Retired effective 1 Feb 2014. Plan to travel,fish,work around the house and visit my grand kids. 2017 still fish and work in my yard . Had to stop travelling on our trike and just sold it . Haven't seen my grand kids in Colorado for three years . Bad feet and knees on many meds , old age sucks !
August 2019 I had a stroke and lost the use of my whole right side and speech . I have come back to getting around without a cane and can talk fairly good . I can drive and do most things only slowly . I am still getting better and feel half normal .
Other Comments:
Retired from Oklahoma Teachers Retirement system 1 Feb 2014. Drawing Social Security,Retired from Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company in 2006 and retired from the Army in 1988. My hobbies are my yard now getting my main attention. Really enjoy going to bed and getting up whenever I feel like ! I still do some bass fishing once in awhile . Still do a few local Bass Tournaments .
Best Friends It was one of the first classes of DA assigned NCO's and we had a hell of a time ! They failed an E-5 that had come over from the Air Force , never took Army BCT or much of anything . He busted his ass and had voluteered for this . The poor guy worked much harder than any of us and we all worked with him as much as we could . Came time to get our Hats and we decided none of us would accept if that E-5 didn't graduate with us ! LMAO , that SMG Commandant had a cow and called all of us names and yelled only to give in as we all stuck together ! He knew a bunch of Vietnam vets E-6 & E-7 refusing wouldn't look good for him , and we were all willing to do it !
Best Moment We had our ups and downs with the two DS Tacs and they tried to screw with us in ways and it never worked as they pissed us off and we would let them know being alone with us would happen sometime . We had lots of fun as most of us were hell raisers and stubburn combat vets , plus some of us weren't to happy about this assignment at that point . A great bunch of NCO's in my opinion .
Worst Moment Now , it won't let me enter the years that I served in that unit ! March 1975 to January 1976 was the correct dates .
Chain of Command Cpt Jones had been a SFC when on the SonTy raid in North Vietnam . Great guy ! SFC Prince was SDS and a really calm guy ! 1st Sgt Hewitt had been a squad leader during the battle in the IaDrang Valley in the 1st Cav . Fire and ice depending on what was going on . Great man that taught me much and supported all of the DS's . He had our backs ! Some great NCO's too work with . It was totally different at Fort Sill . I got moved often because of Officer's not liking the way that I did things mostly . Worked with some good NCO's and some so so one's there . Lucky the battalion commander had my back when one company commander wanted me Article Fifteen or worse . Bn Co did not agree and moved me with no action taken .
Other Memories Kind of a strange time. Lots of things were alright and other things not. All in all I got to like it. Kind of hated to leave when I had too. Of course I was still a DS when at Ft Sill . I didn't stay in the same unit for my time there . Was in BCT then Pershing AIT then Special Training Battery and finally back to BCT again . I had asked for third year so no one to blame !
