After
being loaded on troop trains and shipped to Ft. Sam
Houston, they stayed their for 3 days and the while
Seniors were shipped to their respective OCS's the juniors
were sent to Camp Roberts California for Infantry basic
training.
Rowland
and 20 others had transferred to the Air Cadet Program,
while listing his preference as wanting to be pilot,
because the Air Corps had a surplus of pilots and they
had a need for navigators and bombardiers, he was told
that they preferred he go through navigational training.
In
January 1944, he shipped out Ellington Field in Houston,
TX for Pre-Flight Training. Completing this in March
1944 it was off to Navigational School in Coral Gables,
FL. By the middle of June of the same year, navigation
school was completed and he received his commission
and bright shinny 2nd Lt bars.
We
had been sweating our next orders. In the past Coral
Gables graduates were assigned to the Air Transport
Command (ATC), which was the airline for the Army Air
Corps. They had C-54 transports flying all over the
world carrying people and supplies. This was a good
duty because we were not getting shot at. We were afraid
that we might end up as replacements for the 8th Air
Force because their losses in the B-17's were so heavy.
We did not know that Boeing was now turning out B-29s
by the bunches and each crew had two Navigators onboard.
One was the regular Navigator and the other was the
Radar Operator. The British had developed airborne radar
called the APQ-13 which would enable us to do a pretty
good of dropping bombs on target when it was cloud covered.
There had to be close cooperation and teamwork between
the Radar Operator, Navigator and Bombardier to do this.
They wanted the Radar Operator to be a qualified Navigator,
because of this Rowland and the rest of this class was
sent to Boca Raton, Florida for training in operation
and maintenance of the APQ-13.
They
were quite happy with this assignment because it meant
that that they would be going to the Pacific rather
than Europe. The air war over Japan was not as bad as
the air war over Germany. Although they did not know
anything about the B-29 and had never seen one they
assumed that it was a good airplane and were excited
about being part of the program.
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Rowland
and Nan Ball
14 July 1944
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Three
weeks before graduation they were told that they would
receive a 14-day leave. On July 14, 1944, Rowland married
Mag, whom he had met when they were fourteen. They were
twenty years old; married and heading out to a very uncertain
future. But they were together and decided that they could
handle most anything that life could throw at them and
would enjoy just being together s long as they could.
There
was no time for a honeymoon. Their first night together
was spent at the Denver Hotel in Victoria, TX. They
had to catch a train the next morning about noon for
Huston and transfer eventually ending up in Boca Raton.
They
lived in one-room apartment in Delray Beach, Florida,
which was about five miles from Boca Raton. There were
no kitchen privileges and they had eaten all their meals
out, but this would be only for about a month. When
training was completed we were all transferred to a
pool and assignment center in Lincoln, Nebraska.
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