Veteran interview with Bob Kephart (A)
(7:45) Mr. Bob Kephart tells about joining the military and his experience in basic training.Florence-Lauderdale Public Library Digital Archive Interview with Robert Kephart July 13, 2011 Florence, Alabama Conducted by Clint Alley and Rhonda Haygood Clip 1 Clint Alley: Well today is July13, 2011. I’...
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| Format: | Electronic |
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Florence-Lauderdale County Public Library
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| Online Access: | https://cdm15947.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/war/id/193 |
| format |
Electronic |
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War Years at Home and Abroad Collection |
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Florence-Lauderdale County Public Library |
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Florence-Lauderdale County Public Library |
| topic |
Military life |
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Military life Veteran interview with Bob Kephart (A) Florence-Lauderdale Public Library |
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Military life Military training; Korean War, 1950 – 1953 |
| description |
(7:45) Mr. Bob Kephart tells about joining the military and his experience in basic training.Florence-Lauderdale Public Library Digital Archive
Interview with Robert Kephart
July 13, 2011
Florence, Alabama
Conducted by Clint Alley and Rhonda Haygood
Clip 1
Clint Alley: Well today is July13, 2011. I’m Clint Alley with Rhonda Haygood and we’re here at the Florence-Lauderdale Public Library in Florence, Alabama with Mr. Bob Kephart. Mr. Kephart is gonna tell us a little bit about his military service today. We thank you for coming down today Mr. Kephart. We’ll start off by asking you, when and where were you born?
Bob Kephart: Born July the 12th, yesterday...
CA: Happy birthday.
BK: ...was my birthday.
RH: Happy birthday.
BK: July 12, 1932 in Florence.
CA: Okay. All right and have you lived here your entire life?
BK: Yes, I have except when I was in the military.
CA: Okay. Well where did you go to school here?
BK: I went to Gilbert School and from there I went to Coffee High School and graduated from Coffee and then went to UNA.
CA: Okay. And when did you get into the military?
BK: In 1951.
CA: Okay. Now was that part of ROTC or, or were you drafted or, how did, how did that come about?
BK: That was in the National Guard. The Guard had been called out in the Korean War and they were trying to rebuild the National Guard unit here and I had a lot of kin people, a lot of, my brother and first cousins and uncles, a lot of them were in the Guard and they were called to active duty. And then they were trying to rebuild the unit and I joined the rebuilding of the unit when they were, some of them coming back to start the unit back up again. CA: Um-hm.
BK: So I joined it at that time. Just volunteered it.
CA: Okay. Okay. And were you out of school at that time, I guess out of college?
BK: No. No.
CA: Okay. Okay. Let’s see, you would have been, how old were you?
BK: I was eighteen, I th...
CA: Eighteen?
BK: I had to be eighteen...
CA: Okay.
BK: ...I think. I’d just turned eighteen I think when I...
CA: Okay. Eighteen. All right. And where did you have your basic training?
BK: Fort Jackson, South Carolina.
CA: And what was that like for you?
BK: Well, ah, it’s, this is a long story. I, I probably need to go back, if you don’t—
CA: Yeah. That’s fine.
BK: ...mind. Let me...
CA: Yeah.
BK: ...let me tell you how this all happened. Ah, I was in the National Guard and of course without having a lot of people here, as the time came up I progressed in my rank. So, I was a master sergeant, the highest grade of an enlisted. I went through, well I’m what they call a mustang. I was a private, a private 1st class, a corporal, a sergeant, a sergeant 1st class and a master sergeant and that was as high as they had then. And I was in college, too, at the time. And I was in ROTC. And I went through the first two years of ROTC, went into the third year of ROTC and was in a good, been a good while into the third year of ROTC and all of a sudden I got a letter from the government that says, “Hey, you can’t draw pay from two different entities of the government.” Which I was drawing from the National Guard and Advanced ROTC pays you a stipend, too. And they said, “Which one do you want to stay with?” And I said, “Well,”― I’d met my wife already the first day of college, I met her on the first day of college but we weren’t married but I was just, you know, I—and I said, “Well, I’m in love and I don’t want to leave town and I’m not interested in going on active duty right now, so I’m gonna stay in the Guard and get out of ROTC.” Well, two weeks later I received a letter from Uncle Sam says, “Congratulations, you’re now, will be a member of the Na— of the Army.” I said, ...Wait a minute. You know, I’m in ROTC. I’m in the Guard.” They said, “Well, you’ve dropped ROTC.” And I said, “Yes, because I was staying in the Guard.” He said, “Well, the Guard was not deferring you. ROTC was deferring you.” I said, “Okay, I’ll go back in ROTC and drop the Guard.” Once you open the letter you do not get a recourse. They will not let you change your mind once you open that letter is what they told me. So I went to basic training as a master sergeant. I had all my uniforms and everything else with me and they was already worn you know. They’d turning, faded and stripes up and down my arm. And they said, “What are you doing over here in basic training?” I said, “Here’s the story.” So I explained that to them, how that happened. So they put me in charge of a, of a barracks there and I went through basic training with that group. I had been through a lot of basic with the guard and with ROTC, too. So I carried a unit though basic training and that’s when you asked how it was but I wanted to sum up it myself. And, ah, I went through it and we, we had several early morning hikes with backpacks on our backs for miles and we camped out at nights ah, with, raining, cold, miserable, eat, trying to eat out of a mess kit with it raining and you got mashed potatoes with water in it and you know, this type deal and that’s part of the Army. You know, you have to live with that, so anyway, I went to Fort Jackson, South Carolina. From there, from basic I went to Camp Chaffee, Arkansas and went into an artillery unit there for some advanced individual training. And they, we finished that training and they loaded us all up and gave us shots and said, “You’re going to Korea.”
CA: Um.
BK: I said, “You know, I, okay everything was fine.” Then they got to looking and said, “You’re a master sergeant and you’re twenty-one years old. We’re not sending you over there [??] with that type of a grade and that thing.” And said, “You made high on certain tests so we gonna send you to Fort Bliss, Texas to a guided missile school.” So I go out there and they put me in charge of a unit that was training to put guided missiles around the city of Detroit during the Korean War. And we had what we called, we went out into White Sands Proving Grounds and we trained on the guided missile systems and we, we had the, what you call the Radio Track, or the Target Track Missiles and you had the, ah, TTRs and RTRs, the Radio Track which would lock onto a missile and it was like a triangle. We had a computer that would lock onto the missile, lock onto the target and we had one that would lock onto the missile and they fed information back and then that computer would fin it out and tell that missile how far out that drone was, what the speed of it was and all that type stuff. So we went through all of that type training. The guys that went through the Target Track Radar, Radar Track were offered jobs immediately because they had a lot of technology that they went through back then that we don’t, you know, that was new. It was new. They were offered jobs in the, right out of, as soon as they got out of service they could go on the job. But anyway, we completed our training there, we, in White Sands and then we went to Detroit, Michigan and we were the first unit in the United States to set up a, our radars on towers and our missiles underground.
CA: Hum. BK: And we went into River Rouge Park in Detroit, Michigan and we set these missiles up and we war headed them and everything. They were on revetments of concrete, you know deeper than this room right here and they were on railroad tracks that you, all you had to do was just push a button and it, the missile would slide over and get on an elevator and as that elevator rai—was raising that missile raised. And when it hit the top it was ready to go. All we had to do was arm it with an arming core and then it was—. So we, we surrounded the city of Detroit to protect it because that was, all of our manufacturing was heavily in Detroit, Michigan. |
| title |
Veteran interview with Bob Kephart (A) |
| titleStr |
Veteran interview with Bob Kephart (A) |
| author |
Florence-Lauderdale Public Library |
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Florence-Lauderdale Public Library |
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FLCPLwar193 |
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https://cdm15947.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/war/id/193 |
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http://cdm15947.contentdm.oclc.org/utils/getthumbnail/collection/war/id/193 |
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1705462193063985152 |
| spelling |
Veteran interview with Bob Kephart (A)Military training; Korean War, 1950 – 1953(7:45) Mr. Bob Kephart tells about joining the military and his experience in basic training.Florence-Lauderdale Public LibraryFlorence-Lauderdale Public LibraryBob Kephart2011-07-13sound; textaudio/mp3; text/pdfEnglishPart of the Florence-Lauderdale Public Library CollectionMay be protected by U.S. Copyright laws. Contact the Florence-Lauderdale Public Library for permission to use.Florence-Lauderdale Public Library Digital Archive
Interview with Robert Kephart
July 13, 2011
Florence, Alabama
Conducted by Clint Alley and Rhonda Haygood
Clip 1
Clint Alley: Well today is July13, 2011. I’m Clint Alley with Rhonda Haygood and we’re here at the Florence-Lauderdale Public Library in Florence, Alabama with Mr. Bob Kephart. Mr. Kephart is gonna tell us a little bit about his military service today. We thank you for coming down today Mr. Kephart. We’ll start off by asking you, when and where were you born?
Bob Kephart: Born July the 12th, yesterday...
CA: Happy birthday.
BK: ...was my birthday.
RH: Happy birthday.
BK: July 12, 1932 in Florence.
CA: Okay. All right and have you lived here your entire life?
BK: Yes, I have except when I was in the military.
CA: Okay. Well where did you go to school here?
BK: I went to Gilbert School and from there I went to Coffee High School and graduated from Coffee and then went to UNA.
CA: Okay. And when did you get into the military?
BK: In 1951.
CA: Okay. Now was that part of ROTC or, or were you drafted or, how did, how did that come about?
BK: That was in the National Guard. The Guard had been called out in the Korean War and they were trying to rebuild the National Guard unit here and I had a lot of kin people, a lot of, my brother and first cousins and uncles, a lot of them were in the Guard and they were called to active duty. And then they were trying to rebuild the unit and I joined the rebuilding of the unit when they were, some of them coming back to start the unit back up again. CA: Um-hm.
BK: So I joined it at that time. Just volunteered it.
CA: Okay. Okay. And were you out of school at that time, I guess out of college?
BK: No. No.
CA: Okay. Okay. Let’s see, you would have been, how old were you?
BK: I was eighteen, I th...
CA: Eighteen?
BK: I had to be eighteen...
CA: Okay.
BK: ...I think. I’d just turned eighteen I think when I...
CA: Okay. Eighteen. All right. And where did you have your basic training?
BK: Fort Jackson, South Carolina.
CA: And what was that like for you?
BK: Well, ah, it’s, this is a long story. I, I probably need to go back, if you don’t—
CA: Yeah. That’s fine.
BK: ...mind. Let me...
CA: Yeah.
BK: ...let me tell you how this all happened. Ah, I was in the National Guard and of course without having a lot of people here, as the time came up I progressed in my rank. So, I was a master sergeant, the highest grade of an enlisted. I went through, well I’m what they call a mustang. I was a private, a private 1st class, a corporal, a sergeant, a sergeant 1st class and a master sergeant and that was as high as they had then. And I was in college, too, at the time. And I was in ROTC. And I went through the first two years of ROTC, went into the third year of ROTC and was in a good, been a good while into the third year of ROTC and all of a sudden I got a letter from the government that says, “Hey, you can’t draw pay from two different entities of the government.” Which I was drawing from the National Guard and Advanced ROTC pays you a stipend, too. And they said, “Which one do you want to stay with?” And I said, “Well,”― I’d met my wife already the first day of college, I met her on the first day of college but we weren’t married but I was just, you know, I—and I said, “Well, I’m in love and I don’t want to leave town and I’m not interested in going on active duty right now, so I’m gonna stay in the Guard and get out of ROTC.” Well, two weeks later I received a letter from Uncle Sam says, “Congratulations, you’re now, will be a member of the Na— of the Army.” I said, ...Wait a minute. You know, I’m in ROTC. I’m in the Guard.” They said, “Well, you’ve dropped ROTC.” And I said, “Yes, because I was staying in the Guard.” He said, “Well, the Guard was not deferring you. ROTC was deferring you.” I said, “Okay, I’ll go back in ROTC and drop the Guard.” Once you open the letter you do not get a recourse. They will not let you change your mind once you open that letter is what they told me. So I went to basic training as a master sergeant. I had all my uniforms and everything else with me and they was already worn you know. They’d turning, faded and stripes up and down my arm. And they said, “What are you doing over here in basic training?” I said, “Here’s the story.” So I explained that to them, how that happened. So they put me in charge of a, of a barracks there and I went through basic training with that group. I had been through a lot of basic with the guard and with ROTC, too. So I carried a unit though basic training and that’s when you asked how it was but I wanted to sum up it myself. And, ah, I went through it and we, we had several early morning hikes with backpacks on our backs for miles and we camped out at nights ah, with, raining, cold, miserable, eat, trying to eat out of a mess kit with it raining and you got mashed potatoes with water in it and you know, this type deal and that’s part of the Army. You know, you have to live with that, so anyway, I went to Fort Jackson, South Carolina. From there, from basic I went to Camp Chaffee, Arkansas and went into an artillery unit there for some advanced individual training. And they, we finished that training and they loaded us all up and gave us shots and said, “You’re going to Korea.”
CA: Um.
BK: I said, “You know, I, okay everything was fine.” Then they got to looking and said, “You’re a master sergeant and you’re twenty-one years old. We’re not sending you over there [??] with that type of a grade and that thing.” And said, “You made high on certain tests so we gonna send you to Fort Bliss, Texas to a guided missile school.” So I go out there and they put me in charge of a unit that was training to put guided missiles around the city of Detroit during the Korean War. And we had what we called, we went out into White Sands Proving Grounds and we trained on the guided missile systems and we, we had the, what you call the Radio Track, or the Target Track Missiles and you had the, ah, TTRs and RTRs, the Radio Track which would lock onto a missile and it was like a triangle. We had a computer that would lock onto the missile, lock onto the target and we had one that would lock onto the missile and they fed information back and then that computer would fin it out and tell that missile how far out that drone was, what the speed of it was and all that type stuff. So we went through all of that type training. The guys that went through the Target Track Radar, Radar Track were offered jobs immediately because they had a lot of technology that they went through back then that we don’t, you know, that was new. It was new. They were offered jobs in the, right out of, as soon as they got out of service they could go on the job. But anyway, we completed our training there, we, in White Sands and then we went to Detroit, Michigan and we were the first unit in the United States to set up a, our radars on towers and our missiles underground.
CA: Hum. BK: And we went into River Rouge Park in Detroit, Michigan and we set these missiles up and we war headed them and everything. They were on revetments of concrete, you know deeper than this room right here and they were on railroad tracks that you, all you had to do was just push a button and it, the missile would slide over and get on an elevator and as that elevator rai—was raising that missile raised. And when it hit the top it was ready to go. All we had to do was arm it with an arming core and then it was—. So we, we surrounded the city of Detroit to protect it because that was, all of our manufacturing was heavily in Detroit, Michigan.http://server15947.contentdm.oclc.org/u?/war,193 |