Page 41 - Stand Down Vietnam

My name is Willena Sue Allen, I like to be called Sue.
I was born in the country near Georgetown, Kentucky.
We lived way out in the county. We were very, very
poor.

My daddy was a sharecropper. We were lucky if we got
some little tiny things for Christmas. Daddy would
sell his tobacco and he would go to town and buy some

little thing like a baton; just one tiny thing.

We ate an awful lot of beans and potatoes, then we’d
turn around and have potatoes and beans. We were poor.

I think it was my nineteenth birthday when I joined the
Army. I can’t recall the dates and stuff like that. I
always wanted to join the Army, ever since I was a
little girl. There were these books called the White
Mouse that intrigued me.

My parents approved of me joining the army. I went to
Fort McClelland, Alabama for Basic Training. I think
my time at Fort McClelland helps me get through living
in a nursing home. It was at basic that I learned my
discipline. There were not a whole lot of women in my
basic training unit. It was a platoon of maybe twenty.

After basic, I was scheduled to be a cook and go for
training in a town in Texas. There was no way I was

going to go down there, so they sent me to Fort Knox,
Kentucky.

I was a clerk for a reenlistment sergeant. Soldiers
had to have an interview with the First Sergeant. If
they wanted to reenlist, I typed up the paperwork with
no errors; that typing was very, very important. I also
kept records for who was next to come in for an
interview and scheduled their interviews.