“It was tough having a drink with them one weekend and having them gone the next month,” Pressgrove said.

While the majority of the men in the unit slept in the barracks, for others, active duty at Fort Bragg meant a temporary transplant for their families.

McDonald, his wife, and his 4-year-old daughter, Marie, lived near base.

Growing up at an Army base with covert tactics in the news confused young Marie.

“The radio would come and say Gorillas are doing this and that, and she always thought they were real gorillas,” McDonald said.

Shupe’s got a free pass from war games one day when family duties trumped the special mission.

“(Someone in the unit) said, ‘Sergeant Shupe, you need to come with me. You’ve got a new baby girl,’” Shupe said.

Shupe said his daughter, Shannon, who was born at Womack Army Medical Center, also battled military child confusion.

“She used to tell (her lower elementary school class) that she was born in Vietnam,” Shupe said. “She didn’t know the difference.”

Allen Bernard Coley’s family was at Fort Bragg too — but when they were on duty, he would address his father, “Sgt. Coley,” rather than “Daddy.”

It was often the job of Allen Bernard’s father, the late 1st Sgt. Allen Lasange Coley, to give orders to the unit.

“(My father) treated me like the rest of the soldiers,” Coley said. “He didn’t show me any favor.”

But when the unit was off duty, it was different, Coley said.

National Guard service is a family tradition for the Coleys, he said. It was something Coley never questioned he would do.

“I knew I was going to be in the guard since I was a little boy,” Coley said.

“In fact, I couldn’t wait till I was 17.”

So Coley joined the National Guard while he was still in high school in October of 1951, when his father was fighting in the Korean Conflict.

Coley remained in the National Guard for 26 years following their activation at Fort Bragg. He was promoted from sergeant to first sergeant shortly on the recommendation of Waycaster after he returned to Natchez.

“I’m familiar with this place,” he said of the National Guard 367th Ordinance Armory on Liberty Road.

Waycaster, the chief warrant officer at Fort Bragg, said even though he was in charge, he always got along with the men in the unit.

“I enforced all the rules, but I had nothing but great relationships with every one of my guards,” Waycaster said.

After all, most of them knew each other from back home.

“We’d grown up playing ball,” Dearing said.

McDonald also remained in the military. After more than a year on the base, officials at Fort Bragg asked if any of the men wanted to remain on active duty, and McDonald obliged.

“I said, what do I have to do to fly airplanes,” McDonald said.

So McDonald went to flight school at Fort Rucker, Ala. He was soon given orders to deploy to a county he had never heard of — Vietnam.

“We were there before most people knew we were there.”

McDonald — the same guy who played the piano at the officer clubs on the weekends — was eventually promoted from his position as first lieutenant at Fort Bragg to a lieutenant colonial.

Dearing remembered a few other incidences following 1961 activation, in which they were called to duty.

Dearing said he hadn’t been home long when a barge carrying chlorine broke loose in the Missisippi River at Natchez, and he was activated to help deal with the situation. Ironically, he was supposed to meet at Braden School, where he was principal at the time.

“I had to change from my suit and tie into my army fatigues,” Dearing said.

Dearing was discharged in 1966.

Shupe, who was working in an oil field before he was called duty, said his and his wife’s time at Fort Bragg was a learning experience, one that they went through with a number of other men from the Miss-Lou and a handful of wives.

“It was a change of life,” Shupe said.

Pressgrove said since the nature of the National Guard was to go wherever they were needed, the men never knew when or where they might be called to serve.

“We were in the Cold War, and we never knew where we were going to have to go,” Pressgrove said.

So when they were awoken at 4 a.m. and told pack their gear and board a plane without their civilian clothes, it was anyone’s guess where they would go. There was not time to place a phone call home.

“They loaded us on planes, and it wasn’t a lot of people doing a lot of talking,” Dearing recalled.

Once the plane taxied down the runway and slowed to a stop, they learned it was just a drill.

“We never had to go overseas, and we’re lucky in that respect,” Pressgrove said.

“It taught us how to be away from home and family, how to budget our money and how to and be close to friends,” Shupe said.

“I was 23 years old, we were just young kids.”

“It was just good clean, honest experience.”