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37 A Segregated Army In 1942, I dropped out of Stamford High School to go to work for Northern WarrenCutexCorporation.Manystudentsdroppedoutbecausetheywere not performing well academically, because of family or personal issues at home, because they needed to support their families, or because they were no longer motivated. None of those reasons applied to me. I left because I saw an opportunity to make a good sum of money and because I was given enormous responsibilities at my job. I had started working for Northern Warren as an after-school job. I was assigned to the nail-polish compounding lab, where I cleaned floors, sinks, and cabinets. At night, while I mopped, the foreman, Mr. Fleming, mixed the compound, and I asked him questions. I had enjoyed my one class in chemistry, so I couldn’t pass up the chance to learn the process. Three weeks later, a worker spilled a fifty-gallon drum of nail polish on the floor, requiring a major cleanup. He was fired, and I was immediately promoted to his position based on the quality of my work as a janitor and Mr. Fleming’s recognition of my interest in chemistry. I had a car and a great job making eighty-five cents an hour, and I was dating. Life seemingly could not be any better for a teenager in 1942. Yet, there was a war going on. My older brothers, Bill and Bob, were already in the army, Bob at Fort Hood, in Texas, and Bill, a corporal in the transportation corps, was stationed in New York. I thought it was my duty to serve. I felt mature enough, and I was built fairly ruggedly. I was also swept up in the war fever gripping the nation in those years, the desire to punish the Japanese for the attack on Pearl Harbor. In 1943, when I was seventeen years old, I attempted to volunteer. The recruiting sergeant said, “Kelly, why don’t you just wait? In a few months, you’re going to be eighteen.” People at the local draft board said that as soon as I turned eighteen, they would immediately send me my papers. ChAPtEr 3 38 A Segregated Army My mother was not excited about my going into the army, especially since she already had two sons in the military. She was resigned to the inevitable, however, and told me, “Well, son, I guess we’ll have to face it. We’ll have to have a third star to put on the flag in the window. I’d like to keep you home as long as possible, but if you want to go before the call comes, that’ll be up to you.” So I waited, out of deference to my mother. I got my draft papers just weeks after I turned eighteen. On May 18, 1944, less than three weeks before the D-Day invasion of France, I was inducted into the United States Army. My first post was Fort Devens, Massachusetts, and my first military assignment was peeling potatoes for three weeks. It wasn’t what I had expected.Aftertwomonths,Iwasherdedtogetherwithaboutfivehundred black troops onto an all-black troop train. It was my first real encounter with the segregated army. In fact, except for my trips to Harlem and the time I was in Pop’s churches, it was the first time I had been around more than a dozen African Americans at one time. We traveled three or four days with the windows blacked out. We didn’t know where we were or where we were going. We arrived at our destination—Harrisburg, Pennsylvania—on D-Day. I didn’t know or care anything about what was happening in Europe that day. I was focused on my own situation. I said to the soldier sitting next to me, “Why in the hell did it take us three days to do this?” The white officers herded us into trucks and buses and transported us out to Indiantown Gap Military Reservation. I was assigned to the 445th Port Company, part of the transportation corps, for basic training. Most of my basic training was geared toward learning how to unload ships as part of the newly organized U.S. Army Transportation Corps. We had some advanced individual training, and we mastered the basics every soldier learns—how to run, shoot, and march, a little bit of bayonet training, some infantry training, and army organization. Eventually , we learned about military justice and how to conduct...

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