Reply #35: I had borderline pneumonia in Orlando, December, 1977 [View All]

Luckily, it was the weekend before service week - which was the week before our 2 week Xmas vacation. I got to spend two weeks in the infirmary, make up my "service week" the last week of the vacation in the Admin building (typing up infirmary reports, including three death certificates) and still keep up with my unit. The physical tests afterwards towards the end of bootcamp were hell to get through, but I did. Lucky thing we did the swimming, firefighting, and the gas chamber prior to that. (In fact, I think the gas chamber helped trigger the sickness - which I had already had around 3 years prior.)

Anytime you get a large group of people from all over and put them under great stress and force them to live in close quarters, you're going to get sickness as their systems go through shock.

Haele