MILITARY TRAINING INSTRUCTORS:
MTIs IN THE NEWS:
FRANCIS GUESS

ForrrrrWARD, HARCH!"

Yup. He still has it. The old TI charm never went away. That's TI as in training instructor. Basic military training instructor. BMT for short. And the guy who still has his booming TI voice is retired Master Sgt. Francis Guess.

Technical Sgt. Francis " Spunky" Guess calls out to a BMT flight in 1955.

Decked out in his fatigue uniform, Guess went back to basic, calling out cadence to a fedgling basic trainee fight, a job he held nearly 50 years ago. Guess, now 68, easily kept in step, marching the two-week-old trainees in the hot Texas sun at Lackland Air Force Base. The former TI joined nearly 500 colleagues this summer to help celebrate the golden anniversary of Air Force basic military training. "He's a living history of BMT," said Master Sgt. Ray Watson, 322nd Training Squadron. "It's like he never left," said Senior Airman Lashonda Brown, currently an instructor at Lackland. "He jumped right in. It was motivational for the trainees and gave them more respect for what TIs do. Plus, I was amazed to see how well he performed. He's in great condition." No kidding. In addition to teaching cadence calls, Guess taught the flight how to do one-arm pushups, demonstrating a la Jack Palance at the Academy Awards show a few years ago.

"Those fresh, young faces hadn't changed a bit," Guess said. "They responded the same way as when I was a TI. It all came back pretty quickly." Master Sgt. Don Bivens, a supervisor with the 737th Training Group, observed Guess' work frst hand. "It was exciting just watching him," Bivens said. "You could see his eyes light up. He was having a great time." Like many bluesuiters, Guess enlisted after high school and sought pilot's wings. "I wanted to fy all through my high-school years," he said. "When I graduated on the last day of May in '47, I signed up to become an air cadet. I even had recommendations from my congressman and school offcials." A low score on the pilot qualifcation test kept him out of the cockpit, but he qualifed for officer training and enlisted anyway, waiting for an offcer's training slot. He'd previously served in the "home guard" as a plane spotter in his hometown, Charleston, S.C.

The group eventually was absorbed by the South Carolina National Guard, where Guess reached the rank of sergeant before reporting to Lackland. His military background qualifed him to assist his TI during indoctrination training, the forerunner of BMT. Due to a shortage of TIs, he was pulled out of training during week nine of the 12-week training regimen to become an instructor. "The commander said I was doing a good job and that the troops respected me," Guess said. "So being a fight marcher-that's what they called us then-became my career feld." He could've opted for another assignment at 19, but stayed because he enjoyed his job. "I also knew the promotion opportunity as a fight marcher was greater than for other jobs," he said. Because of his academic shortfall, Guess always stressed education to his trainees as a way to succeed in their military careers. "That's one of the things I started talking to them about even before the Air Force had the outstanding educational programs it has today."

Guess remained in the education and training career feld during his entire career. His final assignment was an education in itself, he said. "I was assigned to a unit whose mission was to retrain airmen in what was known then as Operation Second Chance," he said. "Our job was to retrain airmen who had been in Air Force stockades and rehabilitate and train them to become contributing members of the Air Force again. When they fnished the program-and about 90 percent of them did-they got back one stripe. One of them even made master sergeant." Law enforcement agencies constantly studied the Air Force's retraining program to fnd out why the unit had such a tremendous success rate. "It was one of the many outstanding things I did in my career," Guess said. "I'm really proud of what we accomplished." Over the course of fve decades, not much has changed, say current and former TIs. "There may be slight modifcations," Bivens said. "But overall, it's still the same as in 1947. And that's to train airmen."