When I was in grade school, my closest friend was Bob Cooper, who was temporarily living with his grandparents about a block away from our house on South Lindsay Street in Gainesville, Texas. I understood that he was living with them because his father, a regular army Captain, was not in a position to take care of him where he was stationed. We used to play war with toy soldiers (made of lead, as I recall) and develop grand battle strategies on the floor of his grandparents living room.
Sometime around 1940, Bob rejoined his father who was transferred to Schofield Barracks, the main army base near Pearl Harbor. Bob wrote me a few letters from Hawaii, all very interesting, but the last one, written in the summer of 1941 as I recall, was even moreso. It spoke of the big Marine War Games they had just finished, and how the "Blue" team had totally surprised the "Red" team by staging an aerial attack from the northwest side of Oahu Island. The mountains blocked visual sight, and radar, which was in its infancy, didn't pick up their planes until they had "bombed" Pearl Harbor. I thought the letter was very interesting, but thought no more about it until the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor from the northwest side of Oahu Island at 7:50 AM on December 7, 1941.
I heard about the attack on the radio about noon just as I was leaving to pick up Lew Allen. We planned to cook lunch and do some hiking and exploring on the banks of the Red River. Someone had moved an old railroad freight car there, and allowed our Scout troop to use it for a base camp.
Lew hadn't heard the news, and I remember how stunned he was when I told him. We did go on and do our cooking and hiking, but our minds weren't on it. We agreed with all of the radio reports from around the world that the Japanese must be crazy.
Most people in the US hadn't expected the attack, but we all figured we were ready for them because the US had gone on a war footing earlier that year. The 36th and 45th Divisions of the National Guard had been activated (In fact, the 36th ("Texas") Division was on ships several days West of Hawaii when the attack occurred), and our President Roosevelt had announced that we were going to build 50,000 planes. The only thing was, everyone expected the attack to come from Germany rather than Japan. Hitler had been making noises about cutting us off from Britain, and in fact had sunk a number of American-owned ships.
At the same time we also knew that Japanese expansion in Asia - they called it the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" - presented a threat to our oil and rubber supplies, and could cause economic havoc in this country. To help stem this expansion, Roosevelt had earlier placed an embargo most war materials, a move that was met with hostility in Japan, but started negotiations for a settlement in Washington. Their envoys were, in fact, in the process of negotiations when the attack occurred, and that is why we still call it a "sneak attack."
In short, it seemed to most people that Hitler was the real threat, while no one really took the Japanese very seriously. Everyone knew they weren't smart enough to make real guns or planes. "Made in Japan" was another term for "junk."
The early days of WW II were nothing but a series of defeats for the good guys, culminating in the loss of the Philippines which was our main Pacific base after Pearl Harbor. It wasn't until we had some relatively minor victories such as Midway, that it began to look a little better, and by the time I got out of high school, in May, 1942, the country was into full mobilization, having realized that maybe they had underestimated the Japanese a bit.
My ambition then was to become an aeronautical engineer and design airplanes for the war effort, and toward that end I enrolled in Gainesville Junior College, not to learn engineering but to get some courses out of the way - like Freshman English and Economics - that I would never have worked hard enough to pass in a real college.
In the Spring of 1943, several of us took a test to determine eligibility for one of the Specialized Training Programs offered by the various branches of the armed services. Five of us passed the test and were then given the choice of signing up for V-12, the designation of the Navy program, or A-12, the Army program. Knowing that I had very poor eyesight and could be turned down by the Navy, I chose A-12. I think I was the only one. Lew Allen also took and passed the test, but soon received an appointment to West Point. The others chose V-12, and at least two of them spent the war at Southern Methodist University, were commissioned ensigns and held down desks for the duration.
I was assigned to Texas A & M college, and duly reported to Foster Hall, an ancient structure that had been saved from demolition so that we would have a place to sleep. We stayed there maybe two weeks, time enough to learn at least the rudiments of poker and dice, and the words to the various Aggie pep songs. At the end of two weeks, the Army decided it had really meant to send us to OKLAHOMA A & M, at Stillwater.
By this time, the poker and dice lessons had reduced my wealth to maybe three or four dollars, so when they told us to go home to await further orders (all of this was at our own expense because we were volunteers), the $2 for the railroad ticket to Dallas on the Sunbeam Express (the fastest train in Texas), and another dollar something to ride the bus to back to Gainesville left me flat broke and none the wiser.
Arriving home in the middle of the night, I found that my mother had converted our living room to a bedroom and had rented it to a Camp Howze soldier's wife. It was a surprise to all of us when I let myself in the front door that night.
Around September 1 I rode the bus to Stillwater, Oklahoma, the home of Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College (now Oklahoma State University), located in a barren field halfway between Tulsa and nowhere.
When I first arrived and scanned the courses we were to take, all of them sounded terrifying except Geography. I had taken this subject, I suppose, in every grade, and had found it to be the one of those courses you could sleep through, so I figured to use Geography for nap time. This very nearly proved the shoal on which my college career would founder, because I learned almost too late that Geography at Oklahoma A & M was just about the toughest course they had.
Physics was another matter; I understood none of it, having carefully avoided taking it in high school in favor of Chemistry. So I would most certainly have failed it miserably if it had not been for the good old grading curve which allowed my pitiful 50% rise to a passing grade due to so many 20's and 25's. We had one guy there, Moberly, I think, who really understood physics and would routinely score 98 on a test, thus qualifying as our "curve buster." Had it not been for Moberly and his ilk, my 50 would have probably put me on the honor roll. As it was, I think I came out with a solid C in physics.
Of course, there were constructive things to learn there. We sang songs in formation going to the mess hall, such as "Wilberforce, Get Off That Horse and Bring Him in for Lunch," "...Take down that Service Star Mother, your Son's in the ASTP. He'll never get hurt on a slide rule, so that Service Star never should be," and "Some day I'll go over the ocean, and a dirty old Jap I will see. I'll whip out my slide rule and kill him with the cosine of A minus B..."
We also found, for the very first time, that it was possible to cut classes - this particular sin had never occurred to us before in our sheltered lives. So one afternoon, thinking no one would miss us, two or three of us went across the campus to the theater and saw a movie. I think the movie was a cartoon feature of some kind, I don't remember, but I do remember the punishment. We were given pairs of shears and told to trim the football field that Saturday morning.
The ASTP program provided a quarter system instead of semesters, and required a semester of work to be crowded into a quarter. This system was designed to get us out in three years going year around - there was no such thing as a summer break. Since the course content stayed the same, the accelerated program didn't allow time for such careless delays as reaching down to pick up a dropped pencil. I learned about holding on to the pencil, and the good old grading curve saved the physics, so I finished the quarter successfully.
Finally, there was the matter of shooting dice. We did it late at night in the latrine of our barracks - the college Field House. Dice, as played by those guys, is a very, very complex and fast moving game, and it took almost all of the money I had to find out that I don't think that fast. So I didn't shoot dice at all after that until well after WW II, and then only for fun.
Tommy Nolen occupied the bunk below me. My way of leaving my bunk was to roll over on my stomach, throw my legs off the bed and follow them, all in one fluid movement, an efficient and effective way to get out of bed; however, it did not take into account what or who might be on the floor below me or sitting on the edge of the bottom bunk. After I had struck Tommy in the head a number of times in this manner, he solemnly paraphrased President Roosevelt: "I HATE WAH, AND MY ELANOR HATES WAH. BUT IF YOU HIT ME IN THE HEAD ONE MORE TIME, YOU SON OF A BITCH, IT MEANS WAH!"
One day toward the end of the term, they told us that it would be a dandy idea if we got our Army basic training out of the way so that we could concentrate fully on our college work for four years, followed by commissioning as officers and gentlemen.
This was the last time anyone mentioned either college or commissions to me, anyway.