I enlisted in 1950, unbeknowing to my father. He bought this farm shortly after that I enlisted in the service and he was planning on my help on the farm. I went down into Findlay.

Recruiting was down in the basement at that time, post office, and I went down and signed up in the Air Force. I went up to Toledo to take the exam and don’t you know, I flunked it!

So I was standing outside on the balcony and the Army recruiter heard that I flunked out of the Air Force so he approached me and asked me if I’d be interested in the Army.

I said, “Well, I’m not going home now.” That’s the way I got four years, because it was four years in the Air Force.

He said, “How many years do you want?” I said, “I’m here for four years.” I went home and told my dad and he broke down and he said he was losing his hand on the farm, but shortly after I was in the service and then he seen what my basic training was, he said that was the best thing I ever done.

I was a young man and shall I say, no wild but a big chip on my shoulder and he couldn’t do much with me and Uncle Sam took care of that.

I took my basic at Fort Knox, and then I got hooked up in a clerical school there working under an old master sergeant overhauling typewriters in a clerical school. Of course, that’s where I learned to type a little bit. So, I was there for several months, and then I got transferred to Camp Pickett, Virginia.

I was outside Blackstone, Virginia, close to Richmond.

There was a reserve unit come in there from New York and I joined them and we opened up that Camp Pickett. It was in mothballs at that time. It wasn’t active.

Then they got transferred out to Stockton, California at general Depot which is a lot of warehouses and subs and mothballs there for the Navy. Well, I started pulling KP at Camp Pickett and I was pulling for other fellows who didn’t like KP.

The mess sergeant says, “You like it in the mess hall?”

I said, “I gotta have a job!” So I spent the rest of my time in the kitchen, but when I was transferred to Stockton, California, from there I went to San Francisco Second Army Headquarters Cook and Bakers School.

Meat cutting, and I finished my time out all over the States. I was in training units, training companies, you know for getting fellas ready for going overseas

They’d ship everybody out and would keep the mail clerk and the cooks. They had what they called overseas levy, and you could sign up to go here or go there to some country, or go here, so I signed up to go to Germany. This was back in the time of the Korean conflict.

A company commander called me in and said, “Wilcox, I see your name on an overseas levy!”

I said, “Yes sir, I thought I’d move around a little bit.”

He says, “I’m gonna move you around, where you don’t want to go (Laughs), if I see your name on another.”

I said, “Yes, sir!” I never signed up on another one. So I finished my time up in Stockton, California at Sharp General Depot, but I was in training outfits.

I worked in a consolidated mess. That’s a mess that never closes. They are coming from overseas and going out and I worked in that for…Oh, I don’t know, a year or so. Then in the 50s they set those A bomb tests off out in Frenchman Flats, Nevada? So I worked in a field mess out there, a whole branch of the service coming in to witness them in the early 50s.

I actually saw the A bomb tests. I got pictures of them. I was up on them about 30-some miles away. We were in little trenches up over our head. We could feel the suction when it went up.