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Howard EllisHilo, Hawaii "It was a day-long ride and little was said, even though we stopped to eat our C-rations. The dirt roadway was well maintained, but we saw no traffic. It was an awesome scene. All was totally destroyed. Nothing could be distinguished other than soil, rocks, and small pieces of tree trunks. It was as if a giant machine had scarified the entire terrain. The major said it was from artillery. It was nerve-racking." - Howard Ellis
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Memoir Contents:
When the Rooster Crowsby Howard EllisChildhood MemoriesLooking back on my life, now that it is about over, I would have done best in the military. That was how I started out. My forming years were just before and during World War II, and I thought about storming ashore on a Pacific Island beach under heavy enemy fire so much that something of that nature was what I expected as my fate. I didn’t grasp the overall idea of the military. My Uncle Bonner, Papa’s youngest brother, was in World War I. He was the only person I was ever knowingly nearby when death came. This was around 1944, at his home where I often visited. Mostly I was selling "Grit" weekly newspapers on Saturdays. He was in bed sick for a week or so. He was in like a coma. Maybe it was something he overate. Sometimes we ate cold vegetables for supper that "didn’t agree". They may have gotten toxic somehow after long and repeated cooking and cooling. This is only my thought. I do not know if he had a physician looking after him. He had always kidded me a lot, calling me "snake doctor". When I went into his room after he got sick, he so called me. His daughter, my first cousin, Maggie, was amazed that he even recognized me. The night he died, he had been moved from the back room, where I had seen him, to the front room. His family, my parents, and at least his brother from across the road were there along with others, all of whom I do not recall. My Uncle Newt, the next older brother, was at the foot of the bed. When there was a stir of emotion by the bedside, he said in a trembling voice, "He’s going. We have to hold his feet." He reached under the covers and did this. I was asked by a distant cousin to go tell another relative. I checked with Papa before I left. I then and still prefer to think that Uncle Bonner had been an infantry combat soldier. My sister Mildred countered recently that she thought he had been an aid man. Perhaps so, and as I learned in the Korean War, he might have been both. As is often said, he didn’t talk much about the war. He was in France during the fighting. When the Germans acted up again, I heard him say out in our churchyard that he had seen our boys coming back into the trenches with pieces of cloth down by the hilt of their bayonets. When I was a few years old, Uncle Bonner give me two little Army books that he had brought back. Mother put them away not wanting me to "study about war". I sometimes begged her to get them down for me, which she would for a short time. I believe that they were about the uniforms and duties of the different ranks. I took a hankering to a plain pink dress shirt that officers wore. I never got to wear one. Other than a neighbor who had skin characteristics different than ours, I learned of no others in our farming community of Level Land who had served in that war. I didn’t know of any other blood relatives older than Uncle Bonner who had been in any wars or even in the services. I did not feel any military tradition. Sometime after a "Bonus Army" marched in Washington, D.C. in 1932, which I only found out about much later, Uncle Bonner got some money for his service. He bought the first binder I ever saw. This was a machine that took the place of hand labor to harvest grain. It had wooden horizontal blades that folded the stalks into the teeth of the cutter. It bundled, tied, and dropped the sheaves off to be picked up and stacked manually. It was built to do all these things in response to the turning of the wheels over the ground as mules pulled it. It replaced a lot of labor. I am not sure of the over-all benefit it gave the economy of our place. Uncle Bonner hired out to harvest others' fields. Papa was an expert to cut the first round along the edges of the fields so that the mules would have a place to go without trampling the crop. He did this by swinging a cradle. This was a long blade maybe five feet long, with a wooden framework upon which the stalks fell as they were cut. After each swing, Papa’s right hand would gather these to carefully place them on the ground. Either he or another gathered these "hands" to bind into a bundle. It came to be about ten inches in diameter and was put up in shocks to dry before being hauled to the barn to await the thresher. At about 30 years of age, I came across one of these cradles. I tried swinging it and found it very difficult. Mr. Will Newell owned the threshing machine. He was our next door neighbor and the father of the other veteran mentioned above. Papa told me the story of the Newels having trouble getting money due this veteran for his service. I did not know him. Perhaps he had passed on before I was big enough to remember. A man came by where Papa was working in his field and asked about this neighbor. Papa identified this man as a federal agent. Papa said that he had a radio on in his car and left it on. He knew about these, but this was the first one that he had heard. Papa was not impressed with either the man or the radio and only had the best of things to say about the veteran and nothing else. This made me proud. When the newspapers reported that Mussolini had invaded Ethiopia, Mr. Newell and I celebrated how well Haile Selassie was holding off the invasion by sitting together on a gully bank and sharing a watermelon from our patch. I have only now looked up the historical details and found that the invasion took place on October 3, 1935. This puts me in a bit of a bind, as this would have been pushing it a little late for watermelon picking. I was seven years old and starting the second grade. I was not reading well yet, but I made on to Mr. Newell, at his enticement, that I knew all about that conflict. He enjoyed this part, as he was kidding me. He was excited about it because it was between people of two different skin characteristics. I was on his side. I didn’t address him by either title or name. I thought of him as "Will" because this was what Papa called him. When he passed away a few years later, Papa and I were the only ones of our color to see him in his casket at his home and to attend his funeral at Springfield Church. We sat on the end of the front row throughout the service. Near this time I was in the cotton field with Papa and my only brother, Emmett, who was thirteen when I was born. It was in the short rows abutting a water drainage ditch. Arbored over this depression was our prized scuppernong vine from the corner of Mother’s flower garden. Cotton was being picked and it was the only time that it was easy to talk. I was surprised to hear about some military campaign going on at a place strange to me, the Dardanelles. They were waxing eloquently about prospects that might ensue there. Papa mentioned the weather. Emmett said that something called the cavalry would be used. Not having seen any movies yet and only relating to the place where our pastor said that Jesus had died, I wondered what it meant and asked. Emmett may have told me, but indicated that I need not join the conversation. I haven’t gotten around to researching the history of what this might have been about. It seems like a pick up or a continuation from the previous war. We got a daily newspaper, The Anderson Independent, delivered by our Rural Free Delivery mailman, Mr. Luke, but I only looked at the "funnies". I associated RFD with FDR, our president who was trying to help us with such things then. He had said when he came to that office that the number one problem of our nation was the poverty in the rural South. President Carter was my favorite president and ex-president. It now looks like he should have said when he took office that our number one problem was terrorism. Papa and Emmett must have read the paper well because neither had been far from our community to learn things. Papa had never attended school because there was none when he was of that age. His parents did a great job to teach him, however they had learned. It must have been the Sunday church meetings that encouraged this pursuit of current events and history. In more recent times I came across other proof that my folks kept up well with their reading. I had heard that a great grandfather had been named Chris Ellis. At the later time I found that it was Christopher Columbus Ellis and that he had been born 100 years before me. This time I was able to satisfy myself as to how his name came about. I learned that Washington Irving was "one of us" and at that time was on his trip to Spain. It was he who got together for the glory of his hosts the enduring tale of the discoverer of the new world and had it published the year that great grandfather was born. Papa told me that he himself had wanted to serve in the Army when he was 18, the year the Spanish-American War broke out. Since he was the oldest of the large family, his mother didn’t want him to go and he abided. When his youngest brother, my Uncle Bonner, was inducted for World War I, he first went to Camp Croft near Spartanburg, in our state of South Carolina. I was amazed when Papa told me that he went to visit him there before he shipped out overseas to France. Papa didn’t have and could not have borrowed any means of making the fifty or so mile trip. I believe that he went with others who had soldiers there also. Most likely it was in their car. They must have taken food and camping things along. Papa told me that they just hung around for several days, not seeing their soldiers much. An officer asked them to leave. Later in my military time I experienced little to allow me to relate to visits of families to camps. An uncle, Ithema Brooks, had married my mother’s youngest sister, Aunt Alpha. Uncle "I" enlisted for the Pancho Villa trouble. General "Black Jack" Pershing headed up our fieldwork there. Being all along keen about military leaders, I carried in my mind an image of the man being so tough that he brought discipline in his troops as if using a blackjack such as police had. A few years ago I chanced to read that General John Joseph Pershing (1860-1948) had come by this nickname by having led a black regiment long prior to leading the American Expeditionary Forces to Europe in World War I. I liked this image better until I further read that he issued a document warning French military leaders against treating black American troops as equals. I was glad to see it also recorded that the French people disregarded his advice. Uncle "I" talked to me several times about my signing up and seeing the world. His idea was to go and observe everything and to see how other folks did things. He indicated that it would be the best education to get. Contrary to what Horace Greeley said and the stories of European immigrants to America, Uncle "I" felt one should always come home afterwards. When he did, he built a nice home, using ideas he had gotten in his travels. He had a fall from the top of this house, which Papa said caused him to not be able to father children. He had learned to bake in the service and quickly came up with a freshly baked cake each time we visited. I believe that he might have been in the Navy, but I don’t remember any salty talk from him. Perhaps he was not aboard ships much. Closer to our house than that of the Newells and in a different direction was a house used for sharecroppers. It was on land owned by another neighbor, Mr. Mark (Wilson). A family living there for some of my young years was the Jamesons. Unlike with the Newells, we called the elder Jamesons Uncle George and Aunt Eva. Their first-born was a son who they named Male. A later son was named Camale. Male enlisted in the Army sometime in the early 1930s or maybe before. He spent time in Hawaii. Aunt Eva told my mother that Male had been so ashamed at how members of his unit became friendly with local girls. Looks like they may have been like the French earlier. Aunt Eva said that because of this, Hawaii was a horrible place and she hoped that neither my brother nor I would ever be sent there. I was interested to hear people talk of their background. None in my family encouraged me in this. "Never mind the past or others, look to your own future", they sometimes said. When I finally came across things written about "our people" such a long time later, it said that one of our characteristics was to never talk about the last place we had been. I didn’t even know we were such a distinct group. I cherished reading about us, the Scotch-Irish. Visiting Scotland, our guide said that no one is known as Scotch, that this name is only for their whiskey. Returning from school one afternoon, I was surprised that Will Newell’s widow, Mary, was sitting in our fireplace room talking to Mother who was sewing. Staying in the backroom, I tried to hear all she was saying. She mentioned that she had Native American blood. I had never dreamed of such a thing. I wish that I had followed up on this. Mary also told a touching love story about meeting Will and how they came to marry and raise a large family. It was like she had never indulged in talking to anyone before like this. I felt uncomfortable that Mother was not interested in what Mary was saying and was after getting her to leave. When she did, I approached Mother to ask questions. She expressed displeasure at me for the way I wanted to know about such things. Another afternoon after school, I was with Papa cutting firewood along the road to the Newells. Their son, Liddell, who had built his home halfway between our place and his parent’s, came walking by. Shortly after, he came back and told Papa that something was hung up in one of our pine trees. Papa went with him to investigate, but he told me to stay back. I wondered why. When they came back, they had a small bright orange parachute, a lot of string, and a small box. Papa gave it to me. He explained that he had thought that Liddell had said, "a pair of shoes and stockings". He was thinking about something that I had not yet learned. Later, I went down with this stuff, on my own, to talk to Liddell’s mother about what it might be. The next day at school, I poured over our set of encyclopedias for the answer to what it was. It was a weather balloon with a device called a radiosonde that sent data back to the releasing station. These volumes were not to be checked out to take home. I pleaded with the teacher, Mrs. Clark, to just let me have it overnight to show this article to my friend. She relented and arriving home that day, I hurried unannounced to the Newells. She and I studied the article, its pictures, and the things that had gotten caught in our tree. They were identical. We were satisfied that we understood it. Fifty years later it was a thrill to get a job releasing these same units from Atlanta. Without a doubt, the earlier one had come from there as the winds prevailed from that direction. There were batteries in the unit. When Mary examined them, she told me that they had a soft end and therefore would not likely explode and were safe to handle. Another thing that she told me that time was recalled in Korea during that war. She had warned me about taking care to look at objects I might find before picking them up. These were things that appeared in contrast to the natural background. In my Army training, this safety caution was verified. Just after I got to Korea in January 1953, I was the point on a training exercise for several days. When I was thinking that our commander must be about ready to quit, I looked down and saw objects there on the ground just like Mary had described. It was nothing to worry about because I recognized the small bits of colored candy wrappers that were refuse from soldiers who had taken a final break there at this previously used training area. Gung ho runners came forward angrily telling me to keep moving. I stood my ground and our commander did call an end to the program and held us there for a critique. More candy bars were broken out. I hope we policed the area better than those there before us. I learned from Liddell why we heard him going out in his car at night and shortly returning. His mother had aged and got so lonesome that she stole away to rush along the road, dressed in black, almost two miles to talk to her husband in his grave. Who better did she have to talk to than Will, who loved her so much? The first born in our family was my sister Sara, born 20 years before me. There were four other sisters and my brother living as I grew up. A brother and a sister born just before me had died in infancy. Papa was 48 and Mother was 43 when I was born. There was no way that I could have seen then what this configuration might have meant in my personal development. I didn’t feel so strong and was embarrassed at my skinniness. Due to some special programs that were available, my boyhood was not as improvised as I might seem to be making it. A lady from Due West was a public service nurse. She came to Level Land School when I was perhaps nine years old. This lady determined that I had some sort of intestinal worms and gave me medicine to rid me of them. That summer I was unexpectedly able through the 4-H club to go to a summer camp at the Citadel at Charleston, SC. My two weeks there, bunking in the first room to the right as one entered the tower building, is remembered by the large amount of food the local waiters gave me. They seemed to enjoy doing it. I thought they took a shine to me. Before, I had eaten few, if any, hot suppers except a few in the wintertime when there was a fire in the fireplace back home. Here at the Citadel, I ate much hot grits and cool milk. There was fish too, but they were not so familiar for me to eat. When I went back to school that fall, I felt stronger than ever before and proudly thought that I had fleshed out some. The Home GuardThe day in June 1944, when I became 16, I joined the Home Guard in Abbeville, our county seat. I lied about my age since I needed to be a year older. My brother, brother-in-laws, and most of the men their age were off in the services. I drove cars that my brother and a brother-in-law left behind. I pretty well kept to myself with our Monday night drills and occasional weekend training exercises. Those people in our infantry company of an age too advanced to likely be called up helped me learn better. I was able to give rides to several from their farms to our armory. I worked at the cotton mill at Abbeville on the graveyard shift during this summer. Our company commander was Captain Robert Stone Galloway II, from the village of Due West that was closer to our farm than the armory at Abbeville. I noticed that he paid some attention to me during the riot drills, correcting me about my body form and stance. He was an athletics coach at Erskine College. The other officer was Lieutenant Graves. He worked for Mr. Galloway in a printing works. The little-used jail was underneath their building and Mr. Graves was the town’s policeman. Thinking about it only recently, the riot drills were important. I heard of troubles with organized labor coming south a few years earlier. At Honea Path, a town just over the line in Anderson County, a group of local men had been deputized when word came that the northern organizers were on their way to their cotton mill from one in North Carolina. Mr. Mabry, a schoolteacher I had at Level Land who told this story, said that at this encounter, one of the deputies shot and killed his own brother, who was aligned with the union. Mr. Mabry said that the dying man was just watched as he raked the ground with his legs. There was no one holding his feet. The arms we had were World War I rifles. I learned to clean them and to do a pretty fair manual of arms. Lieutenant Graves sometimes wore that pink shirt that I envied. Robert Stone Galloway III was my classmate at Due West High School. There were only nine of us in the class. He worked some in his father’s print shop and came to school one Monday saying that he had overheard his dad and Mr. Graves talking that they were going to promote me to Corporal. We were the same age and Bob spilled the beans on me. That afternoon, I turned in my uniform. We were paid for the meetings, but I don’t remember how much. I had a serial number, but I do not remember it. The year after the Home Guard, out of high school and approaching 17, I wanted to learn to fly in the service. The class that had graduated the year before had three who were the same age as me, but who had been allowed to start school the year before I did. The makeup of the two classes was so different that the useless thought of how it would have been had I started with them does show how things might work out. Mother had wanted to start me then, but Papa didn’t. At the time, I didn’t know what the fuss was about. These three who were from Level Land had joined the Merchant Marine. This could be done at their age then of 16. After a year, they came home looking experienced and matured. It was talked around that they had made plenty of money. One was said to have returned with a tin fishing tackle box full of paper money. Without much thought and no advice, I decided that the Merchant Marine was for me. None in our family had any nautical experience. Only Emmett had learned to swim. I have never learned, have nearly drowned three times, and am afraid of water. Mother was getting panicky about it, saying I was sure to stump my toe and fall overboard. Another thing from that trip to Charleston was that I saw the ocean for my first time. I became so frightened to see it from the big bridge there. It came back to mind when later considering the Merchant Marine. In my getting around to making my move then, I heard that they had a four-year academy at King’s Point, New York. I got information on this and Mother was a little less bothered. I applied and was supposedly accepted. I wasn’t all that keen on losing out on flight training and being out of military action for so long. Now, tentatively bent on this other venture, I tried to picture myself as a sea captain taking care of my crew instead of dying on an invasion beach. I got this to feel comfortable, but on the brochure I had from the academy, I did not like the front cover. It showed a cadet or midshipman in a nice uniform dancing with a pretty girl. I had never "dated" and had no fancy to learn to dance. It just didn’t seem to fit my thoughts at that time. I talked it over with an older casual acquaintance I chanced to see on the streets of the Abbeville Square. Showing him the picture, he said that I should not be worried by it, that by the time such came around, I should be able to just do it in stride. I wasn’t convinced. I worked that summer in a new shirt factory at Donalds, a village just beyond Due West. This was some dozen miles to our northeast. If this distance is imagined sweeping around clockwise past Abbeville, Iva, where our mail came in, Anderson, and Honea Path, the area swept out was free from railroads. All the places mentioned had rails. I felt left out. When the weather conditions were just right, sometimes in the winter at night I thrilled to hear the whistle of the interurban electric going by Donalds on the run between Spartanburg and Columbia, our state capitol. Half-heartedly, I thought of getting orders and instructions to leave for New York that fall. Instead, a notice came that I could not be accepted because of my lack of a course in physics. It had not been offered in our small school. There were no choices. You just took whatever was offered. Two of the teachers, women, were good. The other two, a man and a woman, were a disgrace. The latter two ran the school and it was to them I went to complain. They were this summer in an office getting paid to work on school courses. I felt they were letting the national interest down at this time of war by not having physics. High school back then and there ended with the eleventh grade. The professor was shocked that I would show up and talk this way. He said that I should write the Merchant Marine telling them that I would take a physics course in summer school at college. Erskine College in Due West did not offer it that summer, but Presbyterian College in Laurens, 35 miles away, did. He encouraged me to go there. It wasn’t something I could do. I needed to work on the job I had and did not have the money to go away from home to take this course. Had Erskine offered it, I might have tried to do it. Erskine had trained pre-flight students for the Army several years before, and I had been inspired by them and also the veterans who had begun to return home. Nothing else came along that summer of 1945. At my mother’s unusual and just-by-chance effort, I did enroll at Erskine that fall. I took physics taught by a shell-shocked veteran of World War I, Professor Bonner. I liked him and the subject. His wife was that beautiful lady who as a nurse had probably saved my life. These classes were small. The student body for the four-year program was less than 100. I didn’t catch on at the time, but a hundred years earlier the founders were straight out of Scotland and were of the group of our ancestors, who I learned about much later. I didn’t even notice that their first president, whose stature dominated the front campus by the street, was Moffatt Grier. Papa, born in 1880, was named Moffatt Grier Ellis. I felt of this village of perhaps only 500 as being snooty with respects to those of us who were "country" even though Level Land, the rural community of our farm, was only seven miles away. I had already felt this in high school. My brother and my sisters who had preceded me there reinforced this feeling. My parents didn’t seem to share this thought. Again, I missed out on a good experience by not boarding there for my freshman year in college. I came from my home each day, being referred to as a day student. This was very different. Peers in my community and at the place where I worked that summer and at another place I worked the next summer made fun of me for "getting up in the world". Taking this as fun, I myself wasn’t as serious as I now wish I had been. However, I did have a thing happen to sort of turn me around. Vaguely aware that students were addressed as Mister or Miss, I didn’t think that I would be called Mister. When the dignified and stately lady, Miss Dessie Dean Pitts, who taught English composition, addressed me this way, I felt an instant sensation. If I could ever manage it, I would like to contribute to her memorial scholarship fund. Due to the small size of classes and the war, there was little opportunity for sports. I wasn’t inclined enough to override my feeling that sports were just for town boys. Thinking baseball was more country, I asked and Coach Alexander took me on for practice. I didn’t know how to play. I became a joke. It didn’t bother me and I tried to put on an energetic show. I may have had natural ability. The night we returned from our first game, one with Clemson in which I didn’t expect to and didn’t play, I came down with the measles. When I returned to school and took my uniform to the coach, he didn’t protest. I still recall the feel of bruised palms and the smell of green clover, but have not kindled any further interest in that or any sport. I read the war story of an American soldier on the lines in Germany who had gotten off on the wrong side and was seeking re-entry. Thinking he might be a spy, he was only allowed in when he answered correctly the question of who had won the World Series the year before. I would not have known. During the spring of that school year, I heard of a Navy flight program. I wasn’t keen about the Navy due to my brother and several others from our church community being in the Air Force and also the cadets who had been at Erskine fitting what I saw as more my "type". Also I had heard that one had to be especially smart to get into these special Navy programs. The Air Force had it that a large number of applicants should be enrolled and when more became known of the candidates, the undesirable were "washed out". I feared this as something that would be difficult to deal with. Most of the cadets who were sent to Erskine could not believe the place was so quiet. Some tried to get some excitement going. The Greyhound bus stopped at the only drug store in town. The father of my high school classmate ran it. I was once there for the last stop of the day by the bus. It was after dark. I observed a group of cadets being led and entertained by one of their own. They were laying for the bus driver to give him a hard time and see how far he could be pushed. The driver, splendidly arrayed in a classic uniform of that day, may have been wise to them. The cadet repeated complicated questions about service, fares, and schedules. I thought it unkind. The driver kept his cool and climbed back on his bus and drove away. In June 1946 after I applied, the Navy arranged for me to go by bus to Atlanta to take tests for their flight program. I was there several days with a group in the main hotel at the corner of Peachtree and Ellis Street. The rooms were not only bare, but damaged as well. Some in our group did further vandalism. Those keen on becoming pilots had personalities that inclined them to do things like this and like the cadet at Erskine had done. Papa’s cousin, a successful businessman in Due West, had a son who had graduated from Erskine the year before and had just finished pilot training at the same Air Force base in Florida where Emmett was stationed. This relative went there to see his son get his wings and commission and treated Papa to go along and see Emmett. There he was visiting another base some forty years after he had visited his brother during World War I. He didn’t have much to say about the trip, but he did tell me about when they were on their way back. The pilot son was driving and they stopped for a meal. The recent graduate was not nice to a waitress. The father waited until the son had stormed out the door and sought to apologize to the lady, saying that his son had been in such intense training that he was on edge. That hotel in Atlanta mentioned above was making money off the Navy before this section was to be refurbished. Well, now, maybe they donated it for the national effort, I don’t know. I do believe the South only recovered from the useless destruction the North had wrought upon us during that war and their terrible mistake of the "reconstruction’, by the economic opportunities brought about by World War II. Luckily, our solid politics of the Democratic Party had not only reclaimed our dignity, but had made our senators and congressmen powerful seniors. Our good weather and oceans helped too. Those of the different skin color did suffer, but it was clearly the northern Republican Party that failed to clear up the mess they had started and caused. I still await apologies such as have been tendered others. Navy ReserveTo my surprise, in Atlanta, on June 11, 1946, after the tests, I was inducted into the U.S. Navy Reserve (V5) as an apprentice seaman with the service number 7462836. In records recently retrieved from archives, the tests that I took were in three parts and my grades were 70, 82, and 50. My flight aptitude rating was C. There were four levels the selection officer had to choose from and I was given the lowest, which was "acceptable". If this information was available to me at the time, it is not remembered. My height was 6’2" and my weight was 153 pounds. Placed on inactive duty, I was to prepare to enter any college of my choice with the joint approval of that institution and the Navy for the following school year. The Navy was to pay all my school expenses and a living allowance of $53.00 a month. Before leaving Atlanta, I attended a movie. I do not recall what it was about, but I worried that my sisters would see such a strange change in me due to my emoting so over it. By the time the bus got to Abbeville, I was back to myself. Had I been more attuned to a Navy career, the rest of that summer could have been better spent in some training. Navy "boot camp", which I never did receive, would have been good for me. I didn’t think to inquire, and instead got a job at the textile printing plant at Ware Shoals, South Carolina, on the evening shift. Emmett had returned from service and went back to work there. Dale Ashley, husband of my sister Julia, worked there as well. I remained living at home on the farm. I again choose Erskine. The Navy approved this. It would have been better had I tried to "go away" to a larger place. One that had a Navy ROTC program, such as had the University of South Carolina, may have been good. I believe that I sought advice about what to do, but did not receive any. I continued to live at home. There was one other student in this program at Erskine. I see from records recently obtained that he was Robert David Neese. I met him, but we were never together. He boarded on the campus. If any Navy people visited, I did not see them. Records show that I passed without good grades. It was a difficult time for me as I stuck to myself, did not study, and was too dopey in class due to not having had good sleep at night. It was not required by Papa that I help him on the farm. Probably to avoid studying, I did try. The English Literature professor, Dr. Long, was one of the members of the Due West community who Emmett made fun of as being off in another world and of uselessness. Just before sunset on a day that I was carrying to the cotton house a basket of cotton that Papa had picked, this professor and his wife drove slowly along our dirt road as enjoying the pathetic pastoral scene that was foreign to them. They saw me and seemed interested and friendly. I doubt that he recognized me as having been in his class that morning. This was probably the only time I did this task and it must have been because I begged to do it and that Papa was just too tired to refuse. Records supplied the Navy from these schools are different from what I recall. In high school there were four 45-minute classes each day for four years, which would have counted as 16 units. While they reported only one extra unit, I don’t remember having three of the courses with the name given. Three labs were listed which must have actually been vacant periods, as we had no labs. The principal and his lady assistant shortchanged us greatly. The other two ladies were always there for the allotted time. I was surprised to get my high school grades from the Navy archives. Four years of English gave three C+s and one C-. Two years of Latin gave a D and a D+. Three years of history gave one C+ and two C-s. Three years of algebra and geometry gave two B-s and one C+. Three years of general science gave an A-, a B-, and a C. An odd course gave a C+. For that first year at Erskine, it was six semester hours each of Bible @ a C, English @ a C, math @ a C, physics @ a B, and Spanish @ a D-. For the Navy year at Erskine (1946-47), it was six hours each for English literature at a C and a D and American history at two Cs. There was a three-hour credit for analytical geometry at a C. Another math course listed as differential equations was somehow a mistake since I had no knowledge of calculus that must be mastered before this subject can be taken. Whatever it was gave me a B. At eight hours each, there was general advanced physics at two Cs, and general inorganic chemistry also at two Cs. Idle over the Christmas holidays, I become listless and a bit wild for the last part of that school year. A number of veterans enrolled at Erskine, and a temporary barracks was built up on the road above the athletic field. I arranged to get a room there. There was rent to pay, but no food was included. It was a pity that I kept so alone. I never ate at the one outside eating place there. I returned home often. A veteran from Honea Path was also a day student. His brother, Luther Lewis Ashley, had graduated before World War II and had become an Air Force pilot and flew bombers out of Guam. When he returned, he set up an airport. It appeared on the charts as "Ashley". Expecting private aviation to boom, he started out with four planes and established a flight school. It was possible for veterans to use their GI bill of rights for education to take flying courses there. Those not inclined toward college had this opportunity and a number signed up. I talked to Lewis and began paying for and taking lessons. I hung out there at the expense of my schoolwork. Sometimes I rode with students. I had thought about flying so much, I was fearless and had no trouble to solo. The Navy did not know of this experience that I had. I savored it, but don’t believe it helped me in my Navy program. Lewis was the first adult outside my family and community who took an interest in me. Papa had insisted all along that, for my own good, I needed to get off somewhere on a job. Our community was short on any kind of transportation and our service men often had to catch a ride or hitchhike when going to and coming back from the service. I had seen tears on cheeks when they unofficially rode our school bus to Due West. Emmett referred to hitchhiking as "by air" with a jerk of his thumb. In those early years when I walked to the Level Land School, there was a place in the dirt road between a quarter and a half mile from home where I could look back and see it. More than once I shed tears knowing that I would be leaving someday. Occupants of the house next to ours went through changes due to the war. New sharecroppers were a people seeking this life instead of at factories. One such family was the Herrings. They were a large group. They had a son in the Air Force. He came home on furlough. He was unusually handsome. He did not flaunt it and was also nice and soft-spoken. Being this way, I couldn’t see him ever working with his family on the farm, and while he was home, he didn’t. It became obvious that his stay was longer than it was supposed to be. Early one morning there was a stir at their place and he was seen leaving in the splendor of his uniform. He walked to the crossroads that was the center of Level Land and tried to catch a ride in any direction that would lead to transportation. Mother had told me that I should not hang out there, as other mothers might have told their sons about Times Square. Just as it was getting dark that evening, I saw the soldier slowly walking back. He wasn’t seen for a while and I don’t know what became of him. School was out on May 26, 1947, and on the 28th orders were received to take a train from Calhoun Falls, South Carolina, first class fare with upper Pullman @ $5 per diem with three meals en route @ $1.25 to arrive at Ottumwa, Iowa, on June 4. Our mail came by rail to Iva, a place I never saw. It was on a rail line going north, but not one that the Navy would choose for my trip. Another one at Calhoun Falls was the proper one. Abbeville, on this same line, was closer to Level Land, and it was arranged for me to catch the train there. Mother had gotten my sister Frances and her husband, Earle Simmons, who had returned from his two war years in Germany, to drive from their new home in Greenwood to get me to the train. Mother was beside herself and could hardly crack the backroom door for our goodbye. All we could manage was a touching of our cheeks. I believe that it still stands as my most emotional moment. Earl tried to macho me out of it on the drive down to Abbeville. He told me to write to my girlfriend, not my mother. I didn’t have a girlfriend. Civil War ReferencesNot having any experience with trains, I was thrilled with this huge, black, steaming, and noisy monster. I could hardly believe that I was going to be a part of it. A few years back I read a shocking account that I had not known of before. During our War of Secession, a youngster from the county had enlisted and was catching a train in Abbeville to report for duty just as I had done on my day. His mother was there to see him off. Right before her eyes, the young enlistee somehow got excited and got crushed under the wheels of the train and was killed. Less than a hundred years had passed between the two events. Even if Mother had not heard of it, the effect of it may have come around. A story of that deadly war that was in my family from my parent’s grandparents was unclear and I have found no verification of it. Two Yankee riders trailing two other horses were somehow known to have left Anderson and were coming down the Level Land road. I cannot imagine how this information might have been communicated. My people buried what they had and hid, but the interlopers galloped right on past. From my much later readings, I figure they were Sherman’s drummers more likely from Georgia than when they came through our state. The community must not have been seen as prosperous. Sherman was probably in a hurry at the latter time or else that evil man would have sent troops to burn Abbeville, as it was known as the place where the Confederacy started. It also ended there. People have about stopped looking for the South’s treasury that some thought might be buried there. The best belief on this is that none was left. Mother told another story that is not likely to be affirmed either. It was about someone in Papa’s family who would have been an ageing widower at the end of that war. This was a theme she worried about possibly happening in generations downstream. A woman carpetbagger came down from up north and chanced to find this ancestor of mine. Mother told the story really well. I might have asked her to tell over again. This northern woman convinced the old man that she had come down to help and that she was going to take care of him. He had a fondness for custard pie and she was good at making them. One day she got him to agree to go for a ride in his only vehicle, a buggy drawn by his only horse. She got him to take along all his valuables. He was later found dead by the side of a road with only a partially eaten pie that was found to have a generous filling of strychnine. From the record, this war was from 1861 to 1865 and 620,000 died. This was more than the US lost in the Revolutionary War, War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War, both World War I and II and the Korean War all added together. It figures to 420 a day. Those of the different skin color accounted for 38,000 of those who died. On July 1, 1862, forces of the US and our seceded Southern States fighting for Southern Liberty met at Antietam, Maryland. Within three hours, 9,000 were dead. When the day was over 23,000 were killed, wounded, and missing. This was 30% of the forces meeting there that day. For comparison, in World War II, at Pearl Harbor 2,340 military people and 48 civilians died and on D-Day 6,000 American service men died in the first 12 hours. Separate from the war, in 1863, 1,200 Blacks died in one day in New York City in an anti-draft riot. In 1871, at the same place, Irish Catholics attacked parading Orangemen. Twenty-nine policemen and soldiers were killed, as were 104 of the assailants. In the concepts of enemies, hates and loyalties, Blacks have every reason to be the people who should have killed as many whites as possible. Whites feared that these people would finally get enough and rise up against them. This never became a reality. If whites hate Blacks, this must be the reason. I didn’t understand it until much later but we the people of that place still suffered from the devastation put down upon us during my great-grandparents’ time in punishment for our daring to try go our own way and the resulting and long lasting "reconstruction" "they" brought upon us. With the apologies that the United States has rendered others, I await one to "us". History of this time and place to which I am connected is still an important factor in the way I think and act. In 1934 I was six and went with Papa, Sara, Kathryn and her husband, James to visit Papa’s sister at Rock Springs, Georgia. We traveled in at model A ford, owned and driven by James. Leaving early, we saw the memorial carved on Stone Mountain, the panoramic battle scene in Atlanta and arrived at our destination well before dark. We made better time than seems likely today. While there we visited the battlefields at Missionary Ridge, Chickamauga, and on our way back, Kennesaw Mountain. Papa was well-versed in the history of these places. We picked up fragments of ammunition still at these places. Navy Boot CampGetting back to the time of my train ride to the Navy, I was seated in a coach, sure that I was indeed off and running and should look around to see the people with whom I was sharing this adventure, when a boisterous group got on. I heard it said that they were from Charleston. I was puzzled because I didn’t think that a rail line connected from there. I learned that they were from Charleston, West Virginia, and realized that we were moving right along. It was like I had been cast as a young country bumpkin and that I was free to play it out. As it became dark the coach was filled and I got so enraptured with looking at people that I lost track of time and continuity of what I should be focused upon. I believe that I stared at an unusual lady until she confronted me about it. I was thinking that she might be an Indian Princess like the one I had heard about in a song that went something like this:
This woman on the train loudly said that she was going to have the conductor throw me off. This was a bit much for me. It helped that none of the other passengers seemed to react to it. Nonetheless, I was relieved when the conductor passed through the coach without saying anything to me. Years later, I thought she was most likely from Eastern Europe and not a Native American. Like trying to reconstruct a dream, I am uncertain about how many nights I spent on this trip. It seems that it was early morning in Chicago when I disembarked the train with an older man to whom I had told my story. Out on the street, I looked up at a tall building with the name "Marshall Field". I sat at a lunch counter with the man, but had no idea if I should order. He suggested an egg salad sandwich on white bread. It was good and became my favorite for some time under such situations. I am not sure if he or I paid for it. I was stubborn in telling my mother before I left that the Navy was paying for everything and I may not have had any money on me. I remember sleeping in the upper berth and awaking as the train rocked and slowed. When it was light enough to see out the window, there was water as far as I could see. It turned out to be a major flood. The day passed again and it became night before we arrived at Ottumwa. I didn’t see any Navy people and didn’t think to look for any. Other people getting off there were hurrying away. I asked one of them about a hotel. He hesitated and pointed ahead. It was of wood structure and maybe three stories high with wide staircases. I went to the desk. The slender man behind the counter didn’t seem to pay me any attention. He said that all rooms were filled and nothing else. I only carried a small, fake canvas hand satchel that was dull blue in color with brown trimmings. It was not new. I saw a men’s room and used it, coming back to sit on a large wooden bench between the front door and the desk. I didn’t worry, thinking daybreak would finally come. After a while the man at the counter rapped on it, getting my attention, and pointed to the first landing of the stairs as they made a right turn above the lobby. Another man was there, setting up a cot. He looked friendly and I happily went up. He fixed it up with sheets and a blanket. Nothing was said; I slipped my bag underneath, and crawled in for a good night’s sleep. I awoke in the dim light of dawn with a man dressed for work peering into my face. He seemed kind, chuckled, and went on down the stairs. I got up and walked the short distance to the train station thinking of some way to get in touch with the Navy. Mother had addressed a post card for me to mail her as soon as I arrived. Seeing a mailbox there, I dropped it in. I had argued with her that it didn’t need the one-cent stamp as service people had free mail. I didn’t think that this was only true when mailed from a military facility. I didn’t have an address to which she could write me or know that I was safe with the Navy. An unhappy enlisted man came for me in a pick up truck. He scolded me for not seeing him the night before and called me something that meant he thought I was dumb. There was no further talk on the ride to the base. The records show that I had a special check-in on June 5, 1947 at USNPFS, NAS, Ottumwa, Iowa. A blond midshipman went with me to my assigned barracks. They were the two-story ones and had abbreviated partitions between groups of cots. He was fascinated with me. It took me a while to understand that neither of us had seen the likes of each other. He kept talking to me. He wanted to know what was in such a little bag. We were the only two in the building. We were on the upper floor and it was mid afternoon. He laughed at my underwear but quickly offered to lend me some of his. He called it by a name that I had not heard. Soon others came and he gathered them around me saying, "Say something, Carolina". This continued for sometime and after our evening meal, he had me come with him to a gathering at the rear of the top floor. I didn’t catch on to what it was all about and thought that he meant for me to keep saying things. Something more serious was taking place. Afterwards he told me that had I not acted so silly, he could have gotten me picked as a student officer. This was a shock. These people surely had been exposed to Navy tradition. I didn’t know that a group formed up for the purpose of such elections. Since I had become so easily known, he thought I would be a shoo-in. I don’t remember any voting taking place. I had disappointed my new friend. I did not discern him in our group after that. As darkness fell, we walked as a group up a hill to a theater and saw a movie. It was "The Yearling". I remember it more than most movies. In particular the part when the youngster countered that his playmate was just different stuck with me. I was happy. It seemed so good at last to be part of a group where I wasn’t sorted in a bin of those people thought by the others as being alike. I was and continued as the resident Southerner. Things were busy. Marines administered our school. We were issued khaki uniforms. In one of our lines formed in
order of the first letter of our last names, I met Daniel Canny from Chicago. We became friends. The flood was
still a problem in the town. Our swimming pool was kept unused in case its water was needed. Danny and I were sent
there one night to watch it. I was also sent to town with others to do guard duty. I was issued only a knife and
belt. I was dropped at the locked gates of a factory that looked a lot like the Abbeville Mills entrance. No one
was around and I didn’t see any flood waters. There was no traffic and everything was quiet. On June 13, I was appointed a Midshipman. My height was 6’2" and my weight 151 pounds. Classes were finally started. They were interesting. Thinking I had fulfilled my commitment to Mother by mailing her card, I did not bother to write. I was thrilled to be there and home didn’t enter my busy mind. I was called before our Marine commander and found that Mother had contacted the Red Cross about me and their local representative had located me. I was ordered to sit down right then and write a letter home. I felt bad. When we regained contact, Mother wrote that my card was delayed and a postage due notice was received for it. The newspapers had covered the flood where I was and poor Mother had suffered. Many years later on a visit, Mother introduced me to her mailman. He said that he had delivered enough mail from me to cover her house. One of the first classes was swimming. I was scared and confided to Canny that I could not swim. He told me "Don’t worry, Carolina, I’ll take care of you." The entire class bunched together on the edge of a high platform over the deep end of our pool. Canny and I were in front. There was a cargo net draped down to the water. We were to all jump in on the one command and then climb up. The next thing that I was aware of was that I was lying on the bottom of the pool on my back. My eyes were closed. I thought that Mother had been right. I gave up and opened my eyes. I could see all those legs sticking down and thrashing around. I popped to the surface and gained the net. Canny was not seen. I was overjoyed to make it. At the same time, embarrassed, it was not mentioned to anyone. When I became more experienced in other pools, I found it impossible to repeat lying on the bottom. When the swimming coach outlined the things we needed to do in order to pass, I was distressed and consulted with Canny again. At the next class, I was grateful to see him approach and talk to the instructor, who then came to where I was clinging to the side at the shallow end. He told in a voice which all could hear that some like me needed help in the beginning and he would equip me with a safety float. His assistant put the orange thing on me while I was in the water. It fit in the small of my back tightly with a belt around my waist in front. The coach in a kind way told me to swim the length of the pool to the deep end. I made it and he complimented me and told me that I could now climb out. I fearlessly did and quickly fell backwards into the pool. There was laughter. I saw that the device could not float. It was filled with something heavy. It was told that each Thursday evening there would be competitive sports within our battalion. I was put on the swimming team. This was not to my liking. I thought I would have enjoyed a sport with a ball. Many in the class were trained and good athletes, who I admired. I wasn’t so depressed about it as I thought that with training I too could do these things. I never became good at any. I did learn the swimming strokes, but never enjoyed the water. I don’t believe that I could have passed the final tests, but do not remember what happened. World War II VeteranOn June 27, we were told that our training would be stopped and our activity would be moved to Pensacola, Florida. We had some duty in getting closed down and ready to move. On June 30, we were flown down in R4Ds (C-47s) with each of us doing the navigation. I liked this subject, but for the first time I had a worry as I made gross careless mistakes in that exercise. The Naval Air Station at Pensacola was beautiful. Our school was at a place called "Main Side". My new home was in the downstairs corner room across from the Chapel. All buildings in this area were of permanent two-story construction, and very nice. Each room had two double deck bunks. Mine was the lower on the left as entering. Canny was not in the room. Part of our physical training was on trampolines. I had not seen or heard of this apparatus before. I didn’t master it as I would have liked. The instructor pointed out that we had better get good at using our bodies because most of the Navy’s aircraft were difficult to get into and out. There was an infamous and feared Navy activity called the "step test". This required stepping up on a bench and back down to a loud bleeper that changed tempo. It was a real trial. More fell out before me than after. We were paired by weight and height to box three one-minute rounds. We wore facemasks and overweight gloves. Canny was my corner man. I had palled some with my nice opponent. It was the last thing I wanted to do, but Canny worked me up to it. I didn’t realize that I had gotten our instructions down pretty well. Right away, I landed a right to the middle of his mask. He was dazed. I felt badly. Canny’s face was red with excitement as he shouted, "Undercut, Carolina, undercut". I didn’t, and didn’t throw any more punches to Canny’s distain. My opponent was competitive and easily won the last two rounds, but didn’t land any good blows. To my horror, when he took off his mask, there was a streak of blood in the white of his right eye. I wanted him checked out, but he claimed he was all right. I don’t know if he did see someone about it or if it gave him any trouble, but the last time I saw him, the streak was still there. We had liberty each Saturday evening and rode a bus in to Pensacola, getting off at the door to the bar at the San Carlos hotel. I had turned nineteen. On Sundays we dressed and attended services at the chapel. The Chaplain once gave an inspirational message on the theme of not being haunted by who you might have been. I was surprised to see Canny wearing the insignia of a student officer. Just before noon one Saturday, just outside my room window I saw my brother Emmett, his wife, and their two young children getting out of their parked car. Not having thought any of my family would ever visit, I became flustered. I waited until the PA system called me to the commander. I went right away, saw Emmett seated stately there in a chair, ignored him, and reported to the officer, who motioned to my brother. I went to him but was uncomfortable. I gave some excuse and didn’t go out to see his family and they left. Earlier, when Emmett had returned from the service and I was at home but taking classes at Erskine, he came to visit weekly. Once he expressed anger to me for not coming out to be with him at these times. I didn’t say anything, but pretended to be studying, although I never got around to doing it much. In September a hurricane came to NAS, Pensacola. We were kept inside the building that day without duties. An incident happened that, like the one above, I forever afterwards was bothered by not being satisfied with how I handled such a small thing. Midshipman Hall from Seattle had the lower berth in the other bunk. I don’t remember the other two. I was up for breakfast. Our dining room was in our building. I never wanted to miss a meal. I had made up my bunk, but when I came back another student was lying in it talking to Hall. I was taken aback and gave all the indications I could that it was my bunk. I thought he understood, but he didn’t move. Throughout the day I returned many times and he was still there. I allowed myself to be dreadful. It wasn’t until it turned dark that he left. I complained to Hall, who answered that he guessed that the guy had just been lonesome. There was some duty to clean up after the hurricane. Talk was that three classes had piled up and were about at the same stage in training. Our class was 47-D. At a morning muster out on the street in front of our building, it was announced that names would be called and those should fall out into another formation. I was stunned that mine was one of them. Canny was in the group that marched off to class that day. I never saw him again. I heard that the lower one-third of our class as well as the other two classes would be boarded. I made a pitiful defense of myself. Some thought that I went in too early because of my last name and that later ones might have stayed if they had desired. I was now with a group of washouts. Most said that they were glad to get out. I hid my hurt. We worked with enlisted people to clear trees downed by the hurricane. On September 24, 1947, I was discharged. I was given the bronze lapel pin signifying that I was a World War II veteran. It was called the ruptured duck. The official end of the war had been on March 3, 1946. There was a rule that being enlisted before the end of 1946 qualified for all the benefits. I had been enlisted on June 11 of that year. We had had a lot of interruptions, the war was over, but there was none but myself to blame. The records that I recently obtained said that I had failed ground training and that the failure had been in gunnery, survival exams, and failing averages in daily work in navigation, engines, and aerology. I do not recall knowing this at the time. The gunnery, I remember nothing about and so don’t believe I had been exposed to it. The survival exam was not given to me. It was on a Saturday and we were to go on launches when our name was called and be taken to Santa Rosa Island for the day without furnished food. I was hungry right after breakfast, but my name was never called along with others. We heard that there had been some trouble with the launches and that we should wait for another day for that exam, but it never came. I fell in with three or four others and took a train with them up through Alabama. This was not quite the way home, but I thought I had fun as the slow train stopped at several small towns to pick up pulpwood logs. We were carefree to run after the train as it left these places. I parted from them in northern Alabama and caught a bus to South Carolina. I was alone again after the mostly happy summer, and I was unsure. Just before dawn, the bus stopped and the driver opened the door. I saw that we were in the country with no buildings around. A woman spoke to the driver in an accent which I had not heard for a while. I knew I was near home. I slid down in my seat as in shame, even though it was too dark to see me and none on the bus knew me. The first evening home, I didn’t adjust. I had been issued clothing, most of which I had not worn. Records show it was valued at $121.20. I brought it all home in a great white sea bag. Getting an old car back into operation, I thought that what I could do to ease the pain was to put on my dress uniform, which I had never worn, and drive off to Anderson. I did not know this town and I chose there because no one would know me. It felt like the kind of adventure to set me straight. Mother saw me when it was almost dark, and called Papa, which was not something she did in such cases, taking care of it herself. Papa came into the outside room where I was, asked, and I told him what I was up to. He just softly said that he would rather that I didn’t. Giving up my plan without disappointment, I took off that nice outfit and never had any of it on again. Talking with Papa while picking cotton on later days, he didn’t seem interested in any of my tales such as my having seen the Marshall Field Building. I was not paying attention at the time I was discharged, but I now believe I was enlisted in the USNR (V6). An odd record, which came with the rest, shows that I was terminated on November 1, 1951 due to my enlistment in the US Army. This I had done a year earlier. I should have kept the clothing in good shape, as I might have been recalled to active duty. It never crossed my mind and I gave it away. I had no further contact with the Navy. I got my education benefits and enrolled at Erskine for my third year as a day student, staying at home again. I had enough to finish through the fourth year. I had really made out. Before school started, I went to see Lewis Ashley at Honea Path. He wasn’t surprised that I had not made it. When he heard that I was set to go to Erskine, he demanded that I go take it back and sign up for his Commercial Pilot Course. This I did. The registrar rightly scolded me, but gave in. I was back at "Ashley" My parents lost track of what I was doing, but they were concerned. I went to work again on the graveyard shift at the Abbeville Mills. I quickly used up my benefits. I completed the course and passed the ground school commercial exam, but only got my private license, needing to take the commercial flight test. Later I took extensive tests and qualified as a ground school instructor for all five subjects for commercial pilots. Such instructors were in high demand, but I never gave it a try. Lewis had helped form an Infantry Company of the National Guard at nearby Ware Shoals. He made me a sergeant in it. This wasn’t the right thing to do, but we faked it with the help of the older veterans who had joined up for the extra cash. I was embarrassed, but Lewis had fun with it. Papa saw a short advertisement in the Anderson newspaper that the US Weather Bureau was offering tests for future openings. He told me only once that I better get up there and apply. I had a five-point advantage due to my veteran status. I received an offer at the lowest grade as an observer at Florence, SC. I was still hurting from a well-meaning navy washout that told me not to worry since I could get a Civil Service job and just sit there until retirement. I turned this offer down without telling Papa. Later I got an offer for a job two grades higher in the Hurricane Warning Center in Miami, Florida. I took it to get to an aviation center. When I told Lewis, he quickly told me that he could transfer me in grade to an Infantry Company there in Miami. This scared me, but he urged it, saying that we could meet at Fort Jackson, South Carolina for summer camp. Before I made twenty that month, I was in a first rate company as the fourth platoon sergeant at the armory on NW 7th Avenue there in Miami. The lack of combat readiness and other faults of both units allow me to relate to the Iraq crisis following the sorry irresponsible decisions made by Republican Bush and his administration. There were two other platoon sergeants that were decorated combat veterans of World War II. They were named French and Hines. To my wonder, they made friends with me. Perhaps they saw my charade and were amused by it. Both were kind and friendly. They invited me into their families and lives. French was married and Hines had a pretty girlfriend, who I felt he must be possessive of, but who he insisted that I date. We spent a pleasant morning at a beautiful un-crowded white sand beach, Crandon Park, near her home. I was awkward and became more so when after I had taken her home, I found my wallet missing. Returning, her mother became excited that I might think her daughter had stolen it, but we found it still folded in her swimming towel where we hid it when we went into the water. I saw her around town often after that, but we only greeted each other. I don’t know if she ever married Hines or what happened to her. I was unable to get off work during the hurricane season to go to summer camp at Fort Jackson. Lewis sent me a note by our first sergeant. We did fire our M-1s at a weekend range. Hines was careful to instruct me, as I had not fired a military weapon before. One of the officers was a basketball enthusiast and had a team from our company that he coached. He was delighted to see me and over my excuses put me on the team as center. When we practiced at our armory, local civilians came to watch. I was cheered as I came on the court. I could only fake a lot of hustle, as I had no idea of the rules or how to play. Coach just didn’t seem to grasp what was wrong and never worked with me. I felt no urge to learn on my own. We played a National Guard team down at Homestead. I rode both ways with the coach in his personal car. The score was something like 4-56 in their favor after the first half and ended as 8–99. I badly blistered the soles of my feet. He grumbled all the way back that night that he just could not understand what had happened. He was the same officer who, as our pay master one drill night, stated that he bet none of us could properly report to receive our check from him. We were inside the armory and had our rifles at shoulder arms. I brought my rifle down to order arms and gave the salute across my middle with my left arm and hand to the tip of my rifle. He was impressed that I had it correct. In events one year apart, two officers had such different opinions on this, my strange salute. The oldest man in the company was in my platoon. He was short and dark. After drill one evening, I was told to get a crew to clean the latrine. I picked this man who quickly showed his hurt and anger. Sometime later, we had a dinner party at the Biscayne Bay Center. This man got me to sit at the table by him, his wife, and several others. Fear of him vanished after he had reminded me of what I had done. His name was Vick and he was old enough for me to be his son. They didn’t have children and over time, it seemed that he was thinking of me as his son. He was always kind to me. His darkness was from being years in the sun as the lifeguard at the Surf Side public beach. Earlier, before the habits of the rich had changed, he had spent summers at the resort at Asheville, North Carolina as lifeguard and winters at this place. He had been repeatedly honored at each place for lives he had saved. He wouldn’t tell the total and never boasted. Maybe there were so many that he didn’t know. I went there most of my days off and when I worked the night shift. He swam each and every day at least two hours far out beyond the sand bar in, as he called it, the Gulf Stream. I could just see his right arm going over to begin another stroke as he swam back and forth. Sometimes dolphins were with him. We often ate lunch at the drug store counter in the village. He was always the same and never gave up on trying to teach me to swim in the ocean. I did not learn, but since then, whenever I try, I think of him. I raked the seaweed each morning whenever I was there and dug a deep hole to bury it in the sand. On a much later visit to Miami Beach I saw that this is no longer done. It is left in a row on the beach. There was a large rowboat there that he liked to use for his rescues. I helped him keep it clean and he drilled me in its use. I liked it. One day I took a local girl who frequented the beach for a row. I got too far out and had a difficult time against the drift to get back. My palms were bloody. The next day Vick brought soft material and tape for the oar handles. There were the two sergeants, Vick, and several other casual friends from the Guard who I saw, but except for drill nights, we did not mix together. One, younger than I, said that he had been in a Guard unit in New York City. While there, he was ordered to go to the dock and drive a big Army truck back. Not having had any chance to drive any vehicle, it was a struggle but he made it. These things happen. Enlistment in the ArmyThe Korean War came in mid-1950. French, Hines, and myself agreed to go there right away and stay together. Thinking that our company might be activated, we delayed. Toward the end of that year, Hines said that we should go. He said that we would go to Fort Jackson, qualify on the rifle range, and be in Korea in no time. They had reserve status, but I had to enlist. They thought I could catch up with them. Thinking that I would, I cannot remember the last I saw of them. A Sergeant Gore at the Recruiting Main Station, which was across the street north of the main Post Office in Miami, enlisted me. While I was seated, filling out forms, someone came to stand in front of me. When I looked up, I started to tremble. It was Richard Conte, (1910-1975) a movie star. He could have used a shave, was dressed in a dark outfit, and looked just like he had when he had frightened me in a movie I had seen. In a kind soft voice, he asked me why I was scared. Maybe he bemoaned the thought that such as I would be used to fight our country’s battles. A picture of him and me appeared in the Miami Herald the next week. My boss at work was Grady Norton, a legend as a hurricane forecaster who got his start as a sergeant in the Army Signal Corps many years earlier. Like Papa, he called me "Boy". As his goodbye to me, he told me that he wanted to learn that I led the parade into Moscow. The records that were sent show that I had a medical examination in Miami on January 24, 1951. This has to be a mistake, as it must have been a month or so earlier. I was A-OK except for hammertoes on both feet, but not the big toes. This was the first I heard of this and looked down to check my feet. Maybe I had them scrunched up out of fear then. My weight is shown as 176 pounds, which was too heavy to have been correct. I thought that I had orders keeping my Guard rank and to follow my two friends. As an after thought, I arranged to visit my parents for a month in Abbeville, South Carolina. Just like Emmett had done some years earlier, I went to Mildred’s home overnight and next day she took me to the gate at Ft. Jackson. This was on a Monday, January 29, 1951. Her husband, Linwood, was at that time on his way home from a Navy tour. I had been so shocked that he had been called back up. President Truman had earlier ordered that the armed forces be integrated by race. The morning that I reported appeared to be the first time this order was being carried out at this army camp. It was chaotic and I was roughly treated. I don’t know if I was inducted properly. I was sent for basic training as a Private. This was with Co. A, 13th Infantry according to the records recently received. Having been issued clothing, I had changed, and approached the steps of my assigned barracks. A small-built new inductee said to me, "Blacks, Upstairs." Actually, he used different words. He was of my skin color. I went upstairs without hesitation. That night as I prepared myself and my area for sleep, my bunk mate looked at me as I had noted others had and said to me in a soft friendly manner, "White Boy, what are you doing up here?" They had a lot of fun that night and I had no discomfort. When I awoke in the morning, I quickly got up and dressed. My friend loudly said, "Look. He is going to do well in this man’s army." That day we were all assigned bunks differently. The soldier who had appointed himself usher that first day kept a wary eye on me for the remainder of the time we were together. He was particularly interested in my sister Mildred who came when our training cycle finished. She had done so because the man renting her neighbor’s home was our mess sergeant and kept her informed of me, saying my KP crew was the best he had. I always wanted the job called "outside man". Throughout the rest of my Army time, I heard few words used for skin color by soldiers. We went to great extremes to describe someone, when in some cases it would have been much easier to use some simple word. This was never remarked about. I have never thought what might have been the cause of this wonderful thing. A record from Fort Jackson shows that I went on sick call on February 12, 1951 with a chest cold and a check up on February 15. There is a stamp on this report that no record was found in enlisted personnel information section of the P.I. Branch. I don’t know if this has any significance. Our bunking assignments were made according to the first letter of our last names. I was downstairs and in a lower bunk and Elam from Alabama was in the upper bunk. We were so much alike that we were teased that we only went to the latrine when we both had to go. We did become good friends. When he first saw my service number with the RA prefix, he right away told me that I better get that mistake fixed. He was unable to see how anyone could sign up. We were in the first platoon. I was the right guide and he was the first squad leader in our formation. Elam and I were popular. In bivouac, some of the platoon called out to the others to come see our feet protruding from the opposite ends of our shared pup tent. We had a good platoon sergeant as cadre who lived in his room by the front door of our barracks. I could not believe how much effort most put into their training. Probably most of us were country people from that region. It was too bad that we could not have stayed together. During the time of the last few years while viewing the Internet entries made by veterans, I was thrilled immensely by one, which recalled his main joy in getting into the service had been to be with country boys who seemed to know about everything and he had learned so much from them. I never expected to see such an expression. It reminded of my youth and hearing: "White Boy, you don’t know anything and we have to show you everything." Not planning on getting any passes while in basic training, I was shocked one Saturday noon when told we could have a weekend pass. I took off to town and caught a bus to Abbeville to see my parents. When I returned Sunday afternoon, Elam was lying in his bunk and I right away realized that I had made a horrible mistake by not checking with him before I left. He could have easily gone with me. My folks would have loved this sort of thing. It would have made everyone happy. This was very sad, and neither of us could get over it. I hope it has not haunted him as much as it has me. Elam hoped to go to cook and baker school. When I last saw him at the end of our training, he had gotten his wish. We never saw each other after basic. I had an allotment made out to my parents. I received at least once my minimum amount on payday. A civilian insurance salesman came to give us his pitch. Our company commander insisted that it was a good deal and that we all should sign up. I did and had it taken out of my pay, but later cancelled as it seemed too much for me to pay and that it probably benefited our officer in a way that was not right. Our field first sergeant was named Burnett. He told us that he was part Cherokee Indian. He sided up to Elam and I several times and once he called us the "black knights, standing tall." We responded to him well. He told me that in bayonet use that it is difficult to pull it out of a body once you thrust it in. He warned me to always be ready to make a great effort to get it out quickly. This made sense to me. He had been in Europe during that war. He was healthy looking with ruddy red complexion. He taught me to run like he said Indians did. I think he was right and I used it well a number of times. It was done with floating-like long strides. I was laughed at about it when I later told a civilian athlete. I still think it's good. Taking aptitude tests, I remained late in the day as most of the others left as new segments were started. Only when the Forrest Gump movie came out years later did I wonder about my IQ. I never saw that movie. Checking with a veteran familiar with military records at that time, we found that my discharge papers list my AGCT score as 129. On that day when our cycle finished, we stood in formation to fall out in groups as our assignments were called. When finished, I remained standing. After receiving a dressing down by that sergeant, he searched his list and did not find my name. I was dumbstruck. I don’t know what happened. I only remember talking to an enlisted man behind a desk some time afterwards. We mentioned my job in meteorology and about a new unit being formed at Fort Bliss, Texas, called the ballistic missile center. It remains a mystery to me how I believed that I was going there. I remember being on a troop train. I did not know anyone nor did I make friends. We briefly stopped at Spartanburg and I thought it so close that I should call Mother from a pay telephone outside the depot. I did and she could not seem to get it straight and was sad, cautioning me to watch out. I am unable to reconstruct much else of that trip or our arrival. I was put into basic training again with recruits. They were from regions unfamiliar to me. They were good guys but just different. All must have been inductees. There was about the same mix of the different skin colors, but I was treated in a way unlike my experience back at Fort Jackson. I felt that we all wanted those of the other color to go ahead on and show their rights and leadership. No one complained. I felt sorry for some of our cadre of that color. I knew that they were smart, had a lot on their minds, but had not felt right about expressing whatever was bothering them. There was no trouble but it was an effort, was unpleasant, and I withdrew into myself even more. I made no friends. On paydays, my name was not there. No one offered to help and I sought none. I wrote my parents regularly, but did not mention my plight, nor did I ask them for money. I got a few dollars from fellow trainees who knew I might not repay them. I didn’t know if I could either and as it turned out, I didn’t. Emmett lived with his family in San Antonio. I should have at least asked him. I am sure that he would have known what to tell me to do. I do not remember, nor have I been able to learn the length of either of these basic training courses. If the one at Fort Bliss was artillery, I don’t believe it varied much from infantry at Fort Jackson. At the end of this cycle, I was not surprised that my name was not on the assignment list, nor did I panic. That sergeant, our field first, who I recall with respect, told me that I might be able to get into leader’s course. I went and completed this as shown on my discharge. It states that I was there from June to August of that year, 1951. It was a small class and did not have any mix of skin colors. There were a number of National Guard soldiers from the nearby units who were only taking the course. They had their cars with them. On a holiday, I went along on a trip to Carlsbad Caverns. Much of our time was spent giving practice classes. We became close-knit. We suffered at the possibility that some might not make it through the course, helping and supporting each other. I remember just one instructor. He was young and more an educator than a soldier. One of us was of Japanese ancestry and was well liked, probably because we wanted to show him that we had no bad feelings about his people or their country. However in a well-meant friendly joke, one of us called him by that three-letter word. He responded with vigor. We didn’t know about this. He explained his reaction and apologized. Finishing the course, without further orders, I was sent to a replacement depot, which I could not tolerate. There were undesirables there awaiting whatever. Looking back much later, it seemed that it would have been so easy for me to get help from several places and people. One of the Guard people who had finished the class was named Parris. He saw me a day later as he was driving home in his car. He understood and offered to help with money and clean clothes. He gave me a clipboard and told me that carrying it about in a soldier-like posture could help me get into places. He must have assumed that I would find my way to the main headquarters and personnel or some such rational place. I thought of going out into the desert. I am thankful that I didn’t. Some years back I read that during that time the head of the Weather Bureau airport station just across that stretch of desert at Biggs Field was from Due West. I did not know him but I am sure that he would have helped me. He had started work at the kite station there at Due West in the 1920s and 30s. I cannot recall how many of these days there were. I did not find my way back to the unit that I had basic training in. I have no memory or record of that unit’s name. That place had the two-story barracks like the ones back at Fort Jackson. The place that I went had only five-man tarpaper shacks. I went up the battery street seeking assignment in each of the orderly rooms facing the street. The first sergeants would have nothing to do with me. At the next to the last battery up that hill, the first sergeant was abusive. A voice boomed from the back telling me to come around the left to the back door to the supply room. The sergeant shook his head in disgust. The voice came from the battery commander, Captain Krantz. He had a stick with a 30 cal. tip. He told me to take off my shirt. He looked me over as if it was a slave auction. He asked if I could give the standard PT each morning. He said that he would take me in on trial. He told me to get into his big green Buick to go to the replacement depot with him. I had been given statements of charges for property I had signed out for. Others had destroyed these. The captain said that he had a score to settle with the lieutenant there. That place was a series of connected buildings alongside the desert with the airport on the other side. I was more shocked when the captain told me to drive his car slowly to pick him up at the far end. I heard noises as he passed through. When he got in his car, he said that all was straightened out. His was battery C, 4th AAA Tng Bn, from the records. That first sergeant was still hostile and told me to go buy the captain a case of beer. I remember crawling through a hole in the fence to Dyers street, but I cannot remember how I got the beer that I brought back. I was bunked in the first cadre shack across the battery street. Two double bunks were each to the sides of the only door. I took the single one to the rear on the other side of the oil-burning heater in the center of the shack. Heat wasn’t needed then. Without coaching or manuals, I gave not only the morning PT, but also classes in the 50 cal. machine gun and the half-track that had four of those guns mounted on a swivel in its bed. These were left over from World War II where they were used as anti-aircraft. They were being used in Korea against enemy troops. There were two sergeants who had returned from fighting there and told that they were known as "bloody buckets" for their vulnerability to grenades tossed in and to ricocheting small arms fire. I thought it odd that they did not teach these classes instead of me. Somehow it worked out to the satisfaction of everyone. They were always there. I also gave bayonet drills and defense against knives and bayonets. These and the PT were difficult for me. There were other classes given by others but no one complained about what or how I taught. Of the cadre, there was Corporal Cook, a tall handsome man of the different color. He was one of the great men to whom I ever came close. They said that he had been the first in the navy to make gunner’s mate. When I told him my story, he too said that he had come to Fort Bliss to become part of the ballistic missile center, but had ended this way. There was another thing that we shared and this was that neither of us received any pay on the due day. His was for a different reason. On that first such day, I saw a beautiful lady seated just inside our orderly room door. She looked to me like Pearl Bailey. She was Cook’s wife, estranged or not, there to pick up his signed check. Neither Cook nor I ever mentioned it, but I was sad. Cook did not share our shack. Neither of us ever took a pass to go off base. We neither talked much nor spent time together. I think now that I was not enough aware, as I should have been, of how all knowing he was and how well he was looking after me. One afternoon I was giving the class about the parry of a bayonet thrust. It was on a flat area above another down below where the halftracks were parked. Both surfaces were bare with lots of small pebbles. Between the two elevations was a fairly steep embankment of perhaps four feet. Vaguely aware that I was the sole cadre there, but not worried by that, I was running into trouble with the class. I could feel it and tried to jive up my presentation. Probably the top trainee in this class was a neat, regular looking one of the different color. He raised his hand and when I motioned to him, he stood and in a polite way asked if he might rush me with his rifle and unsheathed bayonet fixed. This was a shock, but I answered quickly that this could not be done. I tried to show no fear, but do not know how I was seen. Before anything else could take place, Cook bounded up from behind the embankment where he had hid himself to listen. He worked them over, physically with some, so that fear of him reigned and all settled down. The several officers who went out with us each day were good and supportive. The field first was Sergeant Muncie and he took time with me to recall the system used in World War II, England, and Europe by the anti-aircraft units, particularly their incoming aircraft observing network and how it worked. I could relate to it and found it interesting. I was impressed with his pride in recounting it. He was older than I thought an active soldier should be, but there he was. A Lt. Colonel came to my machine gun class one day. I imagined that he had come up through the ranks and perhaps down and up again. He was a stocky, ruddy-faced one. After I finished and the class dismissed, he took a shiny 50 cal. round from his pocket and started rattling off every possible characteristic of it. He went through the entire nomenclature of the gun, its mount, and the half-track. It was impressive. He didn’t scold me and I appreciated learning that there were people who had mastered this process. I wasn’t hurt so much because I felt that it was not I who had set myself up to do this sort of thing. I thought these youngsters going soon to Korea were getting poor training. There was never any meeting between me and either the first sergeant or the captain. There was a good feeling about the support I received from the other cadre. One of the sergeants who had returned from Korea was also a World War II combat veteran. I listened to his war stories. He had some gruesome ones to tell. One day he yelled my name and told me not to stand sideways because then he could not see me. He told me to wait until I got to Korea to stand sideways and then they would never hit me. His and the humor of others helped. On a Friday afternoon, an army film was shown. Perhaps its name was "Shades of Grey" and it concerned undesirable individual behavior short of insanity. I thought it good that this matter was not so black and white after all. I had no thirst for beer and other such things. Without money, I didn’t want to start. That evening, Cook had taken up a collection and had a tub of ice and beer outside the theater building. He urged me to take part. When there was a mad rush for the tub, he again got physical and better manners soon prevailed. He handed me the first beer. I was ashamed. On Sundays, I left after breakfast to go to religious services in a small chapel. No one came up to greet me as expected, which pleased me. I went with the small group to Bible study and took my turn to read. It was good and most of all I marveled at a young lady in the group. It was like going back to a real world. I thought she was older than I and perhaps an officer’s wife. I never got into checking ladies’ fingers for rings. She was freshly attired in a simple but colorful dress. She didn’t show any indication that I was there. I found a stadium where polo was played. On these afternoons, after going back to my mess hall for lunch, I went there. Not wanting to soil or wrinkle my uniform, I stood at the bottom and to the right of the stands. I knew nothing of this sport or about horses. I didn’t talk to anyone, but I picked up some about the game. One team came from across the river from Juarez. The other was either from the base or from El Paso. There was a handsome blond lady riding with the Mexican team. When they took their breaks, she gave me the reins of her three ponies without words to me. Looking at their big excited eyes, I wondered what opinion they were forming of me. I didn’t want their slobber on my clothes. It seemed obvious to Cook that I needed something to get going more happily. He had mentioned several times that he wanted to get me to a cathouse in Juarez. One evening he sent me on my way with money and a pass. He had taken up another collection. I did not want to partake, but I didn’t want him to know this. I went alone. In the early part of the evening, I sat in different bars, drank beer, and listened to the mariachi groups playing. I wondered how this woman thing worked, as I thought maybe I should try to get it over with. I didn’t see any obvious clues and I didn’t have anyone talk to me. Not keeping up with the time, it must have been just before midnight, when feeling drunk, I walked into yet another bar, the one closest to the bridge. Sitting up to the circular bar, suddenly several girls appeared and excitement was felt. One came right to me and bit me on my cheek. The bartender rang up his register and gave her something and I was lead rapidly upstairs by the girl. An elderly woman gave me a hand-on examination and said something to the girl in Spanish. I did not catch the meaning of it. On the edge of a stark looking bed, we sat. I did not get prepared and told her that I needed to go to the bathroom. She said that this could not be done and supplied some container from under the bed. She seemed happy and was not harsh. At that moment, there were screams and soldiers ran downstairs. It seemed like it was a raid. Only one army officer was out on the street and pointed us to the bridge and said that it was curfew. Trucks of the three-quarter ton size were at the other end of the bridge and we were told to climb in. I was sick with worry over being charged and maybe spending time in the brig. I could only think of Mother. I didn’t know where we were being taken or who was taking us. No one in the darkness of the canvas covered back talked. Finally someone parted the flap in front and told us to call out our units. I didn’t catch on but when I looked, the area was familiar and I jumped out and went to my shack. To my gladness, nothing was ever mentioned of this. Cook seemed satisfied. Even though I was cadre, I had only my rank of Pvt-1 or "buck" private, the same as the recruits. I demanded that I be addressed by this my rank. They were called trainees. Before I could think about it, I had the unlikely reputation of being a tough. I went ahead and tried to play the role. I was told that there would be a forced night march, once during the training cycle and that I would lead it. This was not quite correct because all I did was a lot of yelling and prancing around. Fear of me built up before this event. After being told by one that another was in bad shape over it, I went to see him. He was indeed worked up. I told him that he could be excused. He was offended by this and told me emphatically that he would make it. The night of this exercise, after we were marching for a while, there was seen railroad tracks along to our left. At that time a train went by in the same direction we were going. After it sped past, our trail crossed over the tracks. There were no warning markings. I was shook up over what might have happened and I called a halt to rest. In the headlights of vehicles following us was seen a soldier still going full speed ahead. The ambulance went off to get him. He was the one who I had excused. I didn’t see him again and don’t know what happened to him. After training ended one afternoon and we were milling about the battery street, going to the latrine for showers and washing clothes, an unranked soldier who I had not seen before came up to me. I had my rank and last name above my fatigue shirt pocket. He said that he was from another battery and having heard of me, had come over to see if we could fight. He wasn’t scary but he looked like he could hit a quick lick. He seemed relieved and left when I simply said no. Another such afternoon was hot and, stripped to my waist, I lay on my stomach on my bunk. PFC Strickner was the only other in our shack. He was in his bunk on the top left. There was a commotion with the screen door opening and someone with an upheld mess kit knife was jumping for me around the stove. I believe that I rolled over with my left side breaking most of the force in his arm. Without valor, I bounded for the door, slamming it behind me. I yelled "corporal of the guard". These were posted for training purposes and probably no one else ever thought to use them. Trainee Schuler was near by walking his post. Sergeant Muncie was still in the orderly room and ran over. Strickner had covered the trainee with a blanket. I had struggled through the last class of that day which was on knife disarming. This trainee had been in that class. We had practiced defense against a downward thrust of a knife. He was unusually small of stature, but was difficult to hold down. With my hands on him, along with the others, his muscles and body felt as hard as iron. He stunk of beer that had been made available at the PX after hours. I was all right, but the tip of the blade probably ended in my navel. There was just a bit of blood. There had been since birth a mole inside. Mother had tried to pick it out when I was a small kid. I had been ashamed to be seen wearing swim trunks. Otherwise, it had not been a problem and I had not thought to have it checked by a doctor. I had been concerned about it in the hot weather. I had heard about my going to be a flag bearer in some up coming holiday parade. I feared the staff holder might irritate it. Discussing with Cook, we decided that I should go on sick call the next morning just for the record. We thought that I would be laughed at and sent back to duty. I was strangely relieved to be sent to the hospital. I may have felt near the end of my rope, at least subconsciously. When I didn’t return, Cook checked and that evening he walked up the hill to bring me my toothbrush and razor. I didn’t know what to tell him was going to happen to me. While I had not recalled talking with any medical people about the knife incident, I assumed that it had been reported. I was embarrassed about it. After some ten years of requesting my medical records, I recently received a detailed set. These had been requested because a VA nurse told me that she might be able to help me more if she had them. They made no mention of anything other than a pathetic sounding description of a 23-year old private with a mole in his navel about which he had no complaints, but which they would surgically remove. The records show that I went to a skin clinic on October 9, 1951 and was sent to William Beaumont Army Hospital. I cannot reconcile the dates, as my admission is dated October 12. I am sure that I did not return to my battery. I recall going before a full colonel who seemed angry at the way he saw me acting. He scared me. I had never seen the "bird" insignia so close up before. I had no idea what was to happen. I thought a mistake had been made when blood was reserved for me. On the morning I was taken by gurney down the cement ways through a campus of large trees and lawn, I thought it funny and wanted to push the guys on it. In a white room there were three by my body and another back of my head who talked to me. I thought that was nice of him. He wore glasses and I, sometime later, saw the reflection in them of my bloody stomach area. This was the first time for me to understand that this was bigger stuff than I thought. In the detailed record of October 18 there was a peak in several things they kept track of and a note that there was slight nausea and vomiting. It must have been when I saw that view. There was a clock on the wall and I thought that I could tell how long it took, but I forgot to look later. I thought it a long time but the records give the length of the procedure as about one hour. Arriving in the recovery room, I was placed head against the wall as were a number of others. In the middle of the room there was like a mobile artwork, splayed out there in space. There were unrecognizable sounds coming from it. It was a distraction, which turned out to be a young soldier badly injured in an auto mishap the past Saturday night. The sounds were his teasing the nurses each time they came within his view. Someone was rolled in over to my right. I saw he was a handsome man. He looked over to me, extended a handshake, and asked, "How are you, Son?" He asked God’s blessings on me. Shortly after that a nurse came to check on me, saying that I could not leave until I could wiggle my toes. Without haste, she went over to that man. Then I detected a stir of excitement in her and she hurriedly wheeled him out. I think he might have died. Later I was put back in my ward. It was lunchtime. I got up, but I couldn’t move well. I felt that they had bound me up too tightly. Making it to the stairs, I found that it worked better to sort of slide down the rail. The next several meals were gotten that way. I was happy when people laughed at me. I enjoyed eating there. No pain was felt. The next morning, I heard a lady say that she wanted all hands outside on the covers. As she came in I saw her as surely the most beautiful one ever. This was the only time I saw her or any other nurses while in this ward. She called my rank and name. My bed was next to the last in the corner farthest from the door. As she walked across, there was cheering and laughter. I was flustered. She was Lieutenant Lawler’s sweetheart and a nurse working there. He was one of our battery officers and had her check on me. Either later that morning or the next, a male nurse came and mentioned that I was supposed to have taken my meals in bed, but I had not been found at these times. He was there to remove the bandage and stitches. When I saw my midsection uncovered, I became a little sick again. I watched him pull out each stitch after he had cleaned the area. It looked like it might pop open with ease. Sergeant Muncie came to visit and when I told him that they had taken out my bellybutton, he said, "Don’t worry, Son. It will come back out." He said that this was what had happened to his brother-in-law. There was an evening when Sergeant Muncie came again overnight to take some tests himself. He, several others, and I were passing time after dark sitting and talking outside on a rock wall that was around a great tree there. I told my story. All listened without much response. One, a corporal, also overnight for tests, said that he worked in personnel. The next morning, he came to me. I did not recognize him. It was a Friday. He had already checked and found that Captain Krantz had never reported me. He told me that officer’s candidate school was absolutely the only way that he could get me out. I had to go with him right then. When I asked, he said that I could not check with the hospital people. I had on the wine-colored robe and sat in the back seat of the Jeep. He had a driver. I held myself up with my arms and hands, as it hurt to sit. We passed my battery and I saw Cook giving my class but I could not wave and he didn’t see us. Two officers, who I believe were visiting from a Guard unit, interviewed me. The four of us laughed. I signed some papers. The corporal sent me back to the hospital telling me that the next morning, Saturday, I should walk off to my battery without checking out of the hospital. Orders would be there with a check to cover my travel to Fort Benning, Georgia. He also said that Captain Krantz was out of town on leave and the first sergeant didn’t work on Saturdays. It pains me that I did not retain the corporal’s name to thank him as I realized how much he had done for me. My orders were titled, "To Be Sergeant", and by the records recently retrieved, was to be effective November 2, 1951. Upon admission to the hospital, they reported to my battery that I would be there about seven days. It figures that I was there 20 days, but this seems too long. My orders gave me 21 days of convalescent leave. I was less than an hour back at my area and was eager to leave for town. As I was standing in my shack, the trainee who had come at me appeared in our door. He had come to apologize. I was terrified. Cook went with me to catch the army bus. Walking along side as the bus pulled away, he was saying, "Always Yes, Sir and No, Sir and little else". It was the last contact with him, much to my regret now. Getting to town, I cashed my check and had stripes put on my Ike jacket, although this rank was only for pay purposes. At lunch I sat with a soldier who I had met at the hospital. He said that he was glad to see me with "shacking rockers". He told me that going around the corner to a booth, I could put my name in and where I wanted to go and save money. Soldiers stationed here who lived at places close enough to go to on wee end passes would be coming by about this time. As I walked out, I saw the beautiful sight of Lieutenant Lawler and his bride walking out of a church there. He wore dress whites and she a great white gown. It was so good to see them. I doubt that they were able to recognize me in their excitement. Fort BenningI was soon on my way to San Antonio. I sat in the middle of the back seat with two others and there were two in front. The driver told me that I was not a sergeant. I didn’t respond much and remained quiet, as did the others. He drove fast and we were there late that night. I walked right into a hotel where he stopped to let me out and I got a room. The next morning, I was amazed that the Alamo was outside my window. I went there and learned that Jim Bowie from Abbeville had been one of the men who gave their lives there. I wondered if the knife had been named for him. It was clear to me to enjoy my freedom awhile before calling my brother Emmett. I loafed along the riverfront with pleasure. I visited him four times later and never saw that area again. About dusk, I went to the bus station, bought a ticket to New Orleans, and then called Emmett. He came right out and saw that I had made sergeant. I did not tell him about the hospital or not getting paid. I let it appear that I had just arrived from El Paso. He saw me off. I sat by a tall, raw, bony man who didn’t talk much and who got off at a country place. He sounded in earnest when he invited me to get off and ride fences with him. Only then did I picture that was what cowboys did in those days. Later, I wished that I had taken him up on his offer. I had written my parents but they appeared unprepared to see me. I did not visit anyone outside the family. I had left a car there, which I would take with me to Fort Benning. No one knew what I was up to and didn’t inquire. I didn’t know either. I did show Mother my incision and she was glad. I have no record of my date of arrival at 5th OC Company, 1st OC Regt., Fort Benning. It must have been near the first of December 1951. My stripes were ripped off right away and I did lots of pushups. I showered late at night because my stomach was still red and easily seen. There were no comments about it. I didn’t see any of the other skin color. Christmas soon came and we were given leave. I spent my second consecutive Christmas with my parents. I did very little during this visit and was more depressed than I should have been. Even though the combat boots I had been issued had the rough or the inside of the leather on the outside, I spent lots of time shining them. I had bought a big shoe brush at the PX, which I still have, and it's in good shape yet. Back in training, I received back pay of an unremembered amount. The clerk mentioned that my records had gone to an outfit in Germany. It could have been to a meteorological outfit that the Army had. I wonder if there had been a search out for me. I feel a possible cause could have been that I didn’t want this assignment and that I feared the struggle I might have with women there and ignored it subconsciously. Maybe the sergeant back at Fort Jackson had not seen my name when he rechecked or I did not get the word before I left on the troop train for Fort Bliss. It remains a mystery that would be good to have solved. A letter was received down through channels addressed to "Pvt. Ellis" and either to US Army or also to Fort Bliss, Texas. It was from a mother who was convinced that I had given her trainee son improper treatment. They were from Tennessee and named Swain. He was the one who kept reporting to me that others were worried about our soon-to-come forced night march. He was more nervous than I had thought and had gotten his mother upset over what he had told her about me. My attempt at an answer did not suit the clerk and luckily he wrote it with references to the army first aid manual. I signed it and heard no more of the matter. There is a record of dental work done at Harmony Church Dental Clinic, Fort Benning, on April 1, 1952 and a physical done on April 10. There had been perhaps 200 of us and our platoon, the 4th, had a full barracks. The one-story buildings had partially separated cubicles with two double bunks each. Candidates started leaving right away, then slowing but continuing to the end. Soon there were only three in our cubicle. John Melton, from Texas, slept above me. He was straight-laced and determined to make it. He didn’t talk much but one night before we were asleep, he leaned over and wanted verification from me that all of us had the same size when excited no matter what we showed in the shower. He and I had cars parked in the lot, but neither of us knew of the other and told no one. One evening he was not around until late. He told that he had been in to Columbus to see a movie. Mitzi Gayner had been the dancing sensation in it and he raved about her beautiful legs. He wrote me months after we parted to say that he and his school sweetheart had married and that he was glad that he had waited. I lost track of him after that. The other was slow with his personal care and bragged lots. I made his bunk a few times with Melton’s disapproval. One evening he had received some warning that he might be going and went out to telephone his uncle who he said was a general in the Air Force and could pull strings to keep him in. It didn’t work and he left. Acting ranks in the platoon were rotated to give us practice. Some rotated for a day into company positions. I did not. Some showed unexpected and perhaps uncalled for showmanship at these times. Candidate Ralph Drake, in another platoon, played a strong company commander at his turn. I complimented him on it. Later wh | |||||||||||||||||
