On February 28, 1943, I became eighteen
years of age and eligible to join the military. Pop
took me to the draft board at the Mariemont community center
where I requested voluntary induction. That happened on March
20th and my active service began one week later. I
reported to Ft. Thomas, KY and was issued the standard equipment
and uniform. Because
of my ROTC, training the Army made me an acting corporal over
ten other guys. It
was my job to see that they did all the things we were supposed
to do to begin to get ready for basic training. There is
probably a photo of myself and Bob Coen in uniform outside a
barracks building. We
look rather silly, but what else could be expected from a couple
of 18 year olds.
My Basic Training was given at Camp (now
Fort) Blanding Florida. This
is located in the vicinity of Jacksonville. Only
a few memories remain to be related, so here goes:
Everyone had to learn to shoot the M1
Garand, gas operated, rifle. It
was to be addressed as your piece. If your piece was dropped or
not kept clean the Sergeant would make you sleep with it in your
bed. Not only that,
but you had to memorize the serial number which was engraved on
the breech of the rifle. Fortunately,
my previous training had blessed me with good familiarity of
shooting. Marksmanship
earned me an Expert medal from which hung small bars identifying
which weapons were used qualifying me for that level. My medal
had several of those bars. It
was also a requirement that we had to be able to field strip the
M1 (i.e., take it apart into component assemblies) blind folded
and within a very short, like seconds, time frame. We
also had to reassemble the thing in a similar manner. This was
more difficult for me, but I made it.
The Army had a neatness complex. Everything
had to be exactly arranged and clean. This
went for everything, people, clothes, equipment, furniture,
buildings, and grounds.
For some unknown reason they selected me
to be a radio operator. Just
about every day I was assigned to go to radio school, where
several poor saps like me would put on earphones and listen to
morse code messages for hours. Each
of us tried to get proficient in identifying those piercing
little dits and dahs. My
patience gave out very soon and so with no supervision, it
became easy for me to slip away before school and wander off
into portions of the post where it would be unlikely for me to
be caught. One very
hot day my meanderings took me up to the lake where enlisted
personnel had a beach from which they could go swimming. Since
it was a normal duty day, no one was around. I
stripped off my uniform down to my undershorts and stretched out
on the top of a picnic table. In
today's vernacular it was time to catch some rays. The
warmth of the day caused me to doze only to be awakened by
shouts of "HELP, HELP!!!" Coming
out of the stupor it dawned on me that someone was drowning out
in the lake. There
were three guys about one hundred yards out (deep water). One
of them was doing the yelling while the other two seemed to be
in trouble. Quickly
I jumped into the water and swam out to help them. Checking with
one man, I ascertained that he could reach the raft on his own,
another was OK but did not know how to save his friend, and so
my lifesaving merit badge from Boy Scouts came into play for the
third guy. When we
reached shore he was able to stagger up to the picnic bench
where he collapsed. Although
he was breathing, it was with extreme difficulty so I used some
artificial respiration techniques to get the water out of his
lungs. A few hundred yards up the beach was an officer's club
and from there many off-duty officers and nurses came rushing
down to see and assist in getting the three guys into recovery. Well
there I was in my wet undershorts with parts of my masculine
anatomy exposed to any onlooker, not to mention the fact that I
was not where I was supposed to be. When
all those people arrived and were so involved in helping the
swimmers, I quickly donned my uniform and surreptitiously
slipped away.
At one point a security organization of
the government asked me to watch for things going on that would
be detrimental to the war effort. I
was supposed to write a monthly report about any such
shenanigans. This just wasn't my bag so it lapsed for lack of
interest on my part.
>From Blanding the Army decided that my
I.Q. was high enough to qualify for the Army Specialized
Training Program. So
they began processing me through a series of steps to verify
that the capability was also there. First they sent me to John
B. Stetson University near Ocala, FL. While
there some of the other candidates and I had the opportunity to
visit Silver Springs and ride the glass bottom boats on the
lake. The next step
resulted in my being sent to Pratt Institute of Technology in
Brooklyn, NY.
We were domiciled in a housing development
that had been constructed for the poor folk of the city. There
were a few hundred of us and we were quartered in apartments
with about four soldiers to each. Each
weekday we would fall out (an Army term meaning to get out of
your quarters and line up outside into a prescribed formation),
get breakfast, then march through the city streets to the school
for classes. At the
end of the school day we'd march back, eat dinner, and were then
dismissed to do our homework. The
courses we were taught were math, engineering, physics, etc. The
idea of course was to develop engineers. On
weekends we would cruise the local areas or go into New York
City. Being in
uniform was a great help in getting friendly relationships
started with the citizenry.
There were girls at Pratt and I was
fortunate enough to meet one. Her
name escapes me at the moment, but we had a few good dates. She
had a roommate who seemed to want to share me with her. More
about the roommate shortly. One
time the girl, her father (a Lt. Commander in the Navy), another
couple and I went to a small restaurant for a modest dinner. Not
long before the other soldier had told me about a stunt they had
used in his previous command's mess hall. Well the dinner was
served to us in a booth. My
friend (?) asked me to pass the salt. Aha!
says I, he wants to have me do that stunt. So
I tapped the shaker on the table twice and tossed it toward
him. WRONG --He had
forgotten all about that stunt, so the shaker performs the
normal parabolic arc given when a slight toss is made and
impacts sharply on the table and splashes coffee on the
Commander (my girls father). Needless
to say the parental impression was less than favorable. The
reason the father was there was to take his daughter home since
the semester was over for the civilian students. This
led to another fiasco.
I went to the house where the girls were
staying and waited downstairs in the living room for my girl to
finish packing. While
waiting the roommate and she would take turns coming down and
give me big wet kisses. They
were wearing lipstick which they refreshed frequently. In my
innocence it did not occur to me that they were having fun. It
didn't dawn on me that my face was covered with lipstick and
that when the father showed up there I
was smeared all over my face with the stuff. Good thing there
was never a chance for anything serious to come of that
relationship.
More often than was good for us we would
go into Manhattan on the subway. Just
off Times Square proper was a company called Sharpe & Dohme. This
scientific company would pay volunteers $5.00 for a pint of
blood, give some cookies and orange juice and tell the volunteer
to take it easy and drink plenty of fluids for the next few
days. It doesn't
take a genius to realize that poorly paid teenage soldiers took
great advantage of that largesse. As
mentioned we did it more frequently than was good for us. Luckily,
being in good shape to start and in a non physically active
daily environment no significant damage was done.
This academic life was just not my idea of
being in the Army with a war in progress. The
courses were dull and the weather was too. So
good old patriotic Verne says "Sir, I want to transfer to a
fighting unit."