[ussfa344]

Originally Posted by splummer

This is the first I heard of engineer AIT. He told us he was an RTO for a whole year. As far as being airborn qualified he wasn't on this site but that was a few months back and by now he sure could be.
I never flew in those mini C-130's. I always took the full size model.
Steve

Steve,

The following quote is from wannabee Ron's PDF file that he sent out to "prove" is bona fides.

"I reported to Fort Lenardwood Missouri for AIT (Advanced Individual Training. The training I signed up for.
We would drive bull dozers, front end loaders, Graders, scrapers, and cranes, then we would take apart a big engine and put it back together. We did this for another 8 weeks.
The day of our graduation we were treated to a party of sort and then went to bed. At around 2-3pm in the morning our Sgt came in and woke us up. We had 10 minits to be outside with everything we owned. No letters or phone calls home. Just get on that truck.
We boarded a C-130 (airplane) at around 2:30 in the morning headed for the Dominican Republic. I had just been assigned to the 82 Airborne, While enroute to Dominican Republic Some guy told us that Won Bosh, a rebel leader had just taken over the town of Santo Domingo, We were going to retake the airport and link up with a Marine unit that were landing on 'Red Beach' as we speak. At that point he commenced to hand out M-14s

and ammo. ????"

I haven't read through enough to find anything about an RTO or commo man. But clearly the guy is full of it. Also, just so you know, Juan Bosch was never a factor again after the initial US push, April through August of 1965: a time when I hero Ron was still in high school. Bosch ran a lackluster presidential campaign for the July 1, 1966 elections, in which he was soundly defeated. But that certainly would not necessitate the sending of a slick-sleve engineer, or possibly truck driver, down to the Dominican Republic to help out and inmaginary force of invading Marines. Yes the Marines were down in Dom. Rep. doing what Marines did best, but that was nearly a year before Ron finished AIT, probably a freshly minted PVT E-2.

As for him being Airborne, he claims to have gone through Pathfinder school. Now I haven't checked that out yet, but I doubt that a non-airborne support type in the 82nd would have landed a slot for that program. Just my opinion: maybe Paco and some of the other Airborne troops here can answer that. Also, his PDF file shows a guy with glider patch, wings and such, and the writing below the photo "implies" that it "may" be him. A typical wannabee ploy: plausable deniability.

Robert