This was probably taken at Maxwell Field, Montgomery AL. After a week or so at the Nashville Classificaton Center I was sent to Preflight School. This was nine weeks with an indoctrination into military life. We ran the ratline as underclassmen (first half), received continual inspections in formation.
We marched everywhere in formation. I have unusully wide feet, size 6 1/2 7E, The closest they could come was 7 1/2 C. It was like nailing a block of wood on the end of your toes. It wasn't fun marching in shoes that were too long. We sang a lot while marching.
We had lots of PE (Physical Education), jumping jacks, etc. We had a "Burma Road", over logs, creeks, small hills etc and about 1.8 miles long. As I remember, it took about fifteen minutes to run it. We had lots of classes to get us into the "military mode". I pulled guard duty once and had to know the "General Orders".
Perhaps the most vivid memory was the lousy food. We were told there was an investigation sometime after we left. We ate a "square meal", lifting the fork straight up to mouth level, then straight back into the mouth, then returning in the same path! The food was so poor that sometimes we went through the line (mandatory), sat at the table at attention, eyes focussed on a point in front of you in the middle of the table and ate nothing. When you lifted your eyes, an upperclassman would say, "MISTER, are you going to buy this place?"
I had lots of malts at the club in the evening during the week.We looked forward to the weekend when we could go into town and gorge ourselves.
