What was I doing besides having fun in Colorado for a whole year? I was officially property of the Colorado National Guard. I still met for meetings an training with the other people to which I was assigned, but at that time, it was still a secret. If I was not home when Tom got there, he assumed I was out with Mary or off sightseeing which I was a lot of the time.
My assignment with the Guards was kind of fun. I was the tool girl or at least one of them. I had to learn all the tools and all the parts of tanks and trucks. Yes, I have forgotten most of it now although I have a fuzzy memory of the thing about the little glass or plastic window screen things that went in a tank and had something to do with the guy driving it being able to see where he was going. It was all pretty technical and clearly forgotten by the time I got to Hawaii.
I had to get inside tanks for lessons but darn it, I never got to drive one and I so wanted to do that.
Each tool had a special place it went on huge pegboards in the area I was supposed to man or woman or person? I had to know what they were, what they were used for and what their numbers were. I was constantly looking them up because numbers and I never were close friends. One tool was so huge and so heavy it took two of us to lift it. It looked something like a wrench but it was just so big.
Fort Carson was where they sent a tank or other heavy equipment to be worked on when it was broke. I remember once looking out at the long line of flatbed train cars with over a mile of tanks fastened on them. They were headed in to post to be overhauled. It was quite a sight.
A one time there was some flooding there up above Colorado Springs. I'm not sure of the exact location but even though it wasn't part of my duties I was asked to help out with a small bit of rescue. I couldn't handle it. Saving people wasn't bad it was getting into a boat. It was too much. I couldn't do it. My face got white at the thought and I started to faint. The guys with me knew me and knew my fear of boats. They recommended I be sent back to handle other details. I could always hand out blankets or cups of coffee.
As it turned out I didn't need to do either because by then the experts in flood situations had arrived and the most of us were told to go back to post where we were then thanked and excused for the rest of it. We were not medical personnel and we weren't trained in rescue operations. That were probably afraid they would end up rescuing us. Some of the guys they kept but all the girls were sent back and guys they felt were not essential. If they had a tank that needed fixing our guys could probably have handled that.