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[hhbooker2]

1954 - "The Making of a Soldier." The Korean War had ended the year before and the Vietnam War was at least a decade in the future, the interim Army of the United States was moving away from the earlier days when soldiers wore their service uniforms in combat, except in the South Pacific where they adopted a special camoflauge uniform like worn by civilian duck hunters, but these gave way to olive green herring-bone fatigues with black metal buttons and then after the Korean War they adopted the Sateen Green fatigues and later in the 1950s added a black silk cloth strip with "U.S.ARMY" in gold/yellow over the left pocket and a white cloth name strips with stamped black letters with the wearer's surname over the right pocket. They quite the khaki web belt for a black web belt and dyed their oxblood brown paratrooper boots black and gave them a high gloss spit-shine add that with a white tee-shirt, bright yellow chevrons and coloured cloth or metal qualification badges, made one heck of a target later in Vietnam for "Charley!" They gave us 4 sets of fatigues when I enlisted underage at 16 in the late 1950s, plus three sets of khakis long sleeve shirts and trousers, two sets of short sleeve khaki shirts and God-awful Bermuda khaki shorts only seemed to be worn by Medical personnel and Chaplains, hardly by Infantrymen, much less Paratroopers! They paid us US$78.00 (seventy-eight U.S. Dollars) as a RECRUIT E-1 for our first four months before automatic promotion to Privare E-2. You could make Private First Class (E-3) after 8 months service, believe it or not, that is 25% of the E-2 Privates, the other 75% remained in place as E-2! Elvis Aaron Presely made Sergeant (E-5) under two years as he was drafted/inducted, believe it or not? We had recruiting brochures much like this magazine-like publication! Sarge Booker of Tujunga, California (Get free daily scans and email me at: hhbooker2@yahoo.com)

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