Sun and salad at basic training at Fort Hood during Korean conflict

I was inducted into the Army at Fort Dix, N.J. After three weeks, I was shipped to Fort Hood, Texas, in April 1951 and began basic armored infantry training in the newly activated 634th Armored Infantry Battalion of the 1st Armored Division.
As newly minted soldiers, we were subject to the usual grueling training. However, my worst memory was my time spent doing kitchen police.
I helped offload crates of vegetables from a truck. The cook then told me to peel off the wilted outer layers of lettuce heads and prepare them for the evening salad. I did this work in the mess hall kitchen, and dropped the wilted lettuce leaves onto the floor. When I was finished, I swept the entire kitchen and shoveled the debris and wilted lettuce leaves into a paper bag. I was headed for the garbage rack when the cook stopped me and ask me where I was going. He took the bag from my hands and dumped it into a cooking pot on the stove and said this was part of the evening soup. He did this in spite of my protests. Needless to say, I passed up the soup that evening. I got my fiber in another way.
My best memory in basic training was the day that Omar Bybee, my platoon sergeant, prevented me from becoming seriously ill. We were attending a lecture class in the field under a 100-degree broiling Texas sun. The only shade was under our helmet. I did not feel well, and got up and sat in the shade of a dummy cargo airplane that was used to practice loading jeeps. Bybee saw me do this and asked if I was okay. I said no, I was a little dizzy. He told me to go back to the barracks and stay in the shade while the rest of the platoon went out for the scheduled 4-mile run. I believed that Bybee saved me from heatstroke or sunstroke.

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