[QCWA] Another Fort Monmouth Vet

[Walcott, Paul]

I was at Ft. Monmouth for parts of 68 and 69.  Graduated 26L20 -
Tactical Microwave in June 69.  
 
Upon graduation I had orders for Vietnam, but never got there.  Summer
of 1969 was when President Nixon began withdrawing troops from 'Nam and
most people didn't realize it, but the way that worked was that the guys
who were there rotated out on schedule but their replacements were
diverted somewhere else.  The result of course being that the troop
total in 'Nam went down.  Well, simply by the luck of the draw I was one
of the replacements who got diverted.  I sat for about 2 weeks on the
west coats (Ft. Lewis) and then was sent to Germany.  Eventually wound
up in a Pershing missile outfit in Schwaebisch Gmeund.  Of course having
to go to Germany instead of Vietnam really broke me up.  Hi, Hi.
 
I was given a two week leave between Ft. Monmouth and the west coast and
it was during that two weeks that I remember watching Neil Armstrong
become the first man to walk on the moon.
 
Only got to operate from K2USA once while I was at Ft. Monmouth.  I was
only had my Technician license at the time so I could only operate the
low bands when there was someone else around to act as control operator.
There weren't any other hams in my class at the time, but one guy Mike
Piper later became WA7QPC.  Mike was another of the guys diverted from
'Nam.  He eventually wound up working as an announcer for the AFN
station in Berlin.  Got to visit him a couple times in Berlin and did
all the tourist stuff while I was there.  That was a REAL experience
during the cold war days.
 
Does anyone else remember a really weird grading curve that they used at
Ft. Monmouth?  I think it was something that was normalized for the
class average to be 100 points with those who were below average scoring
less and those who were above average scoring more.  I did pretty well
since I had both my ham experience and had been working for a year or so
fixing TVs before I went in.  During part of the time that I was there
they were giving instant E-5 to anyone who could graduate with an
average of 140 points or more.  I was about half way through my class
when they announced that there the guys who'd gotten the instant E-5
stripes weren't cutting it when they got into regular units, so there
weren't going to be any more instant E-5 promotions.  I heard that and
pretty much lost my motivation to study and as a result my grades
dropped some.  I still graduated with a 134 average and did get E-4 upon
graduation.
 
Lots of other memories from Ft. Monmouth and also Germany, but I'm
getting long-winded so . . . 
 
73's,
Paul  WD8H
(ex-WA8JEI)