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All too soon it was time to board a plane and fly up to Spokane. This was late December 1967. I remember getting into Spokane airport; it wasn’t an international airport at that time, late at night, 11 or 12 at night. I took a cab to the survival school. That year was a snowy winter and going through Airway Heights the snow had been piled up between the east and west lanes I swear eight feet or more. It stayed that way most of the winter. The cab pulled up in front of the headquarters building where the CQ was and I reported in to him. I don’t remember who it was. After all I was in a strange place, late at night and I didn’t know what to expect the future to be like. Anyway I was assigned to a room and away I went, carrying my duffel bag. That walk will remain in my memory until the end of my days. My barracks was on the opposite end of the quadrangle from the headquarters building. All was quiet, it was cold, and lots of snow on the ground the night sky was black as ink, the lights along the sidewalk were on and it was so quiet and still. It was wonderful. I remember getting to my room on the second floor and the lights were off. I could hear someone sleeping in one of the bunks. The upper bunk was empty so that was were I slept for the next six plus months. It was very warm in the room, perhaps, too warm which along with the noise of the heater blower coming on, made it difficult to get to sleep.
The next morning upon awakening, I discovered that I had two roommates, Ron Spaulding and Nick Tuttle. The CQ. hadn’t given any of us any instructions except that someone would come and get us. We didn’t go to the chow hall and were afraid to go to the bathroom for fear that we would not be there when someone came. Someone finally came late in the day and was upset. The CQ. should have told us to report to the First Sgt. Anyway, our class wouldn’t be starting until after the first of the year and it was now three or four days until Christmas so we were to report to the First Sgt. He would handle us until the class started. We did odd jobs around the school, cleaning, painting, shoveling the walks etc.
We found out that at the recreation center on base there would be a magic show on Christmas Eve, so we decided to attend. We had no trouble getting a ride to the base. You have to keep in mind that young folks just didn’t have cars like they do today. We had a nice time with snacks and the show. The show was over about 11:00 p.m. We got a ride from the rec. center to Rambo Road from someone going into town. From US-2 and Rambo Road there was no traffic. We walked all of the way to the survival school. We really weren’t dressed for it and it was cold but it was a nice walk. It gave us an opportunity to get to know each other better.
Class finally began the first week in January 1968. We had four weeks of academic classes. We were taught basic survival skills in preparation for two weeks of familiarization training, where we would put what we learned in the classroom to use. We went to the Little Pend Oreille game preserve. The static camp I was in was in a cold sump. Boy was it cold. We each built several different shelters in the two weeks. The first one was a parachute teepee. It was nice. There was two in each teepee, we each made a nice thick bough bed and there was plenty of room to stand up and get dressed if we wanted to but it was so cold in the mornings that we dressed in our sleeping bags. We practiced food and water procurement, food preservation, improvisation, signaling and vectoring and I’m sure there was a lot more thrown at us. One evening we all hiked to the game preserve rangers house Mr. Ted Hay and he gave a slide presentation on the wildlife and plant life found in the preserve. After the presentation we hiked back to camp. I should mention that there were 41 of us in the class. The night was cold and clear and we were in good spirits. We sang songs as we hiked along the snow covered road. We got back to camp and went to bed. About an hour later we were rudely awakened and told to assemble at the brown house where the instructors were staying. Something had happened while at the rangers house or along the way back that displeased the instructors. To this day I’m not sure what it was. Anyway we were made to chip ice off the road leading to the brown house. The only thing we had were entrenching tools. Picture this, forty one men bent over using entrenching tools to chip ice all night long. We broke several of those shovels. It was too cold to lay down for awhile and the next day we were to hike to the top of Black Tail Mountain to begin arctic training. The first day was spent cutting snow blocks and making one man shelters for the night. Believe it or not the snow was deep and in good condition for cutting the snow blocks. We put in bough beds and by that time it was time to eat and go to bed. The next morning after breakfast we began making a large shelter using parachute material and snow blocks. It was large in diameter, the same diameter as a parachute, with snow block walls and a center snow block pillar to support the center of the parachute. We put in a bough bed over the entire floor. We spent four days there, practicing signaling, fire craft etc. When we were done we hiked down the mountain, got on a bus and headed for the base.
We had been gone for almost three weeks. The food we were eating was called “abandon aircraft rations”. Here is a brief description of what they were like. I want you to know because we ate a lot of them in upcoming field training. It was a rather flat can that contained three pemmican bars. The pemmican bars were dehydrated ground beef packed in a rectangular shape and held together by some kind of grease. They were hard and most times we ate them just as they came out of the package. There were little packages of onion powder and some kind of other powder. I guess that was an attempt to make them palatable. Didn’t work, but when your hungry anything can taste good. There were also a couple of cereal bars. They were like corn flakes, crushed and compacted into a bar with sugar and held together who knows what. There was also a fruitcake bar. It wasn’t too bad. Coffee, tea, sugar and powdered cream rounded out the menu. We did have some rabbits and potatoes also. When we got back to the base we were some pretty hungry puppies.
I tell you all this so you’ll understand what I am about to say.
Coming back in the buses we drove down Division St. and there were all kinds of restaurants, although not as many as there are now, as we passed each one comments were made on the food that we could eat there.
As soon as we got our equipment and ourselves cleaned up we went downtown. There were five of us. Denny’s restaurant on Second was the place we chose to eat. We ordered so much food the waitress asked if we were expecting friends. It was a lot of food all right but we ate it all. We managed to get back to the survival school and fall into the bed exhausted. Some time during the night a few of us lost about all that we had eaten.
The next morning upon awakening, I discovered that I had two roommates, Ron Spaulding and Nick Tuttle. The CQ. hadn’t given any of us any instructions except that someone would come and get us. We didn’t go to the chow hall and were afraid to go to the bathroom for fear that we would not be there when someone came. Someone finally came late in the day and was upset. The CQ. should have told us to report to the First Sgt. Anyway, our class wouldn’t be starting until after the first of the year and it was now three or four days until Christmas so we were to report to the First Sgt. He would handle us until the class started. We did odd jobs around the school, cleaning, painting, shoveling the walks etc.
We found out that at the recreation center on base there would be a magic show on Christmas Eve, so we decided to attend. We had no trouble getting a ride to the base. You have to keep in mind that young folks just didn’t have cars like they do today. We had a nice time with snacks and the show. The show was over about 11:00 p.m. We got a ride from the rec. center to Rambo Road from someone going into town. From US-2 and Rambo Road there was no traffic. We walked all of the way to the survival school. We really weren’t dressed for it and it was cold but it was a nice walk. It gave us an opportunity to get to know each other better.
Class finally began the first week in January 1968. We had four weeks of academic classes. We were taught basic survival skills in preparation for two weeks of familiarization training, where we would put what we learned in the classroom to use. We went to the Little Pend Oreille game preserve. The static camp I was in was in a cold sump. Boy was it cold. We each built several different shelters in the two weeks. The first one was a parachute teepee. It was nice. There was two in each teepee, we each made a nice thick bough bed and there was plenty of room to stand up and get dressed if we wanted to but it was so cold in the mornings that we dressed in our sleeping bags. We practiced food and water procurement, food preservation, improvisation, signaling and vectoring and I’m sure there was a lot more thrown at us. One evening we all hiked to the game preserve rangers house Mr. Ted Hay and he gave a slide presentation on the wildlife and plant life found in the preserve. After the presentation we hiked back to camp. I should mention that there were 41 of us in the class. The night was cold and clear and we were in good spirits. We sang songs as we hiked along the snow covered road. We got back to camp and went to bed. About an hour later we were rudely awakened and told to assemble at the brown house where the instructors were staying. Something had happened while at the rangers house or along the way back that displeased the instructors. To this day I’m not sure what it was. Anyway we were made to chip ice off the road leading to the brown house. The only thing we had were entrenching tools. Picture this, forty one men bent over using entrenching tools to chip ice all night long. We broke several of those shovels. It was too cold to lay down for awhile and the next day we were to hike to the top of Black Tail Mountain to begin arctic training. The first day was spent cutting snow blocks and making one man shelters for the night. Believe it or not the snow was deep and in good condition for cutting the snow blocks. We put in bough beds and by that time it was time to eat and go to bed. The next morning after breakfast we began making a large shelter using parachute material and snow blocks. It was large in diameter, the same diameter as a parachute, with snow block walls and a center snow block pillar to support the center of the parachute. We put in a bough bed over the entire floor. We spent four days there, practicing signaling, fire craft etc. When we were done we hiked down the mountain, got on a bus and headed for the base.
We had been gone for almost three weeks. The food we were eating was called “abandon aircraft rations”. Here is a brief description of what they were like. I want you to know because we ate a lot of them in upcoming field training. It was a rather flat can that contained three pemmican bars. The pemmican bars were dehydrated ground beef packed in a rectangular shape and held together by some kind of grease. They were hard and most times we ate them just as they came out of the package. There were little packages of onion powder and some kind of other powder. I guess that was an attempt to make them palatable. Didn’t work, but when your hungry anything can taste good. There were also a couple of cereal bars. They were like corn flakes, crushed and compacted into a bar with sugar and held together who knows what. There was also a fruitcake bar. It wasn’t too bad. Coffee, tea, sugar and powdered cream rounded out the menu. We did have some rabbits and potatoes also. When we got back to the base we were some pretty hungry puppies.
I tell you all this so you’ll understand what I am about to say.
Coming back in the buses we drove down Division St. and there were all kinds of restaurants, although not as many as there are now, as we passed each one comments were made on the food that we could eat there.
As soon as we got our equipment and ourselves cleaned up we went downtown. There were five of us. Denny’s restaurant on Second was the place we chose to eat. We ordered so much food the waitress asked if we were expecting friends. It was a lot of food all right but we ate it all. We managed to get back to the survival school and fall into the bed exhausted. Some time during the night a few of us lost about all that we had eaten.
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