1 November 7:30 a.m. Dog Shot - After Shot Charlie the site had to be prepared for the next test which was Shot Dog which was detonated at 1,417 feet as an air drop with a yield of 21 kilotons. On Shot Dog we had a lot of company because they brought the battalion up from Camp Desert Rock to be observers at our location in the Forward Area. I think the Colonel even came with them. We had a lot more people at our hillside grandstand seats. We sorta assumed a mantle of special stature cause we were so close. These troops hadn't seen one of these explosions close-up before - they had seen the flash of light from Desert Rock, but not anything like they saw when it exploded. Most of them thought we'd be going home soon. The thing that bothered us the most was the dust and the cold. We never gave a thought to induced or residual radiation, none of us really knew about that, we just knew it was better than Korea.

We knew there was going to be troop observers cause we dug the trenches. The Battalion Combat Teams were already out there in the trenches, but the rest of the troops stayed seven miles away and then went forward.

We waited for the sight of the plane. And then the beginning of the countdown. For those who had not seen this, it was an awesome sight. The Battalion didn't stay with us for breakfast, but went back to Desert Rock. Then, after breakfast we went to work to restore the areas to their natural state. Dog plus 5 or 6 days was our scheduled departure date. Since I was bucking for leave because I hadn't been home since Basic Training like everyone else had - they had sent me on to the Wheeled Vehicle Repair school in Georgia without the usual 30 days leave for home. I wanted a 30 day leave, and they told me we would be going back to Ft. Lewis, Washington soon and that I could leave from there...but we didn't go to Ft. Lewis as scheduled. I wanted to be home for Christmas, so they let me go straight home from Desert Rock leaving on 9 December.

I remember being amused at the sight of the radiation monitor - the only one we had seen - was accompanied with a bus of V.I.P.s after they toured the emplacement areas. They off loaded all of them at Co. "A"'s Command Post - checked them with Geiger Counters there and then put them back on the bus. This amused us because no one had ever checked us with Geiger Counters before and we worked at the Ground Zero areas every day. The Platoon leaders and other key individuals had film badges, but none of the rest of us did. The film badges were gathered on a weekly basis and disappeared into the big "film badge black hole" never to be seen again - or at least no one ever mentioned what the reading might be on them.