I was inducted to active duty at age eighteen at Camp Wolters near Mineral Wells, Texas, on 18 December, 1943 (In Army) Mineral Wells is just about 45 miles West of Fort Worth, and home, but it may as well have been on the moon. A few random memories of this short time:
All of the "old hands" who had been in the Army a week or so, yelled out "You'll be SOR-RY," as we came in on the bus. These same veterans quickly gave us the soldier's Prime Directive: DON'T NEVER VOLUNTEER FOR NOTHING. They went on to detail the really vile assignments that were given to those who even hinted that they were literate. "Above all," they said, "never tell anyone that you can type. They will ask for volunteers who can type, and those who raise their hands are never seen again. They give the really dirty work to the guys who think they are smart because they know how to type." (It was far too late when we discovered that the ones who raised their hands were, in fact, assigned to an office job, typing). So, when the question was asked, I wisely kept my hand down. As a result, I spent some time on KP - including Christmas Day - and some time walking guard duty at the Camp Stockade.
Guard duty had several things wrong with it. For one thing, you had to memorize the General Orders. Today, I couldn't tell you a thing about what the General Orders said, but I remember in detail the version we would chant in the barracks: "I will walk the post from plank to plank, saluting officers rank to rank. In case of fire, I'll ring the bell; In case of trouble, run like hell. And salute all colored officers not cased." For another, they had just given us the requisite 47 shots, most of which gave us the very diseases they were supposed to prevent. Finally, there was the weapon, a .410 automatic shotgun, which I had never fired, but had heard that it has about the same effect on the shooter as the shootee. Also, this particular weapon had a razor sharp receiver, which, cut into my skinny shoulder where I was required to carry it (I weighed maybe 125 pounds then).
I was walking my post from plank to plank when one of the prisoners told me he needed to go to the bathroom - there were no latrines inside the fence. On the way, he leered at my obvious discomfort and asked me if that thing would really shoot. I told him I wasn't sure, but there was one way we could both find out. He couldn't guess, but at that point, I would gladly have taken a few shots at him just to get the damned thing off my shoulder.
A few days later, I was sent by train to Fort Benning, GA for basic training. I was assigned to the First Company, 5th Regiment, where the ASTP boys were collected. All of us still regarded ourselves as college men who were simply going through some dreary formalities because of some monstrous clerical error, and that we would be summarily returned to the relative comforts of college just as soon as the miscreant was discovered by the proper authorities. We had no way of knowing that at about that time, General George C. Marshall, the Army Chief of Staff, found out about the ASTP that was sending a number of boys to college for some unspecified reason. He was then quoted as remarking "WE'RE ABOUT TO LOSE THE WAR AND WE'RE STILL SENDING BOYS TO COLLEGE?" After that, the ASTP sort of died.
Our thirteen weeks of basic training ended on March 21, 1944, and many of us were sent to Fort Bragg near Fayetteville, North Carolina. A few of us wound up in Company A, 398th Infantry Regiment, 100th Division. Infantry? What did that have to do with engineering stuff? The answer was that where we were going we wouldn't need either one but just might need to learn how to dig a foxhole.
I spent the spring and summer at Fort Bragg learning all about the M 1919 A-6 light machine gun - things like the smallest part in the gun has the longest name: "belt feed lever pivot pin retaining screw." I also learned how to clean Cosmoline (grease) off of rifles when you forget to salute an officer, and learned that the best way to clear a space on a bus back to the base was to drink boilermakers before boarding. And as always, there was a lot to be learned about gambling.
I loved to play poker, and there was always a big game on payday in the barracks. After a couple of months of losing my entire fortune shortly after getting it, I developed a protective habit. I would get my $50 pay (it was always in cash), take it to the Post Exchange and buy a pint of vanilla ice cream, a can of peanuts and four cartons of cigarettes - an entire month of minor vices. I would then return to the barracks, join the poker game in progress, and lose the rest. (After a few months, it occurred to me that maybe I should save something for the future, so I signed up to have some money sent home each month. Thus, when I returned home, my parents presented me with my entire life savings of almost $100.)
Our poker playing reached some sort of climax the day we vacated our barracks and were waiting for trucks to take us to the first leg of our overseas jaunt. We spread blankets on the ground and began to play, and the very first hand was phenominal. The winning hand was four aces, that beat two or three other fours of a kind, but as the winner reached for the pot, another player displayed a full house of Aces over Kings. We were playing with a Penochle deck.
We were loaded onto a train at Fayetteville and taken to Camp Kilmer, N.J., where we spent a few days being issued "suntans," or (khakis), then wool OD's (olive drabs), gas-proof clothing, mosquito netting, bug spray and all sorts of things meant to confuse everyone about where we were going. We did get to visit New York several times, and even saw the Andrews Sisters' performance at Radio City Music Hall.
Our unit, Company A, left Kilmer on October 7, 1944, and departed from New York Harbor on October 8 aboard the USS General Gordon.
I suppose the trip over, through the Gibraltar Strait and up to Marsailles was relatively uneventful in that we weren't becalmed or attacked by a submarine. We did experience a hurricane, which prevented our going on deck for a few days - quite an experience when your bunk is three decks below the keel. Even in good weather, when we were allowed on deck - the only place other than the head that smoking was allowed - it was only in daylight. So we spent as much time on deck as possible, and as darkness neared, there would be a litany on the PA system: "NOW HEAR THIS. CLOSE ALL DOORS, PORTS AND HATCHES. NO SMOKING ON THE WEATHER DECKS. ALL TROOPS LAY BELOW." So we would lay below and then find an excuse to go to the head, which was located just above the rudder in the stern of the ship, where smoking was allowed.
A word about the phenomenum of smoking. Everybody smoked cigarettes. It was the thing to do, the emblem of true adulthood, and the the proof of our virility. Overseas, it was something that had a major impact on everyone, as will be mentioned later.
We got only two meals a day - 7 AM and 7 PM - on the trip over, and the ships stores were exhausted (or claimed to be so) on the second day out, so there was nothing to eat between meals. It wasn't too bad except the day we found the huge cauldron of hard boiled eggs had never been boiled, but the weather had a lot to do with flagging appetites, and also there is something about sea air that seemed to me to affect the way food tasted.
I did learn something that has probably saved me many dollars in later years: DON'T PLAY BLACKJACK ON A TROOPSHIP OR ANYWHERE ELSE, FOR THAT MATTER. This sensible admonition was based on the fact that each of the 4,000 people on that ship had his own set of rules that differed materially from the other 3,999. Had we been issued live ammunition aboard ship, very few would have gotten across.
Revised 12-7-1991
2-6-1995
3-15-95
2-19-96