Becoming a USAF Russian Linguist in 1966. [View all]

[MineralMan]

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.