Basic Training

The Barracks Symphony: Basic Training, Fort Dix, Late 1944

After lights out, it’s a symphonyof flatulence, sighs, snores, and sobs:for being away from homein a strange dangerous worldthat will only get more perilousonce they’re sent into the war.

Later, the furtive soloists appear:whether from loneliness, lust,or just because every waking hourthey’re shouted and shot at: preparationfor the European and Asian Theatres.

Inspired—by bathing-suited pin-upsof Grable, Gardner, or Hayworth,or by memories of the girls back home,the girls they kissed or wanted to kiss,the girls they spied on undressing, innocentof their prying eyes, or maybe knowingexactly who was looking, their way of givingboys who might not be coming homesomething to remember and briefly enjoy—

guys take themselves in hand, cots creaking,squeaking, a bolero more rhythmic, urgentthan Ravel’s, a basso-grunting louder, faster,until the blessed crescendo, brief oblivion,the slowing diminuendo, then silence.

My father lay in that swampy cot-darkness,most likely added his voice to that discordantchorus, remembering his wedding night,the day before he had to report.

How Basic Training Worked: Fort Dix, Early 1945

The mission: to turn nice, polite kidsinto packs of murderers, so drafteesjogged double-time, faces a permanentwar scowl: teeth barred like fangsthat could rake anyone who stumbledinto their path, hands held like clawsthat would tear into zebras or wildebeests.

In the mess hall, fifteen minutes to wolfmeals tossed at them like lions in cages,then back to training how to kill, becausethat’s what the Nazis and Japanesewere bellowing at their draftees.

No privacy, no quiet, except the few hoursthey were allowed to sleep, then shoutedawake and spat at that they were little girls,maggots, that if any of them had girls back home,“Jodie” was sure to be doing the backdoorwith them, laughing at saps who’d been healthyenough to be drafted and turned into gray meat,

when smart guys faked conditions that let thempick and choose like cattle buyers amongthe luscious lonely women stateside—until draftees hated everything and everyone,especially their sergeants, stand-insfor the enemy troops they couldn’t wait to kill:to protect their families and homes,

but more because then, maybe then,they’d finally get a little peace and quiet,the bellowing silent, the eruptions inside themsubsiding, the War, please God,the War, over and won.

Bayonet Training: Basic Training, Fort Dix, New Jersey, Early 1945

“Think of a high-school football coachwhipping his team into a frenzybefore the biggest game of the season,”Dad chuckled and sighed relief:World War ii ending before he was shippedoverseas, a last-minute reprieve from the chair.“Then multiply the mayhem by a hundred.”

“What’s the purpose of the bayonet?!!!!!”the sergeant bellowed, demanded.

“To kill!” the grunts had to shout,once never enough to blood the troops:the hollering thundered for fifteen minutesof frothing rage. Finally the sergeantreleased them to attack the dummy: houndstearing into a swamp-floundering convict.

“That dummy was the Nazi that mightmurder and eat my family, tossing their bonesfor his German shepherd to play with.You can’t imagine how good it felt to staband yank the bayonet out with a twistmeant to tear apart an enemy’s entrails:the Army knew exactly what it was doing,turning us feral so we’d be eager to kill.”

My father eternally thanked the Godhe no longer believed in that he neverhad to use that lethal skill overseas—though another matter entirely: the Jew-hatersin his company when he got shippedto Fort Bragg for advanced training.

Millie Livingston Speaks of Her New Friend Ann Cooperman, Fort Bragg, Early 1945

Like Ann, I followed my husband down,or in my case, up, from Galveston:North Carolina so far north, even in springit might as well be Alaska. We metat a uso dance, our...