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He looked at it and said,“ I’ m not signing that— period.”
I had no options except to keep working and going to school. But I continued to make it known that I wanted to go in the military. I convinced my parents about a year later, in October 1942.
A good friend of mine from high school had decided to go take the Army Air Corps exam. I thought I could convince my dad to sign that consent form. The Army had a different policy than the Navy and let applicants take the tests, and if they passed them, then they were given the consent form. Again, my Dad said he wouldn’ t sign it. I told him I would be drafted anyway and would likely be assigned to the infantry. If I’ m in the war, I want to fly airplanes. Finally, he relented when I convinced him that I wanted to join the Army Air Corps, not the Navy, so I wouldn’ t be flying over water. Ironically, I saw more water than most Navy guys did during the war, since they flew missions about three hours in length. The longest mission I flew was seven hours, all over water. We would fly these long missions and when we’ d get back after these long hauls over water my buddies would say,“ Hey, Jackson, write your dad a letter and tell him about your mission today.”
After I enlisted in December of 1942, I had to wait until February to be called to active duty. At that time, about
500 of us were sent from Chicago to Sheppard Air Force Base in Texas to go through basic training for six weeks as this was a new program. The former program was to send the recruits to San Antonio for classification and then into preflight for two months before formal flight training. At Sheppard, we
were required to learn how to drill, fire rifles on the range, take 35-mile hikes, sleep in pup tents, and all the other“ exciting” stuff. When it was time to ship out, our barracks was quarantined for“ scarlet fever” and we were withheld from the shipment. While in quarantine we were only allowed to march to the mess hall three times a day and stay in the barracks the rest of the time. After one week, our sick guy returned and we found out that he only had a bad cold, but the only bed available was in the fever ward. Typical Army thinking and an unfortunate screw up. About an hour later, the sergeant made us pack up and we were marched about two
AERIAL COMBAT IN THE PACIFIC WAS MARKED BY MANY HIGHS AND LOWS. ABOVE, U. S. NAVY PILOTS ABOARD USS LEXINGTON CELEBRATE A SUCCESSFUL MISSION OVER THE MARSHALL ISLANDS, SHOOTING DOWN 17 OF 20 ENEMY PLANES HEADED FOR TARAWA.
miles around the field, each of us with two barracks bags. When we arrived, we were assigned to different barracks and integrated with about 500 southern boys who just received their uniforms. We learned that we would repeat basic training with them and would only be excused from taking the shots. These rebels did not like us and we did not
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