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.

Rowland and Nan Ball 14 July 1944

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.