In the Air Force Now

A Personal Story by H.J. Ted Gresham

August 19, 2026

I don’t really know what I was expecting when I signed up for the Air Force. I was not quite expecting what I got. Like every other recruit, I will never forget the first day of Basic. In March of 1975, I flew from Houston to San Antonio—the first time I had been on an airplane. We were herded onto a bus and driven to Lackland AFB. There we were hustled off, shouted at a lot, and then sent into a room with chairs waiting for us. We were each required to stand and give our Social Security number on cue. That’s a number I will never forget.

I was a seventeen-year-old kid with poor people skills and a modest nature, now flung into basic training, where I slept, showered, ate, and did most everything else with fifty other guys from all over the country. That was the 3706 Basic Military Squadron. That was my “flight.” It was different.

We had a tough but fair senior drill instructor. He was great at chewing our asses and giving us hell, but he never did anything cruel like some of the other DIs did. We had a “sister flight,” another flight we shared most things with. That flight had a royal ass for a DI. Once he threw all the clothes, sheets, and even mattresses out the second-floor window of their barracks. He then sent the poor Airmen down to sort it all out and put it back in order, on the double and without talking to each other. Sweet.

Basic training was a head game. They did everything they could to make us feel like a mole on shit. One of our DIs, Sergeant Griffy, was quite good at it. “Hey, Gresham,” he shouted at me one cold morning while we stood on the pad beneath our barracks. “Close your mouth, Gresham, or a fly is going in there and shit on your tongue.” Anywhere else that might have been funny, but at the time it was a slap in the face.

I felt like I’d been transported to another planet. Everything was so weird and different. Slick-sleeve Airmen wandered around lost; everyone above the rank of E-2 ate us a new asshole whenever they could. And don’t even talk about officers! Just salute them properly and go on by.

Even the food was different. I was raised a country boy: pinto beans, fried ’taters, pork chops, and sometimes some weird pasta my mother tried out. I had no idea there were so many other things to eat! Broccoli, cauliflower, and what was THAT? They rushed us through the line, and I just took whatever they offered. Some turned out to be great. Some other stuff stayed on the plate. It didn’t matter too much because we had maybe ten minutes to eat anyway, then it was back into some line somewhere.

We went from place to place being sized for uniforms, shoes, and stuff like that. A couple of days later, we got our uniforms. My uniform had my name wrong: GERSHAM. It took several days of being called Gersham before I got it fixed. I had the same problem with my name tag for my dress uniform.

I received a couple of pairs of fatigues, a set of dress blues, and a set of khaki pants and a shirt. The dress blues were horrible. They were an early iteration of polyester and felt like plastic. Both the shirt and especially the pants were hot and sticky. The khaki uniform, however, was the opposite. That was the most comfortable set of clothes I ever had. We didn’t get to wear it often. Sadly, the Air Force got rid of those uniforms not long after.

We were issued three pairs of shoes: combat boots, dress shoes, and chukka boots. I’m guessing at the spelling. Those boots were ankle-high, stiff, and the most uncomfortable shoes I’ve ever worn, before or since. We all hated the days they were the dress of the day.

Last of all, we got three hats. There was the fatigue hat we wore most of the time, basically a green baseball cap. There was the flat side cap, which we called the “piss cap” and wore when we dressed up some. Then there was the service cap. That nasty thing sucked. It had a band that pressed on the front and back of my head to hold it on. I got a headache every time I had to wear it.

The one thing we learned to do was march. We never walked anywhere as a flight. We marched. Within just a few days, we became quite good at transforming from a bunch of half-asleep, bumbling Airmen into a firm marching unit, even at five in the morning. I did, in fact, love marching. It’s the one thing that made me feel proud.

Within a couple of weeks, the mind-game elements of Basic got to me. I was in freak-out mode. I asked to go see a chaplain. I’d arrived in San Antonio a fairly dedicated Christian, and in a couple of weeks all that was flying out the window. I was escorted to the chapel and had a nice talk with the chaplain, a friendly Methodist minister. He helped me get my head screwed on straight, pretty much.

If marching was terrific, PT was the opposite. I was a jiggly little fat boy. I’d had to lose 30 pounds just to get into the Air Force. I never, ever did any exercise. I drove junior high and high school coaches nuts. I just would not work out. I did not run, either. I’ve always been short-winded. If I tried to run very hard for very long, I completely lost my breath. PT, then, was hell.

I struggled through the exercises well enough. But then came the track. Not far from our barracks was the PT field with a quarter-mile running track. They sent us out there to run. I’d go until I got a little dizzy and then slow down. Of course, Sergeant Griffy gave me hell. One day he kept shouting at me so much that it pissed me off. I leaned over and ran full-bore as hard as I could for at least halfway around the track. Then everything went dark. In a couple of minutes, some Airmen were helping me get up off the ground. I stumbled off the track and back to the group, gasping for breath and holding my hat over my mouth as the sergeant kept saying, “Breathe! You hyperventilated!” I never really got much better at running, but in the end it didn’t matter anyway.

Of course, Airmen are rarely assigned firearms unless the unit specifically needs them, like military police or units designed to go into forward bases. (Have I got another story for you about that!) We went twice to learn about the M-16. The first day was “dry fire,” when we were taught how to use the weapon but did not shoot it. It got late, so we had to return the next day for live fire. I remember I had a bit of a cold and felt really crappy. I didn’t hit the target very well. The prone position required lying on the gravel ground and firing. Every time the gun went off, it shoved my arm into the gravel. That hurt! I think I scored 20 out of 100. That means I hit the target twenty times! (I can hear my son the Marine laughing at me now.)

We got time off on weekends. I actually made lots of friends. A group of us all became buddies and went to the recreation area, movies, and other places together. I remember them all. Many of them signed my book, the picture book everyone got at the end of our time there. I can’t remember names except one: Del Vecchio. That guy was from New Jersey. He had a thick accent, and he looked for all the world just like a mouse. Ha!

Sundays, we went to chapel. Most everyone went to the early service at the main chapel, a massive and very beautiful building. That was a really watered-down service where nobody listened. The choice was go to chapel or clean the barracks. Everyone, like I said, went to chapel.

A few other guys and I went to the denominational services. We’d get to the small auditorium and sit through Catholic Mass and then through a Protestant service led by the Methodist chaplain I’d already met. It was amazing how the chapel assistants swished the tables and accoutrements used for the various services around. After the Catholic service, they came out like busy bees, swept the little tables away, and replaced them with others holding the things normally found in a Protestant church. I had actually talked to the chaplain about getting that job, chapel assistant, and he said those were not particularly religious positions and I might not like it.

After maybe four or five weeks, my knees really hurt. It became difficult to walk. I was first sent to the aid station, but they could not do anything. I was then sent to the hospital. After some X-rays and a consultation, the doctor told me I had damaged my knees marching. In marching, we slammed our heels onto the ground to make a “heel beat,” the beautiful sound of all fifty men in perfect unison. I was a bit too zealous, and it didn’t turn out well. I was sent back with marching restrictions.

For the last few days, I was not required to march. Instead, I just trundled behind the flight as they marched places. That was one thing I was really sad about. Like I said, I loved marching. The light duty kept me off the running track, so my inability to make the trip fast enough was no longer a problem.

Throughout the first couple of weeks of Basic, we were given test after test: skills tests, aptitude tests, all kinds of tests. It was the Air Force’s way of figuring out what job we would be given. My recruiter had assured me I was in a designated job, electronics, and I could not be given another one. What I learned was that he had placed me in the “field” of electronics, not a specific MOS. Ahh, that was not so secure. Around the fifth week, we were given our new assignments. I was transferred from Electronics to Electrical/Mechanical. I was going to air-conditioning and refrigeration training at Wichita Falls. Lovely.

Growing up, I had not had very many friends. All of a sudden, I had a lot of them. Many of the guys and I grew pretty close. But then the end came. Suddenly, the reality of the military crept up on us. We were fast friends for a few weeks, and then we likely would never see each other again. We told each other goodbye, and I swallowed a few lumps as I watched one after another leave the base.

Eventually, my turn came. I was loaded onto a bus. We were all driven to Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls, Texas. There the second phase of my Air Force career began. Many things happened to me during those six months, but the most significant of them all was my getting a new name. I was no longer just “Hubert.” Tech school was not only significant for teaching me a trade, but I picked up a nickname that became my regular name and changed everything for me.