Life of Ed Murphy Part 8

In March, 1943, after completing my second quarter of college I received my call to active duty. I was told to report to Kearns, Utah, Air Force Base for my basic training. I was anxious to get going. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to report on schedule as I had contracted the german measles just a few days prior. Anyway, I went on schedule. I reported in Salt Lake at the train Depot in the morning. After walking around Salt Lake City all day waiting to be transferred out to Kearns we left around midnight. Because I was not used to walking on concrete, I got a very painful case of “shin splints”. I don’t believe I slept a wink that night. On my first day in the service we went to the supply depot for our uniforms. Of course the clothes they supplied me were too large. My barracks bag containing my clothes was so heavy I couldn’t carry it. I paid a kid 50 cents to carry them to the barracks for me. We spent 16 days at Kearns, drilling, doing calisthenics, running obstacle courses, taking additional tests, physical and mental examinations and shots. From Kearns we were transferred to Omaha, Nebraska for a three month college training course at Creighton University.
The college training courses were very educational. I had never learned so much in such a short period of time. Discipline was extremely strict. Many hours were spent drilling and marching. The girls in Omaha were very pretty and I enjoyed associating with them. Each Sunday we had a dance. We had great orchestras, bands and pretty girls.
I contracted Scarlet fever while in Omaha and was hospitalized for two weeks in Lincoln, Nebraska. During this college training we were required to take 10 hours of introductory flight lessons. This provided me with my first experience in flying.
In June of 1943 we transferred to Santa Ana, California for our pre-flight training. The training was all academic except for the many hours of drilling, marching and calisthenics . The schooling was excellent, which was directed more to flying, i.e. aircraft mechanics, navigation, physics, aircraft identification, meteorology etc. We were also given many different aptitude tests in order to determine what phase, if any, of flying we were adapted to. I was classified as a pilot, which was my desire. I really wanted to prove to myself I could learn to fly. Discipline at Santa Ana was very demanding…