It is the 13th of August. For as long as I've been posting anywhere, "journal" or "discussion board" or "blog"

dating all the way back to the Compuserve days, on the 13th of August I report that "On this date in 1969, Class 70-01 of USAF Officer's Training School at the Medina Annex of the Lackland Military Training Center in San Antonio Texas, pinned on its gold bars and became Second Lieutenants (2LTs) in the USAF."

And we really did throw our hats in the air, and we really did all manage to find them, and then we got salutes from enlisted men for the first time (and we did tip the first enlisted person to salute us $1.00, as is - or was - customary). My first salute came from TSG Jack Adams, who had been one of my TIs in Basic Training. He had a bunch of former Airmen Basics in that class, and we were proud to get the first salute from him in particular - in fact we sort of lined up in front of him. He was one of those movie-type TIs with the smokey bear hat and razor-edge creases in his suntans, and a stogie, nearly always cocked at an angle such that the end of it almost made a right angle with the severely tilted-down brim of his campaign hat. He was all tough talk and yelling and so on, but a sweetheart underneath and did a good job getting such a bunch of weenies as us through Basic and into uniform with a minimum of pain & agony. I have a scan of a photo of him saluting me, somewhere. After Basic, OTS was not such a big deal; when you've been screamed at by professionals, upperclassmen aren't even in the ballpark. OTS also had the benefit of our own club, where we could actually drink beer (alcohol is prohibited to enlisted trainees). It was in the OTS club that a couple hundred of us stood around on 20 July, 1969, and watched Apollo 11's triumph.

A little less than four-and-a-half years later (December 13, 1973) I was a civilian again, never having been shot at. Imagine that.