A history of the

Albert Taylor and Frances McCamy Rymer

Families from 1680 to the present day

John Rymer
April 8, 2006
Born: Crandall, GA May21, 1928
School: Hall's Chapel, Georgia First Grade
Ocoee Grammar School, Ocoee TN, grades 2 - 8
Polk County High School, Benton TN grades 9 - 12
Attended U of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN for short while
Florida International University, BS in Business 1980

Air Force Days:

In 1949 I went to Florida where Onie and her husband, Buddy were living and worked for Clearview Awning for about a year when I was about to be drafted for the Korean War. Knowing this I left Clearview and drove back to Old Fort and awaited my fate. My brother Frank was postmaster at Old Fort, holding this job until the rural route mailman job opened which he knew would be soon due to the age of the mailman. One day I was at the post office watching Frank sort the mail when he came on a letter addressed to me; "You don't want this" he said and threw it in the undeliverable mail or something. It was my draft notice.

A day of two later I went to the Air Force recruiting station, I think it was in Chattanooga and signed up for the Air Force. Given a few days before we were to leave I sold my car to our cousin Ralph Ervin. On the appointed day I appeared along with a bunch of maybe 20 others for a preliminary check-up and transportation to basic training.

I opted to join the Air Force for four years instead of being drafted. It was in November of 1950 when the group of us boarded a train bound for San Antonio, Texas, arriving there about 2am. We were loaded onto open trucks for the trip to Lackland Air Force Base, probably a 45 minute trip. It was cold and riding in the open truck with thin clothes on we were chilled by the time we got to Lackland. It was now about 4 am and I think the first thing we did was to eat breakfast in the mess hall. We were then marched to a large building where we were issued a duffle bag and told to take off all our clothes and put in the duffle bag. We then moved into a barber shop in the same building and in the absolute nude sat in the barber chair and were a given a G.I. hair cut, about one half inch long all over. We took a shower just before or after the haircut, I think after. Following this, we were issued our Air Force outfits. If I remember correctly it consisted of; two pairs of fatigues, two pairs of blue dress pants, two blue dress shirts, a short (waist length) and a long (fingertip length) blue dress jacket, a heavy wool overcoat, a fatigue jacket, brogan type work shoes, black dress shoes, blue tie, hat with brim, fatigue cap, folding cap, towels, underwear and tee shirts. Looking at me now you would never guess I weighted 155 pounds and was issued pants with a 28 inch waist. Putting on our fatigues and carrying our duffel bags we were marched to our luxury apartments for the next several weeks.

The luxury apartment was a tarpaper building (2 by 4 studs covered with plywood, outside the plywood was covered with tarpaper) about 100 feet long. There was an aisle in the center and 15 army cots on each side, at one end there was a bathroom with several showers, toilets and washbasins. There may have been a private room for the team leader to live in. This was home during the weeks of basic training..

At Lackland we were given a through physical. One of the first things I learned at Lackland was I was color blind and would not be eligible for pilot training school. I had never known I was color blind before. Other than that I passed as being in good physical shape.

One thing we learned in basic training was that "morning" looks and awful lot like night at 4 am when they got us up to start our day. We learned to march in unison, take a shower (for those of us who didn't know how), make up our bed in the G. I. fashion, clean our piece (rifle) and to keep our area clean and ready for inspection. These were pretty new ideas for most of us. We also learned about KP by washing hundreds of sticky mess trays, peeling a few hundred pounds of potatoes or cracking eggs for breakfast. The Sargent instructed me on how to crack an egg in each hand at the same time one morning when I cracked about 50 dozen in about an hour. We went to various classes, marched a lot, had a bit of physical training. Due to the need for troops we had a shortened basic course and only got to the rifle range one day. I think we each had a rifle but it was attempting to rain and the Sargent wanted to get back so the second group of us were to use the first groups M1's without firing a test round. I was in the second group and the guy ahead of me had funny eyes or didn't know what he was doing. My first group of shots was pretty bad, I made corrections and my total was good enough to become a "Marksman".

Following basic training I remained at Lackland for several months as a team leader, I remember it was called "Flight Leader". This required getting the 60 or so troops out at about 4 am each morning, taking roll call, marching them to breakfast, then to whatever training was scheduled for the day and putting them to bed at "lights out". Sometime in the spring or early summer of 1951 I signed up for Gunnery school to be a gunner on a bomber, at that time bombers had several gunners; waist gunners, belly gunners, a tail gunner and turret gunners. I don't remember the reason I signed up for gunnery school. Gunnery school was at Lowery Air Force Base in Denver, Colorado.

So off we go by train to Lowery Air Force Base in Denver. Arriving there we found the Air Force in its infinite wisdom had enough troops waiting to go to gunnery school for two or three months so we had nothing to do until our number came up. After a week or so I learned there was no wait time for finance office school and they were looking for people. I had made very high grades on all of the Air Force tests and could get into any school except pilot training, so I volunteered to go to finance school which was also taught at Lowery. This was pretty good duty, we went to class a few hours each day for several weeks and were pretty much on our own during off hours. Except for soap, shaving supplies and toothpaste we had no living expenses and I was earning about $60.00 a month. Sending part of this home into a savings account I still had a few dollars to blow by going to Denver once or twice a week. I enjoyed Denver and the surrounding area and the time spent here. When we graduated from finance school we were told the entire class was being sent to the European Theater of Operations (ETO) and we were given our orders and 2 or 3 weeks (leave and travel time) before reporting to Camp Kilmer in New Jersey.

One of my classmates who was named Rice had a car and lived in Kentucky, I rode from Denver to Kentucky with Rice then caught a train to Knoxville where Mary and her husband Gale met me. I don't remember how I go to Old Fort, Mary and Gale probably took me.

After a few days at home I decided to go to Florida. Before joining the Air Force I had been renting a guest house in Fort Lauderdale. A guest house in those days was built behind the main house and were frequently like the one I rented, one or two rooms and a bathroom together with a garage. I visited my old landlady and she said she wanted to get me a date with a girl down the street who had just graduated from college, she described the girl as; "she is short and dumpy but she sure is cute". I said OK and she fixed me up with a blind date. Using Buddy's car, I picked up Beverly... the landlady was right on all accounts. I think we had a date every night before I had to go to Camp Kilmer.

I flew from Fort Lauderdale to New York where the Air Force furnished transportation to Camp Kilmer. That was my first commercial flight, I had been up in a Piper Cub or something similar. Camp Kilmer was staging area where military personnel gathered to be sent overseas and personnel returning from overseas were either discharged or sent to bases in the states. When I returned to the states my enlistment was almost up and I was discharged there. I was in Camp Kilmer for a few weeks before being shipped out. Each morning we all fell out (gathered) in a large open area and the names of all the troops being shipped out that day were called. After that work details were "volunteered" in groups usually 10 or more. These were usually unpleasant tasks like cleaning furnaces, bathrooms, etc. so you tried to avoid them whenever possible. One day a old Master Sargent wanted 30 men and I was in the group he picked, marching us smartly out of sight over a hill we came to a halt and he said, "Hell men, I am just waiting to be shipped out like you, dismissed for the day". One morning my name was called and I became one of about 2,000 troops on a ship bound for England.

It was fall but the weather going over to England was pleasant and I spent a good bit of the day on deck. Sleeping conditions were OK for a troop ship, about every seven feet there was a steel pipe from floor to ceiling. Four or five arms were attached on either side of the pipe and hammocks were attached to the arms. I think there were eighteen vertical inches between the hammocks and about six inches between the hammocks on the same level. The aisles were so narrow you had to turn sideways to pass. I remember the food as being OK for army food. It was not the most enjoyable week of my life but not unpleasant.

We arrived at Southhampton, England fairly early in the day, by the time we got to a processing base it was well into the afternoon. I was picked for a detail to unload a truckload of American beer. We lined up from the truck to the storage area and passed the cases of beer from person to person, there were over 1,400 cases of beer on the truck. The last one or two cases were opened and served to those that unloaded the truck. I believe we stayed at the processing base for two nights. My orders said I was assigned to permanent party at Upper Heyford Air Force Base, we were loaded along with our ever present duffle bag on a bus to Upper Heyford. On our way we passed by Stonehenge, the large rocks placed in a pattern by some unknown people. Beverly and I visited Stonehenge a few years ago where we spent several hours.

Upper Heyford Air Force base was named for the hamlet Upper Heyford which was maybe as large as Old Fort, it did have a railroad station like every place in England. There was an old Inn in the area and maybe a pub, I don't think there was any kind of a retail outlet. The base had been built by the British as an air field in the 1920's, in addition to the airfield it had a Headquarters building, an Officers quarters, enlisted men mess hall with NCO club upstairs, some two story "H" shaped buildings which were barracks for the enlisted men and a few other buildings chief amoung them was the heating plant that heated water for heating the entire base. The heating plant was broken when I arrived, some weeks later it was repaired, we had heat for two days when it broke again. It was February when it was finally repaired. Needless to say the barracks were cold. There were also some "tarpaper" buildings added during World War II.

The buildings were solid brick with walls at least a foot thick. The crossbar in the "H" buildings contained a staircase and bathroom facilities with a room for senior NCO's at each end. There were four bays on each floor, with one bay on the ground floor reserved for use as a "day room". About twenty of us were assigned to each bay which had double bunks. We each had a wooden footlocker and a metal locker where we kept our clothes and personal items. Due to some kind of agreement with the British, which were still under some kinds of rationing, we were only issued one sheet. This meant we could sleep on top of the sheet or under it, not both. After a few months we were issued a second sheet. This was home for almost three years.

I was assigned to the finance office of the 3918th Headquarters Squadron. Our office was in a "tarpaper" shack next door to the headquarters building. The barracks, with the mess hall across the street was some 200 - 300 yards from the office. The PX was very close to the office. For practical purposes I could live the entire three years within a 300 yard area. The finance officer was a Captain Ross who was a pilot and a Regular Officer. His assistant was a Ist Lt. Who's name I don't remember but he always referred to himself as Lt Benjaman F. ------, an officer and a gentleman by an act of Jackass Congress. The Lt. had a field promotion from Master Sargent and was a Reserve Officer. Both of them were pretty nice guys and left us alone most of the time. Master Sargent in charge of the office was a Sargent Hockman known as The Governor", more about him later. Tech.Sgt. Kaye was in charge of paying invoices, Tech. Sgt. Thornburg was in charge of payroll and I was in charge of preparing travel vouchers for payment. I don't remember just when I got my third stripe but after about a year at Upper Heyford I was promoted to Staff Sargent.

We had two Master Sargent's in our barracks; Sgt Slabe worked in another group, he seldom went off the base and stayed in his room most of the time. He kept weights in his room and pumped a lot of iron. His arms looked like Barry Bonds. Sgt. Hockman, NCO in charge of the finance office was called "The Governor", a nice guy but he liked to drink. When The Governor arrived at a base his first call was to the NCO club where he selected a seat at the bar and proceeded to tell one an all it was his permanent seat and he expected it to be reserved for him at all times. After work each day The Governor would go immediately to the NCO club where he would drink until 5 minutes before 6pm when the mess hall closed. Going downstairs to the mess hall he would eat and then return to the NCO club until closing. On weekends The Governor was in his seat when the NCO club was open, and... you would never know he was drunk. On payday The Governor would go by the PX and buy soap, shaving cream and other items he would need for the next month. By the 15th of the month he would be broke and borrow money from other NCO's writing the date, the person and amount carefully in a small notebook. On payday he would pay back everyone. Of course this excessive drinking will do you in; one Saturday afternoon I saw him in the hallway of the barracks laughing and saying see those butterflies and that pink flying elephant. He died not long after that.

Unfortunately, many career non-commissioned personnel, and probably officers drink to excess. We had a Airman 2nd class, two stripes and many years in the service, who had been in the Olympics in his youth. Another from Alabama who kept photos of his relatives in his locker. Returning from town drunk he would open the locker and talk to the relatives telling them what he thought about each one.

At the time it was illegal for service personnel to have US dollars, instead we exchanged our dollars for MPC's (Military Payment Certificates). MPC's looked somewhat like play money and were somewhat smaller than dollars. They were from five cents to twenty dollars and were different colors for ease in telling them apart. On payday the troops stood in line to be paid in MPC's next to the payment officer was a guy with a lot of English pounds and you could buy as many pounds as you wanted by exchanging the MPC's for pounds. This money had to come from somewhere, a day or two before payday Capt. Ross would go to London where the MPC's were kept to pick up MPC's for payday and to a bank in a nearby town, I think it was Bicester to pick up British pounds. Sometimes I would be picked to go with him, we traveled in an Air Force staff car driven by an English driver. There was a small military hospital a couple of miles from our base where a few American personnel were stationed. One day returning from London a G.I. ran across the road halfway then tried to go back, our driver hit him not doing any significant amount of damage to the soldier but breaking a headlight on the staff car. Apparently he was not the best soldier on the base, the base commander thought we should have injured him enough to have him shipped back to the states. Another day we had gone to the bank to get English pounds, some 5 or 6 miles, and before we got back the bank had called two or three times. They had given us 500 pounds too much, which was at least six months salary for the guy at the bank and he was about to have a heart attack until he got it back.

Upper Heyford was a SAC (Strategic Air Command) base under the command of General LeMay who felt we could be attacked by Russian nuclear bombs at any moment. To offset this threat he sent bombers armed with nuclear bombs and crews from their bases in the states to places like Upper Heyford for ninety days temporary duty. These persons were entitled to certain travel payments for their time away from their home base. So we would get about several hundred people moving in for ninety days requesting money on a travel voucher generally every 30 days. Processing these travel vouchers was most of our work but we also got some travel vouchers from permanent party on the base. I had three or four assistants to help with this, more when there was a crew on temporary duty on the base.

Life at Upper Heyford was pretty good compared to everything I had seen before. For practical purposes I was my own boss as I was left pretty much alone by the officers and Sargent Hockman. I had a regular hours; 8 am to 5 pm Monday through Friday and inspection on Saturday morning. We were issued a "Class A" pass which meant we were free to be off the base at any other time. It was much like a regular job except I could eat for free and live in the barracks for free. I think when I made Staff Sgt. I was making $160.00 per month, sending $100.00 home and living well. One of the ways I did this was to "moonlight", there were jobs available to work in the "Class 6" store and NCO club. We were issued coupon books which allowed us to buy a bottle of whiskey and a carton of cigarettes each week. The cigarettes were sold at the PX but the whiskey was sold at the "Class 6" store. I worked at the "Class 6 " store for a while, which was open for only a couple of hours after work. Later I worked at the NCO club keeping the door, which was mostly checking passes and issuing change for the slot machines. This gave me enough extra income to live well in an area where beer was (in our money) $0.14, retail clerks made about $5.00 week and mid-level managers thought they had arrived when they made $2,850.00 per year. I had free room and board and was making about the same, with my second job, as mid-level managers in the area.

Upper Heyford was about 15 miles from Oxford and 60 miles from London. There was a bus to Oxford every night and two or three scheduled at various times on weekends. There were also taxis waiting to take you to Oxford or bring you back and if two or three of you teamed up it was pretty cheap to go by taxi. So it was not expensive or difficult to go to Oxford once or twice a week. Getting to London was generally a weekend jaunt, I don't think I ever went except on weekends but sometimes guys would go just for the night and be back at work the next morning. I remember going to London once by catching the train from Upper Heyford (there was also a Lower Heyford which was about the same size). Mostly I think we took the bus to Oxford and then a train to London. In London I saw a number of first rate shows such as "South Pacific" with most of the original cast from New York.

The Thames river flowed through Upper Heyford, where it was about the size of the canal in the back of our house in Miami, on through the middle of Oxford and then to London where it was large enough for ships to come from the ocean to dock. On nice days we sometimes rented a punt, similar to a canoe, in Oxford and rowed up and down the Thames. This was an enjoyable outing for a hour or two viewing the scenes along the bank. Fred Strelau, the best man at our wedding, had a car and on nice summer evenings when it did not get dark until about 11pm three or four of us would ride down to the Thames and sit around, maybe have a couple of drinks, and talk till dark. The Thames at this point was in the country and there were several places where you could park beside the river.

I always enjoyed Oxford, I enjoyed walking around the colleges which make up the University and are spread out over much of the center of the town. I had a couple of pubs I enjoyed and a number of English friends, some who were married and some single. One of the couples the man was a podiatrist, I was invited to their home for Christmas. England still rationed many things at the time so I got one of my married friends at the base to buy me a pork roast, probably about 5 pounds and took it for Christmas dinner. They almost cried when they saw it and said it was the most meat they had seen since the late 1930's.

British pubs had very strict hours when they could be open, I remember it as 12 - 2pm for noon opening and 5 to 10pm (maybe 11pm some days) at night. I seldom went to Oxford on Sunday, the last bus left the base not later than 1pm and even the movies did not open until 4 or 5pm so you either walked around which was OK on nice days or went to one of the little cafes and drank awful tea with milk in it. There may have some nice little cafes around, and there were in other towns, but I never found them in Oxford. There was an Indian restaurant in Oxford named the Taj Mahal which served curry and other foods I loved but the floor was filthy dirty, don't know what the kitchen was like.

The Air Force obtained commissioned officers several ways; 1.) graduate from flight school becomimg a pilot, 2.) obtain certain college degrees such as M.D. where a part of your schooling is paid by the government in return for joining the service 3.) graduate from college ROTC 4.) field promotions 5.) go to Officer Candidate School (OCS). Of these the only one that would have been open to me was Officer Candidate School. At the time I joined so many others were also joining the Air Force to avoid the draft at least a four year college degree was required to get into OCS, so that left me out. This supply dried up two or three years later and orders came out they were looking for people like me with no college but good test scores. One problem, you had to be stationed in the lower 48 states or Alaska to be considered. Caught by "Catch 22" again. At this time if I had been able to get a commission I would have been a career military man. A few months later I was ready to be home for a while, so I did not investigate if I could have gotten into OCS.

I met Beverly just before going overseas, on our last date she allowed me to have her name and address, we begin to correspond, after a while it became on a fairly regular basis. Beverly had beautiful handwriting and expressed herself wonderfully well. I on the other hand, could hardly read my own writing and was a joke at Old Fort because I expressed myself so poorly. I think she felt sorry for anyone who could not write a better letter and being a teacher felt sorry for me.

I have never been a person who wanted to travel and so did not travel as much as some, I also have always been pretty much of a "loner" and did not have to be with friends all of the time. I took a trip to Nice, France by myself for probably 10 days. While in Nice, I visited a perfume factory a great smelling place. I learned that some smells are so fragile they pick the petals one by one off the flower and layer them in lard for a couple of years where the smell is absorbed by the lard, the lard is then used to make the perfume. I also visited a chapel at Vance where the life of Christ was depicted by the artist Matisse. For the non-artist like me, it looked like a bunch of stick figures drawn with a one inch brush using black paint on a white background. Went to Monte Carlo, did not gamble away my life's savings. Laid on the rocky beach, the rocks are about the size of baseballs and the water was about like muddy pond, cold to a person who was accustomed to swimming in Florida.

Fred sold his English Ford to Smiley and bought an Austin-Healey sports car. On Easter Sunday we crossed the channel and landed in France. Going through France and on to Switzerland. On the way we drove through a snowstorm, really big flakes, with the top down and the heater on. It was like magic with the snow surrounding us on all sides but not touching us because of the movement of the car. We spent several days in Switzerland going from town to town, planning day trips at night. We saw a circular route on the map and decided to try it. There was no snow at lower levels but as we began to climb there were occasional patches of snow and soon more snow, then the ground was covered as we went higher. Finally, we could go no further and had to back maybe 3 miles down the mountain where we moved ice and snow with our bare hands to get a place large enough to turn around in. Later we realized why we had the problem, the height of the mountain was shown on the map in meters, not feet, so it was over three times as high as we assumed.

Smiley was a farm boy from Iowa, he was so shy he seldom said anything and just smiled when you said something. He had a sax and sometimes played it, I have no idea how well. We were two hayseeds with straw sticking out of our hair and a local farmers group wanted someone from the states to talk at their monthly meeting so we were asked to do this. Smiley had Fred's old car and was the designated driver and I was the designated talker. I talked about cotton, something I knew more about than the English who don't grow cotton. After the meeting the president invited Smiley and I to his home. His family had farmed the same land since 16 or 1700's and still did not own it, it was owned by a corporation which was probably owned by Lord Plushbottom or somebody. The farmer had roasted, as I remember it, a whole hind leg of a beef and it was hanging in the kitchen. He cut off a few slices and we each had a sandwich.

Smiley and I decided to go, I think to Bristol, at any rate we stopped in Bath for the night getting a hotel room in a fairly large hotel (four stories high maybe 100 rooms). We went to dinner and coming back stopped by the pub in the hotel. There was a good looking young lady in a white dress with pink poka dots at the bar. We struck up a conversation that lasted until the pub closed (10 or 11pm). I then offered to walk her home which was a mile or so away. When I returned and started to go in the door was locked, I rang the bell several times but nothing happened. After a few minutes a couple of Bobbies came by on patrol and asking why I was standing there. I explained and they rang the bell and beat on the door with their night sticks, all to no avail. So we walked a couple of blocks to the jail and let me sleep in jail, (WITH THE DOOR OPEN). This is the only night I ever spent in jail. The next morning I found the night clerk had quit a few days before and had not been replaced.

The summer before I was due to come back to the states Beverly took a tour of Ireland, Scotland, England and Europe with the first stop at Cork, Ireland. I had a lot of leave time saved up so I signed up for some leave starting a few days prior to Beverly's arrival. I went to Torquay in the south of England for a couple of days where I met a couple from Cork who were on vacation. They were going back to Cork the day before Beverly was due to arrive. We traveled by train to Blackpool and took a boat to Cork. The couple were neither wealthy or married, the girl had a different class ticket from the guy. I purchased the same class ticket as the guy, which much have been steerage. At any rate we were outside the entire trip which started early in the evening and docked about daylight, interesting night and glad for good weather. After getting me to a hotel they went home and a couple of hours later showed up with the guy's brother's car. We drove to the beach to go swimming. I have never seen a prettier beach, not a house in sight, gentle dunes with sea oats and fine sand. After putting on our bathing suits the girl waded out and started swimming around playing like a puppy. I, not to be outdone by a mere girl, waded out until the water was about ankle deep and every bone in my body was aching from the cold. My male ego kicked in and I managed to wade into deeper water and swim a few strokes. It was the 23rd of June 1954.

Beverly arrived by ship the next morning and I met her tour at the dock. She seemed glad to see me and introduced me to everyone on the tour, they had become friends during the days spent together on the ship. The tour guide allowed me to ride on the tour bus and I spent the next few days touring Ireland, Scotland and a part of England with the group. In those days people dressed up when they were on a trip and Beverly looked pretty cute in a little suit that buttoned at the waist and a little checkered pillbox hat with high heeled shoes matching the suit. I took Beverly to see "The King and I" in London. We had gotten to know each other better through our two years correspondence and by the time I left the tour to go back to Upper Heyford we were fond of each other. Fond enough I went to the jewelry department in the PX one day to see about a ring. Prices were very good in the PX so if she turned me down I still had a ring at a bargain price. (The "M" word had not been mentioned by me or in my presence) Diamonds for the PX were sold at a shop in London, I remember going there, it was pouring down rain and the shop was on the second floor in somewhat less than the best part of London. I looked over the available rings and my financial condition picking out one I liked. I hid it in a little box that had contained a filter for a camera in the bottom of my duffle bag and that is they way it arrived in the United States. Apparently the ring was OK, after returning home in October I asked Beverly to marry me at Christmas time, she accepted the ring and still wears it over 50 years later.

A few months after Beverly's visit we were back on a troop ship headed for Camp Kilmer again. The weather on the return trip was not as good, the first morning out waves were breaking over the bow of the ship and we were not allowed outside. I ate oatmeal for breakfast and immediately go seasick. Arriving at Camp Kilmer I was processed and discharged and caught a train back to Tennessee. I think it took over two days for the trip.

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