Back in 1943, I was in a terrible slump. A slump is a bad day at bat; it is a bad day on the basketball court when the ball never goes in. It is when your battery doesn’t turn the engine over and when you have a flat tire.
I had such a year – or two or three – but in the end I wound up making it to 1997, a distance that some had their doubts about. 1997? Preposterous – but, we’ll see.
This is not a war recollection. It is not really much about war. It is the sights and sounds of people who were temporarily close to me – as close as a military unit would permit. It is in those whom I endeavored to hear the hope in their voices and the disappointments in their countenances. This is more of a spontaneous, free verse expedition. It takes no particular path. It has no calculated end. It is just how it comes to me from 1942 to 1945.
In the beginning, my parents thought well of me in 1942. I had enlisted so there would be no draft day for me. As I stood there on the back step ready to leave for the Army, I recalled the people who would give me help. I called the French, the brave Belgians and the gallant Norwegians. Then it was an innocent, but a big mistake. I cited the British. My mother was an Irish nationalist. She listened for an instant and said – with respect to the English – “Son, you’ll have to do the best you can.” That’s all she said and I was off to the Army.
Jefferson Barracks, which served the St. Louis area, was about a 20 mile trolley ride with three or four more changes from one street car to the next. It was a long, lonely ride. I only knew that my enlistment ran through the end of the war plus 6 months on the end. I had a lot of time ahead of me.
Before the start of hostilities, the draft supplied virtually all the recruits for the Army. Now, five and six months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the intake was still geared to the draft system. Those of us who enlisted stood in a cluster for about four days to get a physical examination. (We stood in a cluster because we had little or no clothes on.) The drafted people got through in about ½ a day. The Army just ain’t got the news. (Right way, wrong way, the Army way.)
As it turns out, the meals are not so bad at Jefferson Barracks. I never drank my mother’s coffee because the grounds settled in the bottom of the coffee cup. Somehow, the Army grounds didn’t go to the bottom so I think they are on to something. But I never drank coffee in the Army, so it was all a lost cause.
A long train trip to New Mexico – the Land of Enchantment. Sgt. Spinelli led the calisthenics. Then it was oh boy – pretty grim for us. We marched around Camp Luna day in and day out with only dust and grime for our companions. And the food was bad – the Colonel was stealing from the enlisted men’s mess fund. He went to jail for that but it didn’t help much in the food department.
Every day a big rumor that we were sailing for the Pacific; that we were headed for Europe and that we were being readied for a big, secret undertaking. In the end, we headed to Miami to become Aerial Engineers.
Somewhere in Georgia, we encounter the Okefenokee Swamp. Jack Anderson, who was from Rome – near the swamp – started to tell us all about that town. Unfortunately, at 60 miles per hour, we only spent two or three minutes traveling within the confines of Rome, Georgia. Jack was mighty happy. He made it a point to keep up his monologue about the joys of Rome even after we had long left the greatness of Georgia. I like him.
At Embry-Riddle Aircraft School in Miami, there were two shifts, six days a week. At night, we were all warned about backing into a spinning propeller. One instructor used to say, “Boys, that will make hamburger meat out of you.” I thought about that. The meat was a tautology, I think.
The Army still ain’t got the news. From Florida we came north to St. Louis and headed west by rail. As we passed through Hutchinson, Kansas – late at night – the ladies got on board and handed out apples. I’ll never forget that. Later, when we heard them attach a puller on the front engine and a pusher on the tail, we knew we were at Raton Pass. No mistake about it. We were headed back to Las Vegas in the Land of Enchantment.
Two weeks were passed in sort of a solitary confinement as we were to be sent Overseas. Then it was back on to train cars for a trip which ended in Charleston, South Carolina. I was pretty sick and couldn’t speak. Some how a doctor came aboard in West Texas and prescribed sulfa, I believe. When I arrived at Stark General Hospital in Charleston, I still could not speak. So I was sent to the V. D. Ward, which is where sulfa sufferers wound up. It took a day or so until I could break the news. No one from Las Vegas ever got out of camp, so man, it wasn’t me.
The troop ship “Santa Maria” had several holds normally used to carry cargo. In these holds were beds stacked on top of each other. From bottom to top, it rose to a total of six levels. All in all – bad news.
We landed at Dakar in about twelve days. I was glad to never see that ship again. From Dakar we were to go to Rufiskque which is where the worst of the war awaits us. But to end on a funny note – not for me – there was a football game. The quarterback owned the ball so he sent people to do his bidding. In my case, I was sent to tackle. I weighted all of 150 pounds. Across from me was a behemoth who weighted in at 235 pounds, which was a great deal in those days. On top of that, he had played for the Chicago Bears. His name was Dean Coddington. He wiped up the floor with me for a full hour and I’ve never returned to football.
Time doesn’t permit thinking about all those things that happened so long ago. I can still recall the smell of mutton from British Army mess tents. Do they really like that? I see the people of Italy running their cars on charcoal fumes. The traditional generosity of the Italian people would include asking us to their homes. They could not do that because they had so little to spare. And finally, some thoughts about North and Central Africa. There aren’t many romantic nights in Tindouf, Atar, El Fasher, El Genina or Khartoum. Nor many romantic days, either.
So now we look back on 1942, 1943, 1944 and 1945, the war years. This little essay is sort of a nickels worth of sights and sounds from a long time ago. It’s not a big deal; just some thoughts that occur every year on December 8.
It was a long way from December 8, 1943 to a wiggley baby who came in an adoption on December 8, 1953 in Chicago. And it was another three years that her sister arrived on December 8, 1956. Judy now has five grandsons. So I guess that, one way or another, December 8 has made up for the sins of the past.
E. E. Carr
December 8, 1997
Essay #1 (Old Format)
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Starting Ezra’s Essays is just another thing that has now been added to a long list of of significant December 8s. Originally written in longform, this was the first thing he thought to write about after receiving his assignment to write essays in order to combat aphasia. Crazy to think that this was written almost two decades ago now; in my mind the essays are still a recent phenomenon, but the ink was drying on this one when I was seven years old. It represents the start of something pretty incredible.