There was a time when I knew every one's name in this picture. Now, I only recall some of those of us in the front row: Dillon; I no longer remember the next guy's name (with the sunglasses) but he was one of the three guys from California with whom I met up in El Paso, TX; me; Patrick "Frenchy" Sanjenis, who was a cousin of the guy whom I have my arm on. I don't remember the names of anyone in the back row though I knew them all. David Hunn is second from the right.
Even using a magnifying glass on the original photograph (that someone must have taken and given me a copy), I cannot quite make out their names from the blue name tags. Someone with better eyes could probably read the names.
FSP was an intensive three-week program. All of us took a bus from our FSP barracks back at Lackland and road out to that old WWII flight training base. The birds flew around the hangar door because of all the insects. Texas was filled with bugs.
When we were training with our first flight before FSP, we were on the third floor of our barracks and yet we saw a dead scorpion in the hallway light fixture. One afternoon during a fire drill, we were standing out in the parking lot when someone saw a large spider walking along. He lightly put his foot down on the top of the spider when a wave headed out from it in all directions. We realize that it was a female spider with hundreds of babies that fled at the first sign of danger.
I realize that my dad must have made friends like I did during his bombardier training. Of course, while these guys went on to become pilots in the Air Force, dad's fellow trainees went on to fight in WWII and most probably did not make it back.
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