By Joe Hammons
I was with a large group of Army soldiers at Fort Sam Houston , Texas , who had just completed eight weeks of training to be medics. Fort Rucker in southern Alabama , had requested nine of the just graduated medics. Army helicopter pilots were trained at Fort Rucker.
What happened in one Moment had consequences for many people. The clerk at the fort in Alabama entered the number 90 instead of nine on the request for medics. No questions were asked at our fort. In fact, those in command rounded the number to 100 and chartered a plane for us to fly directly to the base in Alabama . We landed at the airport located at Fort Rucker . As more and more of the expected nine medics kept coming off the plane, we could see that our greeters were getting angrier and angrier. They contacted our former Army base and were told they would not take us back. We were quartered in barracks that normally housed incorrigible soldiers and weren’t treated well.
A day later, I was with a very small group who were told to march over to a sergeant. He said that our test scores were high and if any of us wanted to be a clerk, just walk over to him. I had known during my medic training that I wouldn’t be able to be a good medic. I couldn’t remember things to do in the correct order to help an injured person. I also knew that a platoon of soldiers could easily replace me by tossing a hand grenade into my tent. It is called fragging.
I jumped over to the sergeant. I was assigned to the Information Office. I had no control over where the Army sent me for training or where I would work. At the height of the Vietnam War from 1967 to 1968, I was at an Army base in Alabama where I wrote articles about happenings at the fort, was sports editor of the post newspaper, was a photographer, and even did radio work for one week, instead of getting a hand grenade during one of my sleepless nights in Vietnam.
