Air Cadet Story
#2

Right on cadetat6.

I was in Cooley High School, Detroit,Mi. in 1943, when I signed up for enlistment in the Army Air Cadet Program. I Was put on temporary leave till I graduated, which meant that I took 12b and 12a together. After basic training, we took aptitude tests. But what really went on was the following. Our barracks had 100 men. ----50 men 1st floor, 50 men 2nd floor. After all the aptitude tests, this is how they decided where we were to go. Ist floor to radio mechanics school; 2nd floor to radio operators school. Now how is that for classification. Turns out that out of 100 men, only one of us knew what the heck the inside of a radio looked like. He was a HAM radio man. He could take a radio apart and put it back together . No problem. Guess what floor he was on. Yep---2nd floor. That meant that when he would be on a mission and had trouble with his radio or radar, he would report it upon return to base and the radio mechanic would attempt to repair it. Where is the logic in that?

 

Well what do you know. I was on the 1st floor, so I went to Truax field,Wisc. for radio mech. training. from there to Chanute field, Ill. for electronics, and on Boca Raton air base for Airborn radar. Just as our training completed, the war in Europe ended.What to do? We were shipped off to Ft. Monmouth, N.J. to be trained by the Signal Corps in shipboard radar. We were then sent down to New Orleans to be sent out on Merchant ships as three man radar crews. An interesting point however. Since we were, a three men, going by train to New Orleans, We carried our record book and travel papers on our person. Now, I ask you; With our record books on our laps, do you really think we wouldn't look. The page that would have said we were to be trained as cadets was ever so neatly cut out and a new page glued in pertaining to air crews. At barely 18, was I going to buck the Air Corps. Do you know what they put on that substituted page as why I was knocked out of cadet training?-------PROLONGED ENURESIS. Wetting the bed till after the age of TWELVE!!!. I didn't know what it meant till after I came home and looked it up in a dictionary. My mom was furious. By then , I was thankful, after reading what the losses were to the air crews over Europe.

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Messages In This Thread
Air Cadet Story - by Cadetat6 - 12-03-2004, 10:22 PM
Air Cadet Story - by chucktoo1926 - 12-20-2004, 12:56 AM

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