CHAPTER 3 JULY 8, 1942 -- NOVEMBER 15, 1942 ENLISTING IN THE V-5 PROGRAM

Near the end of his course the Navy was giving a preliminary test for a Naval Aviation Cadet program (V-5 NavCad Program) at the Des Moines recruiting station. We decided to take a stab at this test before the Army gave theirs, which was scheduled a couple of weeks later. We did and we both passed the written, oral and physical exams. A few days later we received train tickets and orders to report to the Naval Aviation Cadet Selection Board in Kansas City, Missouri on July 8, 1942. We reported on the date given for the written, oral and physical exams that literally dwarfed the tests given in Des Moines. Again we both passed and were sworn in to the United States Navy as cadets in the V-5 NavCad program. We were told to return home and wait for orders to report for duty.
For the next four months we waited and I continued to work at the bank. About the first of November, both Carl and I received orders to report for duty on the 15th of November. Carl was ordered to Morningside College in Sioux City, Iowa, about two hundred miles northwest of Des Moines. I was ordered to Northwest Missouri State Teachers College in Marysville, Missouri. This town is about 80 miles southwest of Des Moines. So right off the get away we are going different directions together.

Formation of TBMs

The bank I was leaving had adopted a policy of making a bonus donation of $300.00 to all of their employees entering the service. The big catch was that each individual must have put in eight hours a day, forty hours a week for as long as he had been employed. Unfortunately, I, as well as many others, was very short on time, maybe as much as a hundred hours, due to the nature of the work and the fact no one ever said anything when you finished your work and left early. For the last few weeks before leaving I would stay until nine or ten o'clock at night playing cribbage or gin rummy with the other short timers. I made up the time, collected the three hundred dollars and was off to Marysville, Mo.