The Army would not let us remained armed when in the presence of the code. Even
in Vietnam, we had to stack our weapons in a rack at the back of the, ah,
facility. The mills were upright manual Underwoods, and I always wanted to drop
a hand grenade into the guts of one and stand back to watch.
--Bob Whitmire
www.bobwhitmire.com
On Sep 24, 2010, at 9:38 AM, Chuck Norcutt wrote:
> I know about one of those Air Force "mills" (but that's an Army term)
> that was not defenstrated. It's punishment was much more severe. It
> was treated to a few rounds from a 45 caliber automatic. :-)
>
> Chuck Norcutt
>
>
> On 9/24/2010 7:36 AM, Bob Whitmire wrote:
>> When I was in training to be a radio intercept operator back in the
>> late '60s, the Army taught us how to copy code by sending dits and
>> dahs through headphones to groups of 30 or so trainees. We then would
>> shout, for example, "Dit-Dah! Alpha!" and allow the pinkies of our
>> left hands to depress the A key. The typewriters were called "mills,"
>> and typed in all caps. Learning the code was apparently not
>> everyone's cuppa, and during my training cycle, several trainees
>> defenestrated their mills, much to the consternation of the
>> instructors. If you washed out of code school, your enlistment was
>> truncated to three years from four, but your new assignment was
>> usually Infantry Training School.
>>
>> FWIW, I defenestrated nothing or no one, and learned the code so well
>> that I still can recite it nearly flawlessly. Copy it, too, if the
>> operator isn't too ham fisted.
>>
>> --Bob Whitmire www.bobwhitmire.com
>>
>
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