Took It All Off

Ambrose J Borkowski 1st Sgt 706^th described his experience at George Field for the 1996 reunion.   “Here I was with two years’ service having joined August 7th, 1946. I spent months going to a clerical school at Fort Logan Colorado, then a couple of months in basic training, getting inoculations and watching some training films, six months on the line as an aviation mechanic trainee and six months as a dispatcher.

 I can remember well the first day that we arrived at George Field. This was a new field, buildings were all new, cardboard sheds, tar paper covered, with three coal stoves in the sleeping barracks, potbelly type stoves for heat. We were dumped with our baggage at our group of buildings that we were to occupy and were no more than trying to get over just what things looked like, when a Jeep pulled up and the commanding officer got out and wanted to know “who in the hell was in charge of this outfit?” More than one of the men called to me and pushed me right up to the front before I realized what was going on. After I admitted that I was the First Sergeant, the Colonel wanted to know why we did not have things in order.  Here we were duffel bags all over the ground, some men laying on the grass about a foot tall, sitting on their bags, all of us just wondering. I tried to explain that we had just gotten there less than 10 minutes ago, but he only wanted everything in shape immediately.

 Our primary mission was to furnish mechanics to keep the twin engine planes that were there for the cadets to fly in flying condition.  Our outfit was assigned about 20 planes to keep up.  The cadets flew around the clock, so we had three shifts working all the time. We still had to try and maintain some type of military decorum. We had men coming off the flight line at 8:00 AM, they wanted to get some sleep, yet we had to try and show that each man was getting X number of exercise hours, military drills, taking his turn at KP, non- commissioned officers had to take their turn being in charge of quarters particularly on weekends. Imagine the men that came off the three to 11 shift having to get up at 7:00 for calisthenics or to attend a mandatory training film or the ones just getting off the line after working all night.

The planes assigned to us had to have regular inspections every 20 hours, 40 hours, then more extensive inspections at 80 hours, so we were constantly trying to get all our planes ready.  Some of the key men might be out for maybe KP, sick, on furlough or whatever.  Only certain numbers of these men were qualified to do certain type of inspections.

What did we do in our spare time?  Well for one, we had intramural sports and a George Field basketball team and a baseball team. During the war there was a gas rationing program, and it was impossible to buy gasoline without a ration stamp. Not too many people were able to travel very far. That is where we had the advantage. During the basketball season, we would travel all over the states of Indiana and Illinois because we had staff cars available to go plus the gas. The other teams were glad to have us come out as they usually made a big thing out of it. At times I felt like we were nothing more than a barnstorming team. We really had a good time though. Most of the places we played, fed us after the game, treated us royally.

Each company received a percentage of the profits from the post exchange operations to use for their recreational facilities or have a company party, buy athletic equipment, pool tables, etcetera.  Most of the money went into the day room, that was our recreation room. The Major decided to have a formal affair which turned out really nice.  As time went on the non-com club accumulated excess money and the ideal thing to do was to put on something for the members. This was for non-commissioned officers those of Sergeant or higher rank. They had a bar, of course, kitchen for light lunches, a place to dance, jukebox, just some place for you to go when off duty and relax and to bring your guests. How he made the contact I don't know, but the Major was able to get a troop of dancers in from Indianapolis to put on a show.  The event went off real well, according to reports from some of the men the next day.  It was not long before rumors began flying around that things went on that were not necessarily in good taste by some of the people in the Vincennes area. One thing led to another and there was an investigation by the commanding officer of the post because of the pressure being put on by the newspaper. What happened was that the girls went all out --or off might be a better word to describe the show.”