Winning Ways of the Queens Group Drill Team
Bart Altschuh
As a 13 year old freshman at Andrew Jackson High School, I was very happy to be asked by Walter Ramsey, if I would like to join the Civil Air Patrol.
My mother was happy about it. She used to say, "He has to be good at SOMETHING."
I'm not writing here about joining at the Astoria Squadron, which used to meet on Northern Blvd every Friday night, about wearing the Air Force Uniform, as a Civil Air Patrol Cadet, or being trusted to take the subway to Squadron Meetings Friday night, the E or F to Roosevelt, the transfer to the RR or GG local for a couple of stops, and coming home around two or three Sat. morning.
I'm not writing here about taking the C.A.P. courses, earning the Certificate of Proficiency, going out to Zahn's field on some weekends for flights in the little Navion there, or weekends at Mitchell Air Force Base, and the connection I felt with my step father, who flew on the B-25 (known as the Mitchell) during WW II.
No. What I'm writing about here is The Queens Group Drill Team, and the honor I learned in true love there.
Yes, at one parade, feeling pretty good about myself and belonging to the Astoria Squadron, there I suddenly saw what was for me The Light ... in the person of The Queens Group Drill Team.
Why, we marched. But they ... there were no words for what they were doing. When they were given the command, "Double Time," it was a miracle ... they did not devolve into pattering random flubbdubbery, no, they moved as one, arms going back and forth as one. With that expression ... not grim ... but expressionless. Impassive. The Look.
Halt? From double time? No problem. No issue. No inadvertent comedy.
Just a machine, they were. Yes, I liked marching, I liked being a part, but these guys ... "Who are they?" I asked someone standing next to me. They wore uniforms like us, but they had black berets, and there was some device on their epaulets, I couldn't discern it. Their flight leader, having called "Team Halt," now moved around and among them. Adjusting his white gloves (we did not wear gloves) and talking very seriously in a lowered voice.
"Them? Oh, they're the Drill Team." Came the dispassionate reply.
"What do you have to do to join?" I asked. "Could I join?"
"Anybody can join." Came the answer.
And I did try to join. But to try to join, was indeed, to join. There were no qualifications but to be a member of a Queens Group Squadron, and that I was ... Astoria Squadron.
They let me in. They let in any Queens Group CAP member, yes, including even me, and we paid $5.00 / week dues for our competition uniforms, which would be purchased towards the end of the fiscal year for participation in the annual Drill Team Wing Competition, where New York City Teams were always the best, but particularly the Bronx and Manhattan were known to be absolutely tops, and one or the other always won.
So then, in addition to Friday nights at the Astoria Squadron, there was Sunday Drill Team practice in the Flushing Armory. That was special. At Squadron, there was that quasi yelling and hazing: "Give me TWENTY, Mister!" And the sing song, "I can't hear you!"
At Drill Team meetings, we were of a purpose. We were volunteers of volunteers. We were of love. We took in and joined with any comers, and taught them our snappy ways: How to salute as one. The facing movements.
Clumsy? Not a problem. "Smith, take Franz over there and show him how to do a facing movement." Then Smith or whomever would work with Franz for example, for an hour or whatever it took, with love and patience until our new comer was ready and we'd blend him back in.
We were to regular drill what a jet is to a piston engined aircraft. There was no comparison. We practiced and perfected every single aspect of basic drill.
In our hearts we knew that the Manhattan and Bronx teams looked down at us. Called us "farmers." Thought of us as having little more proficiency than what we saw as those "plowboys" from places like Syracuse, where, it was rumored, they did not even have special competition uniforms.
If we were jets to regular squadron's propellers, Bronx and Manhattan Teams were nuclear rockets.
I'd seen them, upon occasion. There was something special to their style. It was extra light flavor precision. We were by comparison, a little heavy footed. We were tap. They were ballet. They floated they drifted but perfectly. We were as one. They were apparently, truly one.
Yes, Drill Team was an urban sport. I think Bronx and Manhattan were so excellent because they did virtually nothing else but practice. I think they practiced more than once a week. I think they had more than one team: A B team, and an A team. Sometimes even a C team.
Us? We were not so much demographically dominated by any one particular racial minority. We had the Mix. This mix appeared in our team philosophy, not just ethnically. The variety was our strength.
In fact, regulations stated that the teams were to be sized in placement. Other teams took this to mean: Tall guys in front. Or ... tall guys in back. Us? We put short guys in the middle. The effect was like looking at a set of Wurlitzer pipes.
In short, we were different.
Not like the so called plowboys from upstate, after all, we were saving for our competition uniforms which were purchased new every year from Jay's Army Navy Store, in Hempstead, tailored by volunteer parents and worn for the first time at the competition.
Nor were we like the honed and notoriously sharp feathery precision angels of the Bronx and Manhattan teams, where every face was a shade of brown, and practice was carried out in all spare moments.
We were ... just us. All we wanted and loved was to march together.
But Queens, like Syracuse, had NEVER won. Then one year, the year I was Drill Master, we did. In 1962, Queens beat everyone, and we were the New York Wing Champions. The precision of Bronx and Manhattan turned out to be fragile as thin glass.
First of all, we had a system, unlike the Bronx and Manhattan where the Drill Master position was held out as an object of competition, and was not awarded until the last moment. On our team, the Drill Master was selected early and practiced with the team as Drill Master throughout the year.
This did a couple of things for us. For one, I got used to working with the team with me as Drill Master, and they got used to working with me. Our first parade was a disaster. When I felt like giving a command, I just let her rip. Some would respond, some would not. The object, of course, was to perform as a team ... not to trick people, even accidentally.
So I learned, like the Drill Master I'd first observed, to talk to the team first, "At the coming corner, we'll do a column right ... every body ready?" Etc. It was the democratic, not the hazing principle. It was love, teamwork, cooperation.
And how did I get to be Drill Master? I think it was because I consciously strove to emulate the command style of the Drill Master who came before me: Tommy Lundregen. Tommy was great, but he'd gone over the allowed age limit.
When we were allowed to try out for the position, I sounded just like him, and I got the job.
Let me say something about ethnicity. As indicated, we had a broad mix. There was no predominance of any one group or neighborhood or religion. For the most part, we did not know each other's particulars. The fact is, we were all different as individuals, and we all absolutely and unequivocally loved each other.
Later in life, I've seen this same pattern again and again. When there is nothing much happening there is often a reversion to arbitrary yelling and figurative throat cutting. In the real United States Air Force, this was reflected. Stateside? Your shoes had BETTER be shined. Overseas? No one had to tell you.
We were, without knowing it, the real deal.
That trick we had of taking outliers aside and showing them the ropes? We carried it over into all we did. Obliques, the diagonal movement between left and right flank, wherein the entire team must shift, not at a right angle, but a 45 degree angle, are the bane of many a precision marching endeavor. The left and right oblique are part of the required basic drill to be performed at every competition.
Give a team an oblique, and before long guide and cover are in a shambles.
In the Flushing Armory, there is a balcony. We used to practice the basic routine, of course, but we'd take members and send them up to the balcony, one at a time, to watch for as long as desired, as we performed the competition routine. In the middle of an oblique, I'd call a halt, and not only could we see who was out of line, but for the person in the balcony, the big picture and how he fit in, was all the more clear.
And so it went throughout the year; squadron on Friday, Drill Team on Sunday, we marched from about noon to about five. There were parades sometimes, exhibitions sometimes. There was great fun always.
In the end, the New York Wing, or State Competition was held that year at the Whitestone Armory, not so much unlike the Flushing Armory ... complete with balcony.
Bronx picked their Drill Master at the last minute. We heard that the Manhattan team did not like their Drill Master. At Queens, there was no question of liking or not liking me as Drill Master.
To most team members, I was "Bart." At squadron meetings, many team members outranked me. I was not even a cadet officer, which was a source of derision and bemusement to our elite inner city brethren.
We shaved up, lowered ourselves into our starched competition uniforms, peeled away the stockings which protected the spit shine luster on our shoes, attached the slingshots, elastic with garter snaps which held our shirt tails down, running from shirt to sock top, inside our pants.
Bronx and Manhattan performed beautifully. There was no denying the perfection of their movements. It was like ballet, they were true artists. You could detect a certain fatigue there though. It was almost like they were saying, "Give us what we've earned and we'll be out of here."
But Queens? That epaulette decoration I'd been unable to fathom was a squared blue letter Q with an eagle coming through, talons outstretched. As Drill Master, it was my job to march out first, to salute the judges and say, "Sir, I have the honor to present ...
The Queens Group Drill Team."
Our Guidon (flag) bearer, was Blackwell. Blackwell had the distinction of being Guidon Bearer because he wanted to. His posture was a thing to behold, if not emulate. He, like the rest of the team, was perfect ... due to aspiration and love.
I think Blackwell's family was from the West Indies. I know that his skin was very dark, and I was shocked when he told me he wanted to become a photographer later in life. No one else I ever knew professed such an aspiration. To me, it was like saying "I want to be a butterfly collector." I mean ... what's that?
When I went to his house once to visit, he chastised me because I'd been warned not to come over. His parents did not approve of me. I was not allowed in.
But at Drill Team Meetings, Blackwell, like Elston, Lindholm, Boremski, Serbent, Cattenacio, Wolfe, Horowitz, Franz, Davis, Zeller, Moran, Hernandez, Mojica, on and on, even Altschuh, there we were for those hours, one.
And on that June day in 1962, in the middle of the New York Wing Drill Team Competition, when we knew the obliques were coming up, and I called out, "Right Oblique ... !" the team shifted, easily, precisely, perfectly, in our pipe organ whoopsy daisy line up, and we marched, lightly, rightly as if and it was heaven. No deviation waver or stutter. Absolutely perfect guide and cover. We did as we were supposed to do and as we loved.
The love the love. You could hear ... not a gasp, but a collective intake of breath from the crowds, the judges, yes, the other teams. Manhattan and the Bronx ... standing around then also spectators.
In that moment in that way and forever. We had won.
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