I built this display and presented the well worn boots to my VA Podiatrist.

Combat boots were really rugged, and an absolute necessity as tools of our trade in the US Army . We were all issued two pair. It was the first time in my entire life that I owned two pairs of shoes at the same time. We were given the option to either throw our civillian shoes in the dumpster or mail them home. Not being able just to toss my shoes, I chose the latter option, and I never saw those shoes again.

Our primary transportation was our feet. We ran farther than most people have walked in their entire lifetime. If we wern’t running or walking, we were crawling. In Basic Training running is the norm, as we were not allowed to walk anywhere. If the temperture rose above one hundred degrees in the shade, they might consider send troop transport trucks and jeeps to bring us back from the ranges and spare us from the ten mile run.

My personally owned 5 ton M-939 military vehicle pulling my M1-51 A-1 Military Vietnam era Jeep in the 2012 downtown Nashville Christmas parade. Picture snapped from a broadway roof top. Note the Ryman Auditorium sign on the street corner.

We ran ten miles to the firing ranges and training areas. We were issued two salt tablets, several times a day. The salt cause our bodies to retain and store water to prevent sun/heat stroke in the hot July heat. Not taking the tablets was not an option and punishable by court marshal.

Actually two pair of boots really came in handy, as one pair would be drying out every other day because we were required to rotate, and not wear the same pair of boots two days in a row. We painted a white stripe down the back of one pair so the drill sergeant could make sure that we changed the boots daily as required. That policy also assured that we had to polish both pairs of boots every night, and not cheat by being able to keep one set polished and stowed away for the daily inspections.

None of us could not wait for basic training graduation day, when we would be allowed to buy “paratrooper jump boots”. The heavier jump boots had reinforced toes, made of much harder leather, and would polish to a high shine luster much quicker and easier than the boots that were originally issued.

After Basic, in September, 1967, I was redeployed on orders from Fort Benning Ga. to Fort Gordon Ga. After a few months I came home and got my wife, Sandra, and my car. We packed everything that we owned in the trunk of that 1959 Chevrolet and headed back to Fort Gordon. We rented a Airstream camping trailer in the area and moved off post. The Airstream was the only available place to rent within our price range. It wasn’t much, but we were happy, so we made due because as a private E1, I only made eighty seven dollars a month.

I owned a SK Wayne, eighteen piese socket set, Sandra’s dad given the tools to me as a high school graduation present. Each and every month, about a week before the long awaited monthly payday, I would run low on gas that I sorely needed to get to work and back. I would hock the tools. In the last two or three days before payday, having no other option, I would hock one pair of boots. I always got eight dollars for the tools and paid back ten dollars. I got three dollars each time for the boots and paid back five dollars. I never lost my boots, and I still own that socket set today. Failure to report to work, or being late, even once, would have caused me to have been ordered to move back in the barracks on post, and Sandra would have been required to move back home.

We would pay the rent, first thing, after getting paid, then retrieve my tools and boots from the pawn shop, buy a months groceries from the Fort Gordon Commissary, and pay the electric bill. Our landlord owned a small neighborhood market and would run a credit tab for esential items that we desperately needed when we ran short, and we always ran short every month. We ate a lot of flower and water gravy that Sandra made from scratch. We survived on 10 cent frozen vegtables, and we feasted on 10 cent per pound chicken wings, that was the cheapest part of the chicken and before wings became popular. After paying the grocery tab we usually could get two hambergers, just once per month, at the Whataburger, Damm those burgers were so good.

Jobs, and transportation to a job for the wives was almost impossible. It was in the middle of the heated Vietnam war and Fort Gordon’s training facilities were strained to the limit. After seven or eight months Sandra was hired to go to work at the Post Exchange for little more than peanuts, but in doing so, she met a friend who helped her land a better and higher paying job at the Post Book Store.

We then found a one bedroom small house that we could rent for only five dollars more per month than we were paying for the Airstraeam, so we moved about a mile and a half, into the little house. Life was easier with Sandra’s earnings, We could eat a little better and even managed to buy each other, and the entire family Christmas presents with the eighty three dollars that we had saved in our piggy bank. Yep! We filled the car with gas, took Christmas leave and came home for Christmas,

When we returned to the post I had deployment orders awaiting me. I was deployed to Germany to join the Nato Forces. At that time our government was thoroughly convinced that Vietnam was only a diversion and the real war was going to be with Russia in Europe. The focal point being the East/West Berlin Wall.

I boarded a plane at snow covered Berry Field, now, “Nashville International airport”, on the 4th of April, 1969. I landed on the snow covered tarmac at “McGuire Air Force Base” runway, Fort Dix NJ, in the snow, only to board an intercontinental eight hour flight to Frankfort AM Main Germany. It was snowing As I boarded for departure flight to Europe. As I sat there sadly awaiting takeoff I was so sad about leaving family and home, once again. I redirected my thoughts to my one and only consolation, “at least I would be getting out of this dammed snow”!

Well guess what! I stepped down off of that plane in snow up to my waist.