Bill Patterson - Strange Military Beginnings.
I enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserves in summer 1964. A friend suggested 6 month active duty training and 5 and 1/2 years weekend drills and 2 week summer camps would determine if I liked the service or not. I had a choice of jobs I could apply for. When I told the NCO I wanted to be a basic infantryman, he thought I was crazy. I was. I was 20 years old, 6 feet tall and 116 pounds. I had never been in a serious fistfight even. I didn't think the Army would accept me anyway. The Army never blinked as they waved me through the reception station at Fort Jackson SC. After 8 weeks basic combat training, they sent me to Fort Polk LA for advanced infantry training. They said I qualified for Officer Candidate School but I had seen enough to know military life was not for my career. I qualified with the M-14 rifle, 45 caliber pistol, M-60 machine gun, rocket launcher ("bazooka"), claymore mine, and worked with tanks, mortars, troop rafts and hand grenades. After all this, I felt I could be an infantryman. Soon after completing training, I was at a weekend drill in Augusta when an NCO approached and gave me a truck driver's license. I asked if there had been some mistake as the Army had just trained me for infantry. He said "No, the infantry unit has been transferred to Columbus GA. We assumed you would not want to move to Columbus so we transferred you to the 319th Transportation Company which has moved to Augusta. You are assigned that truck and here is your license." I had never seen such a vehicle, did not know even how to start the engine and could not believe this had happened. It did happen. For the next five years or so I would be a Senior Light Truck Driver. Nearly all the other men in the company were sent to Truck Driver's School for complete training. I learned by getting into the truck and driving around the parking lot. For the next 3 years my reserve status went satisfactorily. In 1968 more strangeness happened which I will tell later. But the initial strange beginnings were an unbelievable start to my military experience.