It's really the place of legend. And the place where everyone who has worn Naval Aviation wings of gold most likely remembers with a mixture of fondness, joy, and terror. Some want to forget it. Some want to bask in its memory. But all have stories. Both good and bad. And they've even made a movie about the place. Remember "An Officer and a Gentleman"? I'm not saying that they took a huge amount of literary license, but they may have left out a thing or two.
In my case, Pensacola was present in at least a couple important chapters in my life. I married early. I was 21. My wife was 20. What were we thinking? I mean...seriously! More importantly, what were our parents thinking in not talking us out of it? It was crazy. And reckless. And fraught with risk of ending up in disaster. Looking back, it's hard to fathom that we thought we could sustain our relationship. Of course, 45 wonderful years later it seems like maybe it wasn't such a crazy idea! Anyway, we went off to college in Utah and really did a lot of growing up together. We had great support from both families and were blissfully and ignorantly oblivious to the ways of the world. But as I was approaching graduation and she became pregnant, reality smacked us in the face. What in the heck were we going to do now? My wife had graduated a year earlier with her Masters and was working (I was on the 6-year program!). But she was having a baby. No working for her for a while. While I was scratching my head trying to figure out what to do, I happened to be walking through the Student Union one day and lo and behold there was a Navy recruiter. Hey...my Dad spent 20 years and retired from the Navy. My wife's Dad spent 30 years and retired from the Navy. But me...why I never really thought about it. But ever since I was a kid and took my first helicopter ride I wanted to do it again. And this Navy recruiter had a big, shiny poster of a beautiful big helicopter. And he said I could be a Navy pilot. No problem. Take the test. Go to Pensacola. Pin on your wings. Get your helicopter. No problem. So I took the test. And passed. Next thing I know I'm graduating and have these things called orders directing me to report to NAS Pensacola on 16 July 1974.
Now we didn't have much, but we did have some stuff. But back in those days, the Navy wasn't paying to move any of your stuff to Pensacola. I think they would have preferred single guys with nothing but a suitcase! So we bought 8 big boxes, loaded all our stuff in them, and shipped them to an Aunt who lived down the road from Pensacola in Mobile, Alabama. And hoped for the best. Meanwhile, we had to get there also. At the time, our vehicle was a Capri. A little brown Capri. Pretty basic. No air conditioning. Remember that. So we set off for San Diego to touch base with our families and then head off to Florida. In June. With my wife 8 months pregnant. In an unairconditioned car. She had a doctors appointment when we were in San Diego, and he told us that we had to stop every 100 miles so she could walk around. She was very healthy and we were young and confident, but looking back I just can't believe we did that. Again...what were we thinking? What were our parents thinking? But it was a different time. And we were pretty determined. So off we went. And stopped every 100 miles for a walk around the car. It was a long, long journey. I remember that my wife was particularly nervous as we drove down through the backwoods of Louisana. She really didn't want her baby being born there! But we made it. After a short stint in a motel, we found a nice little furnished apartment right on Pensacola Bay. And we called my Aunt and all our stuff had made it. My Uncle helped me get it all moved to our apartment and we were set. She found a doctor and everything was on track. The only problem was that I was about to head to Aviation Officer Candidate School (AOCS) and would be sequestered for several weeks. No problem. Her Mom agreed to come to Pensacola when the baby was born, so our mind was somewhat put at ease. Let me just say that I still can't believe we did this. There were so many obstacles, so much risk, so many unknowns. But we were together and just plowed ahead. I still look back in amazement!
So the day came. She drove me to the base, we gave each other a last fond look, hug, and kiss, and I walked up and through the doors of Indoc Battalion.
And my world, as they say, was turned upside down!
During your first week or so of AOCS, life is a blur. And scary, intimidating, lonely, crazy, hectic, and every other description you can imagine. It is run by Marine Drill Instructors (DIs) who were generally Staff Sergeants and Gunnery Sergeants and, from our perspective, were about 10 feet tall, pure muscle, ate nails for breakfast, never slept, and could chew us up and spit us out without thinking twice about it. The day started at 5:00 am (or 0500 as we were starting to understand) and ended at 10:00 pm (2200). It is a whirlwind of getting gear assigned, getting your head shaved, getting acclimated to a military environment, meeting a whole new group of fellow candidates, adjusting to living in a barracks, learning how to march, endless physical fitness training, and in our case, getting prodded, poked, tested, and measured endlessly at the Naval Aviation Medical Institute (NAMI) to ensure we were suited to be Navy pilots or flight officers. During this time, several of our number either quit or were washed out medically. Several were colorblind and gone. I always wondered why their recruiter didn't test them for that. We were now Poopies. We wore a silver helmet everywhere we went. It was a crazy, exhausting, intimidating time and I'm pretty confident that every one of us wondered what the hell we had gotten ourselves into and thought more than once about quitting. It was called Dropping on Request (DOR) and the DIs were constantly holding that option right in front of our face. But a funny thing happened after we got into our routine and started to in some way become used to it, it didn't seem so bad. We had a Gunnery Sergeant in charge of us who was a tough cookie, but didn't drive us into the dirt like we had heard.
And then one day when all the NAMI tests were done we were informed we'd be transferring to our permanent Battalion, BATT III, and would be getting a new DI. So we were ushered into a room with an accordion door at one end, told to sit at attention, wait. Suddenly, the accordion door flew open and the most fierce, intimidating, and frightening DI imaginable stood gazing at us under the brim of his Smokey hat. His name was Staff Sergeant Penn. And I will never forget that look until my dying day. He uttered one word...FINALLY!! And things went down hill from there. Check out this little video. This is Staff Sergeant Penn. Still gives me the willys!
The movie is pretty accurate. Endless PT, mind-boggling attention to detail, learning to do the most basic things like walking all over again in the proper manner, classroom sessions on engines, aerodynamics, etc, swim quals, dunkers, etc, etc, etc. One of the key evolutions was called a room, locker, and personnel (RLP) inspection. This was a fun little event in which you would prepare endlessly to make sure everything is perfect. The cleanliness of your room, the measurments of everything in your locker, that everything is in it's place, that your uniform including shoes and brass is perfect...you get the idea. And then several DI's would descend on your room and tear it apart. One little thing and the destruction commenced.
There were a lot of interesting guys in the class. They came from all walks of life, the whole economic spectrum, every corner of the country, and all levels of experience. One particularly interesting guy was a giant of a man. I mean he was huge. And he was a prior service Marine with a chest full of medals as an enlisted grunt in Vietnam. And he was a big old target for the DIs. Whenever they were on the prowl, you wanted to be near him, because you knew they were going to focus all their wrath on him.
We also were issued rifles. Well..sort of rifles. They were the real thing but I'm not sure they'd ever been fired. But we had to keep them spotless. And learn to march with them. And protect them. One day we came back from chow and one of our number had left his locker open. And the DI was waiting for him. Oh, he got it back. But he had to go around to several DIs to get parts of it back. And there was a price to pay. Most probably in pushups. We did unending pushups. I mean unending. For the most minor infraction, we did pushups. For a major infraction, we did pushups. For making eye contact, we did pushups. For almost anything, we did pushups. PT was a big part of our routine. And we had committed some especially heinous infraction, we'd get to do PT in the passageway in the Battalion. With no air conditioning. Remember, it was July. In Florida. And hot. Seriously hot. With humidity off the scale. And when we did PT inside the walls started to sweat. Lovely.
We also spent a lot of time in the pool. We had to learn (relearn) all the strokes and pass a test. We had to swim a mile in our khakis. We had to pass drown proofing and treading water tests. We did the dunker and the parachute drag and on and on and on. At some point I felt pretty water logged.
As I said...a whirlwind. 12 weeks. 12 weeks of exhaustion. But also 12 weeks toward jelling as a class, understanding the importance of the training, paying attention to detail, and starting to see a dim view of the future. At some point during the process, we got our tapes! A little piece of tape to put on your nametag which meant that you had progressed sufficiently to be allowed a small amount of liberty. As I recall we could gather on Wednesday evenings with loved ones at the Student Club (sort of a precursor to the many Officers Clubs we'd visit in our careers) and be allowed to go off base on Saturday afternoon until Sunday afternoon. Writing it now it seems like not a big thing....but trust me, it was a huge deal to get your tapes!
But before we got our tapes, I BECAME A FATHER!!! I of course had been inwardly focused about my trials and trevails, but also trying to monitor how my wife was doing. I knew my Mother-in-law had arrived and that he (although we didn't know it was a he) was late. But she had good care and the support of her Mom, so I just hoped all would go well. I remember falling in on a Wednesday afternoon to march off to some other event when the DI called my name. I thought, "oh shit, what have I done now?". But it turned out he announced that I'd become a father, mother and child were doing fine, and now lets get on with training. Nice, huh? At some point later in the day, he told me to put in a request for getting special liberty that next weekend and perhaps, if they were in a good mood, I'd get to go home and see my son. Remember that routine in the movie about entering an office. That was me. I was scared to death but went to their office to get a liberty chit. After they pointed out all the problems with my uniform, they grudgingly gave me a pass to go home Saturday afternoon to Sunday afternoon. 24 whole hours. So my Mother-in-Law came to pick me up and off we went to our little apartment. Seeing my wife and son was just perfect. Short, but perfect. They were both fine, she looked angelic, and of course, my son was beautiful. The reconnection was sublime. And to realize that now there was another person in the world that I was responsible for was an awesome feeling. I will admit that it was difficult to go back, but go back I did. And with a new spring in my step.
And then I was back. Back to the craziness. Now that I had a wife and son I became a choir singer. One of the things that the Chaplain had told us in one of his many sessions to motivate us to stay was that if you joined the church choir, then you went to Sunday services and if your family came, there was usually some time afterwards, maybe an hour or so, when you could sit around on picnic tables and enjoy each other's company. So the choir was fully staffed. It didn't sound great. But it was big!
The other thing I did was become a blood donor. It was called Vampire Liberty. If you donated blood you would get off the rest of the day until Midnight. Any excuse to see my wife and son.
About this time Nixon resigned. Needless to say, not the biggest event in life to us. We knew about it, but no one cared. You generally were pretty myopic. What's happening now and in the immediate future and how did you survive it were all that mattered.
I'm not sure what the percentage was, but several guys has wives and a few had kids. More than you would think. One guy and his wife who became a life long friends had a baby girl right about the time our son was born. Within weeks. We all became great friends and spent many happy times together. As friendships go we have drifted apart but did have the opportunity to come back together in subsequent assignments. They have since divorced and it's decades later but we remain connected. It really is a place to form relationships for life. I can't say that I've remain connected to a ton of guys, but I'm confident that if I saw them today, it wouldn't take long to relive our good times and bad.
And as the days stretched into weeks, things came into focus. Tasks that were impossible just a few short weeks before were now accomplished with a wizened and experienced countenance. Soon we were marching on the parade field for graduation and commissioning. Becoming an Ensign and moving on to flight school (finally) was a great day! And receiving that salute from my DI? Proudest salute I've ever received.
Next stop....Saufley Field, just outside Pensacola, for primary flight training. We'd be starting off in the venerable T-34B Mentor and this would be the place where our destiny would be forged. Here's where the rubber would meet the road. We'd either prove to be able to become pilots or we wouldn't. No middle ground. And while at Saufley we'd be selected for a pipeline. Jets, props, or helos. What would it be? The next year would prove to be a whole other adventure that is worthy of a story in itself.
Now we didn't have much, but we did have some stuff. But back in those days, the Navy wasn't paying to move any of your stuff to Pensacola. I think they would have preferred single guys with nothing but a suitcase! So we bought 8 big boxes, loaded all our stuff in them, and shipped them to an Aunt who lived down the road from Pensacola in Mobile, Alabama. And hoped for the best. Meanwhile, we had to get there also. At the time, our vehicle was a Capri. A little brown Capri. Pretty basic. No air conditioning. Remember that. So we set off for San Diego to touch base with our families and then head off to Florida. In June. With my wife 8 months pregnant. In an unairconditioned car. She had a doctors appointment when we were in San Diego, and he told us that we had to stop every 100 miles so she could walk around. She was very healthy and we were young and confident, but looking back I just can't believe we did that. Again...what were we thinking? What were our parents thinking? But it was a different time. And we were pretty determined. So off we went. And stopped every 100 miles for a walk around the car. It was a long, long journey. I remember that my wife was particularly nervous as we drove down through the backwoods of Louisana. She really didn't want her baby being born there! But we made it. After a short stint in a motel, we found a nice little furnished apartment right on Pensacola Bay. And we called my Aunt and all our stuff had made it. My Uncle helped me get it all moved to our apartment and we were set. She found a doctor and everything was on track. The only problem was that I was about to head to Aviation Officer Candidate School (AOCS) and would be sequestered for several weeks. No problem. Her Mom agreed to come to Pensacola when the baby was born, so our mind was somewhat put at ease. Let me just say that I still can't believe we did this. There were so many obstacles, so much risk, so many unknowns. But we were together and just plowed ahead. I still look back in amazement!
So the day came. She drove me to the base, we gave each other a last fond look, hug, and kiss, and I walked up and through the doors of Indoc Battalion.
And my world, as they say, was turned upside down!
During your first week or so of AOCS, life is a blur. And scary, intimidating, lonely, crazy, hectic, and every other description you can imagine. It is run by Marine Drill Instructors (DIs) who were generally Staff Sergeants and Gunnery Sergeants and, from our perspective, were about 10 feet tall, pure muscle, ate nails for breakfast, never slept, and could chew us up and spit us out without thinking twice about it. The day started at 5:00 am (or 0500 as we were starting to understand) and ended at 10:00 pm (2200). It is a whirlwind of getting gear assigned, getting your head shaved, getting acclimated to a military environment, meeting a whole new group of fellow candidates, adjusting to living in a barracks, learning how to march, endless physical fitness training, and in our case, getting prodded, poked, tested, and measured endlessly at the Naval Aviation Medical Institute (NAMI) to ensure we were suited to be Navy pilots or flight officers. During this time, several of our number either quit or were washed out medically. Several were colorblind and gone. I always wondered why their recruiter didn't test them for that. We were now Poopies. We wore a silver helmet everywhere we went. It was a crazy, exhausting, intimidating time and I'm pretty confident that every one of us wondered what the hell we had gotten ourselves into and thought more than once about quitting. It was called Dropping on Request (DOR) and the DIs were constantly holding that option right in front of our face. But a funny thing happened after we got into our routine and started to in some way become used to it, it didn't seem so bad. We had a Gunnery Sergeant in charge of us who was a tough cookie, but didn't drive us into the dirt like we had heard.
And then one day when all the NAMI tests were done we were informed we'd be transferring to our permanent Battalion, BATT III, and would be getting a new DI. So we were ushered into a room with an accordion door at one end, told to sit at attention, wait. Suddenly, the accordion door flew open and the most fierce, intimidating, and frightening DI imaginable stood gazing at us under the brim of his Smokey hat. His name was Staff Sergeant Penn. And I will never forget that look until my dying day. He uttered one word...FINALLY!! And things went down hill from there. Check out this little video. This is Staff Sergeant Penn. Still gives me the willys!
The movie is pretty accurate. Endless PT, mind-boggling attention to detail, learning to do the most basic things like walking all over again in the proper manner, classroom sessions on engines, aerodynamics, etc, swim quals, dunkers, etc, etc, etc. One of the key evolutions was called a room, locker, and personnel (RLP) inspection. This was a fun little event in which you would prepare endlessly to make sure everything is perfect. The cleanliness of your room, the measurments of everything in your locker, that everything is in it's place, that your uniform including shoes and brass is perfect...you get the idea. And then several DI's would descend on your room and tear it apart. One little thing and the destruction commenced.
There were a lot of interesting guys in the class. They came from all walks of life, the whole economic spectrum, every corner of the country, and all levels of experience. One particularly interesting guy was a giant of a man. I mean he was huge. And he was a prior service Marine with a chest full of medals as an enlisted grunt in Vietnam. And he was a big old target for the DIs. Whenever they were on the prowl, you wanted to be near him, because you knew they were going to focus all their wrath on him.
We also were issued rifles. Well..sort of rifles. They were the real thing but I'm not sure they'd ever been fired. But we had to keep them spotless. And learn to march with them. And protect them. One day we came back from chow and one of our number had left his locker open. And the DI was waiting for him. Oh, he got it back. But he had to go around to several DIs to get parts of it back. And there was a price to pay. Most probably in pushups. We did unending pushups. I mean unending. For the most minor infraction, we did pushups. For a major infraction, we did pushups. For making eye contact, we did pushups. For almost anything, we did pushups. PT was a big part of our routine. And we had committed some especially heinous infraction, we'd get to do PT in the passageway in the Battalion. With no air conditioning. Remember, it was July. In Florida. And hot. Seriously hot. With humidity off the scale. And when we did PT inside the walls started to sweat. Lovely.
We also spent a lot of time in the pool. We had to learn (relearn) all the strokes and pass a test. We had to swim a mile in our khakis. We had to pass drown proofing and treading water tests. We did the dunker and the parachute drag and on and on and on. At some point I felt pretty water logged.
As I said...a whirlwind. 12 weeks. 12 weeks of exhaustion. But also 12 weeks toward jelling as a class, understanding the importance of the training, paying attention to detail, and starting to see a dim view of the future. At some point during the process, we got our tapes! A little piece of tape to put on your nametag which meant that you had progressed sufficiently to be allowed a small amount of liberty. As I recall we could gather on Wednesday evenings with loved ones at the Student Club (sort of a precursor to the many Officers Clubs we'd visit in our careers) and be allowed to go off base on Saturday afternoon until Sunday afternoon. Writing it now it seems like not a big thing....but trust me, it was a huge deal to get your tapes!
But before we got our tapes, I BECAME A FATHER!!! I of course had been inwardly focused about my trials and trevails, but also trying to monitor how my wife was doing. I knew my Mother-in-law had arrived and that he (although we didn't know it was a he) was late. But she had good care and the support of her Mom, so I just hoped all would go well. I remember falling in on a Wednesday afternoon to march off to some other event when the DI called my name. I thought, "oh shit, what have I done now?". But it turned out he announced that I'd become a father, mother and child were doing fine, and now lets get on with training. Nice, huh? At some point later in the day, he told me to put in a request for getting special liberty that next weekend and perhaps, if they were in a good mood, I'd get to go home and see my son. Remember that routine in the movie about entering an office. That was me. I was scared to death but went to their office to get a liberty chit. After they pointed out all the problems with my uniform, they grudgingly gave me a pass to go home Saturday afternoon to Sunday afternoon. 24 whole hours. So my Mother-in-Law came to pick me up and off we went to our little apartment. Seeing my wife and son was just perfect. Short, but perfect. They were both fine, she looked angelic, and of course, my son was beautiful. The reconnection was sublime. And to realize that now there was another person in the world that I was responsible for was an awesome feeling. I will admit that it was difficult to go back, but go back I did. And with a new spring in my step.
And then I was back. Back to the craziness. Now that I had a wife and son I became a choir singer. One of the things that the Chaplain had told us in one of his many sessions to motivate us to stay was that if you joined the church choir, then you went to Sunday services and if your family came, there was usually some time afterwards, maybe an hour or so, when you could sit around on picnic tables and enjoy each other's company. So the choir was fully staffed. It didn't sound great. But it was big!
The other thing I did was become a blood donor. It was called Vampire Liberty. If you donated blood you would get off the rest of the day until Midnight. Any excuse to see my wife and son.
About this time Nixon resigned. Needless to say, not the biggest event in life to us. We knew about it, but no one cared. You generally were pretty myopic. What's happening now and in the immediate future and how did you survive it were all that mattered.
I'm not sure what the percentage was, but several guys has wives and a few had kids. More than you would think. One guy and his wife who became a life long friends had a baby girl right about the time our son was born. Within weeks. We all became great friends and spent many happy times together. As friendships go we have drifted apart but did have the opportunity to come back together in subsequent assignments. They have since divorced and it's decades later but we remain connected. It really is a place to form relationships for life. I can't say that I've remain connected to a ton of guys, but I'm confident that if I saw them today, it wouldn't take long to relive our good times and bad.
And as the days stretched into weeks, things came into focus. Tasks that were impossible just a few short weeks before were now accomplished with a wizened and experienced countenance. Soon we were marching on the parade field for graduation and commissioning. Becoming an Ensign and moving on to flight school (finally) was a great day! And receiving that salute from my DI? Proudest salute I've ever received.
Next stop....Saufley Field, just outside Pensacola, for primary flight training. We'd be starting off in the venerable T-34B Mentor and this would be the place where our destiny would be forged. Here's where the rubber would meet the road. We'd either prove to be able to become pilots or we wouldn't. No middle ground. And while at Saufley we'd be selected for a pipeline. Jets, props, or helos. What would it be? The next year would prove to be a whole other adventure that is worthy of a story in itself.
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