Happy Veterans Day to my fellow veterans!
How many veterans are on Talk?
US Army Aviation (maintenance) 87 - 11, one deployment to the Balkans 99-00, Iraq 2004/05, Iraq 2008/09
Avionics /radar & countermeasures / crypto repair, then Aircraft repair and maintenance (Huey, Kiowa, Apache, Chinook, Sherpa, and more)
Fav part time gig & gun - M60 door gunner
Army 1977-1983 AD - Panama Canal Zone, 193rd Infantry Brigade (Separate), 601st Medical Co. (Separate) (Think MASH), USAR Kansas
Marines '89-'97. California, S. Carolina, N. Carolina & Okinawa, Japan
Air National Guard and Operations Iraqi and Enduring Freedom veteran. Spent 30 years in the USAF and Air Guard. Served on many different deployments in some very interesting places in Central and South America, the Near East and Europe. Served in the Communications and Information Systems and Aircraft Maintenance areas mostly. Aircraft assigned to our unit were the KC-97 tanker and C-130Bs & H’s air-lifters. I loved almost every minute of it, except the desert and chem warfare training.
USN 1965-1971. Two WestPac cruses in '68 & '69 on the USS Chicago (CG11). We visited the coast of North Korea in Jan 1968 after the Pueblo (AGER-2) was captured and went back in April '69 when the EC121 reconnaissance plane was shot down 90 miles from North Korea. All 31 Americans (30 sailors and 1 marine) on board the EC121 were killed. In both cases we sent a multi ship task force, paraded up and down the coast of North Korea for several days, and then left.
Russell Ward
Army '82-'85 - 75F - SIDPERS analyst (personnel database analyst). I saw the garden spots of Fort Hood and Fort Riley.
US Navy 1972 to 1992. One wooden hull minesweeper, one ballistic missile submarine, two fast attack submarines. Retired as Senior Chief Electronics Technician. Nuclear plant operator and supervisor. Don’t know where we operated, other than somewhere reachable from the Atlantic Ocean. My security clearance wasn’t high enough for them to tell me where.
Thanks to each of you for your service.
Texas national guard, Dec 2011 to present.
do tell…where “the garden spot” was on or near Fort Hood?
have to say that is one hella over embellishment for Fort Hood!
Too good to not share, be sure to watch to the end.
US Air Force, 1968-1972, Crypto (Code -decoder) Technician and Secure Communications Installer. Stationed mostly in Germany at a mountain top Radar site, but had 3 short TDY tours of Viet Nam. Back then if you were in Viet Nam for less than 90 days you were never part of the “official” troupe count as Congress saw it. Blew out my hearing, am currently a Disabled Viet Nam era Veteran. Have never fired a gun since, don’t own any guns, don’t want any, don’t need that abuse.
I’ve been out to shoot twice since 2011, but I do own firearms (i don’t reload), and If I had more time, I’d shoot a little more.
All of Fort Hood is a garden spot. It’s the most beautiful place in all of Texas! 
Fort Hood was where I adopted my personal motto of “dress for the weather, not the calendar.” This motto came about by the Army’s rigid dress policies (hopefully since relaxed). “Tomorrow is October first, ladies and gentlemen. That means you wear your field jacket to morning formation. I know the high tomorrow is supposed to be 97, but fall is fall!”
Went through a similar uniform problem when I was stationed in Orlando. Then the Admiral tried to fix it. She would watch the 11 o’clock news, decide what we should wear the next day, and call every C.O. on base to tell them. They would then have everyone attached to their command notified what the Uniform of the Day was. Sometimes awakened at 0400 by “uniform” call. What fun.
… I have a special place of hatred in my heart for fort hood.
For a few years we always went to the range in April for weapons qual at Fort Hood…I think it rained and was in the high 40’s / low 50s. Just rain and mud for the M16 / M9 / M249 Good Times!
Those days made me appreciate choosing army aviation not living and working in the mud and weather - at times I felt I was almost in the Air Force (without the Starbucks tho)
I have to wonder who the moron was that coined “welcome to the great place” at the entry checkpoints to Ft hood - it isn’t my idea of garden spot at all. The only place worse has to be Fort Sill.
I thought Fort Hood was the worst. Then I got to spend a year at Fort Riley. Summer is almost as hot as Texas, winter is way worse. Our (Admin company) CO decided we needed to be more hardcore, so he liked to do our required one week in the field per year in the dead of winter. Nothing like trying to dig a foxhole when there’s 6 inches of snow on top of the frozen ground, and then sitting in it for your guard duty shift at -20 degrees. That was the one time I seriously considered smoking because my fox-hole-mate said it warmed you up.
Oh and our supply sergeant tried to kill us - the diesel space heater they were using in the giant tent wasn’t maintained properly and filled the tent with smoke and fumes in the middle of the night as we slept (and the fire guard had fallen asleep).
The best thing to come out of that year in Kansas was that I learned to drive in snow. And my ETS.