Priceless Memories - Bob Barker [45]
Me, I decided to become a naval aviator. Now I had never seen the ocean. I had never even been up in an airplane. And I certainly had never given any thought whatsoever to what was involved with landing an airplane on a carrier.
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My decision to become a naval aviator was strictly a matter of vanity. One day I was paging through a glossy magazine and saw a full-page picture of a young, handsome naval aviator leaning against a sleek fighter plane. He was wearing his white dress uniform, the one with gold buttons, shoulder boards, a high collar, and a white hat with gold braid. Of course, his wings of gold were pinned prominently over his heart—and to top it all off, he had a deep tan. He was one terrific-looking guy.
I took a long look at the picture of that great-looking naval aviator, and I thought, “If I am going to war, I want to go to war looking like that guy.” I went down to the post office that day and signed up to become a naval aviation cadet. When I finally had my wings of gold and my fighter plane, I used to go out and lean against it occasionally. Unfortunately, there was never a photographer around.
I wasn’t commissioned as an ensign in the United States Navy until two and a half years after I enlisted because the navy ordered me to remain at Drury for my sophomore year. You had to have completed two years of college to qualify to become a naval aviation cadet. I reported for active duty on June 9, 1943.
The navy training regimen was pretty intense, but it was also a lot of fun. Over the course of eighteen months, I trained at eight different bases, met all kinds of different people, made new friends, and flew eight different airplanes, including the legendary Corsair. We worked hard, but we all wanted to be there. I don’t mean to imply that World War II was fun for anybody. I’m just saying I loved flying, and I enjoyed the camaraderie of the navy.
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My navy training began at William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri, just outside of Kansas City. The first part of the cadet training was all ground school and athletics. We put in hours and hours of physical activity, conditioning, and sports. We were all young men in pretty good condition, but I’m talking four hours of hard-core physical training during June, July, and August in Missouri. We did all this rigorous conditioning and athletic activity in the heat of the sweltering, humid summer. On breaks, we lined up at the drinking fountain, and guys would be yelling from the back, “You’ve had enough. Move on.” Sometimes they were not so good-natured.
We played basketball, wrestled, boxed, did gymnastics, and ran track. Four hours a day of athletics and four hours of ground school. I never sweated so much in my life. Track was a particularly new experience for me. The navy had what was called military track. One day our platoon was scheduled to compete with another platoon in the quarter mile. Now, if you know anything about track, you know that the quarter mile is a tough race—that and the half mile—because you have to run fast the whole time. And a quarter mile is a long way to go. I had no experience in track and had never run a quarter mile in my life, but the physical training officer picked me out from our platoon and another guy out from the other platoon and told us to race each other.
“On your marks. Get set. Go.” I knew nothing about pacing or anything about running technique; I just took off, not as fast as I could, but fast enough to be in the lead. I was still ahead of the other cadet about halfway around the track, maybe a little more. Soon, however, he sped by me. I tried to keep up with him, but I couldn’t. Pretty soon I was running as fast as I could to catch this fellow, and something happened that had never happened to me before: black started coming from the top and the bottom of my eyes. My vision was slowly closing down, and I realized that I was about to pass out. So I slowed down, and I could see more. As soon as I started