Vnuchka Memoirs, Part IX

Weaning off of Russian for a bit

There were two main Army groups studying Russian. The largest group were voice intercept operators. We would go to Goodfellow AFB for technical training, then be sent to various duty stations around the world. The other group were going to be interrogators. The units and military duty stations for them overlapped ours. Anyway, before we could go to Goodfellow, we had to meet two criteria: we had to pass the Russian course and our security background checks had to be completed. Signals Intelligence people (the listeners) had to have a higher-level clearance (Top Secret - Special Compartmented Information). During the Cold War, the background checks were complex and comprehensive. You were supposed to be squeaky clean - no crimes, no drugs, no homosexual experiences. BUT…this was the mid-70’s. No one was perfect. Everyone had at least tried marijuana. So instead of zero tolerance, you had to convince the interviewers that you’d tried it, but less than 10 times, and you never smoked it habitually. Lucky me! Off to San Angelo, Texas and Goodfellow AFB. This was technical training - we would qualify for our Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) and then receive orders to our first official duty station. Most Russian linguists, including me, were hoping for Europe, or Turkey, or Korea, or Japan. There was even a site in the Florida Keys. These were not only exotic places, but they were strategic listening posts that were actively intercepting, analyzing, and reporting intelligence from Russian voice transmissions. During the Cold War, this was the best job in the world!

The training at Goodfellow was, in many ways, tougher than at DLI. We would spend 6 hours a day in a SCIF (Special Compartmented Information Facility), listening to recordings of actual Russian voice intercept. We had to listen, identify military vs civilian voice traffic, then figure out if there was anything of military value in the content. The tapes were scratchy, with lots of feedback squeals, static, and background noise. Much different from the live native speakers we were used to dealing with in Monterey! Once again, we were subjected to weekly high-stakes testing. There was so much pressure! Some people couldn’t handle it and kind of broke down and had to be referred for psychiatric support. That was the end for them. Then some people just couldn’t pass the weekly tests. Some would pass those, but at the end, there was a test, I think two hours long, and you had to listen and identify something like 100 bits of important information. No one got them all, but you had to get at least 75%. If you failed, you usually got a retest. Second failure was death. Anyway, by this time, the Army had spent a lot of money on you. You were smart and you knew Russian to a certain level. And everyone already had a high-level clearance. So the people who failed were either retrained as 98C intelligence analysts, the guys who took our voice intercept and repackaged and sanitized it into intelligence that could be reported to higher levels, or they would be sent to the interrogator course at Ft Huachuca.

About halfway through the course, we would be given our next assignment, conditioned on passing the course. This was HUGE. I had dreamed of Germany and Europe since I was a little kid. Nothing else would do. The day came and I somehow was stuck in the back of the crowd at the bulletin board. Cheers were mixed with full-fledged screams of anguish as each soldier found their name and read their assignment. I finally got up to the board, found my name, and after that, “Ft Hood, Texas.” It was the worst assignment I could have gotten. I was crushed. I left the board and went to a payphone and called Vanessa. She heard how depressed I was and asked if I wanted her to come to San Angelo. I said yes! There was a place off base for married students, and I was able to get a room there. I didn’t have a car, so one of the married students said he would give me a ride to class every day. We became really good friends. And that’s how I wound up living with Vanessa. After about 2 months, I finished the course and was told I had to go to Ft Devens, Massachusetts for tactical training. By this time, I’d been in training for a year and a half of a 4-year enlistment, and now I had another 6-week course halfway across the country!

Vanessa and I had to sit down for a long talk. Neither of us were ready to get married, but we also didn’t want to separate. Getting married would mean we’d get a housing allowance and food rations - extra money only married soldiers could get. As an E4, there was no way we could live on my basic pay alone. So we agreed to get married. We left San Angelo and headed to Houston. We were just going to go to the courthouse and get married by a judge, but her aunt convinced us to get married at her home in Conroe. She arranged everything, and we had a family wedding by the justice of the peace there. It was a simple ceremony, but her aunt made a great feast for us. It all happened so fast that none of my family were in attendance. It didn’t seem that important to me at the time. We spent the night there, then loaded everything we owned into our car and started our adventure together. We spent the first night of our “honeymoon” in a pup tent next to a lake in Arkansas. We drove through some beautiful country to the foot of the Appalachian Trail, then drove north through the Great Smoky Mountains until we got to Massachusetts, then checked in at Ft Devens.

I do have one last story to tell as we were in-processing at Ft Devens. This was the mid-70’s, so some social movements were just starting to impact the military. When we got married, Vanessa wanted to keep her maiden name. She was proud of her Greek heritage and wasn’t about to trade that for Smith! I could hardly blame her. Anyway, this clerk tried to put her name down as Smith, and we both said, “NO!” Eventually, he told us that meant we weren’t really married, so we didn’t qualify for housing or food allowances. I tried once to explain that we were legally married and that’s all we needed to qualify. He refused to listen to our arguments. Luckily, since I’d been in the Air Force for 4 years and now the Army for almost a year and a half, I knew all I had to do was say the magic words, “Let me talk to your supervisor.” He called a Warrant Officer over, who proceeded to tell the kid what I had just told him, then he said, “Enter Vanessa X for her name, and process their pay request for rations and housing.” And that was that.

I don’t think we ever spoke Russian at the tactical training. It was sort of learning how to set up a tent, how to sneak up on the enemy, how to behave if captured. It was kind of a fun game. When it was over, I opted for an early re-enlistment that got me a $6,000 bonus! Hilarity ensued. We were paid in cash and hid the money in a box in our apartment for security while we packed up for the move. We didn’t have much, but we had more than we could fit in our car. The army sent a truck to pick up our stuff - it took the movers less than an hour. Vanessa was there for the packing while I was at the base doing last minute admin stuff. When I got back to our apartment, I looked around and then asked, “Where’s the box?” Vanessa was horrified! It got shipped off with our stuff. We frantically called the base, then the company, and found out that our stuff was on its way to Newport, Rhode Island. We jumped in our car and headed for the warehouse there, getting there in time to wait for the truck. I showed my ID and orders and explained what happened. This was back when people could be civil. I climbed into the truck with the guy, he opened the plywood crate that had our stuff, and I rummaged around till I found our money. We were saved! Without it, we wouldn’t have had money for gas for our trip to Ft Hood.

There was some Russian involved in my assignment to Ft Hood, but not much. We had 3 hours a week of language maintenance, run by an NCO, but not monitored. We could basically study textbooks, read Russian stories or newspapers, listen to tapes, or watch Russian films. Most people wasted the time, but I actually studied, because every year we had to take a Russian proficiency test. If we passed, we got to keep our jobs, if we got over 80, we got $100 a month Foreign Language Incentive Pay, and if we got over 90, it jumped to $300 a month! I always got the highest level, because we really needed it!

Next: a shorter entry about life at Ft Hood. It was all about transition.