Transcript of Bill Gannon’s story

When I joined the Army, I did well on the radio tests in Basic Training at Ft. Knox, and the Army almost sent me to Radio School. One Christmas, my brother and I got a Morse code set (battery-operated, with a long wire), and if I remember, it could be set on "click" or "beep." The code was on each one. We spent Christmas vacation sending messages from the living room to the kitchen. We did a lot of "SOS" messages. Anyway, I could not see myself running with a huge radio strapped to my back, and my unit wanted me to go to Ft. Leonard Wood, Mo., for engineer training. My best scores, however, were in Clerical, so I stayed at Ft. Knox and went to Clerical School. When I returned to my unit, there were no administrative jobs, and they OJT’d me as a Pontoon Bridge builder. In January 1959, I was tired of putting together Pontoon and Bailey Bridges in the U. S. Army, so I reenlisted in the U. S. Air Force. I lost one grade in rank, and was now A/3c Gannon. They sent me to Eglin, AFB, Florida, and then I got orders for France! I would have preferred something more exciting, but oh well.

Anne came down from Dayton, Ohio, and we were married April 2, 1959. I took some borrowed leave time before crossing the "Big Pond," and then took a train to McGuire AFB, NJ, and then flew the Atlantic in a C-118, which had rear-facing seats. There was a Captain and his family across the aisle from me, and I asked him the reason for the seating situation. He thought for a while and replied, "They feels it’s safer in case of a crash." I guess I looked a little puzzled, but he just grinned and shrugged. They had three kids and his 3 year-old girl sat and slept on my lap for most of the flight.

We arrived at Orly and got a bus to l’ Gare Montparnasse. I walked into that train station (Big!)... looked around and thought, ‘I’ve never seen so many foreigners in my life!’ Then I remembered, ‘Hey Dummy! You’re the foreigner!’ I had bought some francs from a guy at Eglin, so I looked around and found a small bar, and had a beer. I looked around for someone that looked American, and found two in about 15 minutes. Both were from Dreux Air Base, and one of them ended up being in my barracks. They showed me where to get a ticket (Express, of course...no milk wagon) and then they left for a visit to Pigalle, returning in time for the train to Dreux.

We arrived in the town of Dreux about 2 hours later, and were greeted by a squad of French Soldiers – draftees who did honor guard duty every time a train came in. Sure as hell beat fighting in Algeria! I got another beer at the station bar, and then an Air Force shuttle came and we were off to Dreux Air Base.

I signed in with the CQ, and was to see the First Sergeant in the morning. He looked me over and said, "I’m the one you’ll see when you get in trouble." Then he grinned, shook hands and said, "Welcome to Dreux." The Air Force needed administrative types, I was assigned as a "titless WAF in Base Matriel. It was pretty good duty. We all liked the ‘First Shirt.’ When he said it was time for a "GI" party, we had to agree, because we had some pigs in our barracks, but we always got it done in time to make the shuttle into Dreux (town) and/or on to Paris.

After the Berlin Wall went up, we did a lot of alerts (laying in a ditch, looking at sheep – with weapons and NO ammo. We were told we would be issued ammunition, if necessary. Someone told them in supply that I was ex-Army, so instead of the usual Carbine, I was offered the one and only M-1 .30 caliber rifle on the base, and it was thereafter known to be mine for each alert, but still no ammo. When the alerts came mostly to an end, it came to me one day.... Did they have any ammo for that M-1? I asked the supply sergeant if they had any. He grinned at me and said, "Gannon, the official weapon for the Air Force is the M-1 Carbine, and that’s the ammo we carry!"

We also carried a little black dossimeter to detect radiation. Well, I learned years later that if they were brand-new, they were to be changed monthly. I received a used one and carried it on my key chain for 3 years!

I went to Paris five or six times, but most of the time I stayed in Dreux. I walked the streets, stopped in pastry shops for espresso and ate the best pastries. I found a great, small stand-up bar (I called ‘Mom & Pops’), and in the summer of 1959, I and several buddies would go to town several nights a week We usually drank Porter 39 (brown), and then make it back to the station and hit that bar for a Pelfor 43, or a Tiger Scotch (both Belgian and 9% or better). Then we’d catch the shuttle back to the Air Base and send someone to the chow-hall to see if there was a friendly night-cook who would fix us up with a tray of greasy egg sandwiches.

Many nights, my bed would spin, and if a grabbed a handle of a locker next to my bunk, the whole barracks would spin. Needless to say, none of us were ever constipated! That brown beer makes one "healthy."

In the summer of ’59, we made several trips to Paris. We usually got into Paris about 10 PM, and would share a taxi to take us up to the famous Place Pigalle. Taxi’s in Paris were an experience... They don’t stop at stop signs or stop lights, but just flash their lights on and off. Especially the Algerian drivers. On beautiful and friendly Rue Pigalle... the Nebraska Bar, and the Canada Bar on the corner, with the Hotel Pigalle across the street from both of them, for customer convenience!

My best friend was Al Sander from W. Texas. The main thing we had in common was that our wives were arriving in a few months. My wife Anne in November and Al’s wife, Norita, in December, so if we showed up at the Nebraska Bar, it was for the 100 franc (25 cent) draft beer and we ate a lot of French bread to watch the "show." It was never boring. We were told that if a girl had a bruise on her arm, she had taken a shot for the "Clap." Most has bruises! In the daytime in Paris, we would "stomp the Champs" [Eleysees] and go over to Notre Dame, where we would climb the outside steps and hang over the sides with the gargoyles.

On one of those trips, I had a very interesting evening in Paris. I went to the Nebraska for a couple of beers, but all the bar stools were full, so I sat at a table. Four men walked in, ordered mugs of beer, and asked to share my table. One of them had very good English, and in talking to them, I found that three were from Denmark, and one from Belgium, and they were all French Foreign Legionnaires. They were sappers (combat engineers) and if you’ve ever seen the Legion in a parade, passing in review, sappers are the ones wearing leather aprons and holding an axe at port arms. At that time the Legion was headquartered in Algeria, and by French Law, no Legionnaire was allowed in France proper. These men had enlisted at the same time, and wanted some extra leave time in order to go to Paris, so the took discharges. They planned to re-enlist to keep their rank for retirement, because "they found a home in the Legion!" They had served in Chad where they built a road through the jungle, and of course, in Algeria where a war of independence was in progress. The four of us decided to go sight seeing (bar hopping), and all I can say is that I was in some of the meanest bars possible. But what the hell – I was with four "kick-ass" Legionnaires! They were, actually, very confident, yet extremely polite.

I had a cousin – 3rd or 4th – whose husband was a M/Sgt. stationed at SHAPE Headquarters outside Paris. I visited once and when it was time for Anne to arrive, they wanted me to come to their place and we’d all go to Orly airport to get her. There was my cousin and her husband, Hattie and Joe, with their three children, and another S/Sgt, with his wife and two more children, so Anne had a party of ten to greet her, which wasn’t bad!! We went back to my cousin’s house, where we all ate and partied. Anne took a bath, and of course, I didn’t need any Viagra that night!

Next day, Joe drove us to Senoches, about 10 kilometers from Dreux Airbase. (The official name of the air base was Dreux/Senoches Air Base, and the base was roughly half-way between the two towns.) We got a hotel room and stayed about a week, and I hitched a ride to work from there. Officer’s housing was in the town, so I usually got picked up by one of them, or sometimes by a Frenchman in one of those cheap Citroens that swayed back and forth. While at the hotel, I decided to make coffee in our room on a hot-plate I had brought along. Now I never did understand that 110 and 220 electric crap – converters, etc., and a short time after I plugged it in, all the lights went off in the hotel. All of the hotel! I heard a lot of voices in the hallway, and the manager-owner knocked on our door and apologized for any inconvenience, and shortly, the lights came back on. I decided that my hot-plate couldn’t have caused all that, so.... I plugged it in again. Yep! Off went the lights again, so I unplugged it and stashed it under the bed. I had the same problem trying to use an iron in our first home. We were in our second home before I got a converter, which we used for a toaster.

Our first home was in Louveau, half-way between the base and Senoches. Leave the base, go to the bottom of the hill, go right about 4 miles and you’re there. It was beautiful from the outside. A wall, a gate, a small chateau with three rooms, an out-house out back, cold water, a rusted cooking stove for wood or coke, and brick floors that turned into red mud when mopped....Hot Damn! We’re living now!

The winter of 1959-60 was one of the coldest they had in a long time. We put our mattress and box spring in kitchen, used an Alladin heater and burnt anything I could find in the stove. Needless to say, we spent a lot of time in bed under the covers, drank a lot of wine and ate a lot of cheese and sausage. We could go up the road to "Mama’s" and have a good steak (horse) and salad. We made a lot of friends with the local farmers (a lot of good memories) and we also spent a lot of time at the base service club and the movie theater, etc. I had a buddy who worked at the BOQ, so if we didn’t want to go home on weekend nights, he fixed us up with a room. (Nice to have friends in high places!) We stayed at the BOQ Christmas Eve of 1959 and that night, Anne became "in a motherly way." I know that for sure, because one day short of nine months later, Christopher Allen Gannon was born. We moved to St. Remy at that time, where we had a much warmer home and a hot-water system. We partied and baby-sat a lot with a S/Sgt. and his wife who lived at the other end of town. He was on flying status and was, I think, an engineer.

I had a car by now, a Simca, so we could get around. We went to Paris several times and say the major sights. I want to say that the painting, the "Mona Lisa" was extremely disappointing! I don’t know why they posted an armed guard by it.

When Anne and I went to Paris, we both carried AWOL bags, and the hotel staffs usually thought Anne was a hooker. When we would leave about 8 or 9 hours later, they looked at me like I was some kind of "Super Stud." Well, maybe I was in those days—I’m too old to remember now. [Yeah, Right -- sayeth the transcriber]

Anyway, Anne got "in a motherly way" again. By now, I had been promoted to A/1c (E-4) and before too long we moved to American housing in Chateauneuf, and along came Deborah Gayle Gannon, just 12 days less than one year after Chris. Chris was born at the Dreux Air Base hospital, but they closed the baby ward there, so Debbie was born at Evreux Air Base hospital. By that time, we were getting close to "Goodbye C-119s. I don’t remember the dates, but the Air Force reserve came and got them. It was kind of sad—sadder yet when the Alabama National Guard came and took over most of the base. We had a Unit Supply, Air Police and a Dispensary. That was about it, and we regulars stuck together.

We left our front door unlocked and quite often when we got up in the morning, there would be a couple of Airmen asleep on the couch or the floor. Anne would fix some breakfast and off we would go for another day’s duty.

Al and Norita extended their tour for another year. I was mixed in my feelings, but Anne and I decided to go home. Anne was somewhat homesick, and the families wanted to see the kids, so it was back to the land of the round doorknobs. It did not take long to get homesick for France. It gave us a lot of great memories.

After 30 days leave, we were off to Langley AFB, Virginia. Anne hated Virginia, but I was too busy at War Plans due to the Cuban Crisis and all the other known and unknown crises we had. I did make Airman of the Month and Airman of the Quarter for HQ TAC during or after the Cuban Crisis. That got me off a lot of details, $25 and a lot of points for promotion – we were frozen in rank at that time and for a year or more, but when they finally unfroze the rank, I made S/Sgt.

I got out of the Air Force in February, 1965 and in 1970 I joined the Ohio Air National Guard. They cross trained me as an AC&W operator. I hated that job, so after 3 years, I switched to the Army Reserve in 1973. I went to a USAR school with taught advanced officer and NCO training. Anne also joined and stayed in for 4 years. She got in just before she was 35, and was called "Mom" by the girls at basic training.

I retired in October, 1982, with 21 years, 1 month and 19 days total service, as a M/Sgt. (E-8). Since I was a mixture of Regular and Reserve, I had to wait until I reached my 60th birthday to get pay and benefits. On December 19, 1997, I got my certificate of retirement, pay and other benefits.

Chris, my little Frenchman, retired from the Navy in February of 2000, and has a super job and a new home.

Well, that’s the Life and Times of Bill Gannon.