By: GLO Press Office
Today, Texas Land Com- missioner and Veterans Land Board (VLB) Chairwoman Dawn Buckingham, M.D., is proud to introduce the next installment of the series highlighting the VLB’s Voices of Veterans oral history program. This week, we highlight the service of Sergeant First Class (SFC) Joe Carter who served in the United States Army.
Carter said he was born in a small community at Saint John’s Colony in Caldwell County, Texas, a place his “ancestors developed after slavery.” Carter said he went to school there until the 8th grade before going to high school in Lockhart about ten miles away.
His graduating class at George Washington Carver High School was the last class to graduate prior to integration in 1964. The initial plan was to join the military high school but Carter said the years of working in the fields took it’s toll. “Whatever grew in the ground in Texas, I worked it and I couldn’t pass a physical and so I had to take another approach to life and so I went to work at a restaurant called ‘The Chicken Shack’ on Lamar in the late 60s,” Carter said, adding he would later move to Fort Worth and work for the railroad but kept getting laid off.
Carter would make another job change, this time working for a bakery, before realizing he needed a more stable job and so he looked into the military, finally being able to pass the physical needed, entering the U.S. Army in February 1975. Carter said while the U.S. Army wasn’t his first choice, he thought the U.S. Air Force would be better suited for him for when he transitioned out of the military, he was told he had aged out of being able to join, but the Army would take him.
“I didn’t meet the age requirement as 27 was the cutoff age at that time,” he of the Air Force. “I was referred to the Army, which worked out good for me.” Carter went to boot camp at Fort Leonard Wood in the Missouri Ozarks for eight weeks before he was sent to basic training at Fort Sill in Oklahoma for another eight weeks. He said he didn’t have to leave Fort Sill, as it became his first duty station but this time to learn his Military Occupational Specialty (MOS), “13-Bravo-10, field artillery as a Cannon Crewman.”
A Cannon Crewman operates and maintains field artillery howitzers while also providing vital fire support for ground troops.
Carter said in 1976 he deployed to Germany where he continued to “work on the guns” during a two-year rotation. He said of his time in Germany, other than regular training, he didn’t really get to experience what life was like there, as some of his peers did, due to being selected to work in special weapons. After those two years, Carter said he returned to Fort Sill, went back to school and changed his MOS to become a cable installer.
