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5. "Fin from Hollywood' till recovering from his shock at being mustered into the regular Army as a private on October 18, 1918, Capra found himself not in European combat but at the Presidio at picturesque Fort Point on San Francisco Bay, headquarters of the coast defenses. He was one of 2,500 prospective officers from eleven western states crammed into the Enlisted Specialists' Preparatory School. From reveille at 5:30 A.M. to taps at 10 P.M., they studied tactics and weaponry, practiced with artillery, and trained in trench warfare with bayonets, hand grenades, and machine guns. Capra said that to take advantage of his scientific background, the Army made him an instructor in ballistics mathematics. The existing Army records do not say anythingabout teaching duties at the Presidio, only that Capra was on duty at the school. A journalist visiting the camp noted that it was not unusual for "a stripling" to be made an instructor, "refreshing the memory of some old-timer who drilled under the old manual." The frustrated Capra, however, spent much of his brief service at the Presidio taking classes himself. While the war reached its final days in Europe, he was in a master gunner section, taking a crash course in surveying. On November 11, when the rest of the country was celebrating the Armistice, Capra was plodding through a study of "Chaining Between Two Points, One of Which is Inaccessible."* * Some of Capra s publicity material over the years stated that he was promotedfrom private to second lieutenant in World War I. Capra told the author that he was promoted from private to technical sergeant before being discharged; he said he was "bumped up to sergeant becauseI was teaching the big boys." But none of the existing documentsfrom World War I in Capra s Army personnel file indicates a rank aboveprivate; and the adjutant general's Official Army Register for December 1, 1918, a week before Capra s discharge, lists every officer in the Coast Artillery Corps of the rank of second lieutenant or above, but it does not list Capra. An Officer Qualifications Record sheet Capra filled out during World War II listed the highest grade he achieved£ 1 0 4 F R A N K C A P R A In the fall and winter of 1918, an epidemic of Spanish influenza swept the world. More than twenty million Americans became ill, and half a million died. Schools were closed for the duration, people wore breathing masks when they ventured out in public, and the Army was devastated by the attack as it spread unchecked through crowded camps, killing 44,270 American soldiers, nearly as many as were killed in battle. Capra's hardy constitution initially put up a resistance. But he soon felt the symptoms coming upon him. In desperation he fled the post to downtown San Francisco, still wearing his uniform, and fainted in a cafeteria. "I woke up in a strange room. There was a little bottle of water on a desk. I was in a bed. There was nobody else there. I lay there for a day in a terrible sweat. Nobody came to see me. Finally a couple of Army guys came and took me to a hospital." At the French Hospital on Geary Boulevard, he was dumped in an "enormous old brick room" with "beds so close together nobody could get between them. "When somebody died, some old men would come in and put him in a basket, and as they walked this basket made a creaking sound. We heard that sound all night and all day. I never saw a doctor. 1was there six days. I saw the guy next to me die. For the first two or three days I wasn't hungry. Then I started getting a little better. I asked one of the guys carrying out caskets if I could have some food. He went out and came back with two eggs. I picked 'em up and they were cold rubber. "I got an idea. Might as well get these guys laughing, they're going to die anyhow. There was a nail in the brick wall right over my head. So I reached up and stuck those two eggs onto the nail and hung 'em there. There was laughing all over the room. It was so wonderful to hear. "Those two eggs stayed there until I left." Capra was sent back to the Presidio, weak from flu and pneumonia...

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