R EPUTABLE historians have said that Allied Victory in the War was foreseeable by the fall of 1942, at which time the Cadet was ushered out of officer's training at Camp Davis, which is situated not far from the Atlantic Ocean and Wilmington, North Carolina. However, it was not foreseen at the time by our enemies, who appeared to be doing fairly well; they would have to let many millions of people die and many more millions suffer through hell and many fine cities devastated before they would concede, by which time they were bunkered down in Berlin and Tokyo.
Projections of victory were not, I hasten to say, founded upon the fact that Our Hero had been enduring a grim regimen up to this time and was about to project himself upon our enemies, but rather upon statistics of manpower and production, allowing a fair margin - - say, 10% -- to the probability that the generals and soldiers of one nation were more effective than those of another nation. In a particular case, such as himself, if he was becoming a better soldier, the probability of victory coming sooner rather than later would be enhanced by one fourteenth-millionth or so, much less if you counted the industrial soldiers who labored mightily in the War Effort -- perhaps one thirty-millionth.
He did not think along these lines. If he was to suffer the tortures of the dammed, it was in order to make A Significant Contribution to the War Effort. He had declared, you will recall, that the Japanese and Germans, not to mention the Italians and several other nationalities, were insane to go to war with the United States. If he was so confident of victory, why didn't he play cornet in the Camp Grant Band and let it go at that? His 1.4 x 10-7 or 3 x 10-7 of the required heft was hardly needed.
Instead, exaggerating his potential role and unaware of what was confronting him, he signed in and took up his bunk space at this Officer Candidates School of the Anti-aircraft Division of the Coast Artillery Corps, graduates of which were called Lieutenants in the Army of the United States and given a new Army Identification Number. They were also termed "Ninety-day wonders." The road to graduation was one of the rockiest of anybody's army career, not excluding direct combat.
We can let himself begin his story via a letter to his wife, despatched not long after his entering upon the scene:
Sweetheart,
A ten-minute break brings you a letter, but it is perhaps a sad one. For I am hopelessly morose without you. And this is a hell of a life. Really darling, you can't imagine how much I love you because you can't see the feelings under the skin.
We are all dead tired. No sleep and nagging officers every minute of the day. My baggage with everything in it hasn't come yet and I run to one place to borrow a razor and another to borrow a pin. My papers haven't arrived to give me the travel money owed me, tho I can neither get the time to cash a check or spend any money. So don't send me one yet.
...This is supposed to be the toughest officers' school in the country. I can well believe it. My back is almost broken from arching it to the tune of an officer saying "Get your chin in, Mister. Stick your chest out Mister. Guide that rifle, Mister." Well, I'll write more details later.
Your loving husband,
Al
No one was free from the regimentation of war, she would have him know:
I think they've rigged up a public address system just recently for the sailors across the Midway. Did you hear any untoward noises when you were here? Anyway, they talk to the boys every 5 minutes - - telling them everything from orders to report to their C.O. to go to Pearl Harbor to enjoinders to wash their socks. Needless to say, every word uttered wafts in here, & I find myself leaping out of bed at 6:15 and hurriedly Lux-ing out my summer whites, before my higher centers have a chance to say "boo".
His complaints were only beginning; they continue week after week, viz:
The foremost thing to keep in mind always is that I have a chip on the shoulder against anything that keeps us apart and since I can't take it out on the real culprits, the Japo-Nazis, I am very restless and unhappy. For truly I love you as much as any mortal could possibly love.
But first the training and then the reactions of the men. Here's the set-up. The directors and officers are out to get the men. The tools are constant and close supervision, most exacting demands, perpetual driving and criticism, a terrific program of activity which I have told you a few things about in earlier letters...
I've learned a good deal and relish these new things. The first week was composed of miscellaneous subjects such as these: map- reading and aerial photography, customs of the service, court-martial, motor transportation, characteristics of American, British, German and Japanese planes, anti-tank defense (we use anti-aircraft guns against mechanized & armored units, you know), first aid, and math. About the latter: I've learned a lot, now that I must buckle down to it. My knowledge right now is average in the class. Four subjects are tested, algebra, trig, logs, and coordinates (directions, azimuths, & a combination of trig, logs, etc.). I think I'll hit off the math all right in enough time and expect to catch on fast now that I have to. Maybe then I can hold my head up in speaking to you on the subject. [She was good at mathematics and statistics.] There is quite a bit required. Some of the firing mechanisms are marvelously intricate. Next week we study searchlights and they are beauts, then later machine guns, 90 mm. anti-aircraft guns (long, sinister-looking cannon), 37 mm. guns, Garand rifles, and so forth.
Meanwhile every day we stand rigid inspection which gets on the nerves of the men like nothing else. Such things as these cause demerits: bedding not folded to perfection, shoes not properly aligned, books on shelf slightly askew, a piece of broom straw beneath the bed, a smudge of dust anywhere, a button unbuttoned.
Today was the climax of the worst week of the course. At 11:00 a full-dress inspection was held. We had between four & five hours' sleep last night and before dawn were polishing and scrubbing the barracks. The whole morning we spent in rigid drill and classes, bolted lunch in 5 instead of the customary 10 minutes and changed to our clean khakis. Then we began to march, a whole battalion of over a thousand. The chief of the school was reviewing us. We walked at strained attention with our rifles for a mile, lined up on the concrete parade ground and stood for an hour while being inspected. From where I stood I could see the splotches of sweat appearing and growing on the backs of the men in front of me. Some looked as if they had wet their pants. I couldn't raise my hands to stop the sweat pouring down from my face onto my collar. I tried everything to take my mind off the agony of waiting, I thought of you, I thought of cold drinks, I tried to pick out the man who would collapse first, I tried to take my mind off the idea that I perhaps couldn't stand it myself. I tried to rid myself of the mutinous idea of yelling "go to hell", throwing away my rifle, and walking into a cold shower. Later, I asked several of the men what they thought of and they said they too were wondering how long they could last.
Finally the colonel came before our rank. I shot the rifle up but gripped it a little below the balance. Gigged! Well, so were a lot of others, I thought. [They called their rifles "gig sticks."] The rifle was a Springfield, and you remember that I formerly had an Enfield. I'm not quite used to a perfect manual of arms off this one (i.e. without glancing down).
We marched back again and had barracks inspection, short & sweet. When finally we were set free, I felt like a new man. Now, after a dinner with a couple of other guys at the Service Club, a weekly luxury I plan, and a cold shower, with a thunderstorm outside & the barracks comparatively quiet and thinking about you I feel very comfortable and relaxed. Since dismissal, I've had four cokes, 2 iced teas, at least a gallon of water (really), a bottle of milk, a glass of lemonade and a glass of beer.
The Coast Artillery is running this giant operation that graduates a new set of second lieutenants every week, and there is some doubt in the Cadet's mind about the usefulness of the whole operation though he does act as if he must get through the dammed course no matter how, and he feels sorry but encouraged when each week a few men less belong to each class of the school and are replaced by men who have been moved back for having flunked one of the score of special components of the curriculum.
The curriculum consists largely of technical subjects until several administrative ones are studied in the last weeks. The math gives him trouble, the mechanics not so much as you might expect, given his life-long immersion in matters intellectual. He finishes high in most academic subjects, in deportment, and in field exercises. In the final analysis, the curriculum is likely to be of limited use; a battalion ends up with an ordinance expert who is called to say whether a piece is easily repaired, should be sent to base ordinance, or should be junked. What, then, was important? The firing was important, maneuvering also, and communications, and intelligence, and planning. These were nevertheless slighted. So, too, were genuine training in leadership of a group, in group relations and inter- relations, in coordination between platoons, batteries, and battalions, between infantry, tanks, friendly aircraft and the automatic anti- aircraft weapon systems.
A certain all-over atmosphere was important. There was small indication that it was intentional, yet there it was. Its core was a deliberately produced staggering fatigue, bringing a weakness of body and mind into which were introduced a tolerance for irrationality, a poignant desire to obey the slightest command to perfection, and a crowd complex arbitrating against comradeship, cliques, criticism and doubt.
Close order drill was fanatically pursued. The barracks platoon was the drill unit. The Lieutenant was the leader and Instructor, and after a time began to put the cadets through the hoops. "Forst, front and center!" "March the platoon to the mess-hall!" "Yes. Sir!" Salute. Rightabout face. "Platoon, Shoulder, Arms! Left, Face!" And one hopes for the best. Cadet de Grazia should have done better. He hardly managed to scrape through. He had acquired stage fright. Nor had he any experience worth mentioning. His voice, ordinarily loud and clear, emerged uncertain. Here was a source of gigs, once, twice. He would have had less trouble had he believed in close order drill. He thought it ludicrous for modern warfare. But how else do you get an organized crowd from one place to another? "Follow me!"? No; there was good enough reason to have an orderly procession in rhythmic motion to go between a number of points. He did, actually, begin to enjoy the marching:
(Y)esterday was very strenuous, but I don't feel it at all. We walked four miles in an hour with pack & rifles, very good time for a marching column or for anyone for that matter. Our platoon is full of good marchers & singers, so we really swing along. It is really a sight to watch us in action, no `hut-trip-thrup-fore' is necessary. Two seconds and the column is right in the groove, swaying from side to side like a metronome.
The worst of the experience was the continuous nagging and scolding from pre-dawn to lights out, and in the darkness the shadowy men still fearfully, feverishly, working at shining, sewing, ordering gear, pushing a rag through a rifle barrel. The sleeplessness stunned the mind, five hours, six hours, occasionally interrupted by mock air raids, guard duty, special details. And upon the same minds were piled reading and lectures loaded with information; the memory reacted bizarrely, recalling only snatches, retaining facts only for short periods of time. As the summer deepened and the misery intensified, the commandant granted a few minutes' increase in the dosage of sleep, sounding assembly at a gracious 05:50 hours. Then the heat -- crawling up to 110 degrees at times -- the rains, humidity, and mosquitoes, sleep murderers all.
DDT had not been invented. The mosquitoes prowled and swarmed. They were privileged against attack. On the march, no one dared brush one off, less he be scolded and gigged. So many gigs, though a specific number was not to be known, and a man would be sent packing. You marched in perfect symmetry, stiff, sweating, shuffling in that peculiar U.S. Army military style so different from the British or the German or most others of the day. Your eyes never shifted. They focussed on the burnt neck of the man ahead, where you could see the mosquito alight, immerse its proboscis, swell up with blood, and swoop off heavily, as you dully, silently remarked the incident, helpless to aid, and awaited your turn.
Since it appeared most unlikely that the enemy would attack American shores with any force that would not be given short shrift by the Coast Guard, the top brass designated the Coast Artillery to take over the anti-aircraft function, and indeed the school is named for this, the Anti-Aircraft Artillery, more technical and complicated than field and coastal artillery operations, since it fires three -dimensionally against its target.
But how many planes can the enemy have? They are already losing large numbers of them, both in the Pacific and Atlantic Theaters. Their manufacturing ability diminishes from month to month so far as one can tell. The response to heavy enemy losses in the air is that anti-aircraft artillery should be used for ground fire as much as or more than for aircraft fire, and the Cadet waxes enthusiastic when at midpoint in the proceedings they get some instruction on how to lower the 90mm, the 40mm, and the 50 cal. guns against ground targets such as tanks, bunkers, trucks, and attacking infantry. But the Coast Artillery Corps is speaking rather modestly in these regards, because if it moved whole-heartedly into field artillery operations it would surely incite conflict on the highest levels in Washington, and might indeed lose out to the field artillery.
Actually, by the time his class graduated with all due ceremony upon the blazing finale of August, a day when only a few men fainted from the heat, the CAC was already suffering heavy unemployment, and yet was swallowing up enormous resources in the production of weaponry and training of manpower, both of which could be quickly turned around into gains instead of losses on the balance sheet except that the organization costs were enormous. All the ideology, planning, ordering, assigning, transporting and so on of a half million men and their logistical support and weaponry were aimed at a war that no longer was happening.
This certain Cadet didn't spend too much time doing a full-scale study of what would have him court-martialed as a shadowy minor version of General Billy Mitchell; he was struggling to keep in line with the steers passing through the corral gates. He was neat as a pin, fast as lightning, clever at quizzes, silent and unprotesting. When the management, or let us say "Commandant" for that sector and age, passed out a form asking for self-criticism of the program, Our Hero knew better than to go to the heart of the matter; instead, he expressed himself strongly on an annoying habit of the cadets: so automated generally, still, when they were let into the dining room, they rushed to the tables and gobbled up everything in sight, without an if-you-please, generally behaving like exhausted boorish laborers at a rooming house of South Chicago. He said there should be rules about manners.
The management leapt to it and he was gratified to see a notice posted shortly to all cadets, warning them to behave as officers and gentlemen at table or else. To act snooty is much safer than being a conscientious "trouble-maker".
He was not, you may gather, fond of his fellow cadets. They appeared narrow-minded and unsophisticated, humorless, and desperately selfish, like drowning men. If he behaved toward them humanely, cooperatively, correctly, it was because he appreciated their suffering and was suffering himself. He wondered why there was so little camaraderie: it was the Command's fault. The cadets could afford neither ideals nor a critical attitude; they could not be charitable, could not extend sympathy to their fellows. He notes: "A few days ago, the platoon applauded a lieutenant who announced he was leaving for overseas duty. That night, the Battery Commander rose and reprimanded us. `You were heard applauding. That is the last I expect to hear. You have no feelings - you do not cheer, laugh, or boo.' He's a very popular fellow, you can gather."
He made friends named Tom Powers, Hanrahan and Jim Fisk, all Easterners and of the 'auld sod, it would appear, plus a Rutgers man named Mills who enjoyed a large literary background. They would roam for a day in Wilmington or at the ocean beach. Or simply go over to the Service Club for a beer or food.
An acquaintance, Harvey Sherman, had come to Camp Davis a few weeks ahead of him; they had known each other studying political science at the University of Chicago. Harvey saw Alfred's name on the list of newcomers and went to find him; his somber face was for the Cadet good news. Harvey seemed confident and gave the best of counsel; that he was on the beam was demonstrated by his return, following graduation and leave, as an Instructor in the School. With him came and went his most valuable friend, and the only possibility of discussing world affairs and administrative management seriously. Harvey's girl Nebbie, who had been of the same group of students, worked in the War Department; her letters spoke contemptuously of the indolent supernumeraries infesting the place.
Then appeared Prendergast for whom he played somewhat the same role as did Harvey for him. He writes, "Tonight as I walked home from class a frail, haggard figure accosted me. It was Bill Prendergast. Remember the Irish tenor at Salk's party? He's suffering thru his first week and is properly miserable."
Later he reports,"Prendergast is in a little trouble for his `military bearing' and had to see his platoon commander last night, but it is nothing to worry about yet." The formal reprimands were miserable: "The disciplinary talks are very humiliating, I've heard. Very cold - following is an example of one as related by a victim: `Mr. Edwards, you are intelligent. That's why you're here. You are inattentive to duty and that must cease. Use your intelligence. Any questions? (No, sir.) That's all.'"
Again, "I just saw Prendergast for a few minutes. I guess he's doing OK. At least he knows enough algebra, whatever his knowledge of Brutus."
Once more, "I saw Bill Prendergast last night. The poor guy was put back for two weeks of infantry drill with some other men in his battery. Two weeks can seem pretty long down here."
Weeks later, "I saw Bill Prendergast again a couple of days ago. Ehrlich saw him too and was astounded at Bill's appearance and abstractedness. The army, I guess, has made him even more inward and absent-minded than he was before. He appears quite beaten down, though I know he still has an irrepressible freedom of mind and belief."
But Mr. Prendergast is not easily dislodged:
I saw Bill Prendergast yesterday. He's not feeling very happy which is not to be expected, of course. He had just made a phone call to his girl and you can imagine how his eyes lit up when I pictured the situation to him - how unsatisfactory the call is, how bad one feels for the hours afterward, how terrible the connections are, how difficult it is to say anything, and yet how irresistible is the urge to phone. Bill doesn't say very much. But he just looked as a person does who gets complete sympathy from one who knows. We were watching the many stars, too, and he said Catholics did not have any compulsory belief in the Earthling as the only concern of God, the only incubator of sin or virtue. I thought that was interesting. He also said that there was no ruling on the literalness or figurativeness of the Bible and that any person could interpret it rather freely and be a Catholic.
The other Chicagoans had surfaced. After Sherwyn Ehrlich, there came Godfrey Lehman from the University. They struggled along, evincing the same symptoms as the rest. Lehman got the bright idea -- and had the cash -- to reserve a room at the beach for every weekend, and, although he was off and on a pain in the neck, his accommodations permitted Our Cadet to spend two nights away from Camp. Money was a problem until the end came. The first weeks were made even more dismal by a delay in receiving his barracks bag from Tyson and by being broke. He remained practically penniless through the summer.
There is nothing to do of a week-end around here. A good number of the fellows go away, thinking thereby to ease the strain. I suppose it does but I can't afford it & probably wouldn't enjoy it. It costs about 10 bucks to get away overnight and do anything. I've got to keep expenses down as much as possible, spending my money mostly on cigarettes, cokes, ice cream & candy bars to ease the pangs of hurried and bad meals, and shoe polish. Going to show Sat night and perhaps the beach on Sunday are sufficient pleasures. I'd as soon cut out all weekends and get this damned grind over sooner. But then again I wouldn't be able to write you a long weekend letter such as I plan every Sat. & Sun."
He asks her to send money, though it must arrive late:
Dearest wife,
Just a note to say hello and to ask you for a little money. My baggage has not yet arrived and won't probably until next Sunday. That won't be too bad; I'm getting used to it. But I am down to a few cents & would appreciate a $5 bill tucked in a little love letter and sent air mail.
I went down to the ocean today for a wonderful two hours of relaxation. The army provides a convoy of trucks to bring the men down & back. The ocean was pretty calm, the water not quite cold enough, and the beach very pleasant."
She jestingly confesses to him her "extravagances."
Sweetheart,
You at last have sufficient grounds for divorce -- if you want them. "Judge - not only did she refuse to get up to make my breakfast, not only did she insult me bitterly when I got up, but - but, Judge, she spent all my money".
Well I did - but I'm sure you won't mind. (Hah) Just remind me never to complain to you about money, a thing I do periodically I think, just for the hell of it. (Really, darling, I never actually worry about money. We've got lots - for us. But sometimes people start owing me a lot, and I just get sore.)
Anyway, I just relaxed into a state of infantilism when I got your check. Maybe you'll feel better when you hear what I got. An itemized account is herewith forthcoming:
One bond for us both (I guess I'd better
put that first)
18.75
One pair very high-heeled shoes (navy blue)
from Joseph's (reduced from 8.95) for Al
4.95
One blue & white silk dress from Saks
(reduced from 11)
5.95
One Saks bag for Mom (reduced from 5 or 6)
2.00
One for me (blue to match shoes) " "
2.00
One fountain pen for me
3.50
One pair play shoes (white) which are going
back to Saks tomorrow
4.00
41.15
I feel pretty good 'cause everything I got is pretty-pretty, which you like, and everything on sale, which deludes me into thinking myself a sharp trader. I shall look very spiffy for early September when you get home. Fortunately all these things are too dressy to wear to work.
Saks is open now on Wednesdays til 9 o'clock for, quote, war workers (that's a laugh) and career girls. That makes it convenient though. After I got thru I came up North & am writing this letter at your folks.
Is there anything you need or like? Incidentally, I raised my monthly bond deduction from $2 to $16, figuring that I really should give 10% as they say.
So, as you see, I'm feeling very opulent. Part of it is that I got a $90 dividend or rather, quarterly payment from home.
But he had worse problems than their personal finances; the lecturers were clear, understandable, but uninteresting, and he was tired; he had to watch himself carefully and continuously to avoid falling obviously asleep in the sultry classroom. "The rat race here," he wrote, "is getting almost ludicrous. Yesterday, during the showing of a training film, row after row of men dropped off to sleep, a truly amazing sight. I actually fell asleep today standing up, listening to a demonstrative lecture. I just got behind my sunglasses & lowered my lids, like an old plow-horse catching a few winks while the farmer's off to lunch. A grand melee occurs at every break in the vicinity of the Coke dispenser. I'm a raving advertisement for Coca Cola. It's all that stands between us & oblivion a good part of the day."
He did rather well with the mechanical operations of the School. His only moment of embarrassment came one evening when he was supposed to dismantle the new Garand semi-automatic rifle while blindfolded. He could not do it in the allotted time and was left behind with the instructor, fortunately not the meanest of them, who tried to get him going on it and then decided not to harry him through to the very end; so he had a piece left over: he wondered afterwards if it was crucial to the weapon's operation. The Garand rifle itself is an interesting case, a complicated bulky weapon meant for long range and for accuracy, for the war which was not fought. Too few of the enemy were struck by it at rifle distance, the mortar and sub-machine gun being far more suitable for the scenarios of encounter. And the continuously pounding artillery for farther away.
The officer's .45 calibre Colt automatic was a fossil, supposedly the very thing for stopping an otherwise unstoppable Filipino gone berserk in the War of Independence of 1899-0. An anachronism. He doubted it was useful. So finally did the army, and, if you were up front, you picked up an officer's light carbine that could hit something at a fair distance with a .30 cal bullet and fire a few shots without reloading, or, better yet, for moments of surprise, an automatic tommy-gun.
Not then or ever had he heard reliably of or witnessed a bayonet being used to stick a live standing enemy; bayonets were used to herd prisoners of war, and on occasion to despatch a wounded enemy in violation of the laws of war. And, of course, to slice baloney and open cans. Yet they were standard equipment along with the gas mask that by universal tacit agreement was not worn at the front but had to be worn here at camp. He liked the bayonet:
"..yesterday we went out on short maneuvers and I enjoyed the vigorous activity and the freedom that can't be taken from a man who is crawling along the ground with his heart next to the ground and his eyes towards the enemy. I still like skirmishing better than anything else in the army. This morning we had bayonet practice and I like that too. I get awfully vicious when I have one in my hands and am pretty good at it. It's just like a good old free-for-fall, smash!, slash, butt stroke, jab, thrust and smash!"
The Home Front was a busy scene all the while he was sweltering in North Carolina. Jill had a box seat: she was now employed in the Office of the Corporation Counsel of the City of Chicago, actually working upon political analyses and propaganda on behalf of the wicked Kelly-Nash Machine. Chicago, like all the cities of the country, held a grand preparedness and win-the-war parade, of which she tells:
Anyway, the only nice thing that can be said for today is that the parade is over. The Sun man did a much better job of describing it, for purposes of general consumption and public morale, than I am going to do. His prose was richer, his Weltanschauung a more lovely thing than mine. But maybe I saw more, in my weasely way. You may caption the following a worm's eye view of the Great Chicago Parade of fawty-two.
I can state officially that it was a fine parade, undoubtedly, bigger, longer, better, with more floats, legionnaires and labor unionites than the New York Parade. It lasted twice as long (14 hours to New York's seven). And it probably got started twice as late and got behind schedule twice as easily.
We arrived at the appointed meeting place at 10 o'clock. That was on Superior over by Lake Shore Drive. We milled around for about two hours, advancing two steps every ten minutes, until we finally reached Michigan Avenue about 12:30. Naturally there was plenty of opportunity in that time for members of our little band to detach themselves and forage in search of women, beer and sandwiches. I was pleased to note that none of the Corporation counsels got tight, unlike Some Other municipal employees I saw (Sewers, Election Commissioners). Several of them hugged women, others joined Licenses (Bureau of) in song. The latter department had several good Irish Tenors. Naturally, your own unique wife foraged and found in her own unique way. I admired several participants from either Mines or Health, I couldn't figure out which, who in turn admired me and allowed me to clap an oxygen mask on my face and inhale pure oxygen. It was a device used in mine rescue work, which they saw fit to carry in the parade. I got kind of high on the oxygen but it wore off very rapidly.
When we finally got started it wasn't so bad, and it was singularly uneventful. Kelly was still in the reviewing stand at Congress St. when we passed by there at one o'clock. Little Hodes led our contingent manfully; it was a gallant thing to do, considering what a sloppy crew we were, in colorless civilian mufti, red-eyed from sleepiness and the big spot lights on Michigan Avenue. Our float was a lot of flowers and a girl from the stenographer's division who has very long platinum hair (natural) whom they dressed up in a white robe to represent Justice or maybe it was Sex. We got to 12th St. finally and Lundy and I started towards the I.C. We walked past our float to congratulate the stenographer, and at that moment, the driver emerged from wherever he was in the flower-covered truck and fell unconscious to the pavement, poisoned by carbon monoxide. Somebody gave him artificial respiration and they finally took him away in an ambulance. I hope he lives. I'm sure the Law Department was the only contingent in the whole parade whose driver got poisoned. And they're probably the only body in a position to fend off lawsuits successfully.
That was the great parade of Chicago, from where I was sitting. The floats were elaborate, the women beautiful, the men heroic, but the best thing in it was a sign on one of the Sewer Department trucks, namely:
United We Stand
Divided We Fall
If You Want a Sewer
Call the City Hall
And then, to boost civilian morale by fearful mimicry of Europe, the whole great Chicagoland rehearsed a blackout:
The blackout was a great success, from all newspaper reports. You know, they blacked out the entire Lake Michigan area, even as far as the Province of Ontario in Canada, and including the 1400 block on 60th street. At the last minute I became rather hesitant about taking a bath in the dark, so I just sat at the window and watched nothing and the wardens flashing about with their green lights. Like Carter Harrison, who gave out such a statement to the press, probably in imitation of me, I just sat and contemplated the glories of the past.
Besides, I was feeling rather enfeebled, since at first-aid class last night I played dead dog for a couple of ambitious artificial respirationers. One of them, a cute girl who attends with her cute husband, was very good about it, but the other girl who took over from her damn near bashed in my ribs. I am still breathing in long whistling sighs.
He wished that he might have been there with his great stout probing searchlight. He begs for more letters, exclaiming at their indispensability. She puts a condition on such a plethora, however:
Darling,..
You must accept certain qualifying conditions if you are to reap the great joy of receiving a daily letter from me:
1) You must promise not to save my letters. Obviously, very few of these missives will contain much that is beautiful, true, enduring or touching. Most will be compendiums of the iconoclastic rubbish that passes daily through my mind, of my faulty actions, of my ephemeral observations on life as it is lived by a 9-to-5 gal. You would hardly want to carry these jerky missives through the Sturm und Drang [What the hell does that mean?] of battle. And I certainly don't want to envision our little love nest of the future, with one room devoted to the De Grazia's and their four or was it six pups, the other ten piled to the ceiling with beribboned packages of early Oppenheima.
... I am getting insomnia again, probably because I miss you so much, & am edgy as a fox. I got very disgusted with map making today & told everybody so & in general was disagreeable. I wish I had a job in the outdoors. I get so sick of being at a desk. I hope we'll be able to live in the country when you come back. I don't think that being a housewife would be so bad in the country. I would bike to market every day & buy sharply & well. Then I would paint the furniture, tend a garden, & maybe type your PhD thesis at night. I don't see why that isn't a good way of living, even tho I have at times intellectually rebelled against being dependent on a man. But despite all my intellectual protestations to the contrary, I'm not a careerist; at least, every job I've ever had I've viewed as a stopgap, certainly not as a career, & always end up setting up some other object (you!) as the end of life. I've got the brains, I guess, but not the temperament of a career girl. And I just don't like being indoors all the time.
He couldn't agree more. He was made to hate this country of sprawling barracks, trailer camps, swamps and sand, but he dreamed of a country like Glen Park on the Fox River where he spent his childhood summers, all shade, coolness, running waters, unspecialized farms, wooden cottages with screened porches, where there would be no drill-step. The affair of his bouncing walk is worth a few lines: it almost cost him his commission.
The de Grazia way of walking was a loping bouncing style that covered ground rapidly and was perfectly comfortable over long stretches of beach and road. However, it was not the ordinary nor the Army way and in OCS there was one correct way, the Army way. The fault lay partly in being conspicuous. Everyone knew this and said it and rediscovered it every week: when a candidate became obvious for some reason, standing out from the crowd, he was on his way down and out. The De Grazia walk was noticeable in the compact and perfectly uniform marching of the troop as it was drilled. Though perfectly in step, he bounced a little.
In a full marching battalion, everyone had to take the same measured step and raise himself off the ground by the same measured height and had to move his arms back and forth from the trouser side seam, and could not bend his knees any more than it took to reach the required pace; you had to keep off your toes and march on your heels, a flat shuffle that contrasted notably with the English, German and Russian stiff swinging. It was an insult to American manhood to have to march in a way that denied Abe Lincoln and Davy Crockett and all the people you see in America clambering along the ridges of Tennessee or Vermont or California but there you were in the blazing heat of the Carolinas with mosquitoes sucking the blood on the back of your shaved neck and you had to march that way or else.
So he does. He writes home finally that he has conquered the lope. It is paramount in a growing pattern of small triumphs, resounding in the barracks now partly emptied and silenced by failures. He no longer writes letters raising the subject of indignant resignation over the impracticality, psycho-social sadism, and false standards of the school, or implying that he may be thrown out. He is now corrupted and confident to the point of arrogance. He will be arrogant when he graduates. On August 1 he scores in the top dozen of 360 cadets taking a 2.5 - hour gunnery exam. On August 4, he writes:
I'm in quite good health, something that a great number of the men can't say. Today the man in ranks alongside me collapsed right into my arms, puking the meanwhile. I awakened last night by chance and actually found myself amid a bedlam of mutterings and short cries. About six men were talking in their sleep at the same time. A large number of men are bothered no end by a heat rash which in some cases covers the body and limbs. I guess I can take any punishment they can dish out. In fact the only way I'll leave this hole which I hate worse than anything is with my bars or by polite and firm request.
Yet the suffering continues:
You rant about officer's training, dearest, and you have my sublime agreement. Yesterday was a Saturday, the likes of which I hope to see never again. The usual early rising was followed by exercises, breakfast, furious polishing, and an examination in searchlights, sound locators and electricity. After that we were lectured and given a demonstration on 268, the highly secret radio locator which can spot planes at tremendous ranges. [This would be the new radar equipment.] It is no secret that with it planes can be shot down in utter blackness, to the surprise & dismay of the pilots. Following this, we had a bite of lunch, and rushed to form for inspection. For hours we stood on hot pavement that burnt right through our shoes. I was actually below ground level when the inspection was ended, so soft was the cement and so still did we have to stand. Every agony and despondent thought passed through my mind as the hot sun beat down.
His girl back home is showing him how smart she is: she would certainly have no trouble with his exams and nothing else he was doing, for that matter, and how she would love the chance to go through it all!
Darling -
I am sitting outside on the Midway watching the sun go down in an eruption of pink clouds. Which puts on obvious time limit on my writing you since any minute it will get dark with a bang.
My eyes are rolling around in my head like a pair of loose Brussels sprouts. I was over at Rosable's for dinner (part of our joint drive to live well at a price) and afterwards she starts to talk about psychological testing, so I says why not, and proceed to waste my time and substance in an exhibitionistic display of test-taking. I took a mechanical aptitude and an intelligence test. The results of both of which surprised me, in opposite directions. I ranked in the 98 percentile in both, which was funny, because I thought I was low in mech. ability & high in intelligence. Really, whenever I take a general int. test I am always sure I am going to get 100 and feel aggrieved at anything less. The source of this astonishing instance of self-confidence I can't explain, certainly I'm not so sure of myself in other spheres of activity. I guess I've just got into the habit of knowing a little about everything and nothing about anything, and so feel that my territory is being invaded when I miss out on a piddling detail.
He has had enough of math and instruments and tests, but lusts: "I want my own gadget (def: something you screw on the bed which does your housework)."
....Lately, it has been occurring to me that much of the pother about words as weapons has its refutation or at any rate some relation to what I've been doing. The social scientists & semanticists fulminate against words with emotional overtones. Yet look here at the terms from a blueprint before me: screw, washer, lug, ring, window, adapter, nut, balls, hole, worm female (socket), male (plug), follower, retainer and many others. All of these words are double-meaning, some of them blushingly so, yet no one worries about changing the vocabulary of mechanics. The men who work with them are conscious, too, of the similes. Hypothesis: It is not the terminology, but the subject-matter of a science which gives it difficulty with the emotions.
The check came - merci, my sweet little one - but I'll try not to cash it. I think Saturday is when the eagle shits.
I got the marriage certificate back today & have now folded it carefully into my wallet, so that when I look for money I don't find it but find something just as good....
About my progress report. Darling, there is no doubt in my mind that I'll be a better officer than 90% of the men around me. I've cut out the bounce very effectively, and in the future will use it only to cover a long distance easily & hurriedly. With you. Among company, I won't use it. Many of the men have had official dressings- down, a thing I haven't experienced yet, I guess because I just naturally look like an officer.
The major inspects us minutely. He glances at a rifle, over which a man lost a night's sleep. "Rusty rifle, gig him for inattention to duty." His handkerchief dangles from his pocket, his posture is that of a bar fly, his walk almost outbounces mine, and his attitude that of a county hall politician. Any of those habits would dispose of us poor candidates.
She continues in the nostalgic vein:
I'll never forget how nice it was to be wakened by you when you came in early one Sunday morning with Hank. I had been waiting up for you til late that night before - very mindful of waiting for Santa Claus when I was a kid (well, I did), and finally, and with difficulty, I went to sleep with the happy knowledge that when I woke up you'd be there. And all of a sudden you were - & I got up, still more than half asleep and drooped all over you. It was a fine and memorable feeling.
Jimmy Durante was on the Baby Snooks program and he affects me the same way that M. Fields and the Marx frères do, i.e., he kills me. He has that highly original, subtle-buffoon tho he isn't subtle, style that I snobbishly feel can only be appreciated by intellectuals. There is a song he sings called "Did you ever feel like going when you wanted to stay?" that is a masterpiece of what I don't know. If you ever can get to it, he sings it in The Man Who Came to dinner - and you've got to hear it.
... I see by today's Times that Dorothy Dix advises people writing soldier boys to make their letters jolly. So many people write sorrowful letters to the boys and then the boys get sorrowful and Miss Dix gets sorrowful, etc.
P.S. Can you send me one of those little Coast Artillery pins. Bill Cate's wife Jane wears one of the air corps, which he's in, and it's very pretty.
It is remarkable that her letters did not irritate him with their expansive sociability. Hardly a day passed without her taking in visitors, female and male, or traipsing about the city with them, and when it wasn't all of these, it would be visiting or staying with his family and reporting all of their shenanigans. To wit:
When I got home from work yesterday afternoon I raced down to the lake, where I spent the afternoon pleasantly chatting with John and Polly Hart and swimming. Then I dropped over to Tallman's to see what she was doing for dinner, the idea of eating alone appalling me, and we went to Morton's which has re-opened in the style moderne and stinks, and I had lobster tails. The joint is very expensive now, too, besides being pretentious looking. But I felt fine after an eight-course dinner because I had begun to sicken of my sardine-on- bread suppers. Then I went back to Jane's house to get my bike and all of a sudden all the fairy-foot men she knows descended on her and lo there was beer and a party. Somewhere in the midst of all these covert and overt homosexuals, Johnny Wiggins showed up. We rushed out into Jane's lovely garden and had a rousing game of night baseball until I lost the ball; then we took an extended trip on the bike to fill up the tires with air, during which I lost my keys which necessitated another extended trip to find them. Johnny has only read Freud and Damon Runyan, and it gives his conversation a color not obtainable elsewhere. I think he is a good guy, do you?
A boy named Sid Rolfe was at Jane's too, and we had a protracted conversation about you. He told me to tell you that he has gotten a candidacy, straight from civilian life, to the School for Military Government at Charlottesville, Va. (I wrote this all down, dutifully) and that this school is for administrators of occupied countries after the war, and that if anybody in the world is qualified for this work, you are, and that if you are interested, the man he saw and that you might contact is a Lieut. Col. Joseph Harris. It sounds pretty good to me. This boy has had some experience in public administration. He is also running for some minor office in Lake County. He is beyond doubt a Commie, and was under the impression you were, too, an impression I promptly dispelled. John thought so too. I tried to explain that you were more iconoclastic than anything. As a matter of fact your position, or rather lack of it, is difficult to explain to other people, although I feel it instinctively and can pretty well know in advance how you are going to stand on various matters. But you even refuse classification as a New Republic liberal. As Sid said, it must be sort of funny being a man's wife and not being able to explain his political views. I said I didn't think it was funny at all, and besides it wasn't the case.
Of course, we talked about the war and it was nice to discuss it with an informed person. I read him a passage or two from Buzz's [the Cadet's Brother in Washington] last letter to me which will interest you too. "It turns out that American equipment in Libya, both tanks and guns, is very good, despite Axis propaganda to the contrary. The British defeat was due mainly to a tactical blunder it now appears. All sorts of reinforcements have been rushed, especially air, & the Br. have been blasting away like hell ever since. Claude the Auchinleck has been doing some fast thinking & acting. Monday at lunch we had Seversky, Nash the New Zealand prime minister, and Commodore Perry of the Graf Spee battle. Seversky & Perry agreed that the Graf Spee battle was probably the last purely sea battle. Seversky, speaking broken English, seems to know his onions, but the Commodore was simpletonish & oh so sweet & conservative, & so pathetically appealing in his self-awareness of his conservatism. Nash was neutral ... etc." Interesting, what?
Somehow, despite Russian reverses, I can't help still feeling that the war will be decided in this year, with the next as a melancholic afterlude....
He has gotten into the habit of mirthless recitals:
We are beginning to lose a few men. A number will be dropped next week, too. A couple left from nervous prostration, a few from illness, and now some for flunking courses and not meeting the "leadership" requirements. A guy across from me who has a degree in Civil Engineering is leaving soon. It's so senseless. His talents should be utilized in more than a non-commissioned position. But he can't beller out his commands and doesn't cut a military figure.
...Incidentally, if you happen to see Gordon Hall, collect $5 from him, lost to me when the Germans didn't take Moscow in June. Sneer, too, while you count the crumpled bills. I would, if I could be there...
She apologizes for not being sufficiently sentimental and romantic:
Sometimes I wish I could write love letters. Rosable and I were talking about that this morning. I know I never really say anything to you that could possibly go down in the history of fiery epistles, and it must be disappointing to you sometimes. The most I ever get off is some bright little remark about missing and/or loving you, and that I never do in any particularly original way. You, on the other hand, could be very adept at love letter writing and are, frequently. I guess you know I love you by now, but you might possibly like to hear it in a different form, now and then. But how can I speak of romance when this goddam typewriter slides all over the place, for one thing? (I lost my pen.) And I guess I really don't much care for love letters, for some reason or other. I probably got the idea in my early adolescence that they were mushy, and never have gotten over that post-pubertal embarrassment at either receiving or sending them. I don't like movies about love either, although I don't mind reading a good psychological novel about the subject. I guess it's because the ordinary brief expression of the love motif, as in movies or letters or most short stories, tends to be corny just because of the necessity of condensing the whole thing into a few black and white symbols. But tell me you love me -- that I like to hear. Shit on this typewriter!
Your loving wife,
Jill
He writes in kind:
Darling,
There is really no way of expressing how much I would have loved to be holding the source of The Voice in my arms, or of revealing how heart-broken I am that we can't be together in body as well as soul. Only the real assurance that will be accomplished soon keeps me from defying law, order, society and all the circles of purgatory & hell. That assurance is the realest and happiest part of my life. When I smile here and am not too sad, it is because I know we shall shortly be caressing each other and because you will be amused when I relate the source of the humor. I know that our love is too great to be sideswiped by any treatment the environment may deal us. I believe you are the best girl in the world and the only reasons our conversations will never be continuous repetitions of that thought is because you know I believe that at all times & everywhere, and because there is an infinite variety of modes of expression which seem not to repeat it - a mutual smile & glance, a symphony of understanding, an identity of interests and a physical attraction and passion which demonstrates our love without the need of expression in words.
So much for his more eloquent romanticism. To read his letters, you might get the notion that affairs were in a deplorable state at Camp Davis:
Due to the large number of cases of heat prostration, Sat. afternoon inspections will now be held on Sat. morns. Probably Sat. Aft. off, I hope, to do a little pleasant reading of the New Yorker. Bill's battery had a dozen men faint last week on the parade ground. A little jeep was kept busy scurrying about the ranks to collect them....Nor do conditions improve:...Everyone is depressed this week. It is very tough academically, in addition to the usual pother about polishing and shining. More guys have flunked and they feel pretty low. Several have moved out of the barracks for reasons of academic ineptitude or "leadership". Tom Powers, next to me, feels badly because he just got a letter from his mother assuming he would graduate & he has flunked gun gunnery. I hate the whole goddam setup so much that I have constantly to hold myself in check.
His war continues relentlessly:...
This week we are firing the guns over the ocean at targets drawn by planes. It's tough to hit the damned things. Sea-coast artillery is pie compared to it. Our target speeds are ten times as fast and we have a third dimension to cope with. You can understand how elated we would be if a tank lumbered at us. We'd depress the 90 mm barrel and blow it to hell.
We swim every noontime. I think I'm on life guard duty tomorrow, duty consisting mainly of blowing a whistle so that each man can grab a buddy who will keep an eye on him.
Harvey, another looie & I had a long talk last night about morale & relative fighting effectiveness of German, Jap & U.S. troops. Harvey is convinced of the all-importance of morale. Despite my predilection for problems of morale, I'm not at all so feeling on the subject. Mainly I define morale more broadly, and feel that there are things that compensate for a fanatical politicalism -- ingrained aggressiveness, physical self-confidence, etc.
For her, politics is the order of the day, "McKeough for Congress," it develops, is the big push of the machine.
...I didn't write you Tuesday night because I got started working out some scheme for promoting McKeough to the housewives of the state and all of a sudden it was 10 o'clock. The scheme was one of those cards for housewives to post in their kitchens giving the list of foods that are price-controlled -- it's been done by OCD [Office of Civil Defense] but not very decoratively -- and also leaving a space for writing in the food bargains of the week which they could erase slate- like. However, Rubin put thumbs down on it for a reason that was good but that I can't remember now.
I'm working pretty hard these days for me. I've gotten up a leaflet instructing absentee voters and service men on how to vote, and also enjoining one and all to register. And also some letter forms that absentee voters can use to send in for their ballot applications. It was my idea -- the leaflet was -- but I notice that I don't get any credit for it since it all goes through Rubin's hands. I don't care much, since that's the way publicity and advertising offices, or any kind of office for that matter works, and I am past disillusionment. And besides it's nice having something else to do but maps. I still haven't finished the ward maps yet and Hodes is on my neck every day. But I do hope that when the time comes when Hodes says to Rubin, what the hell good is that girl for anyway, Rubin will assert my usefulness, paltry as it may be. They've worked up that story book business I did on Curly Brooks into a very cute little booklet -- a professional production man did the job and didn't change my copy too much and added a lot of humorous touches. We all hope it gets into print, since it is a very whimsical and new form of campaign propaganda. However, we do know that the professional politicians from the central committee aren't given to as much whimsy as our office....
He continues to gripe:
The petty discipline goes on and most of the time I ignore it. Curses on the forces which make a man go through this to be an officer! The buck private is the only man that can look himself squarely in the eye in this goddamned army. If I obeyed my impulses I would be in the guardhouse half the time and a good fighting soldier the other half. All this nauseating concern over shiny shoes, conventions of courtesy, debasing rigmarole will never win the war, but sometimes I think that I am one of the few persons concerned with that little matter.
... A bare thirty days to go. Wowee! 96 men flunked the course in Directors; I got thru OK. 300 took the course.
...You would love to see these guns go off. The firing point is a continuous bedlam. Our classrooms (we are in class drawing up and solving firing problems part of the time) are about 50 yards from the big guns, farther from the 37 mm, 40 mm, .50 and .30 cal machine guns. An aeroplane drags along a target sleeve continuously and everything that can shoot opens fire. The building shakes, we put figures in the wrong squares, & the graph squares look like ticker tape. I keep a wad of cotton in my left ear which is next to the window in order to keep it from ringing. We fired the 90's at a horizontal target today on the water. The blast from the guns whips back one's trousers and scares up a lot of sand. The splash can be seen on or near the target. It probably would interest you to know that in cases where tank armor has been too heavy to pierce with the 90 shell going at 2700 ft per sec., the shell has ricocheted and the impact was so fierce that sufficient steel splinters are knocked off inside the tank to demolish the occupants.
Since anything would be a welcome relief from his grumbling, I give you more of life on the Home Front, courtesy Jill de Grazia:
Darling -
...My inner man, which was never dissatisfied in the first place, now satisfied, I can settle down peacefully to ponder on the day's events with you. The war news looks terrible and I challenge you, in your usually unflagging optimism, to make it look any better than it is. Naturally, all we hear about is the second front up here - and then editorial shut-ups from the newspapers. I honestly don't see why they don't do something about invading the continent - anything would be better than a predominant Nazi victory in Russia - even a Dunkirk. [The German armies were moving in upon Stalingrad.] Oh well, as the papers say, the military authorities know best. But it would be a ghastly page in history - Russia's fall while we stood by doing nothing.
Johnny Hess just called to say goodbye - he is leaving tomorrow. He sends you his love - that's just what he said - and I bid him what will probably be our last goodbye for the duration. It seems improbable that he will get any more leaves before he goes over.
... You know, when we lived down on the south shore of Long Island when I was a kid, I used to watch them target-practice, much the same sort of thing you're doing now. Those rickety old airplanes of the 1920's used to drag cones up & down the shoreline. I never saw any hit but we could hear the guns very plainly. Fort Tilden, where they had the coast artillery, was about five or maybe less miles from where we lived. I guess I told you about the time, or maybe it was times, I used to bike up there & look at the soldiers, to the great dismay of my family & nurse. I was nine then, but a sexy girl withal. They had the police out once looking for me.
I felt pretty proud of myself last night. I borrowed some tools from the garage around the corner & took the wheel off my bike & patched that big hole in the tube. While it wasn't a very workmanlike job, because I misread the directions on the can of patching equipment, the tire is holding up fine & the wheel is back on the bike without any parts missing. Of course the bike has a decided list to the starboard now, but it was one of the pleasantest hours I've spent.
He continues to tender alarming accounts of physical strains in his quarter:
....Yes, I can say that I'm in quite good health, something that a great number of the men can't say. Today in ranks, the man alongside me collapsed right into my arms, puking the meanwhile. I awakened last night by chance and actually found myself amid a bedlam of mutterings and short cries. About six men were talking in their sleep at the same time. A large number of men are bothered no end by a heat rash which in some cases covers the body & limbs...
Lehman flunked his Directors and feels pretty badly about it. The Director, my naive little one, is une grande calculating machine which directs the fire of the AA guns...
Monday was payday. I received $23 in travel money and $33.40 pay for July. I'll send you about $25 or so as soon as I can get to fill out a money order. How is la belle cheque account these days?
The uniform allowance if I graduate (and the chances are better than even), is $150. I'll get another $30 for August pay and with that will purchase some things.
...I forgot to sign in when I came back Sunday so this week I am in the "fuck-up" squad, detailed to swat flies in the dining room every night for a half-hour. Oh, well, there's nothing to do during that time except flop on my bunk anyway.
....
I should hate to detail the thousands of deaths by war, famine, and massacre on this day -- like every day in these parlous times, but did not Jesus say something about "not a sparrow falls.."? And so in Chicago, Grim Reaper of Mother Nature: we listen:
Darling -
I certainly feel foolish, considering the circumstances under which I am writing this letter. I ran out a moment ago to buy cigarettes, with the intention of having a quiet drag while I was digesting my supper (bacon, eggs, tomato & garlic - and very good too) and writing you. And what should my keen nature lover's eye espy on the ground in front of the house but an adolescent sparrow, out cold.
Perhaps I ought to furnish a little meteorological background to this latest report of St. Frances of the City Hall. It's been raining and storming like hell all day -- in fact, the lights in the City Hall went out at 4 and we all got to go home early when they showed no intention of going on again.
Anyway, it's apparently not fit weather for birds, because this little chick is lying there, wet and ugly, like dead. I pushed him with my foot and he stirred a little, so I rushed upstairs, rooted out a small box & paper & put him in it. At the nonce, I am sitting on the john seat writing this. Box with bird is on the bathroom floor, where it is always hot as hell, and where I trust he will dry out so I can release him. However, the chances are that he will die before he dries out.
I just arose from my writing to administer a stimulant to this miserable creature, consisting of one part sugar water, one part Black & White. He tried to bite me, which I take as a good sign. Incidentally, first aid teaches us never to give whiskey as a stimulant, only tea or coffee, but I'll be damned if I'll brew a whole pot of coffee for some miserable bird.
... Generally this has been a bad week for animals. On Monday, the Brookfield Panda died. Tuesday, there was an awful fire at Ringling's circus in Cleveland, & nearly two score beasts were burned to death. Wednesday the City Council passed an ordinance that women can no longer stand or sit at bars but must be served at a table.
The last-named catastrophe moves me not at all, although all sorts of feminist slogans have been burning in the skies since the Mayor & Barney Hodes handed down the word of God. Obviously the law will protect soldiers to a certain extent from whores & consequently venereal disease, the rates for which have been sky- rocketing recently here, & even if it doesn't, it will appease the prohibitionists & military officials who might otherwise make Chicago a restricted area. Personally, I don't give a damn whether I sit at a bar or lie down when I drink - as long as I can.
I certainly hope this bird dries out by the time I go to bed. While I am fond enough of all living things - fond enough of them not to let them die when there is anything I can do about it - I do not count birds as being among my special friends, & would just as soon not spend the night with one. In the first place, I think birds are funny looking.
I am having quite some fun doing a special analysis of the 18th Congressional District for a guy named Butcher, the Democrat who is running against that Trib bitch, Rep. Jessie Sumner. I hope he wins but the figures look bad. I really like my job a lot better now than the first couple of months when I started. I enjoy saying hello to all those silly men who sit behind the throne, & being known by the elevator operators, & answering the phone for Rubin and in general - the feeling that I'm sitting in on some half-important doings...
Enough of her Chicago politics. He reminisces of family:
Darling Jill,
Tomorrow is Buzz's birthday and I recall those easy days as boys when that was a big day. Buzz and I would be dressed for the occasion and a select crew of little hoodlums would be invited for the occasion which usually broke up in a free-for-all with toys breaking liberally over everyone's head. The climax was blowing out the candles, but being unsatiable kids, one climax wasn't enough and the candles were blown out and blown out until mere shapeless hulks remained. Mrs. Erickson always baked a tremendous sponge cake for our family gatherings and various womenfolk dashed about the house doting on our avarice. We'll have to have such splendid parties for our children some day after we settle down from our lengthy honeymoon without child. Meanwhile a couple of nephews will suffice.
Gosh, the mortality rate here is terrific. We've lost a number of men from the platoon for a variety of reasons. Out of sixteen men in my row of beds, only four (including myself) have flunked none of the courses. Most will have to take an extra two or three weeks of school before graduating. The school to all intents and purposes is now more of a 14 than a 12-week affair. Some of the men who get through don't deserve to do so and vice versa. It's all a great rat race.
Speaking about rat races, at Wrightsville Beach Sat. night they had a roulette game in a miniature Coney Island there. A poor harried rat crouched in the middle of the whirling disk and finally dashed into a hole of some color or another. If the color is yours, you are the winnah. The rat never wins. He goes round & round and never comes out.
We groused around at great length, drinking pop, beer, & cubalibres. Mills had a hotel room full of men and whiskey. Later, Mills & I went swimming & then, since he had no place to sleep, we arranged a mattress for him at our room.
Mostly we sat around, ate pretty good food and swam. There were a lot of girls on the beach & I don't mean women. The Southern belle is like the rodent plague. She disappears at the age of 16 and is never seen thereafter. Oh, there were a few whose breasts were apparent but words confuse them so. The fact is that I would rather write you a letter than speak to any woman in these parts.
.... So long, love.
Al
P.S. Did the sparrow die?
P.P.S. They invariably defecate on one's hands when picked up.
P.P.P.S. I know, I sheltered lots of them when we lived on Hill Street.
No! The bird is not done-in, she reports:
Oh, that sparrow got to his feet that very night, and even took a couple of spins around the room. I took him downstairs then, because birds in rooms make me very nervous indeed, but he was disinclined to do any more flying. So I took him upstairs again - he was perched on my finger all this while - and made him a little bed on the window sill. Pretty soon he went to sleep, with his head tucked under his wing in authentic sparrow style, and when I woke up in the morning he had flown away. Since then I have been leaving bread on the window sill, in case he comes back. Incidentally, when he dried out, he turned out to be a full-grown adult sparrow, not a baby the way I thought he was when he was all wet....
Back to his War:
This next week will be spent on the beach and on a range, firing 30 and 50 cal. machine guns and 37 and 40 mm cannon. The 50 fires around 600 shots a minute when it gets excited and has adjustments that can bring it down to a lackadaisical poop a second. The 37 mm throws a pretty good shell over a hundred times per minute. So there'll be a lot of pretty tracers to watch this week.....
Later:
(G)enerally Sunday nights are as dismal as the petrified forest. The long week lies ahead. The laundry, dirty laundry, must be sorted, the barracks cleaned, the discipline begins with Sunday night study hall. All of a sudden everyone feels tired. It's astounding how such a number of men can get along together under such conditions as exist. Now and then there is a little spat. I don't like some of the men. I suppose some don't like me. One man in particular has crossed with several men. But he's nervous, out of his element, and not doing so well. You can hardly blame him for having a quick temper.
Otherwise the men hold themselves back remarkably well. They are mostly politically stupid, a thing which exasperates me no end - but we have little time for argument and I would never waste time on that anyway.
The month of August nears its end. More and more time is spent on the automatic weapons and there are intimations of a happy ending:
Dear love,
The imminence of graduation is here, unbelievable and soul- stirring. Smiles are more frequent on some faces, others are a little more drawn. Every day someone thinks of something else to measure Der Tag in terms of. - Fifteen more bottles of milk, two weekends, six more double-timing exercises in the morning, one more dirty laundry list, etc.
I still can't say anything for sure, nor can anyone else. The chances are good that I'll light out of here like a scared jackrabbit come the morning of the fourth....
Down at the firing point we shot the 35 mms at a sleeve towed by a plane. I was a gunner and every time I kicked the pedal there was a great bang, a whistle, and a nice red tracer shooting out into space...
I just got the news of the big Commando raid. [The Dieppe raid in which half a Canadian force of 6,000 was lost, to no gain; the defeat encouraged pessimists over the prospects of landing successfully an army in France.] Very interesting but too early to analyze its significance. It's hard to believe that tanks would be risked in a transient skirmish. Perhaps the feints are beginning....
Today we were down at the ocean again and did a lot of firing. I got off a beautiful blast in my turn on the machine gun, Browning 30 cal., 250 rounds at a towed sleeve without a pause. That's more firing than most men ever get in the army. It's one complete ammunition belt. Usually the guns stick or jam for a second after a few rounds & goodbye airplane.
Later on, we switched to the 40 mms. and again potted at the sleeve with the heavier gun. It was like all hell breaking loose. There were a whole row of 40s, 37s and machine guns shooting away at the same time, and some bigwig got the ingenious idea of making everything hyper-realistic, so a big sound truck parked in the middle and blared forth choice phonograph records of dive bombers, bomb whistles, and sundry explosions.
About that time I was on the director of the 40 mm, with my eyes glued to the telescope, tracking the target and I could see all the tracers converging on the target. But it was hard keeping my attention on the eyepiece when it seemed as if the ground were being blasted away beneath my feet. Tracking is a delicate operation, you see, the slightest jerk of the hand and a big rate is set in which will take the gun off the target completely.
Tomorrow we are firing on the anti-tank range about 50 miles away, reached by our favorite conveyance, the horse car, soixante hommes et no chevaux. That should be fun too.
The general of the school was out today to watch us, and expressed an unfavorable comment on the state of our knowledge of the innards of the 37 mm, with only a couple hundred pieces to learn in four days together with the other guns we have to learn. Unhappily, the instructor asked questions of a guy who has slept through most of the last ten weeks. The poor fellow is just yearning to get back to Alaska where he can cool off.
But some pine needles were flashing in the Southern light:
Just now, Hanrahan, the Fordham flash, sitting next to me, is talking me into seeing some show with Betty Grable and Vic Mature in it tonight. I'll probably go if only to kill off a couple of the hours remaining between us.... Chicken Little, the sky is falling! This morning, for the second time, we didn't have to double time before breakfast. Instead, we had a short arm inspection, which didn't appeal very much, apparently, to the inspecting medical major who had to examine 150 penises before breakfast. I can say, though, that that's the easiest test I've ever had in this school....
I must dash down to shave now before the latrine gets too crowded. The classroom latrines are really a sight, lines of men at all the bowls and the rest of the room crowded with men smoking & drinking cokes until you can't move around at all. I shall probably expire from delight in the quiet seclusion of a tiled bathroom.
Don't bother about the tidiness of the house, Darling. I'll automatically rise at 5 and sweep, mop, dust, shine all the shoes, arrange the closet, fold the blankets and sheets and turn out in the hallway for reveille....
Also yesterday, I learned that officially the reason the Americans surrendered on Bataan was because of disease, that they could have held out much longer but for lack of proper food and pills. That almost everyone had scurvy or malaria or severe dysentery or combinations thereof and that the men simply couldn't coordinate their movements because of a lack of vitamin B, and suffered night blindness because of lack of vit A; they couldn't see more than 150 yds away any time. [Here we come upon an important piece of news, without the implications and lessons being afforded the cadets, nor, as we shall see, was there ever enough attention given to the prevention of ill-health and disease as a primary duty of officers. Disease, prevention, morale -- sometimes it appeared such words were tabooed, insults to "tough guys," to their machoism -- a word not then used -- or excuses for "goldbricking.".]
To continue his story, which softens with every passing day:
Today was easy enough; we spent most of the time examining and taking apart a beautiful 40 mm gun that the U.S. is now producing in copious quantities. It's a Swedish gun adopted by the English & turned over to us. We also fired 30 cal machine guns at toy balloons.
Around 11:30 we were allowed a swim, though I was life guard half the time allotted. The other guard was a Cal man who guarded maidens & men at Long Beach in the past.
Next week I'll purchase the remaining bare essentials of an officer's wardrobe. That will include socks, shoes and a khaki suit for the remainder of summer. The rest you can buy with me. Sometime this week Rogers Peet will have my suit ready for try-out. I don't know that my pants will hang on; you can see how much depends on a hearty breakfast when I'm home. ARE YOU PREPARED? Ready or not, etc.
Five days later, in a relaxing mood, he is telling Jill that "Betty Grable is in camp today and causing a great to-do."
A number of men from my barracks dashed over to the "lucky" adjoining battery where she was sharing mess with the boys. They came back with glowing accounts of her ravishing beauty, blondness & figure. One even described her as having an ankle bracelet which finished her for me. I already had a pretty good idea of her in my mind,, flashy, high heels with a beach outfit, much make-up, long blonde locks and paunchy jowls with a raucous voice. Exactly; I saw her later while she was eating and, all joking aside, I know ten "26" girls who would pass as her beautiful young sister. In all fairness to the men, they weren't as much enthralled as they were curious. Anyway, one day in the life of the hapless second-weekers she visited went a little swiftly. There's just no comparison between the Betty Grable type, and women like Bette Davis, Joan Fontaine and Katherine Hepburn....
I've a lot of letter writing to do. Stouffer [Professor Sam Stouffer who directs morale research for the Army in Washington] wants another morale letter but I have so little free time. I must write several other letters here & there, and periodically I worry about the income tax I didn't pay. Could you inquire about the amount and pay it for me? [This boy has a social conscience!] I really should do something about it, and I don't think there's any point in asking for a delay for the duration.
About the duration and its length, I can't help but be stirred by the bad events in Russia [the German Army had reached Stalingrad], but nevertheless persist in a "watch the cat in the bag" feeling, though this may be all too mystic for your caustic, sophisticated soul....
They even deserve a decent meal:
We had a wonderful breakfast this morning for one thing; awakening to an amazing Sunday with the final week ahead. The good cooks were out en masse to give us Freshly Fried Eggs and crisp bacon with JAM and PLENTY OF MILK. I thought I was still dreaming when I finished eating. It was all so good. Those of us who went to breakfast were startled and overjoyed. It seemed as if the Good Lord had provided for us this morning with special indulgence. The morning was cool for sleeping and the paper boy came early for a change, a combination of circumstances that reminded me of the wonderful ritual we used to follow of a Sunday morn.
With all of this, he recovers in one thrilling moment the full and ringing voice that he had lost early in the game. Now, put in command of the platoon and full battery for marching maneuvers, he calls out across the length and breadth of the drill field -- "Left, Oblique! Right, Face! `To the Rear, March!' With splendid precision he moved the robots.
Photographers come to take a picture of the battery of stern-faced, strut-backed candidates. All who remain know that they will be commissioned. He writes with friendly hauteur of a visiting West Point cadet group that cannot handle the guns and miss their targets.
Finally, the Army, taking with the one hand and giving with the other, discharges him honorably from the ranks of the enlisted men and, on September 4, in Special Order 121, names him and a lot of others to be members of the most expendable rank in the army, and commands Second Lieutenant Alfred Joseph de Grazia Jr., 0- 1043313, from Chicago, Illinois, to report within three days at Camp Tyson, Tennessee.
Here he was, ready to lead a panzer division against Rommel, yet back to the boondocks and flatulent air-cows he was being forced to go.
Friday morning came and, with it, the departure of a newly fledged Lieutenant. The event went unnoticed in the huge encampment, except that the MP at the Gate, passing him out indifferently, had to cast at him that all-important salute. To which he responded in kind.
The Taste of War
A Cadet in North Carolina