Unsung Valor: A GI's Story of World War II

Basic Trainee: Fort Benning, Georgia

Basic 1 rainée Fort Denning, Georgia August 22—November zj, 1943 At Union Station, we peeled off the bus following the sergeant who escorted us from Camp Robinson and squeezed ourselves and our bulging duffel bags through the terminal's revolving doors. Inside the waiting room's echoing cavern, the NCO ordered us to sit on the long slick oak benches near the ticket windows while he dealt with the railroad agent» When he returned, the sergeant handed the thick brown envelope filled with our personnel records and travel vouchers to a slender young man whom I had not seen before he joined us on the bus. The soldier's sudden responsibility for our group froze him as still and silent as a cataleptic. But after looking over the roster unceremoniously bestowed upon him by the departing sergeant, the spirit of the commissioned officer lurking inside his small frame took possession of him. Actually, he was handed the job because he was the only one going to Officer Candidate School (OCS) at Fort Benning. Meticulously reading the roster in his loud Yankee dialect, he withheld comment until he called my name, "Alltä ... C. Harrison! Don't tell me we've got a WAG!" "Yo," I said, smiling. "That's me." After giving me a condescending look and snicker, he finished the names on the list, making sure everyone under his command was "present and accounted for." Later, when a few of us went for cold drinks and gum at the large 21 kiosk at the center of the high-domed station, Earl Nichols and I met the other ASTPers from Arkansas—Ernest Enochs from Texarkana, Victor Papoulious from Hot Springs, Adam Robinson from Pine Bluff, and Fred Dobbs from Dumas. Everyone was restrained and quiet but Robinson, who, I would later realize, was his usual buoyant self. When our train finally arrived, OCS" led us down the steep metal stairs from the station platform high above the tracks. As we boarded a chair car, he let us know that if we intended to sleep on the overnight trip to Georgia, we would do it sitting up because the Army hadn't provided Pullman accommodations. He then pursued the conductor he saw hurrying through our car to ask about a berth for himself, apparently having money enough to pay if one were available.While they haggled, a young woman smartly dressed in a form-fitting black frock was passing down the aisle and stopped close enough to the men to eavesdrop. The conductor impatiently rebuffed OCS: "I've already told you, young man, there ain't no berths, for any amount of ready money!" The woman glided to the soldier's side and spoke to him quietly. OCS turned to her, listening intently while appraising her figure. She pulled a paper from her purse. When he tilted his head down to read it, she whispered in his ear. Both of them left the car, without OCS's looking at us or speaking, apparently headed to her Pullman car ahead. At least that was Earl's speculation, that the woman was sharing her berth for the night with OCS. It was hard to believe that peripatetic prostitution had developed on trains. The couple's casual violation of what I had been taught at home and at church about sex out of wedlock took me by surprise. Later, when the conductor dimmed the lights in the car for the night, Earl and I lay back with our heads against the duffel bag between us, discovering what it's like to sleep almost upright—a capability that would serve us well in the months ahead. Our train arrived at the station in downtown Columbus, Georgia, around noon the next day, and OCS rejoined us, looking neither better 22 Basic Trainee nor worse than those who actually slept—sitting up. The train creaked slowly through a maze of tracks before stopping in a burst of steam beside a corrugated steel canopy that was set up next to the station for troop arrivals. Carrying our bags, we stepped off the relatively cool train into the enveloping humidity trapped under the shed's hot metal roof. Army trucks and jeeps soon pulled up, and we fell prey to several sergeants who sorted us out for different units at Fort Benning. OCS, our overnight leader, rode off in a staff car with a commissioned officer...