BMTS

By the end of basic training I was in much better shape than I had been as a civilian. Note that there are no stripes on my sleeves. Using our official USAF sewing kits, we stitched those on before arriving at our next assignment. I'm wearing a khaki uniform, known as 1505s, that we didn't wear often during basic. We had also been issued fatigues and dress blues. Note the shoes: the Air Force called them low-quarters. We also had chukka boots and combat boots.

Life was better at Basic Medical Training School at Sheppard AFB in Wichita Falls, Texas. As fall approached, the brutally hot Texas weather began to abate. We were also treated more like adults now that basic training was behind us.

Three things stand out in my memories of life at Sheppard. There were women -- WAFs -- in our classes. We could have a beer at the club when we were off duty. And "Star Trek" made its television debut. The latter developed quite a following as we knocked back a few Lone Stars and watched color TV -- then still a novelty -- at the club.

(Women were just beginning to enjoy true parity in assignments in the Air Force. The women in our class told us that they had planted flowers in the urinals in their World War II-era barracks.)

At BMTS the emphasis was heavy on academics. We went to classes all day long, learning advanced first aid, watching training films about military hospital duties and responsibilities, and practicing, practicing, practicing. We took each other's blood pressure. We placed tourniquets on each other's arms and legs. We gave shots to oranges. (The "feel" of sticking a needle into an orange was said to be much like the feel of piercing the skin of a real person.) We learned what to do about a sucking chest wound. (In those days, many of us smoked, and we learned that the cellophane from a cigarette pack would suffice in the field to block a sucking chest wound.) We learned how to use a pocket knife and a ballpoint pen to do an emergency tracheotomy, although we never actually practiced that for obvious reasons.

We didn't know at that point exactly what our medic specialties would be, although we did know the possibilities. Some of us might wind up working in a pharmacy or in hospital administration. Others might work in a ward, an emergency room or an operating room. A few of us would wash out of BMTS and get other assignments. But once again, we knew that our next training school would be based on our BMTS grades, and the competition was fierce. After six weeks, most of us would go on to months more of advanced training. Score high and we might get a good specialty. Score at the bottom and we'd be emptying bedpans or pushing paper. In BMTS, class grades ruled. Physical training took a back seat.

Except for one week, that is, when we set up camp in a field along a dry riverbed about an hour outside Wichita Falls and learned about being combat medics. Once again we had to run an obstacle course, a tough one: This time we ran it in four-man teams carrying loaded stretchers.

When the BMTS course ended, I was again, fortunately, near the top of my class. My next assignment would be training to be an operating room specialist at Gunter AFB. (Gunter AFB has now been subsumed into nearby Maxwell AFB.) On the day after BMTS graduation, the four of us destined for slice-and-dice school boarded a train for Montgomery, Alabama. Our orders said we were to report in four days, more than enough time for a short vacation in New Orleans. It was our first real escape from constant supervision. We rented a room in a cheap hotel, roamed the city, ate filet de truite amandine at Antoine's Restaurant, boiled shrimp and crawfish at the Court of Two Sisters, and beignets at the Café du Monde. We also drank hurricanes on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter late into the night.

It took us the better part of a day back on the train to get our heads once again into being in the military and to start thinking seriously about what life in an operating room would be like. We would discover that the reality would be far different from expectations.