James F. Bond Sr. Interview, 26 February 2005
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JB: | Well no. That particular incident happened after I left Minot. I only spent one tour at Minot and this was after, so it would have been after '68. That's how I got away from Minot was to apply for drill instructor, D.I., at Lackland. So I did that, our school was 13 weeks, teach you how to become a drill instructor, to train the young people coming in. I stayed with that about seven months. I got burned out on it. You get burned out on it real quick. | |
TT: | Are you talking about yelling at these guys and | |
JB: | Yep (nodding). Run through each, they call them "flights." Each flight had approximately 60 men in it, or boys is what they were. I got tired of that, spent about seven months, got out of it I went toa couple of friends of mine that were in the police unit on base they got me to go talk to their commander. I cross-trained over into base police and started on-the-job training there. I was an E-5 Staff Sergeant at the time, worked my way up through all the different various positions that you have to work there, from accident investigation to patrol, to writing traffic tickets and that is how I got into training at Lackland. We didn't have a ceremonial team and I formed that up and we did a lot of training for different drill and ceremonies that were going on. If we had a veteran in the area that the Army refused to provide his ceremony for because he did not serve his full time in the Army [during] World War II, my unit was contacted by a United States Senator from Texas, asked if we could do anything. My commander, Colonel Davidson, said let me talk to my team, he came and asked me how quick I could get our unit together, would we want to do it, did we have any problems with it. I said no sir; we'll get right out there. In fact, it was the next day, that's why he was in a hurry to do it. We got all kind of good letters and stuff in from that. | |
TT: | Yeah I'll bet. So you said Davidson? B.H. Davidson, Colonel? | |
JB: | He was a Colonel. He was our security police commander. I'm sure I've got his signature on something in there. | |
TT: | So you were at Charleston through the late 50's? | |
JB: | Right, I was there '56-'57. I left Charleston and went to a base not too far from here, Sewart Air Force Base out in Symrna. | |
TT: | I haven't heard of that one. | |
JB: | Well the base is still there, but they're using it mostly for civilian aircraft now. There's a Tactical Air Command base, you had C-130's and other aircraft like that there. Stayed at Sewart three years, left there and went to Wurtsmith Air Force Base in Michigan, which is a SAC base. I worked mostly | |
TT: | They have B-52s there, or what were they flying? | |
JB: | They had B-52's, KC-135's, and I was assigned to security, which meant humping them birds that were on alert out there in what we called the "Mohole Area," the alert area, where all were uploaded and waiting to go. And let's see after Wurtsmith I went to Okinawa. Another thing, when we were at Wurtsmith our unit went to Vietnam on a temporary duty deployment. We were there about 8 months, and that happened in June of 1964. |
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