MY MEMORIES

Charles Glenn Petersen

1956 - Air Force Years

Keesler Air Force Base (continued)

After that we moved to another barrack of the same kind in a squadron of students going to various schools on the base. Thinking we now had it made. Go to school 6 hours a days and head for town. Wrong! We were informed that since we did not complete the normal length of Basic Training we would be in Basic Training in the mornings for the next several months and to school in the afternoons. To top that off we were told we would not get a Class A pass allowing us to go off base when off duty until we finished Basic Training. The upshot was that instead of being restricted to base for the normal length of Basic Training, about 3 months, and since we were only doing half days of Basic Training, our period of restriction would be 6 months. Granted there were a lot of things to do on base during the weekends but still that length of restriction was ridiculous.

Basic Training was mostly BS introduction to military life. Our Electronics Training was divided in two parts: Basic Electronics and electronic specific training in specialized fields. We ended up in long distant search radar. The Basic Electronics class was a snap for me since I had already completed my second years of Electrical Engineer at Iowa State College. I finished at the top of my class in Basic Electronics.