...and my favorite military insignia of all ...
Posted on 11/10/2011 7:16:05 PM PST by RightOnline
It has been an inspiration reading this thread. Thanks for posting it, and thanks to all who served, my dad included, although he is not a FReeper. Them internets are too slow down in his neck of the woods!
Ask some of your Okinawa buds if they remember a position called "The Horse". I rode it for much of my time at Onna Point and what a ride it was.
My last old Onna Point bud passed in TN in 2007. Tony Askew. We arrived at San Vito together in 1962, Tony from Onna Point, me from Clark. Were you involved in the 3D or 2T programs?
Another Cold War vet...
Air Force/ Air National Guard KC-135 Navigator during the 80s and C-130 Navigator during the Clinton era.
Now a civilian Desk Jockey in the Marine Corps.
Thanks to the most recent generation of veterans — YOU may someday be known as the Greatest Generation!
...and my favorite military insignia of all ...
US Army 64-87. Served all over but my favorite memories come from my two tours with 2nd Battalion 32d Armor, 1st Brigade, 3d AD.
Checking in.- USS Grenadier SS-525 ‘64-’65. USS Cony DD-508
‘65-’67
I'm not familiar with either program, at least by name, but I did win the island wide Air Force/Navy/Army annual ditty bop competition in '68. ;^)
For the record, I was involved in several "side" projects during my tour on Okinawa but if they had names I wasn't aware of it. Interesting work was it not???
The 3-D program and its follow-on 2T program were designed to keep airmen in the field instead of returning to CONUS and getting out of Command and take a job pushing papers until separation. The 3-D was first, strictly voluntary. If you were stationed a remote location, say, the Aleutians, you could put in for a more desireable location, such as Scotland or Misawa. The move gave the airman a promotion to the next highest grade. The 2-T program was pretty much the same, except that it was involuntary: you could be in Darmstadt and you’d get pulled out and sent to Peshawar, Pakistan, and also pick up another stripe. I chose not to participate in 3-D, opting instead for an inter-theater transfer, Philippines to Italy; no stripes were involved.
Oh, ahem. If I was ever offered anything like that I don’t recall it. I had already gotten my fourth stripe during my first tour. There was a nice re-up bonus for signing on for another four is all I remember. Fact is, I couldn’t see spending that much of the rest of my young life overseas; some of it in some of the most God forsaken places. And given the nature of the duty, that’s just about all there was. The military regimen wasn’t that much to my liking either. Some like it, I just wasn’t one of ‘em.
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