POWERGRAMS

5 back to Okinawa the best way I could." Davis said finding a flight was almost impossible. The airplanes were filled with officers' wives and families who were trying to get back home to the United States, as well as troops who were headed to Korea. Davis finally got a seat a week later on a cargo plane bound for Okinawa. Soon after he returned to Kadena Air Force Base, Davis was reassigned to the radio-repair shop. He worked on communications systems on cargo planes that brought supplies to the island and he repaired radio transmitters in jeeps used by the base military police. Davis said because Kadena was a supply post, the officers on the base thought the Koreans might invade the island. All enlisted personnel were armed with carbines and ammunition. "They told me to get behind some bushes, and I said, 'Are we playing games or is this for real? Bullets will come through those bushes,'" said Davis. "I got in a foxhole." Although the men were prepared, Davis said North Korean soldiers never came near the island. Davis said the living conditions were somewhat rustic. When he first arrived on the island, his unit's quarters were in a Quonset hut at the end of the base runway. The base was loaded with bombers and personnel. After moving to the radio-repair unit, Davis lived in a 12-man tent and slept on a cot under mosquito netting. "When a typhoon was coming, we had to pull our beds, footlockers and all our other stuff into the middle of the floor. Then, we would strike the tent and tie it down," said Davis, noting they took cover in the communications hangar because it was equipped with a generator. "The wind would blow so hard that we couldn't get the hangar door open, so we had to climb out the window to go to the mess hall for supplies," he added. In November 1951, Davis returned to the U.S., where he was stationed at Memphis Municipal Airport in Tennessee as a radio repairman. He was then sent to Shaw Air Force Base near Sumter, South Carolina, where he remained until his discharge in August 1952. Davis said thanks to the GI Bill, which provided college tuition and living expenses for veterans, he attended the University of Alabama and received a degree in electrical engineering. Without the federal aid, that would have been almost impossible for a small-town boy from Wilmer, he said. Davis came on board at Alabama Power as a student engineer during the summers of 1955 and 1956, and was hired full time in June 1957 as a junior engineer in the Birmingham District. Although it was nearly 70 years ago, Davis said the military made a lasting impact on his life. In 2016, he got the chance to remember those years when he traveled to Washington, D.C., with a group of veterans as part of the Tuscaloosa Rotary Honor Flight. They spent the day visiting war memorials and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. "I was patriotic then and I still am," Davis said. "The flag and my service to my country mean a lot to me." By Carla Davis ========================================== Davis in Alabama Power days. Davis visited the Washington, D.C., war memorials in 2016. PHOTO BY PHIL FREE

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