Above the Thunder: Reminiscences of a Field Artillery Pilot in World War II

2 Ninety-Day Wonders and Fair-Haired Boys

72 In 1942, soldiers didn’t jet about the world in plush seats, waited on by lovely stewardesses. They carried their duffel bags up a gangplank and down into the dank depths of some ship that had been fitted out to accommodate the maximum number of men with minimum consideration of comfort, and that smelled like somebody’s dirty socks. We spent about a week between Honolulu and San Francisco. While we cruised northeastward toward home, Marines were fighting a desperate battle against the enemy on Guadalcanal, Rommel was attacking El Alamein, Australians were holding against Japanese assaults at Milne Bay, Germans and Russians were locked in a tremendous battle for Stalingrad, and Churchill visited Stalin to discuss possibilities for a second front to ease pressure on the Soviet forces. The trip itself has left little impression on my mind. I recall being at Fort McDowell on Angel Island, because I sent from there a wire to a certain girl asking if she would marry me. And I recall being on a train that stopped in Lordsburg, New Mexico. An old Indian came alongside the train selling tamales at five cents each. Reaching their arms out the open windows, soldiers bought them by the handful and began eating. It was my first taste of a tamale, and my nInety-dAy wonders And fAIr-hAIred boys – two – ninety-day wonders and fair-haired boys 73 immediate reaction was to ridicule those who had told me they were hot. But after about five minutes my mouth began to burn. I headed for the place at the rear of the car where you could get a weak trickle of tepid water in a thin paper cup that held about two tablespoonfuls. There was a long line and everyone was in a hurry, so there was much puffing and blowing and yelling for the guy at the spigot to move on. I learned about really hot tamales from that. H Suddenly, I was at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, home of the U.S. Field Artillery.1 Off came all the insignia of grade and on went the OCS patch, sewn to the left breast pocket of our shirts. We moved into tar paper shacks, called “hutments,” built on concrete slabs in long rows. At the end of each two rows was a latrine building with showers. The hutments were numbered, of course, and each held six candidates, assigned alphabetically by last name. In my hutment were Everett Kelley, Donald Kellogg, Earl “Bud” Kelly, Howard Kenyon, and Bernard Kipley. Each of us had a steel cot with cotton mattress, a shelf with rod for hangers, and a few square feet of floor space to call our own. There were one or two bare bulbs hanging from overhead and a small oil heater. Discipline was necessarily quite strict, because the amount of material to be covered made the OCS period a rather frantic thirteen weeks. The miracle of the “Ninety-Day Wonders,” it turned out, was that they survived. There was little time to be wasted. After First Call, played by a record over a very scratchy loudspeaker, we had fifteen minutes to be ready for our first formation. In that time we had to make it to the latrine—shave, brush teeth, and all that kind of thing—make bunks, sweep out the hutment, and be dressed in proper uniform of the day. The first formation was a roll call followed, during part of the course, by “voice culture.” The latter consisted of repetition of commands in unison as directed by a senior candidate from another class. This was often varied by being made a “Simon Says” drill just to keep us awake, and sometimes individual candidates were called on to demonstrate the proper voice and inflection for various commands. After that was the 74 above the thunder morning meal, for which, like all other meals, we were allotted thirty minutes. Those detailed for table waiter duty got no special consideration . They served the meal and ate, they hoped, before the half hour was gone. Food discipline was very strict, too. We were told: “Take all you want, but eat all you take.” And then we hit the classroom or the range. We might be learning to fieldstrip different small arms (sometimes blindfolded) or driving sixby -six trucks cross-country or studying the dry regulations pertaining to supply or solving problems in gunnery or...