Robert E. Irion, Sandy, Utah: an interview by Benjamin Bahlmann, September 20, 2002: Saving the legacy tape no. 537, 538, and 539

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Robert E. Irion eptember 20'\ 2002 ROB: Arkadelphia had two colleges there. One was Henderson tate T ach r College, and then the one that we went to Ouachita Baptist College. 0-u-a-c-h-i-t-a. Ouachita. Near the Ouachita Mountains. It was a Baptist School that when we arrived had probably twenty male divinity students, and about two hundred fifty or three hundred girls in attendance - and that was all. Everyone else was either off in the military or not going to that particular school. So about twenty guys on campus, and then in comes this group of about a hundred and sixty soldiers. Well, the quarters that we lived in were a new auditorium they'd just completed, that was designed as an auditorium, not as a barracks building, but it was our barracks. The auditorium had a slope to it, so when you climbed in you bunk at night, and went to bed, in the morning you'd wake up with your feet hanging over the end of the. bed, if you moved at all. Usually your toes were pushing the bottom end of the bed because it was on a slope. But anyhow- BEN: Now this is not your basic training anymore, this is ... ROB: Now we're college- what they call a college training detachment. They- at that point, they divided us up into five classes. I was fortunate enough to get into the first class that was going to leave- there were thirty-two guys in our class, if I remember right, the number, and- we had to- well, what they'd done is divided them up from the testing they'd done on your educational background, and I'm bragging a little, but I was seventh out of the one hundred sixty that came there, in the order that they had us from the testing they'd done. 23