Our "Court Martial"/ Commendation

I neglected to say that we had "problems" with the office of information at the Pentagon during our stint in the Air Force.  It seemed they always were telling us how to do our job, even though they had never seen our act.  They ordered us to always sing with a US Air Force banner (10 ft high x 20 ft across) behind us.  It was huge and very cumbersome and was in a wooden crate which weighed about eighty pounds.  Since we were our own stage crew for most of our shows, it seemed we never had time to set up "the banner".  Our large PA speakers did have USAF stencilled on them.  The USAF did supply us with "singing outfits".  (see earlier blogs for pictures) Of course, we never wore our dress blue uniforms when we did our show.

On our Southeast Asia trip, the office of information ordered us to perform every show in our dress blue uniforms.  We ignored the order, because we wanted to entertain the audience not "piss them off".  You see we looked like we were career military because we were E-6's. The young draftees wouldn't like us because we were non-commissioned officers (Lifers) and the older career soldiers wouldn't like us because we were too young to be that high ranked.

As we toured southeast Asia, we met with the base commanders at each stop and asked them if it would be OK for us to wear our "singing outfits" rather than our dress blues.  All of the base commanders agreed with us that wearing our dress blues would be a mistake.  On November 17, 1971, when we arrived at OSAN AFB in Korea,  the base commander (General Robert W. Maloy) met us at the tarmac with several MPs and said the he "must confiscate our singing outfits".  We again explained the situation and he let us perform in our singing outfits.  He sent a message to the office of information that the order was received AFTER our performance.

When we returned to Bolling AFB, our commander and director of the USAF Band (Colonel Arnald D. Gabriel) was very upset with us because his superior officer at the office of information (Pentagon) wanted to court martial us for disobeying his order to wear our dress blues.  Colonel Gabriel asked us to each sign the Administrative Reprimand.  We did.  The next day they had a big ceremony at Bolling AFB presenting us with the Commendation Medal for meritorious service.  The chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff, Admiral T.H Moorer, sent us a note with his picture. Our time in the Air Force ended February 4, 1972.