort a manager of the BX or commissary to the bank. If someone posted at a gate needed a break, one of the guys on patrol would relieve them. The challenge was to think of something to do for the rest of the time.

I doubt that the real Duke would have specialized in Mickey Mouse ticketing.

I doubt that the real Duke would have specialized in ticketing for such Mickey Mouse offenses.

Russ liked to drive south into the open spaces that were still part of the base. Some horses were fenced in out there. Maybe there was a riding stable. Russ had swiped an apple or two from the mess hall to feed the horses. I just watched.

Russ fancied himself as the John Wayne type. He asked people to call him Duke. He showed me how he liked to give tickets. His specialty was citing drivers for rolling through stop signs. He showed me where he hid the truck so that he could surreptitiously catch the desperados performing these heinous acts. That first day he issued a few tickets using this technique. Then he told me that I should do the next one. I refused; he was not in my chain of command.

I asked someone, maybe Russ, about room inspections. I was told that they never inspected the bedrooms. This was music to a slob’s ears.

After a day or two I began to think about what I would buy with my first E2 paycheck: a rug for the room and a radio for when I had gate duty. The latter was not technically legal, but as long as they were not visible or audible to those driving through, no one objected.

I purchased both of these items. I think that I got the radio at the BX and the rug at a discount department store that AJ or Bob drove me to. When we were not on duty, we were on our own. We could wear civilian clothes and leave the base whenever we wanted.

I had at least a dozen like this one.

Our platoon had two sergeants. The platoon sergeant’s name was Glenn, who was an E6 (staff sergeant). He basically just went through the motions, which was fine with us. The other sergeant was an E5 (plain old sergeant) whose name was Chambers or something like that. He actually supervised the units on patrol. He was both a nice guy and quite competent. He had been stationed for a while in Vietnam, but he was reluctant to talk about it. The only thing that he told us was that MPs were often used as guards for convoys. He was “short”, which meant that he would be getting out of the army1 in a few months.

At the BX I obtained everything that I needed to decorate my room. Within the first week I put up my Russian posters on the walls of my room. The copy of Michelangelo’s centerpiece of the Sistine chapel was on the ceiling over my bed. It was the first thing that I saw when I woke up in the morning (or afternoon if we were working mids).

I bought some green shelving paper and cut out twenty-one letters to put on the wall. I got the idea from Chapter 5 of the book of Daniel, the proverbial writing on the wall. MENE MENE TEKEL UPHARSIN: The days of your kingdom are numbered; your leaders have been weighed and found wanting; your kingdom will be destroyed by the Medes and the Persians.

It was beginning to feel a little like home. One thing was still missing: a table for my stereo and speakers.

At some point in those first few days we met Captain Dean, the Company Commander of MPCO SBNM, and Lt. Hall, who was second in command. There must have also been a First Sergeant, but I don’t remember him. Captain Dean liked to run. He held the company record for the mile, and he was proud of it. His best time was a little over five minutes.

The captain wanted all of us to run a timed mile, and he made sure that we could all attend. We were allowed to wear sneakers and athletic gear. This was a new thing for us; in Basic and AIT we always ran in fatigues and combat boots.

Ned Wilson, Bob Willems, Dave Zimmerman, and I speculated about how much Al Williams would beat the captain’s record by. He was the state of Maine mile champion in college, and his best time was around 4:20. Captain Dean himself held the stopwatch. When he learned of Al’s prowess he was giddy with excitement.

Al ran at a pretty good clip for the first three quarters. He was on pace for a 4:40 mile, which would have been a fair result for someone who had not been able to train rigorously for four months. By then he had lapped the rest of us.

The big question was whether Al would have enough left in the tank for that last quarter-mile. Captain Dean shouted out Al’s time as he finished the third lap. Al waved to him, and then he turned around and ran the last lap backwards, which slowed him down to something close to the speed of the rest of us. As he passed them, he waved cheerfully to the lifers in attendance. Al wasn’t going to give any of them the satisfaction of thinking that he cared about this activity. It was a classy move.

1. This process is called ETS, which stands for Expiration of Term of Service. It can also be used as a verb: “He is ETSing next Thursday.”

1955-1961 Part 5: Events and Activities

Posted on September 4, 2020 by Mike

Daily life in Prairie Village, KS Continue reading →

Jamie: The biggest event, by far, of my years in grade school was the birth of my sister Jamie on January 4, 1956. Since I had been hoping for a younger brother whom I could shape in my own image, I was bitterly disappointed at the news. I was seven years and four and a half months old, in the middle of second grade in the weird split class taught by Sr. Lucy.

I remember little about those first few years. She quickly became a very cute little girl with blonde hair and dark eyes. Both of my parents had very dark hair and brown eyes. I inherited their hair, and she got their eyes. Her hair got darker as she got older. My eyes constantly changed color but never turned completely brown. I can’t remember Jamie having any serious health issues while we were in Prairie Village.

We would often watch Romper Room (with Miss Virginia) or Captain Kangaroo while I waited for my school bus to arrive. Our favorite parts were the Tom Terrific cartoons, especially Might Manfred the Wonder Dog. Jamie called me “buzzer”, and when the Bluebird arrived, she happily announced “Bus school!”

War! The player on the bottom wins all ten cards in the middle.

When she was older we sometimes played cards seated on the floor in the living room. Her favorite game was war, which she almost always won. I have never been known to take losing very graciously. On one occasion, after a few defeats at war, I was frustrated enough to suggest that we play a different game called sevens and fives. I invented rules as we went along, always with some reference to seven or five, for example, “Oh, you got a deuce, 7-5=2, so you must give me five cards.” She never caught on, and I was finally victorious.

My parents sometimes joined us in the Game of Life. I did not cheat.

My dad worked in advertising and public relations. His company, Business Mens Assurance (BMA) required him to travel a few times every year. My mom also usually attended the annual meeting, which was held at some resort location like Sun Valley, ID, or Banff in Canada. On those occasions we had a babysitter. I think that my grandmother Clara took care of us once or twice, but usually the sitter was hired. Jamie and I did not like this. The ladies were nice enough, but we were used to delicious and nutritious meals every night. None of the sitters came close to reaching this standard.

On the other hand, if my dad went on a trip by himself, our meals actually improved. There were a few really tasty dishes that my dad banned from the table. There were several of these, but the most memorable one was chicken breasts wrapped in bacon and chipped beef, covered with mushrooms, and baked in cream of mushroom or cream of chicken soup. She served it over rice, which my dad detested.¹

Jamie went to kindergarten at Tomahawk School when I was in the eighth grade at QHRS. I paid scant attention at the time. However, much later she told me that she had to walk to school, and on one occasion some older kids had assaulted her in some way, verbally or physically or both. That is all that I know; I have no recollection of this at all.

Jamie liked to go to Fairyland, a small amusement park on the Missouri side. Our parents took us a few times. I did not enjoy it much. Rides have never been my thing.

Medical/Physical: My health was generally good. My mom had to take me to Dr. Batty’s office to get stitched up a few times. Other than that I was pretty healthy; I probably got the flu once or twice, but I remember that I had close to perfect attendance nearly every year. I never even broke any bones.

I got the left side but never the right.

Like everyone who was around when the polio vaccine effectively removed one gigantic worry, my mother definitely believed in inoculations. Since I hated needles, this was a problem for me, especially since my smallpox inoculation never “took”. I had to go back every year or two to try again. Several times my mother sat me down and emphasized that if there was ever an outbreak of smallpox, I must try to get inoculated.

My dental health was essentially perfect after the water got fluoridated. I had hyperdontia, an extra tooth between my upper incisors and the left canine. The dentist checked it every time that I visited his office. Finally he decided to pull it, and all of the other teeth just adjusted themselves in my gums. I never needed braces.

I got my first pair of glasses in 1959, and until the end of high school every time that I went to the optometrist I needed a stronger prescription. After I reached forty I needed reading glasses, but a decade or so later, my need for both types of lenses decreased.

I have hypermobility in the joints of my hands. In grade school I could painlessly touch every finger and my thumb on my left hand back to my wrist. My right hand was only a little less flexible. I could also slip any finger in and out of the lowest joint. I could still touch my left thumb all the way back a few years ago, but it hurt. Now my fingers sometimes painfully slip into the wrong joint by themselves, and I have to force them back.

I entertained the guys and grossed out the girls with these tricks. I also liked to show how I could wiggle my nostrils and my ears. I learned the former from a pet rabbit and the latter (both at once or one at a time) from Howdy Doody’s goofy friend, Dilly Dally.

Pets: I have a dim recollection of a pet rabbit that got away and got caught by a dog a few houses down the street. That did not end well.

I know that I also had parakeets at least twice. One was named Mickey, and one was named Nicky. I taught them both to talk.

One day a black and tan dachshund showed up in our back yard. He would not leave, and he came inside as soon as we opened the door. My dad wanted nothing to do with him, but my mom, after placing notices in all the proper places, gave him food and water. I named him Sam.

After a couple of months, when everyone but my dad had fallen in love with him, some people from a few blocks away claimed Sam. We let them have him back, of course, but the three of us were pretty upset about it.

At the time my grandmom Hazel also kept in her apartment in KC MO a slightly chubbier dachshund with the same coloring named Tippy. At some point after Sam’s departure she gave Tippy, whose real name was Donnys Perry von Kirsch, to us. He was a little more difficult to love, but, once again, three of us came around.

The problem with Tippy was that he liked to bite ankles. He had a wonderfully intuitive sense of where every creature’s Achilles’ tendon was located, and he had strong jaws. There were a few small incidents, but we learned to control him.

Tippy liked to sleep with me in my bed, and, after we had moved to Leawood, he loved to play ball with me in the living room. I would throw a handball against the brick base of the fireplace. He would chase it when it bounced back. Then we would fight over the ball, and he would growl with pleasure.

I remember that on one Easter Sunday my mother had baked a rather large ham in the morning. I don’t know why, but while we were at mass she left it on the kitchen table. Tippy somehow got up on the table and devoured about half of it. Needless to say, my mom was upset, but there was instant karma. Tippy was miserable with an upset stomach for several days.

Sports: My parents occasionally visited their friends, Boots and Fay Hedrick², to play poker. They had a son, John, who was my age. He had a deluxe Erector Set, and a basketball hoop was in their driveway.

For some reason, I spent the afternoon at his house once, and we watched the Celtics on TV. Ever since then I have been a Celtics fan. I have never seen an NBA game in person except for one exhibition game to which Tom Corcoran invited me in the nineties.

I played football and basketball at QHRS. Separate posts document my heroics on the gridiron and (posted here and here) the hardwood (posted here).

I was an avid but not fanatical baseball card collector. I also read all of the box scores for every Major League game every day. Since there were only sixteen teams at first, this was not that burdensome.

I played 3&2 baseball. My travails and glory on the diamond are detailed here.

There was not a lot of space around our house. I was therefore very excited to discover the Wiffle Ball shortly after its commercial introduction. It allowed baseball games in confined areas. I saved up my allowance money and rode my bike to the Prairie Village shopping center to buy the original set, which consisted of a skinny wooden bat and a hollow plastic ball with holes on one side to facilitate curves.

The holes provide wind resistance. Thus, a Wiffle Ball will go nearly as fast as a hardball when it is thrown or hit, but it will slow down much more rapidly. To make the ball curve, the holes must stay on the same side of the ball throughout flight. Any spin added by the fingers or wrist is counterproductive.

The best pitch, in my opinion is thrown perfectly sidearm with the holes down. This causes the ball to sink, and, since the harder part of the ball is on top, it normally produces hard grounders or soft fly balls, both of which are usually easy outs. The spectacular pitches are straight overhand with the holes on one side or the other. Whereas a major league curve ball might break two or three feet, a Wiffle Ball will often break twice that much (over a much shorter distance), and the right curve and left curve are thrown with exactly the same motion. It is also possible to throw a sidearm riser, but the hard side is on the bottom, and so fly balls carry pretty well.

The balls did not last long. They tended to crack and tear because the bat had no “give”. Seldom did a ball last a week. A few years later a 32″ yellow plastic bat greatly improved the durability of the balls. My training with throwing and catching a Wiffle Ball did not greatly improve my performance in hardball, but i put it to good use in our pickup games at Sandia Base in 1971.

I also collected football cards and played with them in the hallway. I remember being astounded by the Charlie Ana card because his weight was listed at 300 pounds. This is a vivid memory, but it must be wrong. There is no trace of him on google.

My dad and I watched NFL games together. He liked the Chicago Bears. My favorite team was the upstart Cleveland Browns. My favorite players were Otto Graham, Lou “The Toe” Groza, and, a few years later, Jim Brown.

I went bowling at Overland Bowl a few times. They charged ten cents a line and had human pinsetters. I was not very good. I could not get the ball to curve on demand, perhaps because of my super-flexible wrists. My best game was 180, a record that stood until I rolled a 190 when I was in my fifties. That was the last game that I ever bowled.

I also remember that my grandmother Clara took me and my cousins Johnny, Terry, and Ricky bowling at least once in Leavenworth. That establishment also employed someone to set the pins. I remember this as a great time. I am pretty sure that my grandmother also treated us to some ice cream.

I never took bowling as seriously as other sports. I did not have a ball, and I had to rent shoes. I remember, however, that my parents bought Jamie and me an indoor bowling game that had vinyl pins and a hollow plastic ball. We set it up in the hallway of the house on Maple St. It was the perfect width.

King Louie was the big name in bowling allies in KC. They had automatic pinsetting machines and projectors that displayed the scores above each lane. They charged a lot more than a dime. Some of their buildings seemed like palaces to me.

My dad could not swim. My mother insisted that I take swimming lessons in the morning at the Prairie Village Pool. I think that I did this for two years, but I don’t remember the details.

I did not enjoy this activity. It usually seemed chilly to me before entering the water, and I was so cold after I got out that I could not stop my teeth from chattering. Another annoying factor was that I was a below-average swimmer. It was obvious that no matter how much I practiced, I would never be very good.

I often rode my bike to swimming lessons. One morning a German shepherd came sprinting toward me from the left. I have never been afraid of animals, but this one jumped up and bit me on the left thigh. I don’t remember what happened next, but the dog’s owners had to keep him chained up for a month to make sure that he was not rabid. My wound was not serious; I don’t even think that I needed stitches.

One great benefit of the swimming lessons was that I was able to earn the Swimming Merit Badge without much difficulty. I also took a Red Cross class that rewarded me with the Lifesaving Merit Badge, at that time the biggest impediment for most guys to attaining the rank of eagle.

No skiing or skating.

Fads: I could make the hula hoop spin for a few minutes, but I was not great at it.

In 1959 or 1960 trampoline parks started popping up like dandelions in Johnson County. I never went to one. Suddenly they all closed down, presumably because of lawsuits from people who broke an arm or leg.

The only songs on the radio that I really liked through my years in grade school were novelty songs like “Beep Beep” or the ones that featured a guy imitating Walter Winchell.

Scouting: I spent a lot of time in the Boy Scouts. I became a Cub Scout as soon as I was eligible, and I went right up all the ranks—Wolf, Bear, Lion, Webelo. My mother was a den mother for a while. We wore our uniforms to school if we had a meeting afterwards. I remember that “A cub scout follows Akela,” but I never had any idea what it meant.

I was also in Boy Scouts. At the end of the summer after eighth grade, I had achieved the rank of Life, and I only needed one merit badge for Eagle.

Getting lost in KC is almost unheard of.

My favorite merit badge was for hiking. It required three or four hikes of a few miles and one longer hike. I took the long hike with Gary Garrison and maybe one other guy. There were no adults. We walked out to Swope Park, had a picnic lunch, spent at least an hour or two at the zoo, and returned. We did not solve any of the world’s problems, but we at least defined the crucial issues concerning our friends, our families, and our school. It was tiring, but we had a great time.

I almost always enjoyed extended periods of time spent with friends. I loved going on camping trips. I never missed one. Our troop usually camped out in a field, which still abounded in the KC area, at least once per summer. On one of these outings I first tried coffee. I could tolerate the bitter taste if I added quite a bit of milk and sugar. I never drank coffee regularly until I started working on computer programs ten or more hours per day in the eighties.

I attended all the Camporees, held on one weekend every year. We had to put up our own tents and sleep on air mattresses or whatever we brought. Patrols competed against one another in various events. The one that I remember is knot-tying. I also remember frying steaks in Italian dressing. It was an accident, but they were absolutely delicious.

The most memorable one was when the clouds exploded one night, and I awoke to find myself afloat on my air mattress outside of the tent. We packed up and abandoned the field on which we were camping at dawn. It was great fun!

I absolutely loved going to Camp Naish for a week every year. We slept in permanent tents with raised wooden floors. We used straw mattresses. They supplied the straw and bed frames; we supplied the ticks and sleeping bags.

We sang interesting songs at meals, and there were huge bonfires most nights. We did all kinds of stufff—orienteering, capture the flag, many varieties of games with pocket knives such as stretch, mumbley-peg, and chicken. I cannot remember any medical emergencies, but I have trouble imagining how they could have been avoided.

I have many other memories, too, but I think that I will keep them to myself. I will just say that you grow up a little bit each year at scout camp.

I was never homesick. I have absolutely no negative memories of summer camp. My only negative memory of any camping trip was that Camporee night in which the field in which we were camping transmuted into a shallow lake.

One year Boy Scout Troop 295 (or maybe Cub Scout Pack 205) must have needed money. We were all asked to sell upscale candy bars to our neighbors. The person who sold the most won a new bicycle. I knocked on a lot of doors, and I did sell a lot of candy. However, Mike Kirk sold more and won the bike. I won the second prize, twenty silver dollars, which are still resting comfortably in an envelope in my sock drawer as I write these words. I suspect that they are worth a lot more today than Mike Kirk’s bicycle.

I read Boys’ Life from cover to cover every month. I especially enjoyed the fiction, which for several months involved the adventures of an alien being.

Me wearing last year’s pants sitting on my saxophone case with QHRS’s best lunch between my feet. I was probably waiting for the school bus. The shoes puzzle me. I could swear that I never wore loafers.

Music: I did not have much interest in recorded music until the eighth grade. However, QHRS did have a band of sorts. My parents agreed to purchase an instrument for me. My inability to pucker eliminated the brass instruments. I ended up selecting the saxophone. The cheapest available model was an E-flat alto, which is what I got. If I had it to do over, I would pick a piano or a string instrument, which would have forced me to learn more about chords and keys.

The band director was Rocco DeMart. My mom would drive me to lessons with him in the basement of Jenkins Music Store in Prairie Village. The band put on at least one concert, and Mr. DeMart also held recitals. I played in at least two of them.

I did not really enjoy playing the saxophone much. My mother had to nag me to practice. My only clear recollection from those days was Mr. DeMart’s pleasure when I unexpectedly played “Was that the human thing to do?” in double-time. He thought that the way that I played it sounded better than the way that it was written.

The saxophone mysteriously disappeared when I was in the Army.

Reading: I read a very large number of books. I can’t tell you why, but I read David Copperfield twice. I really enjoyed Robert Louis Stevenson and anything that had sports or adventure.

Movies: I remember going to a few films. I am pretty sure that I saw Gone with the Wind in the theater with my mother and some other people. I slept through most of it.

The movies that I saw with friends were mostly westerns or war movies. I remember standing with some friends in a very long line at the Overland Theater to see Sink the Bismarck. We got all the way to the front of the line. However, rather than sell us a ticket, they told us that it was sold out. We all had to ride our bikes home, but we saw it later. It was not worth all of that effort.

Birthday Party: One year my parents said that I could have a birthday party. I got to invite two guests. I chose Joe Fox and either Kent Reynolds³ or Rick Ahrendt. I don’t remember any other details. Hardly ever did any of my friends come to our house.

I also threw myself a party for my thirtieth birthday in 1978. Other than that, none.

Visits: My dad would occasionally bring home one of his company’s agents or sales managers for supper. These were basically non-events for me. After supper I would retreat to my room to read, work on model airplanes, or play with my baseball cards.

I am not sure of this, but I think that occasionally my mom would host three ladies in the afternoon to play bridge. I might have watched a few hands. I know that by the time that I was in high school I had a reasonably good idea of how to play. It seems plausible that I might have learned something by watching. I think that we had a copy of one of Charles Goren’s books. If so, I undoubtedly read it. I read all the books that my parents had.

My dad’s army buddy, Jake Jacobson, visited us at least once. I am not sure of the year, but I clearly remember several things. It was warm out, and Jake drove us around in his convertible. In those days he was portly enough that he could use his stomach for steering if he needed both hands for something else.

We drove out to Swope Park in KC MO for a picnic. Mom was there, but I don’t think Jamie was around yet. Jake and dad drank beers and threw the empty cans into trash cans from long range. Such antics were new to me. When I got rambunctious, Jake would say “Michael, decorum!” My dad really liked that phrase.

If my dad and Jake ever talked about the army days, it was in solemn tones.

Work: I mowed our lawn. My dad must have mowed it when we first moved to Prairie Village. I cannot remember that ever happening, but I don’t think that he would have hired someone. Maybe my mom did it. She could do anything. By the time that I was ten or so, regular lawn-mowing was part of my chores. My recollection is that my allowance was a quarter per week.

I have no clear recollection of mowing any of the neighbors’ lawns when we lived on Maple St. in Prairie Village, but I might have.

Somehow I got involved with selling Christmas cards every year. I don’t remember the details, but I showed samples to a lot of people. I also took orders and delivered the cards when they arrived. My mom definitely helped.

1. I think that his prejudice was largely due to his experiences in World War II. He associated rice with the Japanese, and he had no use for them. I purloined this recipe and have prepared it to enthusiastic receptions dozens of times. I omit the chipped beef because it is too expensive and the dish has plenty of flavor without it.

2. Fay Hedrick lived to be 100. She outlived Boots by thirty-four years. Her obituary is posted here.

3. Kent Reynolds’ LinkedIn page is here.

1971 January-February: Ft. Gordon, GA

Posted on July 21, 2020 by Mike

MP Training at Fort Gordon Continue reading →

My orders instructed me to report to Fort Gordon, GA, another military base named for a Confederate general, for training as a Military Policeman. Fort Gordon is near Augusta. I flew to the Augusta airport from KC. Almost five decades later I can still remember the smell of the air around the airport. I don’t know what produced the stench—something industrial, i think. It was almost overpowering.

I was assigned to E-10-4: echo company, tenth battalion, fourth MP training brigade. I was surprised to find that, in our platoon at least, there seemed to be quite a few college graduates. I later learned that the minimum GT score for MP’s was 90. Our company in Basic had been roughly evenly split between draftees and guys who enlisted. Here almost everyone had been drafted.

We shared the mess hall and the training schedule with F-10-4, called “F Troop” by everyone including the guys who were in it.

I don’t remember the name of our platoon sergeant. He barely went through the motions of supervising, and he did no training at all. He spent most days in the rec room shooting pool while we were out training.

As in Basic, each squad had temporary corporals. The ones in Basic had just been guys appointed, apparently at random, by the drill sergeant. The ones at MP school had volunteered to spend a week or two after Basic being trained how to be a corporal. In exchange, if my memory is right, they were guaranteed a promotion to E2 (one stripe!) at the end of AIT.

This one costs $1,250. Burt’s probably cost less.

Our squad’s pseudo-corporal was named Burt. I don’t remember his first name. He had enlisted with the intention of becoming an MP for life. He kept in his locker a leather-bound family bible that was at least three inches thick. He was very proud of it. He showed me once how it included pages to record marriages, births, and deaths. He told me that how much it cost, and the figure astounded me. I asked him why he did not buy a cheap bible and a spiral notebook for the family history part. He took my question seriously.

One of the other temporary corporals was named Junkker. He allegedly scored 160 on both GT tests. I never got a chance to know him very well.

Here is a list of the guys in my squad. I might have missed one or two people.

Ken Wainwright went to Boston College. He knew two of my friends from high school, John Rubin and Pat Dobel, my first debate partner. They had both attended BC.
Since Dawson Waites was a little chubby, he was designated as a “road guard”. Whenever the company, while marching to a training area, approached an intersection, the sergeant or officer leading us would yell “Road guards post!” Dawson and the other road guards had to run to the front to stop traffic. In the Army they often talked about the (Airborne) Ranger Shuffle. Dawson perfected the Forest Ranger Shuffle, which was slightly slower than a standard walking pace.
Jerry White was a 6’9″ black guy who flew to Cincinnati every weekend to play semi-pro basketball. Since we had almost no free time during the week, the rest of us did not get much chance to know him very well.
Bob Willems was from New Jersey. He went to Rutgers, the state university of New Jersey.
AJ Williams lived in the Boston area and went to Bates College in Maine. He was the state champion in the mile run.
Ned Wilson went tp Ohio State, but I tried not to hold it against him. He was married and kept to himself most of the time.
Dave Zimmerman went to American University in DC.

As you might have guessed, we were assigned in alphabetical order. We had single beds (not bunks). Mine was between Dawson Waites’s and Jerry White’s. Aside from Jerry and Acting-Corporal Burt, we were a fairly homogeneous group of pretty well-educated draftees who were just trying to get through the next two years in one piece. It was pleasant to be able to have conversations about something besides toughness, girlfriends, and cars.

Rumors were slightly less prevalent than in Basic. Most centered upon our future duty assignments. About halfway through our training the chief cook at the mess hall disappeared. The rumor was that he had been caught selling meat on the black market.

One of the biggest differences between Basic and AIT was that we were actually graded. In theory it was possible to flunk. A couple of guys tried to fail the training, which would have got them assigned to some other MOS. My recollection is that we were required to score at least 700 out of 1,000 points. The last test was physical fitness. A guy named Walton had deliberately done badly enough that his total score was only 695. However, before they posted the total his “commander rating” had been improved enough to put him over the threshold. It was a little surprising that he even had a commander rating. He had gone AWOL once, and he absolutely refused to march in formation. He shuffled along behind us.

Some of the training classes were fairly interesting. They were all better than map reading in Basic Trainig. My favorite was learning about the various categories of fingerprints. My own set of ten, which I had never contemplated before, contained examples of almost every category. We also learned how to take prints using ink and paper.

The military law classes were a joke, which was probably appropriate. After all, there is a famous book, which I have read, called Military Justice is to Justice as Military Music is to Music. The title comes from a quote from Groucho Marx, who probably stole it from Georges Clemenceau. Before presenting any material that would be on the test, the instructor loudly announced, “THIS IS IMPORTANT!!”

We also learned to talk on the radio. We had to memorize the Army’s phonetic alphabet (in which alpha, bravo, charlie replaced the Able, Baker, Charlie series that was used in World War II) and the ten-series (a la Broderick Crawford). We were also enjoined never to use the word “repeat”. Instead, you should say “say again”.

We did not have to carry weapons with us. The only time that they issued us M16s was when we went on bivouac, a camping trip that lasted a few days. The only weapon that we learned to use was the Colt .45 caliber handgun. There was a sharp contrast between this hand cannon and the rifle that we were all now familiar with. The M16 had almost no kick. The .45 would rip your arm off if you were not careful. Furthermore, those huge slugs were very scary. The trainers told us that if one hit you in the toe you would go down. The biggest difference was that it was MUCH easier to hit a target at 300 meters with an M16 than it was to hit one with a .45 that was ten times closer!

We fired these things a few times on the firing range before we were tested on our marksmanship. “Up and down-range” was constantly yelled at us. Unfortunately, it was always yelled in English, and that was not the mother tongue of some of the guys from Puerto Rico, particularly Private Manuel.

When the instructor explained how to hold the pistol so that the recoil did not brain you, Manuel evidently missed it. The first time that Manuel fired the .45 it kicked back and smacked him in the forehead. He was only stunned, but the gun made a big mark in his forehead that did not go away for weeks.

Another time on the firing line an instructor noticed that Manuel was doing something wrong. He approached Manuel from the rear and addressed him by name. Manuel spun around so that they were facing each other. Manuel’s .45 was pointed at the instructor’s head. The .45 was loaded, the safety was off, and a round was in the chamber.

The instructor calmly said. “Manuel: about face.” Manuel knew this command, and he turned back toward the firing range. The instructor, still behind him, then reached toward Manuel’s weapon and told him to hand it to him. Once he had the .45 in his hand, the instructor loudly informed Manuel what he had been doing wrong. He may have even made him do some push-ups.

Towards the end of the training we were given the chance to try to qualify with the .45. We took forty shots at targets, and an instructor kept score. Here are the details:

- The passing score was 300 out of a possible 400.

The test had two parts. The first used standard bullseye targets with ten concentric circles. The innermost circle was worth ten points. The outermost was worth one. For this part of the test we were able to take our time, hold the weapon with both hands, and aim carefully. I think that ten shots were at twenty meters, and ten were at thirty meters.
For the second part the bullseye target was replaced by three truncated life-sized silhouettes. This time we shot twenty times at thirty, twenty, and ten meters, and we had to shoot rapidly from different positions. The last few at ten meters were shot “from the hip” like a cowboy in a gunfight. Each hole in one of the silhouettes was worth ten points.

We all took our forty shots in the first round. A few guys who were experienced shooters qualified on that round. They were allowed to return to the barracks. The rest of us remained until we qualified, or they gave up on us.

Nobody from our squad qualified on the first try, but all the rest of the guys did better than I did. My score was only 68 out of a possible 400! I thought for sure that all three of my shots from the hip must surely have hit one of the silhouettes. They were only ten meters away, but I missed all of them!

For the second round a new rule was added. If you did not score at least 100 on the bullseye, you would not be allowed to shoot at the silhouettes.

I can proudly report that I did much better on the bullseyes the second time. I looked at my target and quickly added my score in my head. It was 80 or 81. I was thrilled. That was much better than the first time. I knew that I would not be allowed to shoot at the silhouettes in this round, but I now felt that I had some chance of qualifying in round four or five.

When the instructor came around to grade my bullseye, he informed me that I would “need to hit nearly all of the silhouettes to qualify.”

The words “nearly all” banged around in my head, but I gave the correct response, which was “Yes, sergeant.”

Our silhouettes were closer together, they did not have stands, and they were green.

So, I was allowed to shoot at the silhouettes. Once again, I did much better. At the end I could see that I had hit one of the targets nearly half the time, and there were also four or five ricochets. The ricochets are easy to discern. Regular holes are round. Ricochets are much higher than they are wide because they have bounced off of the ground up toward the target at a steep angle.

One again the instructor surprised me. He looked at my targets and said, “Well, some of these holes look like they have two or three bullets in them. You qualified. Turn in your weapon.” He obviously knew about ricochets. Either he was extremely poor at arithmetic, or he just wanted to put an end to this as fast as possible.

Only a few guys qualified in the second round. The rest stayed at the testing area to go through the process again. The best part was that the guys who qualified in the first round learned when they arrived back at the barracks that they earned the privilege of being on KP for supper. By the time that I arrived with the second group, the KP roster was filled. We were actually left on our own, a very rare thing.

So, the Army allowed me to wear a ribbon touting my skill with the hand cannon. However, I knew in my heart that I was a terrible shot. I vowed never again to squeeze the trigger on one of those things. If I ever needed to use it, I would throw it rather than fire it.

We were supposed to learn how to drive a five-speed standard-transmission Jeep. We did have one class in it, but we were supposed to have two. They warned us that the Jeeps had very high centers of gravity. They said that we should NEVER drive faster than 35 miles per hour.

Most of the guys got to do some driving. The guys who were familiar with standard transmission cars leapt at the chance to drive a Jeep. I never got to drive at all.

I suspect that Private Manuel, who had never operated any kind of car, set a new world’s record for driving the shortest distance before totaling a vehicle. The previous driver had left the Jeep in first gear with the brake off and the steering wheel turned hard to the left. Another Jeep was parked to his left and less than a foot in front. Manuel turned the key and his Jeep lurched into the other Jeep’s rear corner, which was armored. Manuel still had his hand on the key, and he kept turning until something important under the hood was dismembered, and the engine in Manuel’s jeep went silent forever.

Approximately three-fourths of us actually got to drive. Two drivers flipped their Jeeps because they went too fast around a corner. One was Manuel. I don’t remember if there were injuries. If so, they must not have been too serious.

We had to take a driving test. I flunked. They gave me an hour or so of personalized instructions in the evening, after which I passed easily. Subsequently all of my personal cars (except for the Duster that Sue bought) have had standard transmissions up until 2018, when it was no longer available. I did learn something in the Army.

We had an interesting class in hand-to-hand combat. The first part involved showing us how to bodyslam an opponent. Since this technique is essentially useless outside of a professional wrestling match, they were actually teaching us how to take a fall without breaking any bones.

Our company was joined for this training by a small group of Marines. The instructors had a side bet on whether the first trainee to break a collarbone would be one of the 200 Army guys or the 14 Marines. The guy who bet on the jarheads won, but two of our guys also broke collarbones. In both cases the guys survived the first slam, but they both tried to break their falls with their hands. The instructors told both of them that if they did that again they would probably break something, but they could not help themselves.

It pretty much goes without saying that one of the guys who broke his collarbone was Manuel. They took him to the hospital, and we never saw him again. I don’t remember the other guy.

I really enjoyed learning how to escape from a side headlock. For the next thirty years of my life I secretly hoped that someone would have tried to put a side headlock on me. If they were under 250 pounds, they might have been in for a surprise.

The most memorable aspect of MP training was bivouac, an overnight camping trip. Each of us was issued a pack and half of a tent. We were paired up with another member of our squad, in my case Dawson Waites. We were also issued M16s and a cartridge full of blanks. Since Dawson was one of the road guards, he was issued an M60 machine gun, which was heavier, instead of a rifle. He also was assigned to the TOC (Tactical Operactions Command). So, we put up our tent together, but he spent the night at the TOC. I had the tent to myself.

A few of the guys were assigned to be the enemy. They were supposed to plan some kind of attack on our campsite. We were told to set up a schedule so that one of the two occupants of the tent was on guard at all times. I, however, did not have a tentmate. So, my choices were to go to sleep, to stay up all night guarding an empty tent, or to do some combination of the two. I chose the first option.

AJ Williams was in the tent next to mine. When he was on guard duty and I was half-asleep, he ran around yelling about how he had spotted the enemy. He set his rifle on my tent about one foot from my head and shot off a round or two. Then he ran around and yelled some more. He put the rifle back near my head and shot off a few more rounds. I pretended that I didn’t hear him and stayed in the tent. I kept up the act the next morning and remarked about how easy it was to sleep in the fresh open air.

On the next day we went to MP City, which was a mock-up of a few blocks of a real city. They taught us riot control. The techniques that we learned bore no resemblance with what you see in 2020. Basically, we just stomped our feet as we walked.

A sergeant taught us the proper way to search someone. To see if we learned the lesson he gave half of us a bunch of pencils and told us to hide some on our bodies. Then another trainee would search us to see if he could find all of them. The guy who searched me was from F Troop. It did not surprise me that he could not find any of the six pencils that I hid in or under my clothes.

We also learned how to direct traffic. The public is supposed to assume that you have a stop sign on your chest and your back. You never face the traffic that you want to proceed. Those cars are on your right and your left.

The written test and the physical test were both pretty easy. No one studied or practiced, and everyone passed.

The last big event that we faced before the graduation ceremony was the commander’s inspection. Our CO, whom I remember not at all, was scheduled to come to the barracks wearing a pair of white gloves. In addition to looking for dirt, he also could quiz anyone on any subject.

We were allowed a few hours to prepare our gear and our brains for the inspection. For the first time ever our sergeant appeared in the barracks. He called us together and told us, “If anyone asks you if anyone checked you out for this inspection, tell them that I did. Has everyone got that?” Then he left to shot a few more racks of pool.

An hour or so later the sergeant came back and walked around the barracks. He eventually came over to me and asked me, “Did anyone check you out for this inspection?”

I quickly responded, “Yes, sergeant.”

“Who checked you out?” he asked.

“You did, sergeant!”

He then examined the name tag on my fatigue shirt and jotted it down in his notebook.

There was one and only one place for everything in the footlocker.

The inspection itself was not very memorable. Jerry White had a skin condition that prevented him from shaving. He used some kind of depilatory cream. In the place in his footlocker reserved for a razor he had placed the knife that he used to remove the cream. The captain may have let him skate on that, but the knife was clearly marked as belonging to the mess hall. Jerry had stolen it. He got yelled at, but nothing came of it. At that point they just wanted to get rid of us.

The next day at roll call the captain announced the names of a dozen or so trainees, including Ned Wilson and me, who had been recommended for promotion. One of the fuck-ups was named Lovado, and when they called my name (mispronouncing it wuh VAH duh), he pretended that they had called his name and danced around in celebration.

We had to face a board of review of sergeants and officers one at a time. They asked us a bunch of questions. I missed one about the name assigned to some kind of flag, but I was the only person who got one of the questions right: “What is the first thing that you do in the event of a chemical, radiological, or biological attack?”

My answer: “Stop breathing.”

So I got promoted to E2. I now was allowed to sew a stripe on my sleeve. It was also worth a few dollars per month, but it ended up being worth more than that to me. I was quite sure that my promotion was all due to the fact that I had lied to the platoon sergeant about my gear being checked out.

Then came the moment of truth in which they announced all the permanent duty assignments. Wainwright got White Sands, NM. Willems, Williams, Wilson, Zimmerman, and I got Sandia Base, NM. So the last five college graduates in alphabetical order all were going to SBNM. This was great news.

We were all ecstatic. I asked one of the sergeants whatt Sandia Base was like. He was astounded that I had been assigned there. He said, “You got Sandia? That’s the best duty in the whole country.

I cannot remember anyone else’s assignment, not even Dawson Waites’. He was not sent overseas, but some people were.

It appeared I and all of my friends had avoided the threat of Vietnam. Now we had to work out some way to tolerate the next twenty months as Army cops.

Intelligence v. Stupidity

Posted on June 11, 2013 by Mike

I once had a Top Secret clearance. Continue reading →

Like many grizzled veterans, I feel uncomfortable discussing my experiences in the military. Actually, I have always loved to tell stories about my stint in the service, but most of my friends have already heard the best ones quite a few times, so I have gotten out of the habit of doing so. The news of the last few days, however, has brought to mind my own encounters with the nation’s intelligence network.

At the conclusion of seven weeks of MP training at Fort Gordon, GA, I and four other elite graduates were chosen to be assigned to Sandia Base, NM, which at the time was run by an organization called the Defense Nuclear Agency. In all honesty using the adjective “elite” might be a slight exaggeration; we were the last five people alphabetically (Wavada, Willems, Williams, Wilson, and Zimmerman) who had graduated from college, and we were all draftees.

Upon arrival at the base, which is in Albuquerque, we were presented with patches to be sewn on our sleeves to indicate that we were in the DNA. It was no secret. The patch featured a picture of an atomic molecule with a handful of orbiting electrons, and the word Nuclear was even spelled correctly. The base was open to the public, and right in the center was a school that was clearly marked in letters about a foot high: Nuclear Weapons School.

Everyone in the DNA had to receive a top secret (BI) clearance. The BI part indicated that the FBI had done a background investigation. Evidently in those days you could get a regular top secret clearance without bothering Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. It took a while for the clearances to arrive, but that was not of great importance. We were doing routine police work in what to all appearances was a suburb of Albuquerque, and almost none of the tasks were reserved for people with clearances.

For some reason my clearance was late in arriving. One night one of the guys in my platoon was sick, lame, or lazy, and I was assigned to fill in for him as the night guard at the adjoining Manzano Base. This base was definitely NOT open to the public, and no one without a clearance was allowed inside the fenceline. I naturally told my platoon sergeant that, although I would ordinarily be both thrilled and honored to perform this important duty, my clearance had not yet arrived, so I was ineligible for the assignment.

“F*** it,” he replied. “Just don’t tell anyone.” Since I did not have a clearance at the time, I must assume that I can now relate what happened. It could not be classified, right?

I was the only human being on Manzano Base for my four-hour shift. If the Commies had come after whatever was in there that night, I was the only chance that the western world had. I had no keys to any of the buildings. I just walked around gazing at the starlit sky and sang cowboy songs as loudly as I could. Time came close to stopping during this shift, but eventually I saw the headlights of the truck carrying my relief.

After the shift I went to breakfast at the mess hall and picked up a copy of the Albuquerque Journal. On the front page was a story about Manzano Base. It emphasized that the base was both highly secure and extremely secret. It even made the claim that no one without a clearance had ever been inside the gates. I had to wonder what they would have thought if they had known that while that edition of the paper was being printed, the person in charge of access to the base had not yet been cleared.

Sandia Base was merged with the adjoining Kirtland Air Force Base (yes, for decades there were three contiguous bases in Albuquerque). The MP Company was split up and assigned to various “depots” run by the DNA. Even though I only had three months left in my term of service, the army paid to transfer me to Seneca Army Depot in the middle of the Finger Lakes in upstate New York. By then I had my clearance.

One of the first things that we did upon arriving was to attend a security briefing. We were told that we had been assigned to a top secret base on which weapons were stored. We were also told in hushed tones about the nature of the weapons. However, we were warned that if anyone asked us what kind of weapons, we were mandated to call them “special weapons” and to provide no further information.

I had seen enough James Bond movies to know that the Russian and Chinese spies were inherently inferior to our own spooks, but it seemed incomprehensible that they would not be able to figure out what kind of weapons were being stored at a base in which every single member of the military wore a patch that clearly identified them as being in the Defense Nuclear Agency. Furthermore, it was public knowledge that the people who worked on these weapons had all graduated from the aforementioned Nuclear Weapons School. This information was not classified.

Of course, none of the people who came with me from Sandia mentioned this inconsistency. We all knew that the army employed its own twisted logic. Furthermore, many of us had only a few weeks left in the service, and we were not about to make waves.

When the fact that I could type was discovered, I was assigned to the Intelligence Office. The “office” actually consisted of two sections. The bosses were two intelligence officers — a green lieutenant and an experienced civilian. Each of them had an office at the end of the corridor. I have no idea what either one of them did all day, but outside of their offices was a sign that read “Intelligence Office.”

The other section, which had its own door, was an open area with four desks and a lot of cabinets. It was home to a civilian secretary who seldom interacted with the rest of us, a private, a sergeant who was on temporary duty and knew nothing about what we were doing, and myself. The chain of command in this area was in reverse order of rank. The lady was the boss, the private was second, I was third, and the sergeant was last. The private and I constructed a sign over the door to our work area that said “Stupidity Office.”

We did not have much to do. I do not know why they stored the personnel files of everyone on the base in our area, but I spent many enjoyable afternoons reading through various files. This was before everything was computerized. If I had wished to, I could have removed objectionable material from my friends’ files and even added letters of commendation. My own file already contained a heartfelt letter of commendation from the general at Sandia Base in appreciation of my heroic performance when our base had been attacked by a handful of peace-crazed Gandhiists. I no longer suffer from flashbacks in the middle of the night, but I wonder how many of my buddies have suffered from PTSD in the intervening decades.

I learned a lot of interesting things while reading the personnel files. For instance, I savored the details of a very juicy incident that had almost cost the captain of the MP company his clearance. I also learned that I had the highest GT score in the MP company, and the first sergeant had the lowest. In fact, his score was the lowest permissible score for an MP. No one ever told me that I could not talk about the contents of the personnel files. As far as I know, they were not classified even though they contained the results of the background information checks done by the FBI.

I never questioned any of this. My strategy in the army was to keep a low profile, do my time, and get out. It worked.

* * *Updates: Kirtland Air Force Base still exists. I have no idea what kind of things are being done in the Manzano Mountains these days, but I suspect that they are “special.”

Seneca Army Depot was decommissioned in 2001. A few parts of it have been found useful by various elements of the private sector, but large sectors have been abandoned to the world’s largest herd of white deer, which still lives within the fenced-in area.

Wavablog

Memoirs, bridge, popes, travel, and other stuff

Tag Archives: Sandia Base

1971 March: Getting Settled in MPCO, SBNM

1955-1961 Part 5: Events and Activities

1971 January-February: Ft. Gordon, GA

Intelligence v. Stupidity