Jet Engine Technical School
All the Basic Training Graduates had military travel orders, and mine was to the Technical Training Center at Chanute Air Force Base about 125 miles south of Chicago, Illinois. I was going to be attending jet engine school.
We were put on an airliner bound for Chicago’s airport, then bussed to Chanute AFB. As we entered the base it was fall and leaves were all over the grounds. I noticed many airmen raking and bagging leaves while a few others with colored ropes around their shoulders seemed to watch and supervise the activities. I made a mental note of that for future inquiry.
We reached the squadron and processed in and were assigned rooms. Mine was on the upper floor again, but these barracks were fairly new and nice. I inquired about the airman and the colored ropes, and was informed that they were airman leaders. Different colored ropes meant different levels of leadership authority. I figured this would be something good on my military record, so I asked how I could become one.
Becoming an Airman Leader required some extra work and extra hours, in the form of classes on Saturdays for a few weeks. Technical school was different than basic training. We now had our weekends to ourselves unless you had CQ (charge of quarters duty). Rope levels were green, yellow, and red; with red being the highest level. During my assignment at Chanute AFB I reached yellow rope.
The mechanical and electrical training was very easy for me, but we had a students that were not doing well. If you flunked out you went into security police, cook, or another services type duty. Being the yellow rope in charge of my barracks floor, three Airmen who were a few weeks behind me came to me one evening and said, “We are likely going to flunk out and we really want to work on aircraft.” They were worried and wanted to know what they should do. I said, “I don’t really know what you all should do, but if you want you can get you books and come back to my room every night and we can have a study group, we can all get through this jet engine school together.” The look of despair on their faces turned to smiles and it made me feel pretty good.
The local town of Rantoul was very small with two blocks of a main street and a few side streets. Not much comes to mind as happening at Chanute. I do recall that I was making about $128.00 per month and Richard Nixon was the President. I woke up one morning and there was lots of talk about a huge military pay raise signed by President Nixon. Starting the first of the month my pay was increasing slightly over $200.00 per month. My monthly pay was now about $338.00 per month.
As one of the Airman Leaders with a Yellow Rope in my barracks, we were charged with marching the students on our respective floors to and from school and the chow hall. This turned out to be a very easy task as we were all fresh out of basic training and the tasks of marching and drilling movements were fresh in our minds, legs, and feet.
Technical School was pretty uneventful for me, I pulled duty as Charge of Quarters (CQ) once, supervised some extra duties, and marched the students on my floor to wherever we were required to be. I also operated a study group in my barracks room almost nightly to cover the day’s class material that other students were having difficulty with.
I was stopped one day by a Training Instructor (TI) in passing and he made a comment that, private study groups were discouraged because students were expected to be able to understand and comprehend the technical material on their own. I don’t recall my exact reply, but I basically conveyed back to the TI that I was not aware of that. Later that evening when the other students came to my room for our study group, I informed them what the TI said to me. My thinking was that studying together was discouraged, but not against policy or regulations. We agreed to continue our study group and sessions, but to keep it to ourselves.
The day came and I took my final exams. The scores were posted on the schools bulletin board and my name was up close to the top of the scoring list. I’d done very well. I was just glad that I had passed.
We had to wait a few days for our assignment orders to be posted on the barracks bulletin board. Until then we had free time and were scheduled extra duties. As a rope I was always assigned supervisory positions during these extra duties.
Within a few days an airman ran through the barracks floors yelling, “Orders are posted, orders are posted!” I headed down stairs to the first floor and all the graduates were crowded around the bulletin boards. There were the usual comments, “Oh crap, I didn’t volunteer for that, Why are they sending me there, I don’t want that place,” and a few used words I will not put to page.
The crowd was thick, even after some students read their good or bad news; they still stood around blocking the hallway. The Red Rope that had graduated came into the hallway a started saying, “Gang way, move to the side!” so he could see the assignment sheet. Many of the students did move. He wasn’t liked very much because having that Red Rope made him think he was better than the rest of us. He was a fairly big dude from New York City and that might have had some bearing on his attitude. There was a rumor that some students were planning on giving him a blanket party the night before he left. A blanket party is when your blanket is pulled up over your head as you are sleeping and your arms, hands, and feet are held down, while others hit you over and over.
This is basically an assault, a crime, and as a Yellow Rope I felt it was my duty and responsibility to report. But then this was just a barracks rumor and I did not want to engage in rumors with the school staff. I’d be out of here in a few days and this red Rope had been very mean to many students. If he got a blanket party he surely deserved one. I was of the idea, that if you were going to make the military a career and be a leader, then you must lead and help individuals, not harm them.
I waited patiently and inched my way up to the bulletin boards as other students got their look and moved on. When I finely got my look I wondered where the heck that base was located. My next stop was the School Staff Office in the barracks where an Air Force Sergeant was always on duty during the day. The office had a worldwide map with all the bases on it. The sergeant would show me where my new assignment at Norton Air Force Base, CA.
