Chapter 24

Tuesday morning, my first real day at work; that first week was mostly figuring out how the shop operated, and finding out where everything was located. Lots of paperwork I had to be taught how to fill out, what the shop procedures were; and what was expected of me, day-to-day. Initially Sgt Harper did most of the actual work with me watching; by the end of the week, I was doing the work, with him supervising. The other guys in the shop were great, no bullshit; no hazing or harassment, no practical jokes, except on each other; the Gunny ran a tight ship. I found out quickly that almost all the guys on day crew were married, most with children; most of the guys on the night shift were single. I didn’t take long before I realized that once they were sure I knew what I was doing, I’d be moved to the second shift.

That first Friday morning, my first PFT with the squadron; I went all out and made 300 points, a perfect score. The way that works is that you first get on a pullup bar and do as many as you can; 5 points apiece, maximum of 20 for 100 points. The second event was sit-ups, as many as you could do in two minutes; a point a piece for the first 60, 2 points apiece for the next 20; 80 sit-ups for a max score again of 100 points. The third event was a three-mile run; maximum time allowed was 28 minutes for which you got 40 points; the quickest checked time was 18 minutes and you get 100 points for that. In between the two run times, each 10 seconds was worth a single point; obviously the faster you ran, the more points you got; for another maximum of 100 points. There was a minimum score that you had to score, most guys had absolutely no problem with that; the 3-mile run was a bit of a challenge for some of them. Your score was important, it counted toward your next promotion; along with a bunch of other factors.

The actual work in the shop was fairly easy; the training I’d received was spot-on; and we had a good box, of every type of box we worked on; sitting on the shelves right there. They were required to be kept in ‘Ready for Installation’ (RFI) condition; except most of the access panels were held on by only a couple screws, at best. (RFI condition meant the box passed all the testing, and was ready to be installed in an aircraft.) The idea was that while working on a box that needed repair; if it failed for some reason and the recommendation was to replace a plug-in module; we’d take a good module from our shelved boxes and install that; making sure that was the problem; if that didn’t fix the problem, additional troubleshooting was required. When you needed modules and parts, you ordered them and sent the box to supply, Awaiting Parts (AWP).

The biggest concern was the priority of the required repair; the lowest was Priority 3, which meant there were spares on the supply shelves. Priority 2 meant the supply stocks were low; at that point we were to bring in several boxes that were AWP; and cannibalize them, combine the good parts from two or three bad boxes to make a good one. You didn’t want to do that if you didn’t have to; all the paperwork was on hand-written forms, and you had to move the paperwork from form to form; transferring the information about required part numbers from one box to another. Easy to mess up, and hard to straighten out when you didn’t get it right. Looking up the correct part numbers was another challenge; some in manuals, others on micro-film; and if you didn’t get the part number exactly correct, eventually the supply system would kick the request for parts back; and you’d have to do the request all over again. The shop had a process to mistakes before it got far; but it was still a potential problem; to be avoided at all costs.

Most of the boxes were modular; easily replaced modules that plugged in with very few hard-wired parts. It quickly became apparent that one of the common problems was corrosion in the boxes, and bad solder joints on the hard-wired components. The A6 aircraft was designed to be ‘all weather’ capable; like your mailman, out there in ‘snow, rain, heat, and gloom of night’. Most of the boxes were sealed pretty good; but the system was getting old, and it wasn’t water-proof, closer to water-resistant; more on that later. One of our jobs in the shop was to do the soldering of the hard-wired components ourselves; some of the guys were much better than others. I was pretty good at it, soon I was the guy doing most of the soldering; on all the various systems the shop supported. My shop worked on a couple different radar systems, the Heads-Up-Display (HUD), the ballistics computer, and a couple others; using the master computer test set as the basis for the initial troubleshooting. I was kept pretty busy, from 07:30 until the night shift showed up around 4-4:30. Lunch was 60 minutes; you could take up to 2 hours if you were out exercising too; and didn’t have a high priority box to work on.

I quickly realized that most of the time working on the boxes, I was just sitting there, waiting for the computer to work its’ way through the testing. I brought my writing equipment to the shop, and usually spent an hour a day writing letters to all my ladies; I did get a couple comments from the guys in the shop about all the women I knew, and was staying in contact with. I was getting regular letters from Irene and Mary in Erie, Trish in Pittsburg, and a couple of the girls in Virginia Beach; and occasionally, one from Becky; now I added Karen to my list of ‘pen-pals’.

The first work interruption was in mid-June; I had to spend a week at the rifle range, requalifying with my new rifle. It wasn’t really new, just new to me; in boot camp we used the M-14, now everyone was being issued the M-16. I didn’t know much about it; when I’d been issued my rifle at the armory; I’d had to ask a couple guys how to take it apart and clean it. I’d gone to supply and been temporarily issued a web cartridge belt and a couple magazines and magazine pouches; and given a couple sets of ear-plugs, without hearing protection, extended firing of a rifle will cause serious damage. Monday morning, I got up at 4 am; went to chow, went to the armory and drew my rifle, and drove to the rifle range; getting there at 05:00, still technically dark, but you could see a little. The Cherry Point rifle range was located deep in the woods; a clearing roughly a half-mile long, and 2-3 hundred yards wide. They had 80 targets set-up at the far end, with an earthen berm behind it; at the near end was the offices, parking, and a covered pavilion with bleacher seating.

Eventually there were almost 500 men and women sitting around, waiting for the exercise to begin. The officers and senior enlisted were separated, they would fire in the first group of shooters, known as relays; the remaining 400 of us were divided up into five relays, two of the relays were sent to the pits to pull the targets for the first few relays. All of this was done in the chill, almost dark morning; there was a bit of ground fog about and I just followed the Marine in front of me to the pits. The rifle ‘pits’ was where the targets were located; just in front of the earthen berm. The targets were 6’ x 6’ wooden frames on a mechanical device that was manually raised up and down by us; with canvas stretched tight on the frame, and targets glued to the canvas. It was just like bootcamp, but a lot more relaxed; no drill instructors screaming at us. At first light the firing started, we pulled targets for the first three relays; then swapped with the Marines firing, they then pulled targets for us. The first relay of officers and senior enlisted didn’t pull targets, they went back to work; but the rest of us were out there until we finished, in the mid-afternoon.

Because this was my first time with the M-16, I was going to be out there for the full week. We practiced firing rounds down-range Monday thru Wednesday, Thursday we fired again but with scores being kept; if you fired ‘expert’, you were done; if not you came back on Friday and tried again. Almost everyone had done this several times before, so it went pretty quickly; there was a 30-minute break around 10 am while changing personnel in the pits for a bag lunch.

I’ll explain why being qualified with the rifle is so important; and why it took all day for a week; every year. First off; everyone in the Corps is considered a rifleman first, no matter what your job is; and expected to at least qualify with the rifle, and re-qualify every year to prove your competence with your weapon. Everyone meant every man and woman, every officer and enlisted person, every admin clerk, truck driver, cook; whatever. Your rifle-range score was included in your permanent personal record, and was part of what was considered when you were up for promotion. Your next promotion was first based on your time-in-service and time-in-rank; once you had enough of both, you were automatically considered for promotion. Other factors came into play then; PFT score, rifle-range score and a bunch of others; not being able to at least qualify with the rifle could keep you from being promoted, no matter how good you were at your primary job. There were ways around that, but it was much easier just to learn how to accurately fire your weapon; how to qualify with it.