My favorite memory of basic training at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, was the obstacle course. If I recall correctly, my flight and our brother flight were the first coed flights in Air Force basic military training - coed meaning that a male flight and a female flight (50 airmen per flight) started and finished on the same days. We never saw each other except from our tables at the dining hall or when our flights passed each other, marching elsewhere.
So on the confidence course, as it was called in October 1979, our brother flight was sent on its way ahead of us. This made sense, of course, because if the women went first, it was likely we'd hold up the men behind us. By this point in our training I can say with complete confidence that if any of the other 49 women in my flight were reading this nobody would disagree, that I was the one who always wanted to do more physical training. I thoroughly enjoyed our morning exercises; marching was pure joy to me (I could have done that as a job for the next four years). When I asked if we could please run further than a mile and a half and Staff Sgt. Hartwell said the whole flight would have to run, there were a lot of women who were not happy with me. For these reasons, I was put dead last in the line of my sisters, in our flight W063. At the ropes over water, where airmen had to hang upside down and get over the water, I was stopped by someone on the course. I had passed all the women and was somewhere in the middle of the men and passing them.
I was made to coach airmen at that point, until I was in among the women again before I could proceed. I wasn't such a hot shot: I failed at hanging onto the swinging rope over the pool and fell in.
I remember a lot of things about boot camp, like the day we were asked to see who could lift 70 pounds. I don't think anyone could, in my flight. But I could. I had horses at home and a bale of hay weighed 100 pounds. I could not only lift 70 pounds, but I could throw it.
Lots of memories, and every one a story of its own in just six weeks.