William F. Winter and the New Mississippi: A Biography

3. World War II

42 3 WORLD WAR II World War II transformed the South. New war industries and military camps boosted an impoverished economy and brought American soldiers from all over the country into the region to train. At the same time, southern agriculture, already reshaped by New Deal farm policies, experienced further strains, as black and white workers abandoned the countryside for the military or to search for war jobs. Black military service and the United States’ rhetoric against the racist Nazi regime encouraged black Americans to question more stridently the South’s system of racial segregation and black disfranchisement. Military service exposed Southerners, both black and white, to a wider world of people and ideas and gave them a new perspective on their region and its institutions.1 William Winter , serving for over three years in the U.S. Army, witnessed many of the changes World War II created, while also further honing his leadership skills in diverse settings. Immediately after graduation from Ole Miss in September 1943, Winter and his fellow ROTC members headed for seventeen weeks of basic training at Camp Blanding, Florida, where he got his first glimpse of the nation’s true diversity. Most of the Ole Miss boys were placed with each other in platoons of the Sixty-Fifth Regiment, but Winter’s platoon was filled with strangers. Winter’s first impression of his fellow soldiers was that they were a collection of “low type of men,” many “sorry Yankees from Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Missouri.” Gradually, he overcame his parochial prejudices to appreciate the unique collection of individuals he encountered; indeed, by the end of basic training, Winter World War II 43 had many friends among what he viewed initially as a motley mass of humanity.2 Winter’s opinion of his immediate superior at Camp Blanding, Sergeant . Chuberko, underwent a similar evolution. A recent east European immigrant from Czechoslovakia, Chuberko held a particular hatred for the Nazis, who had invaded his native country and murdered some members of his family. Winter reported that Chuberko’s “mastery of the English language is open to argument.” Despite his verbal limitations, Chuberko “incited terror” among the recruits in his charge. The sergeant apparently sought retribution against the Nazis by creating the toughest soldiers he possibly could. Winter told his father soon after arriving that Chuberko was “the nearest thing to Simon Legree that I have ever seen.” Chuberko led his troops on long marches through the sand and muck of north Florida and rode them for every small infraction against military discipline. To prepare his soldiers for the rigors of combat, Chuberko would wake his platoon at three in the morning for a brisk run around the sand flats of Camp Blanding. Despite his original impressions, Winter came to recognize Chuberko as “fair and sincere.” After a month at Blanding , Winter described the sergeant as an “A-1 fellow.”3 The instruction at Blanding consisted of blocks of training. First came the basics of how to “march, shoot, and salute.” Winter spent his first couple of weeks “drilling, drilling, drilling, rolling packs, hearing lectures, taking calisthenics, and cleaning rifles.” Instruction in infantry weapons and tactics followed, with focus on advanced training in a specific aspect of warfare, in Winter’s case heavy weapons. The last two weeks of training involved field exercises, where the recruits left the relative comfort of camp for a taste of what real infantry life might entail. Winter excelled at all aspects of the training regimen. After bayonet drill, Sergeant Chuberko cited Winter for having “the best form in the platoon,” and during rifle training, Winter proved to be a first-rate marksman.4 The rigorous physical training gave Winter little problem. Early on, after a five-mile hike with full packs and rifles, he noted how “some of those poor fellows [were] dragging that last mile in ankle-deep sand.” During the daily exercise regimen, many of the older soldiers in Winter’s platoon (some in their late twenties or early thirties) had to drop out before the sessions ended. The fact that Winter did not drink or smoke World War II 44 undoubtedly aided his physical conditioning, as did his workouts with the army the summer before at Ole Miss.5 Winter’s performance during the first six weeks of training earned him promotion to acting corporal of a squad. Although the temporary upgrade meant...