Becoming a USAF Russian Linguist in 1966.
I was just 20 years old, and only about four months in the USAF. I found myself in a dorm at Syracuse University in a remote part of the campus, called Skytop. I had checked in there after flying from California to Syracuse in a 707 and then on a small Mohawk airliner. I woke up the next morning, ate breakfast and the next thing I knew I was in a classroom being told we were only to speak Russian in the classroom and in our barracks dorms.
In Basic Training in the USAF, some Airmen were assigned to take a language aptitude test. I don't know how we were chosen, frankly, although I remember being asked if I spoke any languages besides English. I answered that I could speak French and Spanish. I think that and scores on the test we all took before enlisting was what triggered the language aptitude test. If I remember correctly, only 12 people from all of the basic training units at that time went to language school.
Привет, Нина. Куда вы идёте? - Hi Nina. Where are you going?
My first sentence in Russian, as it was for all of us. We dove in, learning to make Russian vocal sounds and beginning to learning to write in the Cyrillic alphabet. Total immersion language school.
Little did I know that after that 9 month school, my writing ability in English would be destroyed, so much so that I still have to to print in English. My cursive English writing is gone. I learned Russian history, too, along with singing in a men's chorus in Russian. We got a full year of college credits from Syracuse U. for that education.
I was lucky enough to have a roommate who agreed to speak only Russian. An English to Russian dictionary was always in our hands. I was amazing how quickly we began to be able to carry on conversations and read Russian documents.
With only native-speaking teachers, we made very fast progress. What an amazing thing to do at the age of 20. An adventure in learning to be sure.
One of the things we did at the school was to take dictation in Russian, writing down what we heard in Russian. A lot of that. So, it was very fast writing, using the Cyrillic alphabet. For 9 months. Many of the Cyrillic letters are used for writing common sounds for both languages, but with different characters. For example the "B" in Russian is pronounce the same as the English "V." "T" in English looks like "M" in the Cyrillic cursive alphabet. So, after doing that a lot for 9 months, cursive writing in English became difficult.
Since we were heavily involved in the Vietnam conflict at the end of the 60s, a lot of people forgot about the cold war, which was still a big deal in the mid to late 60s. In fact, the time period from about 1960 to 1970-something was huge when it came to the need for linguists. Army, Navy, and USAF all had linguists in several languages, with Russian at the top of the list.
The work we did was highly classified, but anyone with a brain can look at the places we were stationed, like the Black Sea Coast in Turkey, and get some sort of idea of what we were doing there. That has since been discussed openly, although the details remain classified. Was our work important? Yes, but it all changed after the early 1970s. As an example, the base I was at in Samsun, Turkey, was only operational from about 1960 to 1972. Twelve years. A lot got jammed into those 12 years, though. For lowly enlisted folks like me, the bigger picture was hard to see, although it could be figured out, one way or another.
It's not the same any more. Not anything like the same. Military service today seems to be at the whim of Donald J. Trump. He would not have understood what people like me were doing while in the military.
= new reply since forum marked as read
He'll probably think it's a direct order from Putin and release them! 
the icing on the cake! 
The script forms that changed from capital to lower case are especially confusing, especially since I knew the Greek alphabet better than the Cyrillic, so Roman, Greek, Cyrillic got mixed up frequently. I never got very far with Russian; quickly abandoned the "usual" grammar-drill-and-vocabulary-repitition classroom approach in favor of learning written Russian well enough to scan a chemical procedure in a Russian journal. Things move fast when you don't worry about conjugation, declension, tense, gender, etc. just get the root and charge forward with a small set of frequently repeated vocabulary. Once I got into grad school I found every important Russian scientific journal was available as a professionally translated and printed publication, so that process lost a lot of impetus.
Every now and then I try to pick up a little more Russian, but in 45 years I've never finished a single language book I've started. Kind of a shame, since I've found an old Russian non-fiction book I'd like to translate. Maybe if I can ever get back to where I can afford OLLI classes I'll take it up again, or actually register for college-level classes. Maybe I could translate that book for a thesis project :/ .
The word Шиншилла (shinshilla), which means "Chinchilla". In red, a decomposition of the handwritten text showing the block letter equivalent.
The word Лишишь (lishish), which means "you will deprive". In red, a decomposition of the handwritten text showing the block letter equivalent.
I once started typing 'cc' in English words where 'ss' was the correct spelling. I gave the Russian a break after that. It's been a decades-long break.
Hmmm...
Ohhhh, boy!
Don’t ask. 
that because Russian does not have a Short-u they spell Donold's last name with an "a" -- which then transliterates as "Tramp".
