It would be a great source of regret it any reader were to conclude from the title of this essay, that this is a religious piece. Banish the thought. Quite to the contrary, this vignette is an Army story. When we reach the latter stages of this inquiry, there will be a denouement that will justify the grand title that has been given to this small essay.
The events in question took place in the Summer of 1942 at an ancient United States Army installation called Jefferson Barracks. St. Louisans usually referred to it simply as “The Barracks.” It was located south of St. Louis on the Mississippi River. The fort or barracks was established in ancient times when the West began in Missouri. The Barracks had seen service in the Civil War in this country and in all the conflicts that took place thereafter. When a man enlisted in the Army or was drafted, his place of entry into military service was Jefferson Barracks if his home was in Eastern Missouri and perhaps in Southern Illinois.
The average stay at Jefferson Barracks was on the order of ten days or two weeks. During that time, the Army would be figuring out where the enlistee or draftee would be shipped for basic training. For this reason, there were many permanent party soldiers who were in charge of determining where the new soldier would be sent.
Every soldier at every base, whether new or older, would ask whether the food was acceptable and whether the discipline was within tolerable limits. At Jefferson Barracks, the food was quite good by Army standards. The discipline could be lived with, so Jefferson Barracks was rated a good place to be if you had some time that you owed the U.S. Army.
When you owe the U.S. Army some time, it is called a “hitch.” Merriam Webster calls a hitch a “delimited period of time especially military service.” For the regular Army in peacetime, the standard hitch was three years. That ended not long after December 7, 1941. From that time forward, enlisters and draftees were compelled to serve a hitch “for the duration of hostilities plus six months.” No recruiter ever featured this aspect of military service.
In the Spring of 1942, the U.S. Army told me to go home and wait for the draft when an attempt was made by me to enlist. The reason seemed to be that the Jefferson Barracks staff could arrange their entry procedures to induct the draftees who arrived on a set pattern. Enlistees, on the other hand, had no predictability as to numbers, so draftees were encouraged and enlistees were in the main, discouraged. And this was in a situation where a real war was going on. In any case, my enlistment started in the Summer of 1942.
Now as to the length of the hitch that enlistees were to serve, news belatedly reached our ears that in the First World War, hostilities technically continued from the end of the war in 1918 until a peace treaty was signed in 1922. At that point, presumably the “plus six months” would kick in.
None of us spent a lot of time worrying about the length of the hitch as we assumed something might happen in the meantime or that our death might solve everything.
Now there is one more consideration about entering the Army after December 7, 1941. For all intents and purposes, the Army created a new army for men entering service after the attack on December 7, 1941. It was called the “Army of the United States,” to go with the United States Army. My enlistment started as Private Carr, Army of the United States, or AUS. When my enlistment ended on November 8, 1945, my discharge said Sergeant Carr, AUS, was honorably discharged. All the while, the U.S. Army still existed for men who had not completed their hitch by December 7, 1941. The Army moves in mysterious ways and creation of the AUS seemed to be one of them.
The Army also moves in mysterious ways when it comes to assigning men to jobs. The Army probably in one of the Corps areas or even in Washington says, for example, it needs some more tank drivers or some more artillerymen or some more front line soldiers. So a requisition is then prepared. When a requisition arrives in the field, the soldiers there grab available people and send them to the proper school or, if there is no time for school, to the proper functioning unit. As an example, my close friend Tallis Liacopalus had always worked in eating establishments. So naturally, he became a tank driver. Al Strain, another close friend, who had always worked on cars, became an artilleryman because the requisition had to be filed. Al was available, so he became an artilleryman.
In my case, the Army ignored my years of drafting experience. The sergeant who handled my enlistment, said that my work on cars during my filling station career would be very valuable on airplanes. So after a time, my hitch had to do with being an aerial engineer. That is nice work if you exclude being shot at from time to time.
Well, now that you have been brought up to date on what a hitch might be or what the Army of the United States might comprise, it is time for what the French call the denouement, or the reason for this essay being written.
Before leaving Jefferson Barracks, every soldier had to have dog tags. Dog tags were not the proper name for the identification that is hung around the necks of soldiers. However, in all the time that was spent in the Army, dog tag was always the name given to the two tags worn by soldiers. Their real name is unknown to me.

At Jefferson Barracks, there were three soldiers in a work unit who had a device that stamped out every soldier’s dog tags. One soldier, a sergeant, had a master list with the full name as well as the serial number of the soldier to be dog tagged. My number was 17077613. The first “1” came because of my enlistment. Draftees were given “3” as their first number. The first “7” is because my enlistment came from the Army’s Seventh Corps Area which embraces seven or eight Midwestern states. The “T42-43” entry represents my inoculation against tetanus. The “0” in the left hand corner is my blood type and comes from the Army physical examination. The only missing piece is the religion of the new soldier. In my case, it is shown as a “P”. There were only two other designations available as far as can be determined. A Catholic would have a “C” or someone of the Jewish faith would have a “J” in the lower section of the tag. No one has ever told me how a Hindu or a Buddhist might be shown on his dog tags. My strong inclination is that they would be shown as Protestants. But in any case, the American Army had few Hindu or Buddhist enlistees or draftees.
When the Army had small groups, such as the one stamping dog tags, it is called a “DETAIL.” Merriam Webster calls it another French word. In any case, when the sergeant asked me for my religious preference, he was told that this soldier did not want a religious preference on my dog tags. It was therefore suggested that the space on the dog tags say nothing. The sergeant stood up and said that everyone had to have a “J” or a “C” or a “P” stamped on his dog tags. And the sergeant wanted me to come clean.
There was an attempt by me to explain that no prejudice hovered in my mind about other people stating a religion. My own choice was that there was no preference in my mind and that my desire was to leave that part of the dog tags untouched.
The sergeant of the detail said that my indecision was holding things up but, nonetheless, he would consult with a “higher authority.” Presumably that “higher authority” was a military person, or perhaps it was someone in the deity. It was assumed by me that a U.S. Army Buck Sergeant could make that inquiry of a deity.
While the sergeant was doing his consulting, my mind wandered to the various kinds of Protestants that then existed. There was a whole spectrum of choices. In the most conservative branch of Protestantism, there are the Episcopalians, the Congregationalists and perhaps the Presbyterians and the Lutherans. In those congregations, the preacher is often called a “Doctor.” Talking by the congregants to the preacher is completely unheard of. As a general proposition, the songs in these conservative congregations are often a thin gruel of unsingable hymns.
On the other side of the spectrum were the evangelistic sects – the Southern Baptists, the Pentecostals and the Nazarenes. Often, the preacher might be a layman who wore no robes. Throughout the proceedings, the congregations were encouraged to talk back to the preacher with shouts of “Amen” or “Halleluiah” or even “Now you are telling them.” The hymns in the evangelistic group will stick to your vocal chords. When “Amazing Grace” or “When the Roll is Called Up Yonder” are sung, the congregants sing lustily, clap their hands or put their hands in the air.
At this point, the august U.S. Army was demanding that this new soldier identify himself as a Catholic, or a Jew or as a Protestant. In my barely 20 years of existence, there was no occasion for me to become familiar with Jewish religious concepts. Catholic beliefs were equally unclear to me except that it was understood that Catholics ate no meat on Fridays. My only religious exposure came as a youngster when my parents compelled me to attend their evangelical churches. From that experience, it was my conviction that religion was to be avoided whenever possible.
There was no anger on my part at anyone. What was being presented by the Army was a forced compulsory choice. My inclination was to not get involved in any way. The Army was saying that it was necessary to submit to military compulsion. My demurral was not acceptable to the U.S. Army or the Army of the U.S.
Again my thoughts turned to the spectrum of choices offered by U.S. Protestantism. In the conservative camp, it seemed to me to be a case of eating petit fours served with well chilled chardonnay. On the other end of the spectrum, there were the evangelistic sects who strongly favored red meat barbecues washed down with a locally produced beer.
My choice was, “none of the above.”
While all this was going through my mind, the sergeant of the detail hung up the phone and turned to me with an angelic smile on his face. He said, “You, Private Carr, are a Protestant,” which made me believe his conversation with “higher authority” was with someone higher than simply a military person. At that point, the soldier in charge of the stamping machine, put a “P” in it and pressed down. So while by belief in non-belief remained intact, there is no denying that the Army of the United States considered me a full fledged Protestant. My parents would have been proud of the man who stamped the “P.”
My service started 62 years ago and ended 59 years ago. In that time, there has been a chance to consider such frauds and mountebanks as Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson or Billy Graham’s son. A good many of this group claimed that they started preaching the Gospel according to Protestant beliefs as child preachers. Perhaps they were pounding the lectern when it was a foot or two out of their reach. Not everyone believes those child preacher stories.
On the other hand, there is a stamp of genuineness to my situation. The Army of the United States, no less, bestowed a “P” on my dog tags after consulting “Higher Authority”. The serenity with which the Sergeant of the stamping detail announced my affiliation with the Protestant faith convinced me that ordinary Protestantism was not to be my ultimate goal. It was to be a no holds barred Protestant preacher in the mold of old Billy Sunday. In that case, even the original Billy Graham would have to concede pre-eminent status to Private Carr of the Army of the United States. Amen.
E. E. CARR
July 1, 2004
~~~
It’s less messy than a baptism, I suppose.
Anyway the part of this that I didn’t previously realize is the bit about hitches lasting “for the duration of hostilities plus six months.” You would just have absolutely no way of knowing when your tour would be done, especially if hostilities weren’t declared officially over for years after the fighting stopped. That could potentially have been a decade-long commitment, depending on how the war went.
I wonder though, why exactly the religion had to be so urgently identified in the same place as name or blood type. If you’re concerned with funeral rites, can’t that be looked up later once the body is out of combat? It seems like you could just as easily keep that in the same database where you’d keep next of kin, phone number, etc. Maybe some soldiers are very nervous that the wrong kind of religious authority would pray for their corpse on the battlefield; this makes sense as there are very little other things out there to be worried about.