“Well, a class of junior candidates had just advanced to their senior phase, and were eager to harass some underclassmen.”
Back in the day, those of us who qualified for US Army Flight Training were given the choice of either fixed wing or rotor wing primary flight school. When helicopter pilots became a sought after commodity about 3 years in to the Vietnam debacle, all Army pilots were trained in helicopter from the get go, and the fixed wing transition course at Ft Stewart, Georgia, became quite a plumb for aviator types. After Vietnam, I was privileged to be assigned as a flight instructor there just a stones throw from Savannah in that transition school. It was lots of fun because these helicopter pilots were already trained aviators, already familiar with the lingo, and only needing to be shown the quirks of fixed wing aircraft.
So in 1964, after 8 weeks of basic training at Ft. Ord California, I entered the Army’s Warrant Officer Candidate school, Class 64-3W at Ft Rucker Alabama. It was never designed to compete with Army OCS (Officer Candidate School) as it combined pilot training with a measure of the discipline and combat skill that one would associate with the OCS program. In addition, Warrant Officer Candidates only had to be high school grads and pass a rigorous flight physical to be eligible. OCS typically was only open to college graduates, with ROTC adding bonus points to ones résumé. So my goal in completing this combined Warrant Officer and Flight Training school was to both qualify for the Army Aviator’s Badge and the accompanying Federal Aviation Administration Commercial Pilot’s Certificate. I had no grandiose ideas of emerging from Ft. Rucker tough as woodpecker lips. However, since there was no actual flying during the 4 week pre-flight phase, our tactical officers and drill sergeants were going to harden us up anyway..
We were soon occupied with soldiering with all the trimmings. The confidence course was just that, designed to stretch us and build teamwork. We weren’t allowed to even look skyward at an airplane. The Armed Services have this fascination, even a fetish, over shinny boots and polished barracks floors.
The photo above shows myself on the left, with 2 other room mates participating in a G. I. Party where said Army fetishes are carried out on a weekly basis. We soon discovered that despite our best efforts resulting in a gloss that required dark glasses to even look at the floor, it was never good enough. We would spend hours into the dark of night scrubbing and polishing only to have our room cyclone’d (trashed) while we were out training for the day.
I did not realize it immediately, but we were fortunate to have one of the best and fairest tac officers in the entire school putting us through our training harassment exercises in the barracks as well as on the drill grounds. This photo to the right shows Lt. Godboldte with a few of his adoring fans in a lighter moment.
Early on, I made a diary entry which read: “Got our permanent tactical officers and NCO today. I don’t know how they’ll be yet.” I made the mistake of leaving my journal in a drawer, on top of the clothes stored there, where it could be found and read by same. In his own handwriting, Lt Chappell made his own entry in my journal: “HAVE YOU REACHED A DECISION?” We returned to our room after a day of pre-flight training to find everything unmade, dumped out and otherwise disheveled, with appropriate notes on the walls in grease pencil referencing the inspection’s outcome. Well I love good gamesmanship like a fat kid loves cake, so it was on.
So referring to one of my letters home: “The class in front of us had just turned senior, and really got off on harassing us in the barracks after chow in the evening. Well, we all had better things to do, so I decided to do something about this. It was a sought after moment for one of these upper class-men to find a loose end of thread coming from a name tag or patch on our flight suits. They made a big deal out of the “Lanyard” grossly hanging out from our uniform. What I did was take a bobbin of white thread from my sewing kit, place in a zippered chest pocket, and with a needle sewed it through the suit just under my name tag, making sure it was noticeably gross at over 2 inches long. I went back out into the hallway to troll, and sure enough, I caught an over eager senior class-man on evening patrol with a few of his friends. The oft repeated floor show was about to begin.
The soon to graduate Army pilot made a big deal of lining “the firing range” with several of my buddies against both walls for the pulling of the lanyard. I was instructed to clear range left, then to clear range right. Then he told me when the lanyard was pulled that I was to just say “click” because I was a dud! A few of his puffed up friends were observing.
So after the preliminaries, he yanked on the thread. It came out about 2 feet! He was speechless as a lovely shade of red crept up his neck. Everyone was laughing at him. Somehow I managed to keep a straight face. Not knowing what else to do, he pulled again with another foot or so of thread reeling out of my pocket. The senior called me the grossest example of a Warrant Officer Candidate ever to be admitted to the Army Aviation School at Ft. Rucker. He then turned and walked away with the thread still in hand. About 30 feet came out, trailing the guy down the hall past my laughing fellow junior class-men.
In a few minutes, Lt. Godboldte came to my room with a pile of thread in his hand. He told me, on the record, that I was not to harass the senior class. It was supposed to be the other way around. He said that if anything like this happened again, I would lose my weekend pass. Then the Lt. said: “Off the record, this candidate was about to break out in tears upon entering the Tac office. As the senior explained to me what had just transpired, I laughted out loud until my side ached! It was the best counter measure I have ever seen!”
I decided to play it cool for a while.
Rusty Bent Nail 