Oral history interview with Donna Barr Tabor, 2011

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WOMEN VETERANS HISTORICAL PROJECT
ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION
INTERVIEWEE: Donna Barr Tabor
INTERVIEWER: Therese Strohmer
DATE: May 12, 2011
[Begin Interview]
TS: This is Therese Strohmer and today is May 12, 2011. I’m on Fort Bragg, North Carolina. I’m here with Donna Tabor and I’m here to conduct an oral history interview for the Betty Carter Women Veterans Historical Project for the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Donna, how would you like your name on your collection to read?
DBT: Donna Barr Tabor.
TS: Well, Donna, thanks so much for being part of our collection.
DBT: You’re welcome.
TS: Why don’t we start out by having you tell me when and where you were born?
DBT: I was born at Fort Benning, Georgia when my father was in OCS, Officer Candidate School, in 1958 April 25. And I only stayed there a couple days. Once my mother got out of the hospital we went back to Massachusetts and my dad followed us.
TS: So you were an army brat?
DBT: Yes.
TS: So, did you—you didn’t grow up on a base, or did you grow—
DBT: Oh sure, [clock chimes] we grew up both in the civilian community and bases like Fort Devens; we lived in Germany for about nine years total.
TS: How old were you when you were in Germany?
DBT: I was, the first time, like, five, six, seven, and then ten, eleven, twelve.2
TS: And do you have any brothers or sisters?
DBT: Yes, I have an older sister, Debbie, a younger sister, Dottie, and my brother Jim is the baby.
TS: So there’s four of you?
DBT: Yes.
TS: So you are second in line there?
DBT: Yes.
TS: Okay. Well, when you—what are your earliest memories of growing up then?
DBT: Mostly remembering a little post in Germany, Herzo base. It’s in Herzogenaurach, Germany and it was a little German post during World War II and the Americans took it over. It had housing and some headquarters buildings but it was out in the middle of nowhere and it was just the cutest little place. We had the PX [Post Exchange] and the gym and the theatre and we just ran the post. We went wherever we wanted to go and we all had a blast and there was[sic] about 20 kids on the post. [clock chimes] There was another housing area further down the road with the—my dad was an officer and most of the kids on the post their dads were officers and then the enlisted guys lived off post.
TS: Really? So what did your dad do? What was he—
DBT: He was in the [United States] Army Security Agency which is kind of like military intelligence. Most of what he did we didn’t know. When we would go see him at his office we had to go through all this security and we could see him through a glass window or something.
TS: You couldn’t go back to where he actually worked? He would come out and see you?
[speaking simultaneously]
DBT: No, what he did was always classified.
TS: Now, did your mom work?
DBT: No, my mom was a stay-at-home mom up until my dad went to Vietnam in ’71 and ’72. She worked then for a few years, she worked for Revlon and for—she traveled for Revlon to all the different mini-mart drug stores in the east.
TS: Oh, is that right?
DBT: Yes.
TS: How long was your dad in Vietnam?3
DBT: A year.
TS: A year.
DBT: And when he came back he pretty much retired at twenty years. He went back to school and got a teaching degree and became a teacher for a couple of years.
TS: Well, I know if you ask people what was it like growing up being an army brat, obviously you didn’t know what it was like not to be one.
DBT: Right.
TS: But what kind of—So you said when in Germany you kind of had a run of the base. What kind of things did you do as a kid growing up?
DBT: When it was time for them to take down the flag in the afternoon after school or on the weekends all the kids would hear the initial bugle call and we would race to the main gate where the young soldiers were going to take the flag down. Whoever got there first, the first two kids could take the flag down with the soldiers. So our whole day was based around trying to get to that flag at the end of the day. We rode bikes. We hung out at the PX restaurant and bookstore and read comic books. There was a tennis court. [click chimes] I remember when I was about six or seven they flooded the tennis court in front of our house and we could ice skate. And my dad, one day, thought it would be a great idea to put the bench on the outside right on to the ice inside and I slid into it and knocked out my front tooth. So, that’s one of the things I always remember. We had a chimney sweep that used to come and do all the chimneys on post because they still were using coal back in the sixties and we used to chase the chimney sweeps because they were good luck.
TS: What do you mean by chase them?
DBT: You touch them. When they were riding their bikes around post we would run after them and touch them and get good luck for the day.
TS: The actual sweep?
DBT: Yes.
TS: I see.
DBT: The person.
TS: Did you get good luck from them?
DBT: Of course!4
TS: Okay.
DBT: When I was little I remember, I was like five or six, and I remember in Germany they have Saint Nicholas come to visit and he has an angel that comes with him. And one day Saint Nicholas actually came to our house and brought us little bags of candy and little toys. And he brought his angel and apparently they were two people that worked on the post that went around to all the kids’ houses. But I remember that very vividly. We lived across the street, when I was a little older, we lived in front of the dispensary where all the medics worked. We used to go there and the guys—you’re talking about, you know, twenty-something guys and they’re homesick they don’t, you know, they hang out with the kids and everything and they would put casts on us and let us use their stethoscope. I remember we were sitting on the stoop outside the dispensary which is in the walkway to go to our house. And my dad’s the second in command of the post and we are sitting with two of the soldiers just talking and one of them was using my stilts that I had gotten for Christmas and he’s making a fool of himself trying to stay on them and everything. And my dad comes around the corner and he about fell on his butt on the sidewalk trying to salute my father while holding on to the stilts. I just remember that was really cool too.
TS: [chuckles] That’s pretty funny. Now did you get off base very much?
DBT: Yes, my dad’s a big history buff and I can tell you that we most likely saw every castle. And every—
TS: What part of Germany were you in?
DBT: Herzogenaurach, that I remember most, was over near Nuremburg and I guess that’s on the east side of Germany. But we used to go to Garmische[-Partenkirchen] and Bergisch Garden[?] for vacations.
TS: What was that like?
DBT: Oh, it was awesome. Going to the Neuschwanstein Castle. That was my favorite. We used to go to Bergisch Garden[?] and swim in the lake and see the mountains in the winter and we didn’t ski; my dad was afraid of skiing. We ice skated and tobogganed a lot. We weren’t allowed to ski but we used to go to all kinds of historic places. My dad wasn’t a, you know, we didn’t go to amusement parks or anything you had to go see something, a museum or—oh that’s another thing, when we lived in Frankfurt, as a kid we went to the natural museum and they had this huge room and the whole room, in the middle of the room was a giant boa constrictor eating a wild pig. They stuffed him that way and I believed that is the point at which I became scared of snakes. And have been ever since, even though I was in the army. You know, I’ve had drill sergeants tell me they could make me get into this swamp and walk around and I’m like just shoot me here, I can’t do it. I’m scared of snakes. But it’s my only absolute fear.
TS: Your big phobia is snakes?5
DBT: Yes.
TS: Now did you—How about school? Did you go to school on base then or off base?
DBT: Yes. Herzo didn’t have a school; we drove to Nuremburg. No, not to Nuremburg—that was a hospital—to Erlangen and we went to school. The medics I was telling you about, they built a swimming pool at the youth center for us, so we hung out at the youth center and had parties and swam at the pool and things like that. In Frankfurt we walked to school. There was one right down the end of the street and I remember walking to that school. I think I was, like, fifth grade maybe, and when they told us that Robert Kennedy had been shot I always remember walking down that street. We actually went back there, with my husband, we went to Germany for three years after I got married and we went back and checked everything out. We didn’t go back to all the castles. We went to all the housing areas where we used to live and things like that.
TS: Like nostalgia?
DBT: Yes. My parents came over and we went to every place we’d ever lived.
TS: When Robert Kennedy was assassinated do you remember how you felt about that? Living in Germany and being military?
DBT: I remember hearing—We had little transistor radios and I remember hearing it and as we are going across the football baseball field to the school the crowd around us got bigger and bigger until when we got to the school it was this big crowd all listening to the radio. But being an army brat, you’re very patriotic. You feel all that because the people you are around all the time are that way.
TS: But how did you feel? What do you mean patriotic?
DBT: Well, you felt really sad that it was somebody that was part of our country and government and all of that. I remember being sad but everybody was just shocked. I know when John Kennedy was killed my mother and father were at an officer’s club dinner or something and we were in the living room with our—my brother was like two or something, and he had a nanny—a Germany lady and we watched black and white German T.V. so we never knew what was going on. But she stood and sobbed in front of the T.V. and when my dad came home he told us. But she was so upset because people in Germany, they really liked him.
TS: You were pretty young at that time?
DBT: Yes, I was like six or seven. I didn’t know who he was. I just remember—I can remember her standing there and just breaking down. 6
TS: When you talk about Robert Kennedy being assassinated do you also remember Martin Luther King Jr. because he was assassinated before.
DBT: I think I was in the United States when that happened, but I don’t remember where I was, I just remember knowing about it.
TS: Yes, so were you aware, that’s what you are talking about 1968. Were you aware of the anti-war protests going on, things like that?
DBT: When we came back in like ‘70 and my dad was in Vietnam until ‘til like ’71, ‘72. We lived in Massachusetts and they are very—for the most part you are living around, very liberal people that didn’t like the war and here your father is in Vietnam so it was very conflicted. They would say all the baby killer stuff and I would try to tell them that that’s not the way my dad is.
TS: Who would say that to you?
DBT: The kids, they would—
TS: At school?
DBT: Yes. Not about my dad, but just about soldiers.
TS: But they knew that your—but did they know your father?
DBT: Yes, sure. Everybody knew ‘cause when you are the only one you kind of stick out.
TS: So were you kind of picked on about that or—
DBT: No, no one ever said anything mean to me about my dad.
TS: No?
DBT: But they just didn’t like the army and they didn’t like soldiers. Which—that is what always bothered me because you can’t be mad at the soldiers. You know, you have to direct that. If you are really interested in stopping the war to help the soldiers then you can’t call them baby killers and treat them mean and spit on them. I always thought that was strange.
TS: And were you aware of the counterculture going on?
DBT: Yes. My older sister was just at the edge of, you know, being the rebellious teen and being in that part of the time but more early seventies. So I saw it; I didn’t participate.
TS: But your sister, you said, was on the edge? 7
DBT: Yes, she was very much like that.
TS: Yes? In what way?
DBT: Just very—My sister started an organization in our high school to get rights for the students to wear jeans and smoke in the court yard and strange things like that. But she got the whole school behind her so she was very, I don’t know what you would call it, involved with things?
TS: Active?
DBT: Activist, yes.
TS: So she was very activist at that point?
DBT: Yes.
TS: What did you think about that?
DBT: I was surprised to find out that my sister was the one causing all the commotion but in a good way. She wasn’t trying to over throw the school, just trying to get a little leniency in how they were. ‘Cause things were more relaxed.
TS: Like rights or whatever for students?
DBT: Yes. But I mean she took over because the president of the student body and all those people just followed the party line of the school, so she just took over and pushed them away. They didn’t count. They weren’t helping students. They were trying to keep everybody in line with what the teachers wanted and the principal.
TS: So she was a little rebellious on that side?
DBT: Yes.
TS: Were you that way at all?
DBT: No.
TS: No?
DBT: No. I was the middle kid. I wasn’t.
TS: What does that mean? Being the middle kid?
DBT: I was the good kid [both laugh]. I got good grades and didn’t cause trouble and was more relaxed. She was very hyper. 8
TS: Well, did you like school?
DBT: High school, no. The rest of the school, yes.
TS: What school?
DBT: You know elementary school and junior high and everything. When I got to Massachusetts—to Marlboro, Massachusetts and I went to the high school I didn’t really care for it. I liked some of my classes. I liked being in classes but it was too confining. I wanted to do something. I didn’t want to just sit there.
TS: In the classroom?
DBT: Yes.
TS: [clock chimes] What do you mean “do something”?
DBT: I took up photography, so I’d rather have been outside taking pictures than inside sitting in study hall. I was real big into history, I loved history. I went to the library in one study hall and every day for a few years, I read every Life magazine cover to cover from the beginning to when they ended back then in the seventies.
TS: What was interesting about those magazines to you?
DBT: The pictures, I love the pictures. I love the—my favorite part and still today in my job, I love the advertisements because when I went to Germany as a wife my mother would send me video tapes of T.V. programs. She cut out all the commercials thinking she was doing something nice for me. I told her “No leave the commercials in because that gives you an idea of what it is like in America. You know, those are things that people are doing and talking about.” The same thing with the magazines, you look at the ads and it gives you the whole idea of what people lived like in America in the forties or the fifties. So I liked that.
TS: Well, while you are growing up are you thinking to yourself, “I want to be this or do this when I get older?”
DBT: Nope. Because I remember being in high school getting ready to go think about what I was going to do. And they make you take the little tests and try to figure out what you are most interested in and I didn’t have a clue. I liked writing but I didn’t want to be a reporter. I liked taking pictures but I didn’t want to be a—I always wanted to be a combat photographer. I’ve seen one on T.V. and I thought that would be cool. But I couldn’t put it all together into what a job would be.
So, I had one counselor suggest that I see if I could apply to [United States Military Academy] West Point. I did all the paperwork and the person came down and talked to me and everything was great and they thought I was great. It was when women 9
were first starting to go and I was starting to decide that was what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a solider and I didn’t go to West Point because I kept thinking I don’t want to be a female lieutenant coming into the army. I want to experience the army. And if I like it enough then I could go—maybe go to OCS [Officer Candidate School] or get out and go to ROTC [Reserve Officer Training Corps]; something. I didn’t want to just be a female lieutenant. I wanted to be part of being with the soldiers and everything. So, I didn’t really want to do that. And I think—
TS: So why did you think that being a female lieutenant would not be part of the army?
DBT: Because it was so new and they were set apart and I didn’t think they were—be treated the same. And I’d grown up in the army and I didn’t think being a lieutenant, at all, would be something I’d wanted to do. I thought I’d rather just be a soldier. So, that’s what I did.
TS: How did you go about making that decision?
DBT: I went and talked to the recruiter and took the tests, and I did really good on the tests. He took me up to Boston and my father was telling me, you know, “Don’t listen to them. All they want to get you to do is sign up for something.”
I wanted to be an army photographer and they said, “You’re not going to get promoted in that, we don’t have anything available. We can’t put you—But here we’ve got this and this and this.” One of the things I wanted to do was I didn’t want to stay in the same town. That’s not how I lived the rest of my life. I wanted to move around like I used to and see new things and do new things. So, I thought I would like to have a job that’s non-traditional female job. When he said the telephone lineman, I thought, “At least when I get out I could work for the phone company, that’s kind of different.” So, I signed up for that.
TS: Let me back up a little. What do you mean by you want—explain more about why you wanted to do a non-traditional job.
DBT: I didn’t want to be somebody’s secretary. I didn’t want to work in a factory. I didn’t want to work at a drug store I had worked at. You know, that would be my life just working at a drug store. I wanted to do something that women don’t do all the time. I mean it was the seventies and women’s lib and all that.
TS: Did that have an influence on you, you think?
DBT: I think so, it would have to. That’s the culture at the time. But, definitely didn’t want to stay in one place and be the people I saw in that town.
TS: And which town was this?10
DBT: Marlboro, Massachusetts. But I had cousins and aunts and uncles that they were born there, they got married there and they’re going to stay there until they die. They have the same job.
TS: That wasn’t you?
DBT: That wouldn’t appeal to me at all. I just wanted out. Not that I hated the town, just the lifestyle. That’s not what I wanted.
TS: Now, do you think you got that from your experience with being in the military—an army brat?
DBT: Oh, being an army brat, one hundred percent, yes. We moved every—at least every three years, and it was fun.
TS: You enjoyed that?
DBT: Yes. Getting new friends and going to new schools wasn’t the best part but all the other stuff was great. You didn’t—You were special; you didn’t live like everybody else. You did something different.
TS: Did you consider any other service?
DBT: No.
TS: Why not?
DBT: Because I’m an army brat. I was born in it so that’s what I was used to.
TS: So you didn’t even look at the [U.S.] Navy or [U.S.] Air Force or Marine Corps or anything like that?
DBT: No. When I walked to the recruiting office they would all say, “Hey, come in here, we’ll talk to you”.
“No, I’m going in here.”
TS: Now, did your—what did your parents think about your decision. Both—both if your father is an officer and you wanted to go enlisted and also just going into the military.
DBT: I don’t think he cared which way, enlisted or—because he went in enlisted. So, he did—He was one of those officers that went to OCS and they knew what it was like to be enlisted so it made them a better officer. So I always thought that was good. He wasn’t prejudiced. He is more now, but he wasn’t back then. My mother and my grandmother had the weirdest reaction. They’d known me all my life and they took me out onto the porch in the back of our house and sat me down and asked me if I was gay. Because the only reason you’d be joining the army is if you were gay. And I’m like—11
TS: This is your mother and your grandmother?
DBT: Yes, my mother! So, I thought that was really funny that they would do that. I just wanted to go in the army. Because it wasn’t normal. I mean a lot of people went in World War II and there were army nurses but this was—the all-volunteer army had just started.
TS: How did you explain? How did that conversation go?
DBT: I just remember just laughing in disbelief. I’m like, “Huh? You’ve known me. I’ve lived with you every day of my life. This is what you think? No. I just want to do the job; that’s what I want to go in for.”
TS: The job?
DBT: The job, yes.
TS: To do something different?
DBT: Yes, but I thought it was a really—I never would have expected it from my mom and my—and my father was a little disappointed that I let the recruiters, he thought I let the recruiters talk me into the MOS [military occupational specialty] I picked going signal. But he wasn’t mad or anything, he just, “I should have gone with you and told you what to get.” But he was alright. He had a cool reaction when I went to jump school. I thought when I went to jump school he’d freak out. But I’ll tell you that later.
TS: Okay. Well, what about your siblings. Did they have any reaction to you joining the army?
DBT: I think my little brother was real proud of me. He always has been. He thinks it’s amazing that my husband and I served in the army. He’s a rich stock broker in Boston and he’ll call me when he gets real nostalgic and he just talks about how great we are to have served our country and all that. My other two sisters, I think they were living their own lives. They were kind of oblivious, so I don’t think they really—they don’t think I was in danger or anything. It’s not like today where you know you are going to get deployed. I’m seriously—nothing ever happened the whole three years I was in the army. Politically we didn’t attack anybody.
TS: We had the Iran Contra—not Iran Contra. We had the Iran hostage crisis. [1979 incident involving American hostages held in Iran]
DBT: Yes, but that was the last few months and we didn’t go anywhere. We didn’t get alerted for anything and we’re the first alert people.
TS: In your first particular job that you had at that time—well, tell me a little then about your first days in basic training.12
DBT: Well, I will tell you that being an army brat makes you not so nervous when you go because you know people like these guys and you know it’s a game. You know they put this face on when they go to work. They are not going to kill you or they get in big trouble. You’re not in danger; they are not going to hurt you. So, some of it—I laughed at a lot of stuff in basic training. When people were crying, I didn’t laugh at the crying people, but when things would happen I didn’t get all upset and cry or anything. I never cried when I was in the army.
TS: What kind of things did people cry about?
DBT: That the drill sergeants really thought all these horrible things about you, because when I went in, back in when I was in the army—
TS: And this was in ’79?
DBT: ’79, yes. They could say anything they wanted to you and be mean to you and swear at you and everything, which they are not supposed to do now. I didn’t feel it was personally towards me, you know, it was just part of the game. So, it didn’t bother me that much, but a lot of the other people didn’t see it that way and they would get all upset.
I remember going to the reception station in Fort Jackson. We flew down there and I remember the first time I was in the barracks with a whole bunch of women and I put some of my white clothes in the washer and one of the women had come and put her red clothes in with mine and turned all my clothes pink. So, like the first night or two that I was in the army this girl wanted to beat me up because I was mad that she had ruined my stuff and I said something. I’m like, “Great, get me out of this place.” I remember telling my dad, “If I ever say I want to reenlist, you just come and get me and take me home.” I was just so, oh, I can’t believe it.
And then, I remember there were the women that were in our platoon had to sit on a bench outside the barbershop while all the guys got their heads shaved and that was really funny. We watched them and laughed because, you know, all these cool seventies guys with long hair and just “zip, zip, get out”. I always remember that my very first assignment by anybody in the army was the drill sergeant had forgot the little plastic cups with the urine in them, for the urinalysis. And I was told to go back and get that, so I was in charge of the pee. [Chuckles] So, I always—
TS: Your first assignment.
DBT: —my very first thing someone told me to do in the army. Then they sent us to Fort Gordon and we went on a bus and we woke up and it was in the middle of the night and we pulled in. You could hear the bus [makes bus sound] and the doors open and of course the drill sergeant gets on, “You got ten seconds to get off my bus and nine of them are gone.” So, we’re all standing and shuffling and to get down off the bus; he’s yelling at you.
But this is Georgia and there’s pine trees and roots sticking up out of the dirt; there’s no grass. I’m looking out the window and everybody kept tripping over the roots.13
And then the drill sergeant would scream and yell even more at them while they were on the ground trying to get up. And I’m like “Oh God, don’t trip, don’t trip” all the way until I got out of the bus. And the thing that freaked me out was all the drill sergeants were screaming at everybody and screaming at everybody and then they marched the guys away to get their sheets and put them in their beds.
There were six women and this one female that was left behind from a previous class, who said, “Hi. My name is so and so and I’m going to take you over to the barracks.” And we just very quietly walked over to our barracks, while going down the street is all these guys getting screamed at. So, it was really weird. I expected to continue getting screamed at but I didn’t. It was very weird.
TS: Were you a little disappointed?
DBT: No, but it was strange.
TS: Were you ever homesick?
DBT: Yes, I liked talking to my parents on the phone and I talked to my little brother a lot. All the time when I was in the army I talked to my little brother on the phone because he was the youngest. He was, you know, preteen and wanted to make sure he knew who I was. I helped raise him. I took care of him from the time he was a little boy; walked him to school every day; fed him.
TS: How old was he when you went in?
DBT: Like, a preteen. He was, like, ten, eleven; something like that. I would call him and talk to him, but not real homesick. We had—the girls we were with, we were friends. We ended up not having but two by the time we got out of AIT [advanced individual training]. The others got hurt or quit.
TS: Well, how was it in—is this in your training, then, you’re talking about?
DBT: Yes, in basic training.
TS: Basic training. Well, did you—was there anything particularly difficult physically that you had to do?
DBT: I ran before I went in and I used to play softball and could run pretty good and I ran even more before I went in. The kind of running you do on the pavement in boots, I got shin splints; we didn’t wear sneakers back then. I got shin splints so that was—in the beginning couple weeks was painful.
The thing that I thought was really cool is when I would be in the middle of the formation and I wasn’t running, because we used to run to class on the other side of post, and I would start to move back in the formation; the guys would keep me in the formation. They wouldn’t let me quit. And my feet could touch the group but they were holding me so I couldn’t get away. They were like big brothers, they watched out for us.14
TS: So it was a co-ed platoon?
DBT: Yes. We had one guy, Sergeant Bolton, he was a prior service and he came back in. He was automatically made our platoon leader and he knew everything so he told us everything. He was a really cool guy; a very mature and not a kid like most of the guys that were in our platoon. So, he kept us out of trouble because we already knew everything before they tried to teach it to us. We were pretty good.
TS: So, you had a good platoon leader to help guide you?
DBT: Yes. I remember when I went into the army I thought that if I got a curly perm I could just wash my hair and go like this and I wouldn’t have to do anything.
TS: Not fuss with it?
DBT: This was a big mistake because I went into a profession where you wear a big heavy helmet every day. I started to look like a clown, you know where your hair’s flat on the top and you have curls sticking out. When it started to grow out my drill sergeant—I told him I needed to go with them when they went to the barber shop to get my hair cut. And he said “No, my wife’s the hairdresser.” She came and cut all of our hair for free in the barracks. So, I got rid of the curls.
I remember in basic training, before I went in the army my dad taught me how to use an M-16; to fire it, to take it apart, to put it back together. Everything that I could learn I already knew. So, I go into the class and I was the first one finished all the time and they thought I was a genius. I was all proud of myself and everything. Well, everybody kept letting the bolt slide and make a loud clack and the drill sergeant or the instructor said, “The next person that does that I’ve got a surprise for them,” and of course mine did it. I had to spend the rest of the first class with my toes on a desk leaning down like a push up to the ground. I had to stay that way the whole time, but I did get the best score.
TS: Did you?
DBT: I just got in trouble.
TS: So, the qualifying was okay for you?
DBT: Yes, I qualified expert. And then they didn’t believe me so they watched me because I qualified expert and I was just a girl. But my dad—
TS: Who’s they; they didn’t believe you? What do you mean by they?
DBT: The drill sergeants came back over and watched me shoot, so that—your partner records what you got, so they wanted to make sure that he didn’t cheat. So, they came over and stood and watched me shoot. 15
TS: You had to do it again?
DBT: Well, they watched the rest of me because I was doing so good. My mother was a crack shot and my dad taught her how to shoot. The very first day he taught her how to use a pistol, a .45. She shot it at the target and my dad’s mouth dropped. She said “Oh look, all the bullets went through the same little hole in the middle.” One of the guys that was next to my dad at the range packed up his weapon and left. He was so disgusted that my mother—
TS: Was such a good shot? [laughs]
DBT: “Oh, it was my first time.” So, my dad always said that I inherited that from my mom. He really did teach me how to do all of that before. I did pretty good with that. One funny thing I told you, some of the things just made me laugh so hard. It was the task at the end of the week when they taught you how to use a grenade and throw a grenade. We’re in this hole, me and the drill sergeant, and it’s just about up to neck level for me but he’s a lot taller and we were supposed to crouch down, stand up, throw the grenade, and get back down.
TS: Was it a live grenade or just a—
DBT: No, it was fake, thank goodness. I did everything perfect, all the moves. I practiced, I did it, and about six feet away from where I threw it, it hit a pine tree and bounced back and when we crouched down the grenade landed right between the two of us. It just made me laugh so hard. I’m just standing there trying not laugh and get in trouble. But he is like [makes a face]. But he lets me pass because I did it right. It’s not my fault there was a tree. We were making jokes and stuff because I’m like, “You’re supposed to jump on that one when it comes back to you, you know; you’re senior. You’re supposed to jump on it.”
I had an instructor, when I was going the M-60 machine gun, and we had to lay down. My helmet was in the way and I couldn’t get it up because where it was hitting the weapon was pushing it down over my eyes. The guy came over and just was pissed at me for something. I kept doing this and not firing. So, he turned it around and dropped it on my head.
TS: Turned what around?
DBT: The helmet. So the brim wasn’t so big on the front.
TS: I see.
DBT: He turned it to the back and dropped it. And when he did it broke my nose right across here.
TS: The bridge of your nose?16
DBT: Yes, and it started bleeding and I had blood dripping on both sides. I was so pissed that he did that that I drilled the whole magazine about ten feet into the ground in front of me instead of firing at the tank we were supposed to be firing at. I got up and I looked at him and I was covered with blood. He was like “Oh my God” and I just walked away. So, I didn’t get in trouble but he didn’t get in trouble either. I was pissed because he didn’t have to hurt me.
TS: Right.
DBT: You know, that was mean what he did because he was mad.
TS: You think some of those things, at that time, because the co-ed? Do you know when that started; to have the men with the women?
DBT: It hadn’t been that long because when I came in it hadn’t been that long that they were together. And I don’t even know when it ended. I was just surprised to find out—start talking to women who said they went with all women, so I didn’t even—
TS: After you were in?
DBT: Yes, much after.
TS: Is it not co-ed anymore? Still today?
DBT: Apparently not.
TS: So, it was just a brief window of time?
DBT: Yes. I don’t know how long though.
TS: How many women were in your platoon to start?
DBT: I think it was six.
TS: And how many did you say ended?
DBT: Two.
TS: You and just another one?
DBT: Yes.
TS: What were the other women dropping out for? 17
DBT: They got hurt. We climbed telephone poles for AIT and they would get injured, and I had to take them all to the hospital.
TS: So, this was your training; not basic anymore?
DBT: Yes, that was. But—
TS: What about basic training? Was that a co-ed training?
DBT: Yes. We actually moved from this barracks to about two streets over and were actually in World War II barracks that were condemned before we got there and they took the tape down and put us in there.
TS: That’s where you went? You’re on the same—you’re on Fort Gordon.
DBT: Just across the field on another street. Yes. It wasn’t far. You could see it.
TS: With your basic training, how many women were in that?
DBT: About six.
TS: Oh, six and the same thing for your—
DBT: Same people, we just all moved together. We stayed with them.
TS: You went in your platoon, knowing you’re going to be doing this. Oh really? Is that how the army—
DBT: That’s how we were supposed to do it; basic and AIT together.
TS: Okay.
DBT: We all were together. It was pretty cool because we already knew everybody.
TS: Right.
DBT: We all did pretty good. I know one night—one night the drill sergeant came into the barracks, and we were in the big long bays in the World War II buildings, and he came in and he woke me up and said “Come with me,” so I had to get dressed and follow him; just me. He takes me over to the male barracks which is across the street, and we’re the only people on this section of the—just us. There weren’t other companies of people. We go into the other barracks and he takes me upstairs where all the guys were and he makes them all take their metal bunk beds apart and take them down the back stairs and set them up out in the grass. And I had to give them a class on how to make my bed because when I was a kid my father taught us how to make army beds. That’s how we had to have our beds. When we were little my father would give us money to go to the movies on post 18
and it was a quarter to get into the movies and a dime for popcorn. If they didn’t bounce on the blanket, you didn’t get to go to the movies. I learned how to make a tight army bed when I was very little. He was sarcastic, it wasn’t—he wasn’t mean or anything.
TS: Your dad?
DBT: He just thought it was funny. Yes. He used to wake us up by—for school every day for most of my life, by going [imitates “Reveille” with mouth] into a toilet paper roll. The cardboard tube; every day forever and ever. He does it now, if we stay over at his house. He does it.
TS: Does he really?
DBT: I even bought him a little guy that—
TS: Makes the sound?
DBT: —plays “Reveille”; a little soldier and he’s an alarm clock. He put a little roll of—he made a little miniature toilet paper roll for his little guy.
TS: For his little guy [chuckle]?
DBT: Yes, he thinks he’s funny.
TS: So, did you teach those guys how to make a bed?
DBT: Yes, and then they made them break them all down and put them back up in their room and I had to help them put it all back together. And then, I got to go back to bed and in, like, an hour he woke us all up to go to train. This is my punishment for doing a good job.
TS: [chuckles] That’s right.
DBT: I remember my mother used to send me goodie boxes. I’m the only one that got them. The drill sergeants of course would say, “Well, you need to make sure your mother sends enough for everyone to share.” So, every time I got a goodie box we’d stand in formation and they’d all stick their hands in there and take something. My mother liked that though.
TS: She liked that you’re sharing it with the rest of them?
DBT: I’m like “Mom, don’t send me anymore stuff.”
[imitating her mother’s voice] “Oh no, it’s okay.”
TS: Well, Donna, what was it like for you as a—growing up an army brat, and then when you put your uniform on the first time? 19
DBT: I remember when I would take a shower, especially in basic and when I got here, and I would get clean after PT [physical training] and put my uniform on. Back then we had starched—they had surplus Vietnam uniforms, all green. Kind of that ripped stuff that we had to starch to make look like anything. You know, you break the starch and you blouse your boots and I just felt like John Wayne. I thought that was too cool.
First time I ever rode in a jeep when my first sergeant was taking me back to have a shower when we were on Fort Bragg in a field exercise. I got to put my foot up on the side and ride in the passenger side of the jeep; John Wayne; totally John Wayne. I was cool. I liked that.
But in basic I didn’t really think—it was more like survival. I didn’t reflect on most of it until after you leave, you know, but I liked it. I liked being in the army. One day around the World War II two story buildings we were told that the company commander was going to be standing in the middle of the building on the other side, outside. And we were supposed to run around to where he was and we had our weapons, so we had to change hands and salute him and then go back and then run around and come back and get the end of line. Three or four people went and then it was my turn. Well, what they didn’t know was that the commander, for the three or four people, kept getting closer to the corner of the building. He was, like, walking and he would shake the— the person would salute him and he would salute back. So, he’s closer each time so by the time I did it he was right at the corner of the building. I run just like they did and I run around the corner and bam, knock him on his butt. He’s, like, in disbelief sitting on the ground looking up at me. He didn’t say anything and I looked at him like this, I switched hands, I saluted and I said “Good Morning, Sir” and I walked away and he’s going [exhales].
TS: The whole dazed look and everything?
DBT: Yes. Yes. It was so funny, and it’s like of all things, God, you know, you could have just been over here and not made me feel so stupid. It was funny to me. I came out of the—I remember they took us over to finance or something. I came out of the old building with the screen, wooden screen door, and when I opened the screen door I knocked a two star general off the stoop as he was coming in.
TS: Now, about the time that you were in the army, the Private Benjamin movie came out.
DBT: Yes, but what I liked about that was it didn’t have to do with anything here.
TS: No, but I can see her doing these things that you’re–
DBT: Yes, but things like that happened to me a lot. I think they’re funny and you can say maybe I was klutzy or I just have this luck.
TS: Murphy’s Law sort of thing?20
DBT: Yes, but I did like that movie because she finished. Most of that stuff—some of it was, I mean, you do, you know, with the commander hitting on her, and she jumped out of planes and things. But a lot of that stuff happened. We used to have—
TS: What stuff?
DBT: Like when I was here at Fort Bragg. The people aren’t used to the women being in the unit and they think, “Oh, well, we can just date.” And they would come—not guys but, like, commanders. I had the brigade commander; he had gotten a DUI so he had to ride his bike. So, he gets drunk and rides his bike to our company, comes in and sits in the day room and tries to hit on all the girls that are sitting there watching T.V.
TS: What do you do?
DBT: Yes, what do you do? You can’t yell at him, you can’t throw him out. You just have to, kind of, get out of the room; go back to your room. Nobody’s going say anything. But weird things like that. You can’t believe guys are this stupid that they would do this. You could get in trouble.
TS: Did they get in trouble?
DBT: Hardly ever.
TS: Yes?
DBT: But in basic training it was more—they were all nice to us. We didn’t get to go anywhere. We didn’t get to—we got escorted to the PX, shoppette or something. We never got to have the night off or anything all through basic. AIT towards the end they let us, but my aunt and uncle lived in Augusta and they would—I went to their house and we had jeans stored there. We would go to the store and they bought me clothes and we’d go to the mall or go out to dinner; hang out. I got to be a real person for a little while.
TS: How often did you get to do that?
DBT: Just the last couple of weeks. That was it. I did want to because they did live down there and we hadn’t seen them in a while. They had two little kids so it was nice to be in somebody’s house. It was weird. I was very happy when I saw my clothes. When I got out of AIT, they gave us our suitcases back. “Oh! Real clothes!”
TS: Because the whole time you just had to wear your army uniforms?
DBT: Oh, yes.
TS: Did you have a big field exercise that you did at the end of basic training? 21
DBT: Yes. They had a bivouac—it happened to be— it was Georgia. One of the ice storms—one of the worst ice storms they had came in and knocked down all these pine trees on top of us. We were outside living in little pup tents next to rivers of ice.
TS: You were in the field during the ice storm?
DBT: Yes, and they came—We were all sitting around, because it happened at—I think it started at night and we were, in the morning, all hovered around fire barrels. Like, your clothes, you could just push them and they are just crunchy ice and we were freezing. And I had—one of the girls had lost their gloves, it had floated away. And so, I gave her half of my gloves. I gave her the warm part inside and I kept the other part. Big mistake; I was freezing. That was very interesting because by that time, the Sergeant Bolton I told you about, got in trouble and he couldn’t be the platoon leader. So, they thought it would be really funny to make one of the only girls the platoon leader in charge of, like, sixty guys. We had all infantry drill sergeants who always told us that, you know, we’re just signal pukes. You know, if we were in the real army, if you were in the infantry, you wouldn’t be able to come home because of a little ice. But they sent us home and it was dark out. It was pouring rain—ice rain—and the drill sergeants went into the barracks and you could hear them drinking coffee and laughing and making fun of us. We were all standing out there like idiots in our ponchos and everything. Well, I stood there for a few minutes and this is getting ridiculous so I walked in and they were all mad at me for coming in. I said “Look, y’all put me in charge.”
TS: Oh, they made you the platoon leader?
DBT: Yes. I said “ You’re the ones who put me in charge, so I’m going to dismiss the platoon so they can go back to their barracks and take a shower and that’s all there is to it.”
They just sort of looked at me like “Okay” and I took everybody back to the barracks.
TS: That was it?
DBT: They didn’t fight me, just, they were shocked that I did it. But if—you’re the ones that put me in charge so this is what I’m doing.
TS: What did you think about all of this? Like you said, you didn’t really like that at the time, but looking back what did you think about your army experience? Were you thinking this is a good thing, I’m glad I joined up?
DBT: I thought there’s a lot of dumb stuff in the army. I thought I shouldn’t have to do dumb stuff, but the people that I knew, my friends when I got here, I missed all of that. I liked all that. I liked playing army, but it’s all the other stuff you have to deal with that made it hard.
TS: What’s that other stuff that made it hard? 22
DBT: Guys back then there, and not all guys; the older guys, not the young guys. Their opinion of women trying to do what we were doing and we shouldn’t be there. We shouldn’t be in their army. Things like that.
TS: How would you—when would you get that kind of comment?
DBT: When you were training, and they would say—you know, the drill sergeants especially. Infantry guys aren’t used to women at all, still. They don’t have very many women around them. But it was always—There’s lots of occasions where you just are so surprised that they would say something like that. I had a sergeant major of our battalion standing on the tarmac at Pope Air Force Base. We’re all sitting around waiting to get on planes to do a jump. My fiancé—my husband is sitting next to me. He’s whittling and the sergeant major comes over, and he’s new; we don’t know him very well. He came over and told us through this conversation we were having with him that if he wanted to he could drag me across to the woods and have sex with me and no one would say anything; no one would report it. And here my husband, my best friend, her boyfriend, all our friends that we hang out with are all sitting around here with their mouths hanging open. “Did he really say that?” My husband, I just was watching him, and trying to defend my opinion to the sergeant major and my husband’s whittling harder and harder. And it was so hard for him not to, which was important to me, that he doesn’t defend me but I thought he was, and he had a knife. I’m thinking, “[unclear], you just don’t know what you’re doing.” [chuckles]
TS: How did you defend yourself to the sergeant major?
DBT: I told him that, “These people are my friends and my fellow soldiers and they would never let you do that. They wouldn’t be scared of you. You don’t realize who you are standing next to,” and I told him—I didn’t tell him he was my fiancé or anything.
TS: Right.
DBT: But what a dumb thing to say. Why would you say that? He’s a sergeant major. He should be saying things about what he shouldn’t do, not that he could get away with that. But they thought like that.
TS: So, let’s get into how you got—First, actually, tell me about the training for the telephone linesman.
DBT: Oh, that was interesting. When I was in AIT, like I told you, they had made me the platoon leader. I would run the guys all the way out to the training area and there was a big forest of telephone poles. We had to wear gaffs on our feet; pointy metal gaffs that you stabbed into the pole and you walked up—you climbed up and you went around and came back down. They would have you do different things. That’s the first week; you have to learn how to climb the telephone pole. Well, people would slip. We had one guy, real tall guy I remember, had one gaff sticking in the pole half way up and the rest of him 23
hanging down. So, his knee is gone and he is just stuck there and we had to go up and get him.
TS: He blew his knee out?
DBT: Yes, and I was the platoon leader so they kept making me take him over to the ambulance and send him to the hospital. One of the girls—she was a little tiny thing too—she was shorter than me. She fell, slid, and grabbed the pole, which is very bad because talk about splinters. This splinter was like three inches, it was very pointy, and it went up through her cleavage and came out like this right next to her chin. I had to take her over there and send her to the hospital. This doesn’t make you want to get back up the pole. You’re like, “Don’t hold on like that. Don’t do what she did.” I did great and I was very proud of myself. I wasn’t afraid. I did everything I was supposed to plus taking all the—I mean, I got to see everybody up close. So it was very daunting to try to get back up on the pole and not be scared.
TS: Right.
DBT: So, the next day—and they told us throughout this class if you don’t come to class, no matter what the reason, you have to be recycled. I go to the unit and the drill sergeant says that I have KP [kitchen patrol]. “No, they told us we can’t miss a day; I can’t have KP today.”
And he said “Oh, yes you do and you’re going to do it.” They left me behind and made me do KP all day. So, the next day I go back out to the pole training and they told me, “You missed yesterday, you’re out. You have to be recycled. Go back and start over next week.” I didn’t think that was right.
I argued with them and they said, “It doesn’t matter, you broke our rules, we can’t let you stay.”
I go back and I tell the people in the company and—“You need to tell them you made me go to KP. This was not my choice.
“I’m sorry; there’s nothing we can do.”
So, I called my dad and I said, “What do I do? Who do I tell? I mean I don’t want to get in trouble but I don’t want to do that again. I already did it all.”
TS: Right.
DBT: So, he told me to call the IG [Inspector General] and he called the IG. We had an appointment the next day with the training battalion—no brigade, he was higher up; with the colonel. Went into his office, like, all the drill sergeants and me, and we went in there and he said that they didn’t realize this problem existed and they want to assure me that this will never happen to anybody else again. “But you, unfortunately, have to be recycled. And hey, don’t worry about it. It’s just one week.”
So, I had to climb the poles all over. Not only that, all the people I’ve known for eight, ten weeks, whatever, went ahead of me. They kept going so I had no friends. I’m with strangers and I was pissed. I get to the first day and the drill sergeant is over at some bleachers a little ways away with a whole bunch of boy scouts and they’re going to show 24
them how a soldier climbs a pole. He tells me to climb the pole. I go put everything on, I’m pissed. I did what he said because he was telling me what to do from across the—I went up there smacked everything, went around, came down, pissed off, took everything off and walked away. I was pissed because they made me do that. Why? Why? It didn’t happen to three other people. They didn’t have KP every other day; just happened to me because they knew that you could get recycled. They did it on purpose.
TS: You think you were setup in that way?
DBT: Yes, I’m one of the only two girls.
TS: Did the other girl get recycled?
DBT: No, but she never made it. She didn’t finish the AIT part.
TS: No?
DBT: Oh, she’s the one with the—the little short girl. She was the last one with me. But she didn’t make it through the pole thing. She quit after she got hurt. I don’t blame her. [Therese chuckles]
TS: You feel like they were doing this simply because you were a girl or a woman?
DBT: I think so. I do.
TS: What’s your dad think about that then?
DBT: Well, he called IG and told them what he thought of it but—
TS: Had no power?
DBT: Yes, they couldn’t fix anything. They weren’t willing to and just the way the colonel said, you know, he made this big deal about me keeping everybody else from doing it and said, “But you have to go back to training. Sorry.” Like he was trying to think of a good way to get out of it, but I didn’t believe him. It didn’t come across true. I think I was setup or something.
TS: So, did that make you more determined to just finish it?
DBT: Yes, but it kind of made me sad because everybody was gone before me.
TS: Right.
DBT: And then when I was in basic training the way they did it back then was everybody that came in had their MOS picked out and a lot of them had their destination after training. 25
They were going to Germany or California or whatever. There were five of us that didn’t have that selection where we were going to go.
TS: Why?
DBT: Because we didn’t select anything. We just came in for the MOS.
TS: And it didn’t matter where you went?
DBT: I didn’t mind.
TS: Okay.
DBT: Didn’t want to go back home.
TS: That’s right.
DBT: So, they brought the five of us to the dayroom and they had an instructor—recruiter for the airborne come from Fort Bragg to talk to us. He told us all about how great it would be to jump out of airplanes and everything, but he kept ignoring me being in the room next to the four guys. He passed out the paperwork to the four guys and I said, “But what about me?”
And he said, “Well, you’re not going to go, are you?”
I said, “Gimme the paper,” and I think one of the things I really thought about after is, I think I got played because he either—it was reverse psychology, you know, he—I think he talked me into doing it. Because I had no plans to go airborne, never thought about it but best thing I ever did. I think I fell for it; definitely.
TS: You think so? You don’t think he was intentionally avoiding you?
DBT: No, I don’t think he was being intentionally mean to me. If he was trying to get his—
TS: Quota?
DBT: Score, yes; his quota.
TS: How many women were in the airborne training at that time? Was this still ’79?
DBT: There were twelve of us in the class.
TS: Twelve women?
DBT: Yes, and there’s like three hundred guys in the one class and there was, like, four classes at a time. There weren’t that many of us but I tell you what, eleven of us graduated. And about one hundred guys—26
TS: So, the attrition rate for women was better?
DBT: We did very well, yes; we did very well. I always remember from jump school, one day the commander came in and inspected us and he said my hair touched my collar in the back. I had kind of rounded in the back, okay, so it was getting close. I went up to the PX that night and the beauty shop wasn’t open after hours. The area right next to it was a barber shop with these five old barber guys. I went in there and I said “Could you just trim my hair in the back because I have to pass?” And I didn’t want—A lot of the women had long hair and they taped it all up. I listened to them pull the tape out every night and I’m not doing that, no. I don’t want my hair ripped out. I don’t want to rip tape from my hair every night.
TS: How would they use the tape?
DBT: They’d put their hair up with bobby pins in the back and then tape it all flat to their head in the back. It didn’t seem like a good idea.
TS: So, you’re in the barbershop—
DBT: I’m in the barbershop and these little guys are so cute. They’re all standing behind me telling each other how it should be done. They never cut women’s hair and the other guy is like “I did it one time and you gotta do this and this.”
I said, “Guys, just cut it straight across. It doesn’t have to be pretty.” I was in there for, like—an hour it took them to cut my—They were so scared to cut my hair and it was so funny.
I hung out with them and they told me when I had to pay. The guy said, “You don’t have to pay.”
I said, “What?”
He said, “If you graduate from jump school you come tell us. That’ll be payment enough. If you don’t, you come here and you pay us.” When I did graduate from jump school I went to tell them and it was closed, so I never got to tell them. But I always remember how nice they were. And they were all old retired army guys; airborne guys. They just were tickled, but not the rest of the people at jump school.
TS: No, how was that?
DBT: Same thing, we shouldn’t be in their jump school. I mean, they’re even more zealous than our drill sergeants.
TS: How would they specifically treat you?
DBT: One day, we were doing the—it’s called a swing landing trainer, which you’re on a platform, like, about six feet up or so and you walk up the stairs, you stand up there with your harness on, they attach it to—well, actually it’s not attached then. You just have your harness and your fake parachute stuff on and what you’re supposed to do is—oh, it is attached. It’s attached to a rope because what he is supposed to do is you jump like 27
you’re jumping out the door but he gradually lowers you to the ground so you can practice a PLF.
TS: Can you tell me; what’s a PLF?
DBT: It’s a parachute landing fall, and you land on the side—the side of your leg and your hip and your shoulder so you don’t hurt yourself just landing face first, flat on your butt; whatever. He didn’t like women in his jump school. So, every time I did it, he’d say, “Go,” and as soon as I’ve jumped, he’d let go and I’d hit the ground, just one big [makes noise] and he’d say “Unsatisfactory, do it again.” He did that to me all day; the whole time I was there I never got to do one. He did that to me every time. Nobody said anything to him. He did that all the time, but kept making me do it over and over.
DBT: I know we were running PT in tower week and I was perfectly fine; no problem. It was hot, but I wasn’t falling out or anything. The formation was really, really tight and I caught the back of this guy-in-front-of-me’s foot. He put his foot right back and I tripped and fell on the ground. I went to get up and these people come over and drag me to the ambulance and make me start drinking salt water because I passed out. I said, “Look, I didn’t pass out. I saw me fall all the way to the ground and I got right back up. I didn’t pass out.”
“No you passed out. You probably won’t be able to finish your training; probably going to have to get recycled.” And they’re filling me full of this nasty salt water stuff, making me sick to my stomach and they didn’t believe me. They treated me like I was a heat fatality and they wouldn’t listen to me. I don’t know why they did that.
TS: So, what happened after that, then?
DBT: I just went back to training. I told them, “No, isn’t anything wrong with me.” They couldn’t say there was something wrong with me anymore.
TS: Right.
DBT: I didn’t pass out. I remember me falling.
TS: Right.
DBT: I didn’t pass out. Things like that. We had Navy SEALs [Sea, Air, and Land] in our class, there were Marines, and these guys would all—they come from a unit, they know each other. They’re going through this training, so anytime one of them got in trouble the other ones would drop and do pushups. It pissed off the army guys and they told them don’t do that. If you do that then everybody in the whole formation has to pushups. So, we did that for the whole four weeks we were there because they would go together. They never changed how they did it. So we had to do more pushups than anybody else because we had to do whatever they did.
TS: The SEALs wanted to keep their camaraderie?28
DBT: Yes, and the commander was a Marine. So, it was very interesting. They were very intense guys but we hung with them. We did pretty good. One of my favorite things about jump school was in ground week you’re at one end of the field and you’re exhausted and it was very hot and they would say you’re on a break. So, they’d put you in a formation and run you to the other side of the field to give you a drink of water so you could sit for two minutes and run all the way back. I’d be exhausted and I’d be like, “I don’t like breaks around here. There not fun, I don’t want to do breaks. I’ll just stay here. I don’t need any water.” [both chuckle] I always thought that was strange, that the breaks were worse than the training.
TS: I guess a lot of people say that women can’t do the physical aspects. You know, for example, the jumping out of a plane, being a paratrooper, those kind of things.
DBT: Well, when I went through jump school and I got here all the non-airborne guys, maybe some airborne guys, they would say—I used to work in operations and they would have to say they wanted the form to go to jump school and they would say, “Well, heck. If Donna could—
TS: If Donna could do it then they could do it?
DBT: —do it, they could do it, anybody could do it.”
And I’m like “Uh-huh.”
I’d be right there when they came back with their broken leg or their “Well, I didn’t really want it as bad as all them other people, you know. I could go later. No big deal.”
But they all—the big mouth ones always came back, and I was like “Oh, so you didn’t make it.”
And they would always say, “Well, they let you graduate.”
I would tell them all the time, “Look, they don’t have special little pink planes that fly three feet above the ground for girls, you know; we jump out of the same plane. We do all the same stuff y’all do. So, this is one thing where you can’t say that.”
One of my favorite things is they do this training where you have to hang in the harness and you’re just in a shed, you know, an overhang, and you’re just hanging in the harness for quite a while. All this training, basic, AIT, jump school, all this stuff is harder for us. I’m 5’3’’, you know, a lot of this stuff—being short makes it harder but being female and you’re not as much upper body strength as the guys, all that stuff. This was the one thing I thought was great because they call it suspended agony because of the straps. The guys, their private parts don’t like the straps and hanging there forever, but the girls we didn’t have a problem. So, we just made fun of them the whole time they were hanging there.
TS: That’s one thing where you had more—
DBT: Yes, we won that one. 29
TS: What would you say to the people, and you’ve given me some examples, but even today there’s still the idea that women, they can’t do this or they can’t do that because you’re not physically capable.
DBT: Well, my idea is when people say it today, if a woman wants to and she can do it and I don’t believe—I never believed in lowering the standards to let women get in and let women pass because then you’re not really doing it. You have to do the same thing or they won’t treat you the same. But if she wants to and she can do it, there are women that can do this stuff and want to bad enough. I wanted to bad enough it made me able to do everything without being as big as they were. If you want to do it, you should be allowed to do it. I don’t think it matters what it is; if you are qualified and you can do it. I know there’s guys in the army that—guys talk crap; like, tankers or artillery guys, you know. “Women aren’t strong enough to do what we do because we handle big ammunition and they can’t lift this,” and all that. Well, it’s all team oriented; they all do it together. I mean that’s the way it should be for the women. And there’s little guys in the army that can’t do what some girl that grew up playing little league and played sports in college and high school. They can come in here and do that kind of stuff that some little guy, that’s not really an athlete, he’s just a guy. It doesn’t matter. I think if you are capable, whatever sex, you should be able to do it. So, I don’t believe all that stuff.
TS: Well, what did you like best about the jump school?
DBT: That it was like going to college rather than it was like being in training. You know, you had your nights off and we all hung out. I remember the night before I made my first jump, which was freaking me out because I told you I was born—I made my—my twenty-first birthday I made my first jump. So, it was kind of bothering me because I could picture the headline, you know, “Woman returns to scene of her birth only to die in a fiery crash.”
So, we were all sitting around outside in the field—or in the little lawn outside the company and talking. I found the only four leaf clover I ever found the night before. The next morning I got up; I broke my foot jumping on my first jump. So, I thought “Goodness, what would have happened if I didn’t find the four leaf clover?” [Therese laughs] What had happened was it had rained so the ground was soggy. But there’s a road down the middle of the drop zone—[unclear] drop zone, and one foot landed on the road the other foot landed in the mush and turned like this [demonstrates to interviewer] and I broke my baby toe.
TS: On the mush?
DBT: Yes, it turned like that and just cracked because it had all my weight. It’s all the adrenaline you don’t really—I didn’t know my foot was broken. But as I’m running across this big field to the turn in your parachute area where the drill sergeant has a bull horn and he’s yelling at everybody telling them what to do. I ran all the way over there and I realized that if I limp I’m in trouble. So, “Don’t say anything, don’t say anything. Whatever this is I can go back and soak it and I’ll be fine, because I’m not getting recycled. I’ve been recycled; I don’t like it.”30
I run over, I turn in my parachute, and he’s over here. And I go maybe a hundred feet away and I’m going to get a drink of water from the water buffalo and I limped. He saw me from all the way over there and yelled at me to “Come here and go to the ambulance.” I went to the ambulance, pissed off. I didn’t want to go to the ambulance. They took my boot off of my foot like this [makes noise with mouth] so I had to go to the hospital and they x-rayed it and said that I broke my baby toe. “There’s nothing we can do about it.”
“Oh great, then why did I have to come here?” So, I went back and I did get recycled because they put me on a crutch for like a week, but it was so funny. When you get hurt you can’t keep training but you—and I only had to do it for a week so I could—I knew I was going back to jump school for the last couple of jumps.
They put you in this big parking lot and sergeants from all over the post come and go “I’ll take that one, that one, that little girl with the crutches,” and they take you away. Whatever they want you to do you have to clean whatever, or do whatever they say, and I had to clean the floor of this huge room. It was, like, a huge classroom with all these desks we had to move out. Little student desks and we’re doing it in the middle of the night. I remember all these rangers that had quit. They come in and they’re broken and bleeding and muddy. They look like they were dead; just the look on their face. I felt so bad for them, so I remember seeing that and thinking, “I’m not quitting; I’m not quitting. It isn’t that bad. They’re not doing that to me. How bad could it really be?”
One day they took me to tower week where they have the two hundred and fifty foot towers and they connect the parachute and you slowly drop. It used to be a carnival ride so it’s not scary. It’s just to see the feeling, I guess, to do the right thing when you pull on your risers. Our job—we have like four guys, and our job is to—they take a dummy, this big, heavy dummy and drop him with different parachute malfunctions so that the class that’s learning way over on the bleachers can see. But what we have is a stretcher and we stay inside the little house underneath the tower and when the thing hits the ground we’re supposed to come out with the stretcher. We’re going [imitates carnival song with mouth] like a silent movie, and we’re all—you know how you laugh so hard you can’t lift anything? We’re trying to put it, because it’s such a dumb thing to be doing. It was so weird. So, we put him back on and we go back to [imitates carnival song again] and we went in. We had to go up to whoever was in charge of the tower week and we went up to their office. When we first got there were four of us. The guy comes over and he’s talking to the first guy and then there were three more of us. He would stand in front of us and ask us what was wrong with us, so he knew for us to work for him that day. So, the first guy says “I broke my big toe.”
I said “Aw shoot.” They made fun of him; a toe; big deal. So what?
And then the next guy says, “I broke my two toes beside my big toe.”
I’m like, “I’m not telling them I broke my baby toe. Nope, nope, nope, nope. I’m not, I’m not, because this is going to be embarrassing.” So, he chewed that guy out about being stupid about toes.
And he said, “What happened to you?”
I went, “Uh, I injured my foot.”
“How’d you injure your foot?”
“Um…” And I tried to get out of it but—
“Exactly what did you do?”31
“I broke my baby toe.” So, they picked on me too. That was embarrassing, I remember that very well.
TS: Yes.
DBT: Because you are trying to be cool and you’re trying not to stand out for the wrong reasons.
TS: Right.
DBT: This stuff happens to me, but I went back—Oh, actually when I hurt my toe on the jump—my foot, when he caught me was the second jump of the day. I actually went to lunch.
TS: I’m sorry, what?
DBT: I jumped my first jump in the morning and hurt my foot. I walked around trying not to limp during lunch and a break. Then we got on the plane to do the next jump. When I got finished with the second jump that’s when he caught me limping at the end of the day.
TS: I see.
DBT: So, I thought I was pretty brave; I jumped with a broken foot. They thought, “Oh, you should just go be recycled. You know, you hurt yourself.” It was only a week and I went back. We actually ended up jumping with the four of us because we all four got recycled. We finished all our jumps and they told us to go down to fire drop zone. They had a little office down there and they were going to give us our certificates and our wings. Everybody else had a big ceremony and got them pinned on. So, we go to this building and we’re standing outside the steps and the guy threw us the little packet full of the—you know, just threw us the little pad of certificates to one guy and threw each one of us a set of wings and shut the door.
TS: And that’s it?
DBT: That was how I got my jump wings. I remember going—walking up the hill—there was a real steep hill; how you had to come down the fire drop zone from the school barracks and everything. We were walking up and a black—a huge black racer snake. We’re all macho because we’re airborne now and we are cool and this racer snake goes across like this; across my boots into the grass. And I stood there on that hill screaming. They’re going “What are you doing, you’re airborne? You’re not supposed to be screaming.”
I said, “I can jump out of planes, I don’t like snakes.” [both laugh] But that was how I got my jump wings. I was actually supposed to—my parents were going to come see me graduate and it turned out that on my very first day of jumping my mother was having breast cancer surgery and we didn’t know, because she didn’t want to say anything until they knew she had it and had the surgery. I didn’t know that but my mother knew that my sister was having her baby the same day. I was jumping out32
airplanes and she was having cancer surgery. So, she was freaking out, but then they couldn’t come to the ceremony. But then I didn’t have a ceremony, so it worked out. I found out later—I told you about the paratrooper and Jerry Devlin is my father’s best friend from OCS. We’ve known him forever and he was going to come to my—
TS: Ceremony?
DBT: —ceremony and bring one of the original members of the test platoon of the 1940s first paratroopers for the army. He was going to help pin on my wings, but because my mother had the surgery everything was cancelled. I thought that would be cool, but I didn’t know until a lot later. What was really neat was Jerry Devlin sent me that book, Paratrooper, which he had just written towards the time I went through jump school. He signed it “For your graduation from jump school,” and it’s from him. Then I end up twenty-five years later being the historian for 18th Airborne Corps and that is the book I use every day to find airborne history. I talk to him on the phone. If I have a question I call him and ask him. He’s my expert and he goes around telling everybody that he’s known the 18th Airborne Corps historian since “she was in her mom’s tummy.” It worked out pretty good.
The reason I’m telling you about the book is I came to Fort Bragg with the book and that book I read. It’s very good information considering you’re going to a unit full of airborne guys that don’t know much about airborne history and I did. I would tell them that the army, when they first tested parachutes for pilots in the army, long before World War II when they still had bi-planes, the first female to test jump parachutes for the army, well, the first person was a female, Tiny Broadwick. She’s one of the first females to do most everything for parachutes; first free-fall jump. But she’s the one that tested all the parachutes for the army and then they decided to buy it. It was actually her uncle’s parachute that he had developed, so they bought it from him. I would remind them when they would say, “Girls shouldn’t be in the airborne.”
“Well, actually, you know this—,” and I would tell them.
TS: What kind of reception would you get to that information?
DBT: They would just look at me like I was nuts and I’d just walk away.
TS: Knowing that you gave them the information.
DBT: Yes. When I was in the unit here my roommate, Beth, and I—we used to—she had the coolest sense of humor. I would just be shocked when she would say stuff. It helped a lot because when you get here and it’s the same people every day and guys say things to you. I mean, when we would run in formation down our dens[?] every morning. Guys would hang out the windows and yell things at you and talk to you. Not bad, but sexual things. And formations going the other way would call cadence about you as you go by. They used to put the women in the front because we were shorter and it would slow down the formation so all of us would stay together. But then all the guys with the big, long legs would be yelling in the back because it hurt them. I’d rather be in the back because I don’t want to piss them off. Hanging around with her helped me. You had to be good at 33
comebacks and I didn’t know how to do that. I wasn’t very good at that. I was just nice, so I didn’t know how to do that. But she helped me with that. She would get me in, not trouble, but in situations where I’d just be like, “Oh my God, we’re going to get in trouble.”
TS: Like what? What would she do?
DBT: Like, she—When you’re in the army, or the airborne, they tell you back then that when you salute you say, “All the way and then some sir.” Well, Beth decided from now on we were going to—when we saw young lieutenants and captains walking past going to the mess hall or something, we’d go, [in a soft tone] “All the way and then some, sir” and then we’d turn to watch them walking by us going, [makes gesture to interviewer] “We’re going to get in so much trouble.” But she thought it was funny. She would throw it right back at them and it helped us stay out of trouble.
TS: Where was she from?
DBT: Pennsylvania. Her name was Beth Hiltebeitel[?] and I have no way of knowing how to spell that. It is very long.
TS: That’s okay.
DBT: You look at her shirt and it’s like halfway across her shirt.
TS: That’s a very long name to put on a shirt. I’m going to pause it for a second.
DBT: Okay.
[recording paused]
TS: You don’t even need a break?
DBT: No.
TS: Okay, so we were just talking about what your dad thought about you being at jump school.
DBT: Well, I told you I signed up with that guy, so it was kind of a last minute, out of the blue kind of thing. So, I called my dad on the phone that night and I told him. I’m like, “Dad? Dad? Dad?”
And my mother comes on the phone a couple minutes later and says, “What on earth did you say to your father? He’s just standing here with his mouth hanging open in shock.”
I said, “Well, I went to jump school.” 34
She goes, “Oh, well of course you are.” My dad can’t get on a ladder without shaking; he is afraid of heights. He did parachute a couple times but not airborne; just being at a military base you can do it for fun on the weekends and stuff; they have clubs. He did it and ended up in a tree—stuck in a tree for a really long time, and they had to get him down and he didn’t like it after that. When he found out I went to jump school he couldn’t talk. It was very long time he wouldn’t talk about it. He would get the creeps just thinking about me flying through the air I guess, maybe, because I’m his kid or maybe because he was scared. Seriously, if you hold a ladder for my father, it does this. It just vibrates like crazy because he can’t stand it. I always remind him that he’s a leg. That pisses him off.
TS: A leg? What’s a leg?
DBT: A leg is a non-airborne person. It’s a—not a nice thing but it’s not terrible. It doesn’t stand for anything evil. You’re just a straight leg infantry guy or whatever. Yes, he’s a leg.
TS: Now, when did you meet your husband?
DBT: When I was here, I was about a year here by myself.
TS: At Fort Bragg?
DBT: At Fort Bragg, and a couple of times I met him until I actually knew him. It’s still pretty weird. Let’s see, it was June of ’80.
TS: Oh, okay. So, we’re not there yet. We’re still in ’79 and you were going to tell me about when you got to Fort Bragg.
DBT: Oh, they suggested—they said they have a program you can go home and be a hometown recruiter, and so I went back to where my recruiter was. It’s a publicity thing; they put you in the paper and you go to the high schools—your old high school and you talk to people interested in coming in. Mostly I just hung out with him and talked to recruits when they came in. He’d take me and do a display—put up a display, and I was just a thing that was in the display because I was an oddity, an airborne woman.
TS: Right, and you had your uniform bloused. Did you have a particular hat that you wore for airborne?
DBT: Well, back then the uniform for women had this little—dress uniform had a little black beanie kind of beret thing with a big gold badge of the front. I always thought it was strange looking. I didn’t get dressed up in my uniform that often so I didn’t have to wear it that much. But they had very strange uniforms when I came in. They had one that was pistachio colored and it was like wearing a plastic bag. It was all polyester or something.
TS: Was that, like, the lime green kind of colored one?End of Part One.
Interview continues in Part Two.