Airborne Infantry AIT
 

Wikipedia :

During the Vietnam War, Fort Gordon was home to Camp Crocket, an area of the post conducting 9-week advance airborne infantry training courses for soldiers in line to attend the remaining 3 weeks of Airborne training at Fort Benning, Georgia, and then be assigned to Airborne units in Vietnam. The location closed as the war ended and today the site is overgrown with pine trees.

:lifter
Spec 4
Fort Gordon
December '68

I was assigned to 6th SFG after graduation in Sept. '70 until departing for Vietnam in July '71. I'm thinking I was in Co. "C" at the time but details a bit foggy these days. Did you know SGM Billy Johnson (my TS) or SGM Gahn or SSGT Pet Griffin, SGT Donald Brumbelow, or SGT Barnhill?

I went through the Abn oriented Infantry AIT, Spring, 1967.

We lived in WW2 barracks on main post.

Across the street there was a row of one story huts that Captured Nazis lived in during WW2.
Some of our guys lived in them.

We went out to Camp Crockett for some training and did a two week exercise there acting as a Infantry company at the end of the course.

You got a 11B2P MOS. Some got 11C2P and others 11H2P.

Most all the cadre were guys fresh back from the 173rd.

The trainees were a motley bunch-guys who had signd up for Abn Inf. or Abn unassigned.

Some were real animals-lots of black guys from Detroit, Philly, and DC.
There were racial incidents.

Halfway through, one morning foration, they pulled me and two other guys and sent us to take the SF test.
We got orders to JFK Center pending graduating BAC.
Only time I got to wear my pretty blue rope was on the bus to Ft Bragg.

Up til then they were saying you had to be 20 and a E-5 to go SF.
I turned 20 a couple weeks into SFTG, but was a PFC.
Most of us were. We were the original babies, more or less.
We caught some flak, but most of us did pretty well in spite of ourselves.

There was very little harassment in training group then. They treated us as adults and most of us responded to that.

A few flunked out or fucked up and made their way down the road to 82 or VN, but most of us made it.
Most had at least a year of college as I recall.

Sorry Dean, none of those ring a bell, but that doesn't mean anything. LTC Ellerbe was Compny Commander of C Co.nat the time and he was the only black Company Commander in the 6th. Super guy, grew up in Ellerbe, NC.

Yeah Mike , I still have some photos of Crockett and some of the guys I was there with. Mötley bunch is an understatement. While I was there there weren't any racial incidents that I was aware of, but when I arrived to Crockett and Drew my field gear from S4, they didn't issue us intrenching tools because a previous cycle had a riot or something and an MP was hit in the head with an intrenching tool and died.
As a result, when we were in the field, we had to use our steel pots to dig foxholes.
While I was there, some guys from another company brought some C4 and fuses back from the demo range and in the middle of the night blew up a porta john at the end of one of the Quonset huts. No one was caught or admitted to it. I was walking guard duty one night and Round 2-something heard a M16 burst and saw a stream of traser rounds going up in the sky.
Yeah, motley crew is right.

I hit group as Spec4 and was 19.

Assigned to Group at 19
 

Spec 4 at 19, 6th Group from October 1969 to August 1970.
Alaska, January 1970.
HALO, April 1970.
Lots of KP and aggressor details, had to pick up the slack for "ghosts "
Bob Howard, Billy Waugh, Drew Dix are a few of the notable ones from those days.
Frank Clausen, David (Lurch) Mixter and Randy Weaver were friends.

I was there from September 1968 to July 1970. SGM Tiggert was company SGM. SGM Bull Fuller was my B team SGM. After July. I went to 10th Gp.

6th Group Short timer
 

I went to 6th right out of training group about May of 69 . I think I was one of about 4 E-4s on an A team at the time. Team Sergeant was MSG Sandoval. Went on the big FTX in the tri-state (SC-GA-Tenn) area. I was on the advance party with CWO Hardy Bachelor (what a man he was). Got back and called Mrs. A and shipped out to Vietnam within 3 weeks of the call. 6th Group had lots of experienced guys in those days. One of the guys on my team was a SOG recon guy and he is how I got into CCN when I went to Vn.

6th Group
 

Bru, what company were you in? I hit Co. C out of Trng. Grp. in early Dec. '69. When the 6th was still in the old WWII barracks on Smoke Bomb Hill. SGM Beckerman was my company SGM and SFC Szabadoz ("Shaky Jake", from Poland) was my team sgt.