Our Dad Was In The Air Force. So Why Were We Called Brats?

by Chuck Yarling

My dad joined the Army-Air Force in January 1942, right after the attack at Pearl Harbor. After training as an aircraft engine mechanic, he served during WW II in approximately 22 countries in and around the Middle East during his time there. And I have the photos to prove it because he kept them all in photo albums.

After returning home from overseas, he married my mother, Clara Catherine Wingo, in 1942. He remained in the Army-Air Force and eventually stationed at Fort Bliss, Texas, where I was born on Victory Europe Day (VE Day), May 8, 1945. Shortly after that, he left active service but stayed in the reserves. And my sister was born two years later.

After the Korean War started, my dad received a direct commission as a 2^nd Lieutenant in the Air Force. From then on, my life was a whirlwind.

Subsequently, I had a total of 21 moves while living in 15 cities, three Air Force bases, and attending 16 schools with my last one of these being at Fort Knox, Kentucky. My dad was stationed at an Air Force-manned radar site outside of Fort Knox. 

So my sister and I enrolled in Fort Knox High School. It was there that we first heard the term, Army brat.

So what is a brat? Several online dictionaries define a brat similar to the following: (1) an ill-mannered, immature, impudent, or annoying person; or (2) the child of a military person who served in one of our miitary services. Synonyms of a brat include a wide range of words including bratwurst, little devil, urchin, whippersnapper, youngster, child, imp, and kid.

Then we have Brat Store, a company that has been a family-owned women’s clothing and gift store located in Santa Monica, CA., since 2000.

There is also the Military Brats Registry where anyone has “a way to find your friends and a way for them to find you” at no cost. They call themselves, “The Permanent Home Address for Military Brats.”©

Most people may not aware that there are large number of acronym names for brat, some of which are really off-the-wall. https://www.abbreviations.com/BRAT includes some of the following “BRATs” from a list of over twenty items:

• Bananas, Rice, Applesauce and Toast (diet order for stomach illness)

• Behavior Research And Therapy (a journal)

• Beautiful, Rich, Attentive, Thoughtful

• Born, Raised And Trained

• Behavioral Risk Assessment Tool (HIV; various locations)

• Brilliant Resourceful Adaptive and Thankful

But our dad was in the Air Force. Perhaps I should feel a little better because there are three Air Force BRATs Groups on Facebook!

What I’m getting to is my sister had questioned that the two of us could not be Army brats because our dad was in the Air Force. So after putting her head into the thinking process that I had always known she had within her, she decided who we were. She told me, “We are not Army brats; we are Air Force Stinkers!”

Here I am some 60 years later and I’ll always remember her glorious decision on who we really were, especially since my sister passed away last December. 

Patricia Elizabeth Yarling (1947-2023). RIP!

__________________

Chuck Yarling 

Spec 5, US Army

HQ Co., 26th Combat Engineering Bn.

Chu Lai, Vietnam (1969-1970)

This first appeared in The Havok Journal on April 3, 2024.

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.