It seems I got 47 & 48 mostly right. Parts of 48 are still messed up in the formatting, but the webmaster and I are working on them.
I got quite a few readers who wrote about their experiences with the Army, mostly along the line that they remembered these things well. The shot line brought back a lot of memories to people, generally not in a good way! A lot of the memories were the type where you look back after twenty to thirty years and laugh, but at the time they were a royal pain in the ass! I think you’ll find that in any field.
I think I have the major errors and screwups in my story corrected, but there will also be some minor items that people will notice. For instance, a number of people said that the Airborne doesn’t say HOO-RAH but says AIRBORNE! I fixed that, along with a reference to an Interstate section that didn’t exist in 1977. Another thing I have seen is that every few years the Army (and the Navy; I hear about it from my son, twenty-plus years in the Navy and Reserve) seems to change things just for the sake of changing things! What was the purpose of changing the Division Readiness Force to the Division Ready Brigade? Same people doing the same things. Well, I’m sure the people who think these things up are much wiser than I am, and they have to be better paid than I am!
I was surprised by the number of readers who recalled Grace Hopper and had either met her or heard her speak. Truly fascinating woman. She really was one of the giants.