Dennis was a real towhead with cowlicks and everything, a Dennis-the-Menace type kid; he was open for anything; he just wanted to have fun; and we liked each other. We used to go into town on weekends, Lawton, Oklahoma. They only had threetwo beer, but you could get drunk on it, and every now and then you'd run into a bootlegger who'd have whiskey or gin smuggled in from Texas.
One night Dennis and I went to town and really got wiped out. We came back to the post at about two or three o'clock in the morning and went into the latrine, a big, separate building out in front with showers and rows of toilets and rows and rows of sinks. There was nobody in there but us, so we started acting crazy. We were so uptight and frustrated we started knocking things down. We broke things. Then we took the toilet paper out of the supply room and threw it all over and we lit it; it really started to blaze. We didn't know what to do then, so we ran out. We snuck out of the latrine and into our barracks.
Reveille rang in the morning. They'd blow a bugle. The sergeants screamed at you to get up. You threw your clothes on, ran out of the barracks, and lined up in the little parade ground. Each group of barracks had their own parade ground out in the middle. We ran out, me and Dennis, really hung over. We lined up and looked at the latrine. It was a mess. It hadn't burned to the ground but it was burned bad. They had roll call. Then the lieutenant came. The captain came. They started wigging out to see who had done it, and everybody in our platoon looked around at me and Dennis. They said they'd better find out who did it or the whole company would be put on quarantine; there'd be no passes. They dismissed us, and then when we started to go back into the barracks our platoon surrounded us. They said, "Where were you guys last night? We know you did it. You're the only guys that would do anything like that."
We all went to the latrine and we all had to clean. Everybody kept ranking us, accusing us. Finally I flipped out. I remember saying, "I didn't do it, but I wish I had! That's what I think of you bastards!" They tore our clothes off and threw us in the shower. They gave us a "GI bath" with strong brown soap with lye in it and scrubbed us with big brushes made out of wood sticks. We were hollering and fighting, and finally I told 'em, "Yeah, I did it, you motherfuckers!" Then somebody came and stopped it, one of the officers. And so they put us on KP for a couple of weeks. From then on it was open warfare, me and Dennis against the rest of the platoon.
When I first got to Fort Sill I used to cry at night and think, "How can it be? How can I be here?" I couldn't believe that this could be happening to me. I couldn't believe that I might die with these people I hated.
Before you finish basic training you're allowed a visit. The family chipped in, and Patti came to Lawton. I hadn't seen her for three months. It's hard for regular soldier's wives to get rooms in towns like that; if you're not an officer they think you're scum. But Patti had such a nice way about her, she talked a lady into renting her a room in a house in town, and finally the night came for me to go to her.
We had had an especially hard day. I'd had to go over an obstacle course, climbing and running and doing all sorts of outrageous things. I took a shower and cleaned up. I was all excited. I got a bottle of something and went to town; I went to the place and the lady of the house came to the door, a nice southern lady with the accent and everything. I introduced myself and then Patti appeared at the top of the stairs. She had a silky, clinging dress on with all kinds of colors in it; it set off her white skin. She was wearing those high-heeled pumps that made her legs look so pretty, and her hair was just hanging down. Her eyes were glowing and glistening and she was smiling. And when she smiled she had little dimples that showed. Her face looked like a child's.
I was so happy to see her. I couldn't stand to have anything to do with the girls I'd see in town. One time I was drinking some beer in a bar, and this little chick that looked nice came up to me and said hello, and we talked, and for a moment it was pleasant, and then she called me "Joe." I said, "What did you call me that for?" She said, "Well,-that's what we call you soldier boys." I said, "I'm not a soldier boy!" I got so angry I wanted to strangle her. Joe! I'm not Joe! So seeing Patti I was seeing someone that was mine, somebody I meant something to, and it was wonderful.
We went into the room and had a couple of drinks. We talked and kissed and Patti told me how worried everybody was and how unbearable it was for her: she was so lonely. She cried. Then we got into bed and started making love. Up to this time, so that she wouldn't get pregnant, I had pulled out. I assumed that that was what I would do this time, and when I felt I couldn't keep from coming I told her, "I'm going to come!" But as soon as I said that she threw her legs up over my back and held me, and she threw her arms around me and grabbed me, and she had so much strength, and it had been so long since we'd made love, and I was so passionate, and I was fighting her to get out of her, and I couldn't do it, and so I came. And I remember thinking how marvelous it felt and what a shame we couldn't always do it that way. And I thought, maybe just this one time, maybe nothing will happen, maybe she won't get pregnant. But I knew that she would. I knew as soon as it happened that she was going to get pregnant. She held me and told me that they had decided she had to have a baby. My folks had told her to force me to come in her in case anything should happen to me overseas-so there'd be something left of me. And she said that that was what she wanted.
I felt awful because I didn't want to have children. I knew that I didn't want to have any children. I had even gone through one of those operations because I didn't want to have any children, ever; I didn't want to share Patti with a child. I knew I wouldn't make a good parent.
The doctor who performed the vasectomy had been a friend of Patti's mother's. He had tried to talk me out of it, but I told him, "Man, I want it done!" I got on the operating table, and I had no anaesthetic. They shaved me, put Mercurochrome all over me, and then he made an incision in my testicle. The pain was beyond description. He pulled out the cord with some prongs, and he took a needle filled with Novacain, and all the time I'm going through this the doctor's got someone he's showing how he does the operation. I can hear them talking. This person says, "Isn't the pain bad?" And the doctor says, "Well, it's just for a moment, and this is the best way, really, to nullify it. From then on, once you get the needle into the cord ... " And so he stuck it in, and after a while it took effect, but while I was still pulsating from the pain he started interrogating me. I'm delerious, and he's asking little questions. Finally he said, "When's your birthday? How old will you be?" So he discovered that I wasn't eighteen, and he couldn't perform the operation. He sewed me back up without cutting the cord. I didn't know. I waited to have the test that would tell whether I was sterile or not, and at last he told Patti, and she told me.
I waited until I was eighteen and went back to the same doctor to have him perform the same operation. He cut the cord this time, but he didn't cut a piece out of it. He tucked it underneath a membrane, in case I changed my mind, so it could be repaired. The cord found itself back together. And later, when I gave a sample of my sperm to see if I was sterile, I wasn't.
Twice was all the courage I could muster. I couldn't go through that thing again. But you can see how I felt about having a child, and when I realized that Patti was going to get pregnant I was really angry. I was mad at my folks and at her. That was the only time I came in her, that one time, and she went back to Los Angeles, and she was pregnant.
When I finished basic training they shipped me to Camp Butner, North Carolina, and put me in the combat engineers. And while I was at Camp Butner I heard that Benny Carter's band was going to be in Durham, and they were having their concert on a Saturday night when I'd be free.
I went into Durham and found the auditorium. I bought a ticket. I noticed the ticket said "loge." I said, "What's the loge?" The guy tells me, "That's upstairs." I said, "I used to be with this band: they're old friends of mine and I'd like to be close to the stand, where I can say hello to them." The guy says, "Well, you can't do that. Whites aren't allow
ed downstairs." When Benny had told me I couldn't go with the band down south I didn't understand it. I had been all around Central Avenue for years as a kid. I couldn't understand what he was talking about, and my eyes were still closed at this time. I was shocked, and I tried to argue with the guy, but he said, "You either take a loge ticket or you don't go in."
I went in and took my seat. I looked downstairs. The whole bottom floor was black. The people upstairs were white. The band started playing, and I started drinking, and finally I just walked downstairs because I had to see them. I snuck through the dancefloor. I walked real fast and as I approached the stand I could feel the people staring at me, and then they started moving and all of a sudden they just closed me in. All of a sudden there was a circle of black people around me and they were saying, "What are you doing down here? What are you doing down here, white boy?" I said, "I used to play with this band. I want to say hello." They said, "You get outta here!" And they all started yelling. One guy screamed, "You killed my grandparents, you son-of-a-bitch, you white bastard! You beat my grandparents to death, you son-of-a-bitch!" I said, "I didn't kill anybody! I didn't do anything!" But they kept raving, so I got mad. I shouted, "I don't want to hear any of your fuckin' shit! I didn't do anything to you!" Someone said, "You better get outta here, boy, if you know what's good for you!" I said, "Fuck you all, man!" They grabbed me and one guy hit me in the back; another punched me, and I was screaming and swinging around; by this time I was close to the bandstand and the people taking the tickets saw what was happening and rushed out. I was raging, "I used to play with this band!" I think I hollered, "Benny!" And he jumped off the stand and ran down there. The ushers were saying, "You've got to get out of here! Someone's gonna kill you!" Benny comes up to me and says, "Oh, man!" I said, "What is this? What kind of shit is this? I just wanted to say hello!" He said, "This is what I was talking about before. I thought you knew about these things." I was crying by this time. They despised me. They wanted to kill me. Benny said, "There's nothing I can do, man. Come around after. We'll see you outside, around by the bus." The ushers escorted me out.
I was going to wait to see the guys, but if I had gotten together with one of those black guys from inside I would have killed him or gotten killed. I left the place and found me a jug and drank it and wandered around the town. I was mad. I was really confused. I was hurt. And finally I got on the bus and went back to the post.
I was drafted too late to get into a band. They needed people for combat, not for bands, but I had my horn sent to me anyway, at Camp Butner, so I could play. I was stationed right next to the 225th Army Ground Force Band, and when I realized that, I took out my horn and started practicing in my barracks, playing out the window so they could hear me. They ran over and just wigged out when I told them who I was. They had all heard of me because I'd been with Stan Kenton, and they started a campaign to get me into the band.
It was a difficult thing to do, but there was a warrant officer in charge of the band who played oboe and really dug me. He was a classical child prodigy from a wealthy family. I think he played with the Pittsburgh Symphony. He had blue eyes, blondish, curly hair, a pouting mouth and effeminate ways, delicate hands, long, slender fingers. He had a very refined manner of speaking and was brought up, I think, as a loner, like myself, only he was rich. He didn't really care for anyone else in the band, and he had found a friend in me; in fact, he was a little overly friendly and I always felt strange around him. He never made any sexual advances, but whenever I'd mention my wife or anything like that he'd get uncomfortable and change the subject. It's a thing I've run into lots of times, guys who liked me with almost a homosexual intensity but with no overt actions. This warrant officer had a lot of pull, and he kept working, and, finally, just before the outfit I was with went overseas, I got a transfer. That was right before the Battle of the Bulge, and most of the people in the outfit I was in were killed, but I got into the band.
When it was time for the baby to be born I got a furlough and went back to Los Angeles. Patti was living with my grandmother on Seventy-third Street. Her stomach was real big, and it was strange to feel the baby move. I was praying she'd have the baby before I had to go back, and just before I was supposed to leave she started getting labor pains close together. We took her to the hospital, and I sent a wire to the warrant officer requesting an extension. I got a wire back. He said if I came right away he'd guarantee we'd stay in the U.S., but if I didn't come back I'd be AWOL and I'd probably be transferred into another outfit and sent overseas. I had to leave Patti in the hospital.
When I got to the base there was a telegram waiting for me saying that the baby was born, a girl, six pounds, eight ounces. She was born January 5, 1945, the day after I left. I thought, "Well, anyway, I won't have to go overseas." But the reason the warrant officer had told me to hurry back was that the band was going overseas immediately and he wanted me to go with them. We were shipped to Camp Miles Standish in Massachusetts and loaded onto a boat in a convoy and sent to France.
Everyone was scared. The war was raging. The trip was okay until about the fourteenth day on the water, when it got stormy. It was a bad storm, and everybody was seasick. In the latrine, the vomit and the urine would roll from one end of this long tin urinal to the other, hit the end, and fly out onto the floor. It was hard trying to stand up with all the vomit and the piss. And then, one evening, just as the storm was abating, I felt a huge lurching of the ship and heard an explosion. There were two more explosions; it sounded like they were right under the ship; and then all the lights went out.
They started talking to us over the loudspeaker, telling us to be calm, not to panic, and to put on our life jackets. Finally they called our group to get up on deck. We filed up, and it was night. The motors were all shut off. The captain kept talking over the loudspeakers as softly as he could. He told us the convoy had been infiltrated by German submarines. We were about twenty-six ships and there were six navy destroyers with us. On the trip sometimes we'd see them running through the convoy.
I was fortunate enough, when I came up, to get fairly close to the rail. I was able to see down, and even though the motors were off, the ship was drifting, and where it was floating through the water there was phosphorous. That was the only light. You could see it to the left and to the right and in front; the light of the boat cutting through the water.
I had my life belt on. It was cold. It was February, and we were just approaching the tip of England, going through the Channel. This was the spot where the German submarines used to lie in wait to get the convoys. We were all scared to death. Every now and then the captain, I assumed it was the captain talking, would say that they were going to set off depth charges, don't be frightened. And that's what I'd heard at the beginning. We saw a huge explosion off the back side to the right, and a little while after that there was another. Two of our ships were hit and exploded. We thought at any moment a torpedo was going to hit us.
You can never find out what happens, but I heard later that three submarines were hit. They kept testing by radar until they found that all the subs had left and, after a long, long time, they turned the engines on and we started moving again, but we had to stay on deck just in case. Sometimes they'd turn off the engines and lay on the bottom and wait-the radar picked up the engine vibrations-and then start up again.
Up to this point we hadn't known for sure where we were going-England, France, or North Africa-but at last we entered Le Havre, and I'll never forget the sight of that harbor. There were all kinds of ships, sunk, huge hunks of wreckage, and I guess the harbor was shallow because they were just lying there in the water. There were gun turrets blown to bits; you could see these huge howitzers, broken, all bent. The harbor itself was nonexistent: there were no more docks, so the Seabees had made landing places out of metal stripping.
The people started unloading and we watched from a porthole, but when our ship's turn came to go to the landing area everybody was unloaded except us. We didn
't know what was happening. It was too good to think we wouldn't have to get off there and go to the Battle of the Bulge. We had been trained in stretcher bearing. If we did go we served as medics, helpless, no chance of defending ourselves. At the end of the third day there was no one on the ship but the crew and the band. Our warrant officer couldn't find out why we hadn't received orders to debark. We wanted to know if we could get off the ship and see the town, so he inquired and found that no American soldiers could go walking around Le Havre because the French would kill them. The Germans had taken the town at first, and there was a little damage, but they did just what they had to do, nothing more. Then the Americans came and took Le Havre back from the Germans and just mutilated the place. They were barbarians, animals, and the French despised them. We weren't allowed to get off the ship.
After five days we were frantic, but at last the warrant officer came back. He said, "I've got great news!" We'd been ordered to Bournemouth. We landed at Southampton, where they had trucks waiting for us that took us to a convalescent center in an old city in England, a huge camp filled with people who'd been wounded in battle. If they weren't dead but were wounded so badly they could never fight again, they were sent to the States, but if there was any chance at all of mending them up enough to put them back into battle, they were sent to England to one of these centers. Our function was to play for these people and give them a little entertainment, a little joy.
I stayed at the convalescent center for eight or nine months, playing and watching the V1 and V2 rockets fly overhead, bombing London, and then I became an MP.
At the end of 1945 a lot of people were released from the war. They were sent home if they had enough points for longevity. Most of the guys in the band had been in the army for years so they qualified to go home, and rather than getting replacements they decided to do away with the band. I was put in the MPs and sent to London.
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