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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780826262431 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Missouri Press |
| Publication date: | 07/09/2004 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 272 |
| File size: | 8 MB |
| Age Range: | 14 Years |
About the Author
Lloyd M. Wells (1919–2000) was Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Missouri–Columbia. He was the coauthor of The Supreme Court and Public Opinion.
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CHAPTER 1
IN THE BEGINNING THERE WAS BASIC TRAINING
It has been called "the good war." I don't know about that. It depends, I guess, on a lot of things, including where you were then and how you were before the whole thing started. For my parents it meant trading one kind of war for another. As mobilization for global conflict gained momentum, the domestic depression which had dominated the land for a decade was driven into retreat. By June of 1941, when I was drafted, the harsh realities of unemployment had given way to worry about what a shooting war might bring. Dad, age forty-three, had landed a steady job as a pipe fitter with Springfield Gas and Electric. Mom, thirty-nine, was still working as a saleslady at Kresge's Five and Ten, as she had been since I was eleven.
My only brother — Dad called him "Pete," Mom called him "Bitty Burr," Grandma called him "Frank," while his classmates and I called him "Carl" most of the time — was two years younger. Over the years he and I had become increasingly involved in the struggle to keep us fed, housed, clothed and in school. We were working people, Dad and Mom taught us, and a working person has nothing better going for him than his name. Even our childhood promise to help keep the Wells name clean was beginning to take on new meaning.
For the past year and a half I had been working as an usher at the Landers Theater from 5:00 p.m. until midnight six days a week and hurrying off to morning classes at what is now Southwest Missouri State University on five of those days. My job also required attendance at Saturday morning staff meetings, but, of course, we didn't get paid for those. According to the prevailing logic, we were not working then; we were learning how to improve our work performance. If I didn't become a world-class usher, it was not for lack of instruction.
The job competed with school. When the draft notice came, I had completed a little less than half of the requirements for a degree and was planning to go to summer school to make up for those terms in which I had indulged myself with a light load. My puny plans would have to be set aside. Why, I wondered, did my so-called friends and neighbors on the draft board need me so soon when we were still at peace.
But there were compensations. My routines had become a bit wearing and my job more than a bit frustrating. While, as a halfhearted and self-interested pacifist, I was not eager to go into the army, the order to report to Ft. Leavenworth was neither wholly unexpected nor entirely unwelcome. I was getting restless.
Late in the afternoon of the day before I had to report, a small group of relatives and close friends waited in the crowded Frisco station to see me off. Mom and Dad were there, of course, and old Bitty Burr must have been there too. I don't remember seeing him, but that is probably because I was paying so much attention to my high school sweetheart. She was easy to look at, five feet two, very blonde, very pretty, and very, very well stacked.
Our relationship had progressed beyond the hand-holding stage. I was in love, I had told her, as no one had ever been in love before. We were not formally engaged but didn't need to be for we both knew, as everyone else knew, that we were meant for each other.
So there we were, assembled for the kind of farewell I quickly came to hate — everybody standing around through an interminable wait trying to make lighthearted conversation long after there was anything left to say. Why couldn't my folks just drop me off at the station with a hug, a good-bye, and good luck? Why did my mother insist on hanging around for one last wave as my train pulled out of the station?
But that first time a feeling of terminal loneliness came over me shortly after the crowded troop train got under way. My car was filled with a band of loud and convivial draftees having a last fling at freedom. I felt out of place, a boy among men. The guy sitting across the aisle offered me a drink. I thanked him politely and declined, hinting broadly that I was completely burned out after several days and nights of wild debauchery. Then to give my act some semblance of credibility, I tried to sleep.
The high point of my brief stay at Leavenworth came the next day at the end of a long, fast-moving production line devoted to what were called "physical exams." I stood bareassed naked in front of the final table behind which sat what I later concluded was an army psychiatrist. At the time I don't think I had more than a vague understanding of the word. It is certain I didn't know what this man's specialty was. In appearance he was set apart from the other doctors primarily by the thick lenses of the glasses he wore. I thought they might be a part of his professional equipment. They magnified his eyes to the point of grotesqueness. Maybe they gave him some kind of Xray vision or something.
After hurriedly consulting the papers I handed him, he raised his eyes, blinked a couple of times, and looked me up and down.
"Hello, Lloyd," he said.
That was a switch. I hadn't been called anything better than "Mac" all day. I acknowledged his friendly overture with a tentative "hello."
He glanced down at his papers, looked up, and blinked as he surveyed me again.
"Lloyd," he asked, "do you like girls?"
I was not visibly moved by his question, if that is what he had expected, but I managed a hesitant, barely audible, "Yes, sir." I also believed the world was round, but if the army held a different opinion....
There was brief silence. We blinked at each other. He may have had some doubts about me but made a little check on his paper and waved me on. Apparently I had passed his test, and he had found, I was about to say "uncovered," another guy who said he liked girls.
Later I thought of several clever answers I could have given to his question, but at the time the encounter was more confusing than anything else. Everything was confusing, nothing more so than the apparent hostility and verbal abuse. I went to sleep that first night with the thought, "My God! I have to put up with this for a whole year." The expression little did I know fit my total situation rather well.
The first few weeks at Leonard Wood, where I was shipped for basic training, brought more of the same. It was clear from the outset that I was not a natural-born soldier. But nobody had ever thought I was. My familiars would tell you, and have what they considered funny stories to illustrate the point, that I was never what you would call "handy." In basic training I had trouble mastering such things as how to roll a full field pack and pitch a pup tent in the approved manner. I also had problems on the rifle range and was classified as a "bolo" on my first try with the M1. When I finally qualified with the rifle, learned to field strip, clean, and reassemble it, all while blindfolded, I thought I had passed a major milestone. My respect for the army went up a notch, from a minus one to an even zero. If they could teach me that stuff, they could teach anyone.
I had far less difficulty mastering the rhetorical conventions and the improbable idiom of the infantry. I knew most of the words; it was largely a matter of stringing them together for maximum effect. But I didn't know, for example, that the post you were on was always the anus of creation. Nor had I realized there were so many different kinds of fornicators.
It was easy to detect the soldier's fondness for alliteration (in winter you could get as cold as a "whore's heart") and the demand for the extravagant and scatological greatly outweighed any concern for the probable. In those distant and unprogressive days "son of a bitch" remained the epithet of choice. And in the army I knew, a string of expletives or an interspersed expletive was considered the most appropriate way of supplying emphasis and feeling to a statement.
Consider, for example: "You're goddamn fuckin' well told" and "I'll guaran-fuckin'-tee you." The former, in its primary meaning may be translated as, "You are extremely well informed," while the latter signifies, "You have my absolute assurance in this matter." One or both these expressions might be anticipated, for example, if you were to say to a disgruntled acquaintance, "I understand you're putting in for a transfer." A simple positive or negative would not suffice. The softer language might suggest that your respondent was either halfhearted or indecisive, characteristics unbecoming a soldier. If, however, he didn't wish to reveal his plans, he might simply say, "Oh, blow it out your ass," another general-purpose expression which could be used as a substitute for or a supplement to an invitation for you to go have sexual intercourse with yourself.
It is not surprising that this language was sometimes enshrined in the record of court-martial proceedings. I found that out a little over a year later as a brand-new second lieutenant taking retreat with an infantry company at Camp Breckinridge, Kentucky. After the preliminaries were completed and before the flag was lowered, it was my duty on this occasion to read the results of recent courts-martial in the division for the spiritual uplift of the troops. Couched in formal military legalese, the document which I read at the top of my best military voice went somewhat as follows: "Charge: Violation of the Ninety-sixth Article of War. Specification: In that on or about October 1, 1942, in the vicinity of Camp Breckinridge, Kentucky, Pvt. John Doe, 1234567, Co. A, 745th Infantry, did respond to a lawful order given by Corp. Richard Roe, 89101112, Co. A, 745th Infantry, a noncommissioned officer who was then in the execution of his office, by saying. 'Oh, blow it out your ass,' or words to that effect."
In the general laughter which followed I was unable for some time to finish reading the document. It gave the findings: guilty as charged. And the sentence: six months in the guardhouse with a forfeiture for six months of two-thirds of all pay and allowances.
A second example comes to mind. Toward the end of the war in Italy, a company commander in search of relaxation after a hard stint on the line found his way into a rear echelon, members-only officers' club. He was made to feel unwelcome there. In the fight which ensued, the military police were called and the captain taken into custody. He stood accused of a long train of abuses: using vulgar language in the presence of American nurses and WACs, starting a fight, resisting arrest, and referring to the arresting officer, among other things, as a "piss-complected muff diver."
My sympathies were, of course, with the company commander, whom I had always known to be a keen observer and a reliable informant. Under the circumstances I was glad that the captain had not been entirely content with the more familiar expressions of disesteem; I was disappointed the record did not provide relevant information about the arresting officer.
But all of this gets me ahead of my story, and I now return to basic training at Leonard Wood. As I became more proficient in the language, I began to make friends. In a chance encounter the first week, I met a man who had more problems than I. It was after supper. I was in the dayroom, scanning the next day's duty roster to see whether I had drawn KP or some other choice assignment. A voice behind me asked, "Is my name up there, Slim?" He gave me his name.
I looked around. Standing there was this little guy, about five feet, five inches tall and, I would guess, about thirty years old. To say that his uniform didn't fit would be the equivalent of saying that King Henry VIII was "the marrying kind." Without putting too fine a point on it, this recruit might well have been the original model for the "sad sack." The sleeves of his shirt and legs of his pants had been rolled up haphazardly. There was a hurt look in his watery, pale blue eyes. I moved aside so that he could get a better look at the board.
He asked again, "Is my name up there?" and added apologetically, "I never did learn to read."
I felt surprise and sympathy in about equal measure. To my knowledge I had never met a grown man who couldn't read his own name. "What was the name?" I asked, trying to conceal my reactions. He told me again. I looked back at the list and reported that both of us seemed to have escaped this time.
I saw him several times after that. He was not in my platoon, which meant that he didn't live in my barracks. We usually met in the dayroom after supper. One night we found a reasonably private spot, and I read him a letter which he had just received from his bride. The handwriting and the spelling were a bit difficult to make out, and the contents were neither memorable nor affectionate. It was as if his wife of a few weeks had, by the painful act of writing, made the ultimate sacrifice in demonstrating the great depth of her love. Although I offered to write a response if he would tell me what to say, he replied only that he would "study on it."
I didn't see him for several days after that and more or less forgot about him. When finally I made inquiries, I was told that he had gone "over the hill." Perhaps there were hidden meanings in that letter, some secret message which had escaped me. I never found out.
Going over the hill was not a live option for most of us. We stayed around. We complied. We adjusted. And — apart from the punishing hikes, the Mickey Mouse discipline, the endless repetition of training exercises, the spit-and-polish inspections, KP, guard duty, working in the pits on the rifle range, all interspersed with frequent examples of institutional madness — it was a breeze.
The infamous hikes provided the greatest physical stress. They were seldom more than twenty miles at a stretch, and I know that in the present athletic age people run that distance before breakfast every morning; but permit me to issue a challenge to anyone looking for new physical fitness worlds to conquer: Try marching twenty miles in army fatigues with a full field pack on a single canteen of water when the temperature is at one hundred degrees. You will need special equipment available at any army surplus store. And now permit me to specify the contents of the pack and to offer some advice.
Start with an extra pair of shoes and socks, a raincoat, a blanket, toilet articles, a face towel, a tent pole and pegs all rolled up neatly in a shelter half. To this you add a mess kit with utensils, a bayonet, a gas mask, a short-handled pick or shovel, a web belt containing at a minimum a canteen, canteen cup and first aid kit. And by all means, don't forget your "piece," which in my case was an M1 rifle. Consult your local arms dealer for this item. He is sure to have one in stock. Total weight of this impedimenta? How the hell should I know? We're talkin' about a pack I carried fifty years ago. You can't expect a man of my age to remember everything. To be on the conservative side, let's just say the pack weighed two hundred pounds, more if you carried field rations.
Before you move out, inspect your equipment carefully to see there are no straps which pinch, rub, or bind and nothing which can work loose to pound or gouge your flesh. Pay special attention to your feet, your toenails, your shoes and socks. Be advised that a condition to which you attach no significance at the outset can, after five miles, become a focus of attention, after ten miles a preoccupation, and after fifteen miles an agony. You don't want to fall out of the line of march, because I never fell out, and surely you can do as well as I.
You will move out at a slow and steady pace calculated to yield two and a half miles per hour, walking fifty minutes and resting ten. But your experience won't be comparable to mine unless you assemble a column of marching men extending as far as the eye can see to front and rear. Your squad and platoon will be marching around you, of course. It is only with such a contingent that you will be able to experience the full effect of the accordion movement which has afflicted marching troops since, as they say, "time immemorial." That, as I understand, extends back even before World War I.
The accordion movement operates somewhat as follows: The column in front will slow without warning and for reasons which will forever remain a mystery. You will then be forced to shorten your stride and reduce your cadence to avoid running over the man in front. The slower movement will continue for several minutes until you have become adjusted to it. Then, suddenly, for reasons which again you cannot fathom, the column in front will take off, as we used to say, "like a big-assed bird." Now you must lengthen your stride to its fullest extent and break into a run to catch up. So much for the slow and steady pace.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "From Anzio to the Alps"
by .
Copyright © 2004 The Curators of the University of Missouri.
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Table of Contents
Contents Statement "In Memoriam" 00 Preface 00 Chronology 00 1. In the Beginning There Was Basic Training 00 2. Ninety-Day Wonder 00 3. Innocent Abroad 00 4. Mt. Porchia: The Legacy of a Battle 00 5. Cassino--January 1944 00 6. Anzio: The German Counterattack--February 1944 00 7. Anzio: Stalemate--March\-April 1944 00 8. Anzio: Breakout and Holiday 00 9. Pontedera: Close Encounters of a Dangerous Kind 00 10. Bombiana and Porretta Terme 00 11. Winter 1945 00 12. Holding the High Ground 00 13. The Last Offensive: Eight Days in the Mountains 00 14. The Last Offensive: Twelve Days in the Valley 00 15. That Italian Spring--May\-June 1945 00 16. The End of Everything 00Library of Congress Subject Headings for this publication: Wells, Lloyd M, (Lloyd Manning), 1919-2000, United States, Army, Armored Infantry Regiment, 6th, World War, 1939-1945 Regimental histories United States, World War, 1939-1945 Campaigns Italy, World War, 1939-1945 Personal narratives, American, Soldiers United States Biography