Article by Orville Wright
Veterans – November 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
Ed Quillen contacted me about submitting something for the November edition of Colorado Central. He said another writer was also working on a couple of pieces related to Veterans Day. So I was asked to supply something that “Explored how military service affected the life of a guy who grew up in Salida.” The following is offered, although it is a wee bit above Mr. Quillen’s suggested word count. –O.W.
MY PLANS to attend college out of state were scuttled by the untimely death of an uncle who was a professor at the University of Illinois. Instead, I enlisted in the Air Force at the ripe old age of 17, one month after graduating from Salida High School in 1957.
After basic training in Texas, I was off to the 497th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron at Geiger Field, near Spokane, Wash. That part of Washington is beautiful, with lots of pine trees, lakes, and green grass.
Things were just starting to fall into place for me when notice came down that the entire 497th Fighter Squadron was going to ship out for a three-year tour of duty in Spain. Everybody, that is, except the last person who joined the outfit. Some obtuse Air Force Regulation required individuals in certain occupational specialties to have held a “3 Level” skill rating for at least six months in order to qualify for overseas assignment. I failed to meet that time requirement by 45 days. The First Sergeant said, “It’s non-negotiable Airman. You don’t go!!”
So instead of shipping off to a big air base near Madrid, I was transferred to Headquarters, 84th Fighter Group for extended detached duty at Wendover Air Force Base. My initial reaction, which thoroughly upset the Group Sergeant Major was, “Where in the Hell is Wendover Air Force Base?”
He said “Utah.”
For the uninformed, Wendover Air Force Base is about 110 miles due west of Salt Lake City, right on the edge of the Great Salt Lake Desert. Because of its remote location, Wendover was the primary training facility for the aircrews that dropped the Atomic Bomb on Japan; consequently several thousand troops were stationed there during the war.
By 1958, however, the mission for Wendover and its nearby gunnery range had changed. The base was only being used on an intermittent basis for air-to-air rocketry training. Fighter squadrons from Air Defense Command installations all over North America would periodically deploy to Wendover for two weeks of live-fire training.
I was assigned to Wendover as part of the Permanent Party Cadre. Within a week, transfer orders were issued along with a $120 cash advance to cover travel and subsistence costs for the first 30 days. I bought two road maps for a nickel apiece, loaded up my recently acquired ’49 Ford and headed for Utah. (The ’46 Chevy with the noisy muffler was now my dad’s go-to-work car.)
RATHER THAN TRAVEL on unfamiliar roads after dark, I spent the night in Missoula, Montana. A nice room at the Wagon Wheel Motel cost $2.50, which included a meal ticket for a full breakfast the next morning.
Report-in at Wendover was set for Monday, March 3rd, at 1300 Hours (that’s 1 p.m. for you civilian types). I got into Wendover at about 10 p.m., so instead of spending money for a motel room, I decided to check in early. (Military bases are set up to house and feed personnel in travel status. A copy of the travel orders and a military ID card will get the individual meals and a bed until the formal report-in process is completed.)
The individual reader can decide whether or not this part of my military career was meaningful or just a waste of time and money. I offer this rather lengthy discourse solely to describe some of the foolishness that took place. That said, I sometimes wonder how much of the same stuff still occurs in today’s military under the pretense of “preparedness.”
I was now in Class “A” winter uniform, having changed earlier at a service station. The Airman’s Handbook said it was very important to make a favorable impression when reporting in at a new assignment.
Things didn’t look quite right as I approached the entrance to the base. Illumination around the gate area was provided by a single overhead light. The gate was wide open and unattended. The guard shack next to the gate appeared to be unoccupied. I waited in the car for a bit, then walked over to the guard shack and looked through the window. It was obvious the place hadn’t been used for a while — it was full of trash that had blown in through a broken pane in one of the windows.
A building across the street just inside the gate had lights on inside, so I walked over there. The door was locked. It appeared to be an office of some type, but nothing indicated what function the building served. A white sign only had the building number, 123, on it. Every other building in the immediate vicinity was completely dark. The fire lights over the doors were even turned off. (That was a BIG no-no at other bases.)
BASE ACCESS was obviously unrestricted, so I headed towards a cluster of red lights visible in the distance. The lights turned out to be around Base Operations and on top of the Control Tower. The Base Operations building was completely dark, but the front door was unlocked. I found the light switch, but it was evident Base Operations had not operated in quite some time. Everything was covered with a thick layer of dirt. (That’s “dirt” not “dust.”)
[Airman Wright]
The gate for the stairs to the control tower cab was locked, but a nearby sign indicated after-hours assistance could be obtained at Building Number 123 or by calling Base Extension 456. (Building 123 was the one that was locked up and deserted. The phone on the counter in Base Operations did not work, so calling Base Extension 456 was not possible.)
I decided to drive around the base until I found an occupied building or got stopped by an Air Police patrol.
The farther I drove, the more apparent it became that the base was basically derelict. Most of the buildings were in a poor state of repair. Roofing material and pieces of tar paper littered the streets. Tumbleweeds and trash were piled up against some of the buildings. Everything was completely dark — including the fire pull-box lights and overhead street lights. By then, it was about 11 p.m. and, quite frankly, the place was getting a bit spooky. Air Police Patrols?? Forget it. The only living thing I had seen so far was a scrawny looking coyote.
A barracks near the flight line had lights on and cars parked next to it. Inside, I found some real live people watching a pot-boiler movie on TV. One guy had Tech. Sergeant stripes on his shirt, so I showed him my orders and asked where the sign-in roster was kept. He said there wasn’t any sign-in roster, and that I was on my own until Monday because all the Officers were gone for the weekend.
I did get a room assignment though. It was at the very end of the hall on the second floor. Welcome to Wendover!
SURPRISE, IT WAS a single room with a real door. Normally, single rooms were reserved for Sergeants. At the time, I was only one rung from the bottom of the Air Force rank ladder, so I was expecting a top bunk and five or six roommates. Welcome to Wendover !!
But the only thing in my room was a metal cot. No sheets. No pillow. No mattress. And no bulb in the ceiling light fixture, either. I slept in the car. Thank God for the old horse blanket GI-Issue overcoat. The desert gets cold at night in March. Welcome to Wendover ?
Around 7 o’clock the next morning, I gave up trying to sleep and headed for the barracks latrine to take a hot shower. The latrine was pure World War Two vintage: A big, open, ground-level room with a bare concrete floor. There was a row of wash basins along one wall; with seating for six along two adjoining walls; and a long porcelain trough across from the wash basins. The shower room was a concrete-lined hole with both ceiling lights burned out and moldy wooden slats on the floor. There was no hot water and the place was cold enough to freeze the balls off a pool table. So much for personal hygiene. Welcome to Wendover ??
On my way out of the latrine, I met the Sergeant from the night before. His main job was running the Radar site, but he was also the Barracks Chief. (The military version of a House-Mother). He explained why there was no heat or hot water. The person assigned to Fire Watch duty had failed to bank the fires in the furnace and monkey stove the night before. Both heating units were hand-fired with coal; and no coal in the furnace or monkey stove meant no fire; which meant no heat in the barracks and no hot water. It made sense to me.
Welcome to Wendover ??
An interesting bit of trivia: The coal used at Wendover in 1958 had been on hand since before the end of World War Two. It seems the U.S. Navy still had some time to go on its 100-year contract to supply coal at all U. S. military bases nationwide. (An historical fact — I looked it up one time.)
I asked the Sergeant for directions to the dining hall, and he started laughing. He told me the dining hall was only open when squadrons were deployed at the base for rocketry training. The next deployment was set for June. When the base was in stand-down status, everybody in the Caretaker Cadre ate at a restaurant. There were only two places to eat, both of which were in Nevada. (The state line runs through the west edge of town.) Welcome to Wendover ????
ALL THE MOTELS were in Utah. I drove to that side of town and rented a room at the Wend-Over Motel for $1.50 (military rate). After a long, hot shower, it was back to Nevada and the A-1 Casino Café for breakfast. Steak n’eggs cost seventy-five cents and came with a big glass of real orange juice, hash browns and a bottomless cup of coffee. Then, I went back to Utah to watch TV, skipped lunch, but went back to Nevada for supper. The evening special at the A-1 Café cost $1.10. That night it was a hot roast beef sandwich, real mashed potatoes, coffee, salad and pie for dessert. Then I went back to Utah for more TV until bedtime.
At 1245 hours Monday afternoon, I returned to the base. In the daylight, a base locator map near the main gate was clearly visible. Building 123 — the one across the street from the guard shack — was Base Headquarters. This time, the door was unlocked but the place was still deserted. A coffee pot was plugged in and turned on, so I sat down and waited. About 20 minutes later, a staff car pulled up by the front door and parked.
An officer in summer khakis got out of the car and entered the building. (It was the first week in March. In Spokane, we couldn’t wear summer uniforms until the end of April.) The officer, a Major, informed me that he was the Base Officer-In-Charge. I later learned the position of Base Commander did not exist at Wendover because of the low number of personnel assigned to the installation. Whatever his title, the Major was a very nice person.
After the reporting-in stuff was dispensed with, I learned my immediate boss, a Lieutenant, was off base and would not return until mid-week. The Major got on the phone and called the Supply Clerk to come over and help me get checked in. That happened, and by 1700 Hours (5:00 p.m.), I had been introduced to all of the military personnel assigned to Wendover Air Force Base. There were, in addition to the Major, five Sergeants and five enlisted men. The then absent Lieutenant and I made it a grand total of thirteen military types assigned to the base. In addition to us GI’s, there were several full-time Firefighters that were employed by the Federal Civil Service. (The base Fire Station also served the Town of Wendover – it still does, as a matter of fact.)
I MET THE LIEUTENANT later in the week and was immediately impressed. He was a graduate of West Point, was Pilot-Rated, and most importantly, was a really nice guy. Unlike some Officers I encountered in the military, he did not need an Act of Congress and a fancy piece of paper to claim the title of “An Officer and A Gentleman.”
I had the job title of “Chief Clerk, Detachment One, 84th Fighter Group.” It sounded impressive, but in reality it meant shuffling paper and being in the Orderly Room most of the time in case the phone should ring. (“Orderly Room” is a military term that sort of means “the office.”) I also had to check in with the Group Sergeant Major at Geiger Field in Spokane by phone twice a week, and the Lt. did the same thing with his boss (whoever he was). Working together, we managed to keep Headquarters satisfied.
During cold weather, an important job for me was to keep the coal stove in the outer office fired up. It was too inefficient to heat anything but the coffee pot because the windows and door leaked cold air all the time. To partially remedy that problem, the Lieutenant and I each had a small electric heater in our offices.
We learned right away not to use the heaters and the electric coffee pot at the same time. If we did, it blew a fuse. If we were out of new fuses, which happened frequently — the military supply line into Wendover left a bit to be desired — a penny in the socket under the bad fuse would work for a while.
Even the local grocery/hardware/plumbing/clothing/auto parts store ran out of fuses on occasion. Supplies had a hard time reaching Wendover in the civilian world, too. I could also comment about the occasional unavailability of toothpaste and other personal sundries, but I won’t.
Light switches in many buildings had a small sign under them that said “Turn off the lights — Save Power for the War Effort.” Some hangar offices still had desks and telephones in them. Even though the phones didn’t work, many had a tag on them that said: “Be Careful — The Enemy Might Be Listening.”
AIR DEFENSE COMMAND, with Headquarters in Colorado Springs, was responsible for training programs and certain administrative functions. Everybody assigned to Wendover from Air Defense Command was based out of Geiger Field in Washington State. The detachment consisted of five people: One Commissioned Officer (my boss), a Food Service Sergeant, a Ground Power Supervisor, a P.O.L. type to service the occasional transient aircraft and an Admin/Security type (me).
[Wendover operations center]
Eight individuals from Hill AFB were assigned permanent attached duty at Wendover: The Base Officer In Charge, a Senior Medic, three Air Traffic Control personnel, two Radar Technicians and a Supply Clerk. Hill AFB also provided materiel support such as food, aviation fuel, toilet paper and fuses (most of the time).
During rocketry training deployments, Hill AFB provided an additional Corpsman and Geiger Field sent a Senior Food Service NCO to manage the dining hall operation. When squadrons were deployed for training — usually about 300 people for two weeks — parts of the base almost resembled a military installation.
All of us in the Caretaker Cadre worked our tails off, too. Twelve-hour days, seven days a week were standard. We ate well, however. No standing in line — Cookie let us in the back door and our chow was fixed just for us.
In the off-season and between squadron deployments, there wasn’t much to be done, so the Major conducted a base clean-up detail. That usually took about a week. Remember, the base was originally built to house several thousand people, so it covered a fairly large area. (By the time we were done, the place was usually junked up again. In reality, the clean-up detail was nothing more than an act of defiance in the face of futility.)
The Major was an old Kansas farm boy, so he drove the Massey-Ferguson tractor, which he used to pull a trailer with trash cans on it. The rest of us walked and walked and walked. Mostly, the trash consisted of weeds, tar paper, shingles and just plain junk the wind blew in. The place was also thick with desert scorpions and some rattlesnakes.
One time we found some live 20-millimeter ammunition and practice bomb charges. That was a REAL thrill. An Ordnance Disposal crew from Tooele Army Depot came out to Wendover and blew it up.
A truly important chore was performed every 60 days. The 2.75 folding-fin rockets used in air-to-air rocketry training were stored in the bomb dump bunkers. Each crate of four rockets had to be rotated, which was supposed to prevent crystallization of the propellant in the rocket body. If that happened, the rocket body could explode immediately after being launched from the aircraft (which was not a good thing).
Somebody once said “Idle hands are the Devil’s workshop.” That was quite true at Wendover. For example the Food Service Sergeant liked to prowl the hills north of town. On one jaunt, he came across a moonshine still, and operational rights thereto quickly changed hands. Being a cook and a native of the hills of Kentucky, the Sergeant knew all about moonshine and had access to the required ingredients. After a near-fatal quality control failure with his initial batch, he produced some mighty fine product – for awhile.
TO CUT DOWN on my idle time, I volunteered to be cross-trained to refuel aircraft, which meant I also had to be trained to drive the tractor-trailer fuel bowsers. I was also trained to service air crew oxygen systems and operate auxiliary ground power units. Believe it or not, I later used much of that knowledge and many of those skills on the job at the steel mill in Pueblo and at various times during my career with the State Patrol.
Barracks life is sort of like living in a frat house.
Before civilian contractors became all the rage in the military — vis–vis Halliburton – stateside enlisted personnel, regardless of rank, cleaned their personal areas personally. But it was also necessary to keep common areas in the barracks clean. That duty, affectionately called Barracks Orderly, usually fell upon the lower-ranking enlisted personnel.
At Wendover, the common areas included two long hallways, the Dayroom (TV & reading room), the Latrine and indoor staircase. At Wendover, barracks duty also included keeping the furnace room cleaned out and the fires going — all of which pretty much shot down an entire day for whoever had the duty. No civilian contractors for that one, either.
I offered to pull permanent Fire Watch in exchange for not having to do the Barracks Orderly gig. My chores at home in Salida involved taking care of four coal stoves right up until the time I enlisted. It would be a piece of cake doing the same thing again, since everything was in the furnace room.
OUR SERGEANT HOUSE-MOTHER readily agreed, as did the other junior enlisted men. From then until the day I left Wendover, there were no more cold showers and the place had heat when it was cold. It took about twenty minutes, morning and evening, to do the job. However, an unknown plumbing defect, combined with my diligent fire-watch efforts, contributed to a hilarious but potentially serious happening one evening in October.
It was a dark and stormy night. The wind was out of the west, which caused a strong draft through the furnace room. That, in turn, caused the fire in the monkey stove to burn very intensely, which caused the water in the holding tank to become hotter than normal.
Beyond this point, the description of what occurred may be rather graphic for some. I apologize.
The sit-down fixtures in the latrine had a vacuum breaker flush mechanism (no water tank). The stand-up fixture had a constant flow of cold water provided by a perforated pipe which spanned the entire top edge.
The P.O.L. guy and I had just finished refueling a single-engine jet making a cross-country flight. We stopped by the barracks to wash up before going to supper. As I turned on the hot water in one of the basins to let it warm up, the cold water pipe supplying the commodes and stand-up fixture began making loud pounding noises.
The P.O.L. guy was at the urinal. Our Sergeant House-Mother had been stricken with some kind of gastro-intestinal disorder, and was also in the latrine. He chose that moment to flush the commode. At that instant, all kinds of hell commenced. The commode, Sergeant House-Mother, P.O.L. guy and the urinal all disappeared in a cloud of steam. The commotion lasted several minutes. When things finally settled down, the latrine, the upper and lower hallways and stairwell were filled with steam.
After supper that night, the P.O.L. guy got drunk and kept mumbling something about a weenie roast to the bartender at the A-1 Casino, and the Sergeant moved about very, very carefully for the next several days.
A local plumber checked out the hot water system and discovered that the safety valve on the hot water holding tank had been disabled at some unknown time in the past. That, combined with an improperly connected water supply, allowed the steam to back up to the main water junction and into the cold water supply line for the latrine. We were lucky that whole end of the barracks didn’t take off.
The water supply system was put right by a crew from Hill AFB, which also installed a stoker on the furnace, which made part of my Fire Watch job a bit easier. However, the lousy old U. S. Navy coal was full of rock, which kept breaking the shear pin in the stoker’s worm drive, and replacement shear pins were almost as hard to come by in Wendover as extra electrical fuses were.
The last week in November, I took a bus to Salt Lake, then boarded the good old Rio Grande passenger train for Salida. A small wedding took place in the First Methodist Church on December 2nd. The next afternoon, Mrs. Wright and I headed back to Utah. We were going to start married life in the town of Wendover in a three-room apartment that used to be part of the dependent housing area for the base.
BUT ANOTHER WENDOVER SURPRISE was waiting when I checked in. While I was on furlough, the entire detachment had been ordered back to Spokane, effective forthwith. Several days later, my wife and I arrived in Spokane, Washington. Everything we owned was stuffed into a 1949 Ford Club Coupe. Diann was 18, I was 19 — just two teen-aged kids. We stayed in an apartment motel located close to the base until we found a place to live in Spokane. The unit had a kitchenette and a fold-down bed.
Diann and I spent our first Christmas together at the motel. Our little Christmas tree cost all of eighty-eight cents, and had one string of lights and about six ornaments. It was Diann’s first time away from home, and there were some tears shed on Christmas Eve when she talked long-distance to her folks in Salida.
Looking back on the occasion, Diann now thinks that little Christmas tree served as the model for the one in “Charlie Brown’s Christmas” show.
A few months later, we learned that the woman who owned the motel had been arrested for running an abortion parlor on the premises.
Because the time spent at Wendover was considered an isolated tour of duty, I was exempt from overseas assignments for the balance of my enlistment. I eventually attained the rank of Sergeant and we were able to remain in Spokane until my tour of active duty ended in July of 1961. During that time, Diann spent a year attending the Sacred Heart Hospital School of Medical Technology, graduating as a Histology Technologist — an opportunity she never would have gotten had she remained in Salida.
I was initially assigned to the Ground Safety Office working in the Driver Education Section for a year or so, then transferred to an administrative slot with the 84th Materiel Squadron until my active duty tour was over.
Since I joined the Air Force at age 17, I had to register with the Selective Service immediately upon release from active duty. I still have the draft card somewhere. It reads classification 4-A — Military Obligation Satisfied.
We returned to Colorado in August of 1961 and started a new life for ourselves. Salida’s economy was in the tank, so we moved to Pueblo. During our time together in the military environment, we had become self-reliant and mature beyond our years. The various skills we had acquired enabled both of us to obtain meaningful employment in a very short time. We were able to buy a home with a VA Loan and I attended college under the GI Bill. Along the way we also had two children.
When the economy in Pueblo started downhill in 1968, I got laid off from my job in the Safety Department at the steel mill — and got the pink slip on my 29th birthday, no less. But two months later, I was fortunate enough to be selected for the next State Patrol Recruit Class.
My military experience definitely helped me land my job with the State Patrol; I retired with the rank of Captain in 1997.
Orville Wright and his wife are both retired now and live in Broomfield, where she teaches water aerobics and he tinkers with ham radios and does some volunteer work for the police department.
