Off To Join the Service: Part II

I was nominally in charge of the group boarding the evening bus across the river to New Jersey’s Fort Dix. Being in charge meant my name had been at the head of the list at the point where it had been divided into manageable numbers – ten or twelve to a group. Most slept; a few talked; none had a change of heart, deciding against beginning their army career with desertion. That I delivered them safely ended my command. No other would replace it.

We were fed, shorn, given clothing and boots – brown boots and a bottle of dye, the army having changed from brown to black with warehouses full of its World War II and Korean stock. As long as anyone had them they also had dye rubbing off on their pants. The clothes were new, very olive green in color. Not everything fit, and what did would not fit us when we left Fort Dix as trimmer people in another eight weeks. During the first days no one had any idea what to do with us, other than to keep us in or around the place where we were supposed to be. We had tests to see what skills we might possess, though skills were less an issue than how we might fit what the army needed.

Jake showed up and caught up with me by the end of the second day. We were by then a large enough group to be made into a company – about two hundred or so - and there were some interesting people in the group. Tom McGibney, a tall man who could play tunes by flexing his knuckles. All Tom’s songs sounded alike, unless accompanied by singing. He was from the Bronx, a taciturn fellow who let it be known what space he required and what he was unwilling to tolerate, without having to say. A fellow from the neighborhood, Mickey St. Claire, had told me before I left that the best way to enter a unit was to pick out the biggest man and to start a fight with him, a fight that would hopefully be ove r quickly and that would have the other guy unconscious. As nice as Mickey was, his advice would have had me trying to KO McGibney, an impossible task.

There was also Henry Osman, an enthusiastic fellow who became unrecognizable without his glasses, as did all the world to him if he were to take them off, and Alan Lovitch, who would one day sell me a suit at Bonds, a suit with two pairs of pants. Alan was among those who chose military service rather than jail – a common offer in those days – and he had a gift for complaining, for acting offended by reasonable requests, thought it did not seem like whining. Jerry Nadeau was one of a large group who had enlisted in Maine. (People not from New York seemed more inclined to enlist, perhaps not knowing that to be drafted was a less intrusive choice.) Jerry had a wonderful singing voice and would use it to make cry those who had left girls behind, serious romances for guys eighteen or nineteen years old. Jerry also looked like a young Rocky Marciano, which made some believe that Jerry and Rocky were brothers.

There was also a fellow named Bob, whose last name I cannot now recall. He had, he said, left West Point before graduation and was coming back to the army, as an enlisted man. It may have been so, but in the middle of training Bob was taken away by the police. No explanation was given, which gave rise to a number of rumors, all of which concluded that the problem must be someone else’s, since Bob was an okay guy. Also in our company was Lance Norton, who had come from New Jersey to find a career in explosives. His name was most intriguing, especially for those who came from neighborhoods filled with Mikes, Jacks, Steves, Bills and Joes.

I am not sure if it was in that company, but I also served for a time with Phil Corner, a musician in real life, who could sleep standing up, and could do so quite readily. The only flaw was his moving, swaying forward and back while dreaming. Had he controlled that he would have done quite well. I later met a man, Ed Miley, who could both sleep and appear interested while standing; and, Ed never moved.

Not everyone was someone I wanted to know. There were in the company, as anywhere, a fair number of morons. There was one, whose name was alphabetically near my own. Because that was the case he was always close to me, next in line or just ahead, doing what I was doing. Because of this, he one day almost shot me while trying to maneuver his rifle. I doubt the shot came close, but it was close enough to unnerve the instructor who was no doubt dreading the paperwork accompanying the slaying of one recruit by another on his watch. I would later appropriate the poor soul’s bayonet, having lost mine and needing to return one to the government at the e nd of basic training. He took it as well as he took most things, wandering up and down the aisle saying, ‘Who’s got my knife!’ In the end, he was not surprised, having long been a victim and having defined himself so. There was also a man who I awoke one night to serve as furnace guard, but he never got up. The furnaces were surely well-serviced, as was everything in the army, but they were also old, and in wooden buildings fire was not always our friend. That he never got up to be the first to smell smoke annoyed me, because he said he hadn’t been awakened. I thought I could really hurt this man, but the incident passed.

Another person toward whom I had a similar feeling was a National Guard specialist, who having served six months was on his two week summer assignment. Our platoon was without an officer, and somehow did not have enough non-commissioned officers (NCO's), meaning that this specialist was assigned to us – or we to him. We did not get along. He seemed not to like me, which I found surprising; but, it seemed only fair that I not like him in return. He took to taunting me during a long march, during which we had to run while carting what seemed like all the equipment we might ever need. Later, he came by to say something was amiss in the tent that Jake and I shared. While he was looking to find something else wrong I told him he would do well not to find it, since it would only annoy me, and he might regret having done so. Or words to that effect. In the midst of my lecture I thought this was how people got into military prisons, but having once begun I thought it only fair to continue. We saw little of him after that evening.

Having no officer assigned, and no regular NCO that I recall, meant we had more freedom than other platoons. We did well with it. The sergeants who filled in were good men and interested in having us be good soldiers. They were helpful, rather than demanding. One tried very hard to teach me marching, something I never did learn. I apparently failed to grasp an essential difference between walking and marching, though I mastered for a time the proper length of a step and the manner in which my foot should come forward. He was pleased. I was pleased. The knowledge did not transfer to the next day’s demands, but it seemed all we could reasonably expect. Perhaps because of my ‘marching disability’ I was not assigned to the infantry, to the ‘Ultimate Weapon’ as the sign had proclaimed at the camp’s entrance. Also against me was being a poor marksman. I recall being told, ‘You could have hit it if you saw it, or if it had stayed where you were aiming.’

Instead, I was sent to the Artillery, to Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

To be Continued...