Letters to America

by Tom Blair

  Cots made up to the corporal’s liking, we put on fatigues and formed up out front of the barracks. There we stood at attention with the Georgia sun doing its best to bake our brains. Then the sweat started to pour out. My fatigues looked like they’d been dunked in a well. Worried I’d get yelled at. Shouldn’t have worried. The sergeant showed up and marched us off to mess. I didn’t know what mess was, but I started to smell food. Hadn’t eaten in more than a day.

  In we went, never could have imagined the mounds of vittles that were piled high. All sorts of food set out in big metal pans that made a row of eats that stretched out twice as long as our house in Renfroe. On the kitchen side of the pans, two fast-moving GIs filled them as quick as they were emptied. On our side of the pans, each of us got a tray that had bowls and plates punched into them. You’d walk along the line and a GI would plop on your tray whatever was in front of you. At the end of the line there was bread. Some guys were taking two or three pieces. I was scared to take more than one.

  Couldn’t see anybody I knew, so I took the first empty seat. Felt like I was about to burst and for sure didn’t want to eat. Thought about asking somebody, but the sergeant told us he would rip the head off of anybody that talked. At one end of the room there was a doorway, and every once in a while somebody would come out pulling up their zipper. I had to do it. I stood up and walked through the door. Thank you, Lord, it was a toilet. First time I’d peed indoors. First time I’d peed a gallon. As fast as I could, back to my spot, ate in a rush. I’m not sure what the meat was, but it was good. Then the sergeant yelling again, dropped our trays in a stack and back outside.

  For two—maybe three—hours, we marched. The top of my boots were higher than my socks so my skin started to get rubbed raw. ’Course, I wasn’t going to complain. Then back to the barracks. In came a corporal with assignments. Some of us would clean latrines, some on KP, peeling potatoes and washing pans, and others policing the barracks, picking up cigarette butts, leaves, dead bugs, or anything else that might cause the sergeant a hissy fit.

  Finally got a break, half the guys fell asleep in their cots. Most were pushing two days without shut-eye. Good training for the next three years. Then more yelling by the sergeant and the sleepers weren’t sleeping. Out front, two rows, and marched to the mess for dinner.

  It’s funny, once you do something, it becomes easy. Maybe easy isn’t the right word. I knew what would happen when I walked into the mess for dinner. Like a familiar tune. Down the chow line I went, grabbing my food and taking two pieces of bread without thinking twice.

  Back to the barracks, an hour of marching, lights out. Told that we had to be up by 0515, I guessed that meant 5:15 a.m. In the dark I laid dog tired and thought. ’Course I couldn’t think long ’cause I was tired. Not tired from marching, but tired from worrying. I didn’t like not knowing what I should do. But I figured this wasn’t a bad day. I’d gotten the best clothes I ever had, I probably ate more in one day than I’d ever eaten before, and nobody smacked me upside my head. ’Course, never heard so much yelling. Figured I could handle it. I just wouldn’t let the army get me riled. I would just do what my pa had always told me to do, work hard, do as I’m told, and tell the truth.

  I heard something that night for the first time, something I would hear over the next three years in different places. Somewhere in the darkness a couple of grown guys were crying.

  Basic training was okay by me. Some GIs had problems. Most guys from the cities hadn’t really worked much, or at least they hadn’t done sweat-hard work. For me, a two-mile run and an obstacle course was not a big thing. I’m not saying it was easy, but two miles wasn’t that much farther than between my house and school, and when Pa had work to be done, Billy and me ran home from school. Same with the obstacle course. Some guys just couldn’t pull themselves up over a barrier. It was no problem for the farm boys. We’d cheat and push a guy we liked, but some just couldn’t make it.

  There was other problems. Some fellas had corn mash for brains. I’ll grant you, an M1 has twenty-two parts that need to be taken apart, cleaned, and then reassembled, but twenty-two ain’t that many. ’Specially if you got a week to learn how to do it. A couple other guys just didn’t get along with the army. I’m not sure they’d’ve got along with anything. A guy in the barracks next to us, I think he was from Atlanta, was always mouthing off. The sergeant wouldn’t whack him. Instead, he’d have the whole barracks doing push-ups. Some GIs took this fellow out behind the barracks one night and beat the snot out of him. It didn’t work. I guess some fellas just had their brains put in backward or something. But most were okay.

  Benning wasn’t all about running obstacle courses and peeling potatoes, I got to do things I never would’ve thought I’d do. One day after dinner mess the sergeant told me to pick up a jeep at the PX and drive it to headquarters. Real fast I walked down to the PX. Found the jeep and just stared at it for a while, like maybe it would start by itself and drive me back to the barracks. Finally asked some GIs walking by if they knew how to drive a jeep. Got a yeah. Hopped into the jeep with this GI and off with a lurch. For sure I could understand the steering part. The rest I couldn’t, his feet pumping up and down on the pedals and between the seats this stick with a knob on it getting pushed and pulled. I didn’t want to get in trouble, so I told the sergeant I let another GI drive the jeep. I think the sergeant sort of liked me, but he told me what a dumbass I was. A few days later, maybe an hour before lights out, a corporal showed up with a jeep. Took me out to learn how to drive. The sergeant probably ordered him to do it. The corporal cussed and I sweated. A couple days of practice after chow and I had it down. Couldn’t hardly wait to write Billy.

  My pa had a squirrel gun that you loaded and fired one shell at a time. It shot a bullet about as big around as a pencil. The army gave us these M1s with bullets as long as a cigarette and as big around as a dime. And an M1 held clips, so you weren’t shooting and stopping and shooting, you just kept pulling the trigger. Almost every day for a week we had practice on the range. I was better than middling, scoring over 160, which was a Sharpshooter rating. Some guys couldn’t get over 130 to qualify. But I wanted the Expert rating. I needed 180 or better for Expert. The sergeant worked with me some, but he couldn’t see nothing wrong. He got one of the training sergeants to come over. This sergeant watched me shoot a group, leaned over and gave me one drop of advice, then left. I shot 190 the next round.

  What did he tell me? It was simple. We’d been instructed to hold our breath, then gently pull the trigger to take up slack before firing. The sergeant told me I should exhale a little of the air and then stop the outflow before holding my breath. By keeping my lungs so full when I held my breath, he said my beating heart moved my arm.

  Two months into our training at Benning we were given weekend passes to go into Cusseta. First, we had to watch some army movies about fraternization and VD. They weren’t all that bad, with the dirty pictures and all. I’m not sure everybody that saw the film knew exactly what the purpose was. I don’t mean the guys didn’t know where babies come from, they just were dumb on how to even get a girl to talk to them. Anyway, the weekend passes were better than okay cause Cusseta wasn’t all that bad. Probably twenty times bigger than Renfroe. You’d walk up and down the sidewalks and see all sorts of places to spend money. I only bought one thing, something I’d never had before. I bought myself a milk shake. A few times we got milk in trade from Big Sam, and once I’d had ice cream in Renfroe, but a milk shake was new. When I told the guys back at the barracks I got some real hee-haws. A milk shake wasn’t what most of them were trying to get for the first time.

  That same weekend in Cusseta Emory got himself something for the first time. Got himself a beer. Said the first one was ugly bad, the second one okay, and the third one was his new best friend. Told me I needed to try a beer milk shake next time.

  Two letters showed up from Billy during basic training. Pa couldn’t write but his name, and we didn’t have a
phone, so’s Billy’s letters were the only news. Billy was anxious to join up. Some army guy told him when he was seventeen he could enlist if he had Pa’s permission. I gotta say, at the time I thought it was an okay idea. I was eating good, had new clothes, and seemed to be generally getting along. And I’d be getting $21 a month in army pay as a private. For sure Pa never made that much money in a month. ’Course at the time I hadn’t thought about getting my head blown off. I hadn’t thought about it because I hadn’t seen any heads get blown off. So I wrote Billy and told him as long as Pa could manage, joining at seventeen was probably just as good as waiting until eighteen. I think maybe Billy was fretting the war might be over by the time he was eighteen.

  Toward the end of our time at Benning, Emory and me were picked out to train with a .50-caliber machine gun. I’ll tell you what, just the noise would scare the hair off most anybody. This thing shoots a belt of ammunition that’s fed into it by one GI while the other guy is aiming and pulling the trigger. Bullets go flying like water from a hose. The day I shot this .50-caliber for the first time I figured we could never lose the war. In France I learned the problem with machine guns. The Germans had ’em too.

  Got a happy surprise right before I made private, like the best Christmas present ever. We all got our own government-issued Benrus watch, with a khaki strap and a shiny steel case. Never had a watch before. No one I knew had a watch. Most expensive thing I was ever given. Figured if I got home alive, it would be a fine present for Pa.

  After ninety days of training we were ready to graduate. It’s not like they made us generals, we were privates. Close to three hundred of us marched on the parade field and stood at attention in front of the training commander. This colonel said a lot of things that made me feel good. We were well trained and well equipped. We’d be going off for more training at other bases. And, most important, we were fighting for a great country. Then he punched us in the gut as hard as he could. Standing tall in front of us, this colonel told us that in two years many of us would be dead. No matter how many of us were dead, he said, even more would be wounded. Sweet Jesus. I knew GIs were going to get killed, I just didn’t need to hear it from some colonel who knew what he was talking about. ’Course, I came to learn that being an officer didn’t mean you knew beans.

  From basic training we were dealt out like cards to different advanced training groups. Some guys became typists, other guys hospital attendants, other guys cooks. Most of us got the job that the army is all about, foot soldiers in the infantry. I didn’t get infantry. Never crossed my mind I wouldn’t, but I didn’t. They made me an engineer. It’s funny now, but when I heard engineer I thought of a train. That was the only kind of engineer I knew about. But I found out the army has these soldiers who build bridges, blow things up, and generally act like construction guys. Later on I figured out that I was picked ’cause I tested good with figures. Emory must’ve done okay, ’cause the army made him an engineer too. Robert got sent off to be a foot soldier, winning all the medals.

  Engineers were trained at Fort Belvoir, up in Virginia. I had six days to get there and could do whatever I wanted in between. Thought about going home. I should have, but I didn’t. I figured I’d go straightaway to Fort Belvoir so’s not to be late. Thought for sure that I would have a chance to get back to Alabama another time. Emory was like me, scared of being late. So we headed straight off to Belvoir to get first shot at the good bunks.

  At Benning there was a corporal whose job it was to help GIs get from wherever to wherever. This fellow told us to hop a bus to Atlanta and then a train to Richmond, then another bus up to Belvoir. My second bus trip sure was better than the one from Renfroe. I had my uniform, I had my stripe, and I had some confidence. Once in Atlanta Emory and me got a train that went through Charlotte, up to Durham, and then to Richmond.

  I’d never been on a train before, and this one was a real eye-opener. ’Course not for the reasons I thought. Every car was jammed, enlisted guys were sitting three to a bench seat that was supposed to hold two. Some officers were squeezed in our car, but they each got their own seat. There were sleeper cars with little rooms, each with two beds. I got a look into one when I was walking back and forth to get my legs moving again. So anyway, this really good-looking broad walks up and down the aisle, then stops by the officers. She says something about an extra bed in her compartment. One of these young officers walks away with her. A half-hour later, he’s back. Takes me a while to figure it out, ’cause three or four other officers each left and then came back after a spell. Well, the truth is, I didn’t figure it out. Emory told me she was a Victory Girl. For five dollars she helped your average GI feel patriotic about winning the war.

  Fort Belvoir was in Virginia, maybe ten miles or so south of Washington, DC. Right away I could see that Belvoir was different from Benning. For one thing, it had more bricks than boards. Benning looked like it had been thrown up real fast, but Belvoir had rows of big brick buildings. Some could have been a courthouse back in Alabama. And at Belvoir nobody yelled at us when we got there, we just got processed in. Emory and I were assigned to the same three-story barracks. Probably half the GIs in our barracks came up from Benning too. Other guys had been in the army for a spell and were getting reassigned from the infantry.

  First thing they had us do was read. Not like, “Here’s a couple of pages to read.” No, they gave us this Engineer Soldier’s Handbook. This thing had something like two hundred pages of charts, pictures, formulas—I didn’t even know what a formula was—and all kinds of instructions. Almost every day we had a test. Started off with some easy stuff. Y’all won’t believe this, but they taught us how to cut down a tree. They even had a section on how to tie knots. Learned how to tie a clove hitch, a becket hitch, a rolling hitch, a mooring hitch. I’m thinking what the hell were we gonna do, tie up the Germans and beat them to death with our rifle butts?

  After a time things got more interesting. The army taught us how to build bridges. Not bridges with stone and cement. These were like big sections of metal girders that could be unfolded across a river and not buckle with a tank rolling across it. After bridge building we learned about explosives. I could blow up a bunker with a nonelectric cap or an electric cap, just tell me what you needed. Then more learning. Me and Emory and the other GIs could put down a steel plank runway for the biggest aircraft the Air Corps had, or we could put together a pneumatic bridge made of big inner tubes. If the army wanted me to, I could weld a busted wheel on a half-track, sharpen an ax, or change spark plugs in a jeep. Just tell me what you need.

  Belvoir was a quick easy bus ride to Washington, DC. A happy-go-lucky GI could go up and back on a day pass. Walking around Washington was like living in a history book—sorta like plopping yourself down on a bench and having Robert E. Lee sitting right next to you. Standing taller than anything I could imagine, smack dab in the middle of this big grassy hill was the Washington Monument. Any backwoods GI could march right up and touch it, look up past the point and see Air Corps planes heading down the Potomac River to Bolling Field. Peer one way and you’d see the Capitol, in the other direction, the White House, home of our president. Some guys said they saw him, but I never did. I saw his wife, though. Mrs. Roosevelt came to Fort Belvoir on Christmas Day and handed out little presents to a lot of the GIs. She wasn’t very pretty, but she sure was nice. Here she was, the president’s wife, talking real friendly to a bunch of fellas who didn’t used to wear shoes.

  In Washington I saw something I’d never seen before. I had no idea there even was such a thing. It was a store that sold animals, not horses and cows, but dogs, cats, fish—animals you keep as pets. Any pets we ever had were half-wild cats that came out of the pines and stayed under our stoop until they figured out we didn’t have anything to feed ’em. Anyway, I’m looking in the window at this cage, maybe two feet long, a foot wide, and a foot or so high. Inside is an animal with brown fur. If it’d had a long tail and a longer nose, we would have called it a rat back
in Renfroe. But it wasn’t a rat. This animal was running real fast on a little wheel, like an endless circle. Around the hub of this wheel a cord looped outside to a box sitting on top of the cage. Running real fast made the cord move. It would only move just a little bit every few minutes. But when it did, a kernel of corn plopped out of the box and into the cage. The not-a-rat would stop, get out of the wheel, and nibble away at the corn till it was gone. Then back to the wheel and his run to nowhere.

  Why am I telling y’all about this? Thing is, it made me think real hard about Pa and about the land we worked. The fifty acres Pa, Billy, and me worked was like our cage. If we broke our backs and weren’t unlucky, we got enough to eat. That was okay ’cause I didn’t know there was anything else. But I’d gotten outside the cage when I joined the army. I’d seen people doing okay, people that weren’t working as hard as Pa did. I didn’t want to go back and run as hard as I could on a wheel for a kernel of corn. No way. ’Course, I didn’t feel all that right about my thinking. My thinking if right, maybe said my pa was wrong. Couldn’t make myself think Pa could be wrong. He was my pa.

  If the sergeant was pissed off about something, we’d only get a half-day pass on Sundays, not a full day. On a half-day pass I’d go to Alexandria. ’Course, I was on my own pretty much, I wasn’t drinking yet. Emory couldn’t get enough beer. Spent most of his leave in bars, said he would own one someday.

  But let me tell you about Alexandria. It was a little like you were in a foreign city. It had a King Street, Duke Street, Princess Street, and a passel of old red-brick buildings that were strange shapes. It had a lotta stuff for GIs like me to waste our money on, but it had some good stuff for soldiers. Churches had lunches and dances, and there was a USO club. Almost every big town had these clubs for servicemen. Food was free, or cheap, and there were always some nice ladies to talk to. Some were young like they could be your girlfriend or sister, some were older, like they could be your ma.