Upstream the alphabet, I never had a buddy whose last name began with any letter higher than “K”, and downstream, the letter “R.” This was no accident. The Army sorted us out kinda like sieving flour or blackpowder or whatever…
Scrape… Scrape...
For instance of the four squads making up our platoon, Squads 3 and 4 slept on the second floor of the barracks. We “knew” them, but less intimately than our own immediate bunkmates in Squads 1 and 2 on the main floor. This fact alone assured a continuing contretemps on the stairway between the two levels, and over use of the latrine (our level only). It gave us something to do Saturday nights you see… battling up and down these open stairs in sort of an exaggerated King-of-the-Mountain playtime. (Sigh). Of the two squads billeted below, Squad 1 – my squad – slept in a row down one side, and Squad 2 down the other. We all “knew” one another better than we “knew” the guys upstairs, and we knew our own squad members best of all. There was a method to all this madness…
Each guy came to depend on the guy immediately ahead of or behind him at all times – or to the right or to the left of him. Like family, you see. (Maybe you don’t see…).
Next to me on the left was Shorty Metcalf. Shorty was a piece of work
" 'Is cot was right-'and cot to mine", said Files-on-Parade
'E's sleepin' out an' far to-night", the Colour-Sergeant said.
He more or less raised himself - a true Son of the Great Depression, which you got to remember was only just fading into memory itself in the ‘40’s. Many of these guys, as Shorty, had grown up in homes broken by joblessness and economic disaster and had hit the bricks early-on. Shorty hailed from Indiana, but he had roamed widely, unschooled, and looking for jobs. Any jobs. Like many of his fellows he had been a real railroad-riding “hobo” and the tales he (and they) could relate were some of the greatest you ever heard! For him, the “draft” and the AUS were (finally) “...a home away from home.”
He had tight, curly black hair and dark, almost pupil-less eyes. He was good-humored, rather silent, and good in a pinch. Best of all, Shorty played an old guitar, which he dragged everywhere with him. He had one of the largest repetoires of dirty, exceedingly bawdy songs you ever heard, and nights there was always a gang around his footlocker listening to one of his ballads… He could sing and strum for hours and never repeat himself. “Boxcar Willie” had nothing on Shorty Metcalf. I never knew it at the time, but Shorty was actually one of the best friends I ever had.
On my right was Bert McClellan – from Alabama. He was kinda medium build, too, and had wavy, blondish hair I remember – and sort of pinched, sharp features… You could cut his drawl with a knife. It was in our first or second week of training, and we were hustling late one afternoon, to get ready and “Stand Retreat.” This sadistic ceremony put “finis” to our usual hard day’s workouts on the various ranges, marches, etc. We would return dog-dirty and tired from the field, sweat-stained and smeared with red clay and dirt, and the Sergeants would fall us out – with the admonishment that we were to “dress” and re-assemble in the Company Street in “five minutes.” Decisions, decisions, decisions!
Some succumbing to the temptation, tried to get showers to at least wash off the dirt before slipping into their dress uniforms. But inevitable “gridlock” in the showers meant that some would go wanting, and of them, some would be caught bare-ass altogether when the Sergeants hollered for us – even suffering the ignomy of being forced into the Street by the same sergeants (to wear towels around their waists of course). Of course. And having to stand, humiliated with those same towels around their waists, dropping them at the Company command to “Salute!” and the spine-tingling notes of “Retreat “ sounded over our Quad and the bugle’s notes died away. Of such criminal misfits, malefactors, discontents – even (dread) “Section 8’s” who might be loose amongst us – were the following day’s labor levies made up. It really all DID make sense you see – like the mythological dragon consuming it’s tail to keep itself going, and so on. But at the time it was all lost on me.
Scrape... Scrape...
But Bert McClellan was not lost on me. In fact, he got imprinted onto me like those duck hatchlings that imprint onto whomever they see when they first peep out of the shell. We had to wear ties – tied – you see, to stand “Retreat.” Like I say it was in the first week or so and we were all pretty green at this stuff and we had all got into our dress O.D.’s and ready to pour into the company street, and here stood Bert before me – a tie in his hand.
I said, “Put the god damn tie on, Bert… we got to get our asses out in the Street.” (As if to emphasize my words, I heard Depp’s tin whistle shrieking somewhere…).
Bert just said, “I can’t.”
I said, “You can’t what, fer Chris’ sake?”
He said, “I can’t tie my tie”.
I said, “What do you mean you can’t tie your tie?”
He said, “My Momma always tied my tie. I don’t know how.”
“Jeezul!,” I said, “You better quit fucking around, Bert – unless you want maybe to go to the Stockade. Depp means business here. Trust me.”
(The “Stockade” was a shadowy realm of horrors that few had endured, but those that did came back changed and wiser men… it was the ultimate bogey of our world…).
He just stood looking at me. Cheep. Cheep. Maybe (better) Quack! Quack!
“Christ Almighty,” I said.. “Here! Give me the fucking tie!”
I looped it over his neck and then did my best to try and tie a Windsor knot in it. (I was no expert you see- I wasn’t even Bert’s Momma if anyone should ask you – and tieing a tie backwards and non-mirror image like this is kinda tough….).
But I got it done presentable enough at last, and the two of us hit the street and oozed into ranks – the last couple to issue from the barracks.
"What are the bugles blowin' for?" said Files-on-Parade.
"To turn you out, to turn you out", the Colour-Sergeant said.
“Company-y-y-y—y! ‘TEN-SHUN!!! Hundreds of feet dragged together with a soft thud and heels smacked row on row. Then… Silence. Then the stirring “Ta-ta-ta-TA-ta-ta…” of the Bugler’s Retreat began, and simultaneously Old Glory began to descend on her mast. To the West, the sun sank into a bank of gilt-edged clouds…
And we had survived yet another day.
It took me about three more months, but I finally got Bert McClellan so he could tie his own tie! We would practice Sunday mornings, I remember. He was so happy with this achievement he wrote his Momma. And she wrote back, (he showed me the letter) wanting to know if he had met any “nice” boys or were they all “…just damn Yankees?” Well enough to be learning to tie your own tie, but to learn it from a Yankee… what could Bert be thinking of! At the time I was kinda pissed – but never showed it – and I never let it come between me and Bert. We were best of pals. Damn! I wish I knew where he was, Earth, Heaven, or Hell. And why all this so suddenly seems important to me when it hasn’t all these intervening years.
Ivy Lee Johnson’s bunk was on the other side of Shorty Metcalf’s. Ivy Lee was from Mississippi. He was good-looking, stocky kind of kid…black hair, black eyes. One day he came to me and said, “Y’all’s kin write they say.” Kinda questioning…
I looked up and said, “Well, yes, guess so…” Trailing off.
Ivy Lee said, “Kin you read, too?”
I looked at him a minute, then said, “Well, yes, Ivy Lee, I can read, too. Readin’ and writin’ they just kind of go together. Like ham and eggs”, I added hopefully.
“Kin y’alls read my Momma’s letter?”
(Jeezul! I thought. I already got to tie Bert’s tie – now what's this redneck need? Doesn’t anyone Down South ever go to school? What do they do with all their tax money anyhow?)
For all my 18 years, I was still green corn, you see… Lots to learn myself – but of course I did not know it. Of course.
With this, he produced a sheet of paper and handed it over to me.
I scanned it, and began: all about the sawmill and the cotton that year, and Granpa’s lumbago and the likes, and Ivy Lee he just sat mesmerized – like a lizard in hot sun.
When I was done, his eyes were moist and he said (somehow I was expecting this): “Cud y’all’s write maybe a letter from me back to her’n?” So I said, “Sure, Ivy Lee, why not? (pause) You got a pencil and piece of paper?”
He did, and so I began his first letter home to his Momma. (And don't ask me how Momma knew to write and Bert didn't - as someone has. It was just a "given" - like MacCauley's 'trout in the milk', I guess). Unlike Bert, whom I finally got to tie his tie, I never was able to get Ivy Lee to read and write (actually I didn’t try). It was automatic: when his name was shouted at “Mail Call” and he came forth, then I knew that 10 or 15 minutes later he would appear bunkside with same for me to read….
And pen a reply.
Thus, Ivy Lee.
“Leetle Bugs” was an Italian or something. Leastways he was a foreigner and didn’t speak much English. Story was he got picked up when he overstayed his leave in New York once in the Merchant Marine. In those days, you see, if you enlisted in the Merchant Marine, you were somehow “exempt” from the Draft. But to maintain this status you had to stay in the Merchant Marine. At all hours, really. If you took a “shore leave” whatever in some port where the Miliary Patrols and all had authority, and if you should be so unlucky as to overstay said shore leave – by even one minute, and the Shore Patrols got you – you were fucked.. It was off to the Infantry for you – and it didn’t even matter if you were one of the international set that has always made up the work force of the world’s great maritime ports: if you were in the U.S, and you served in its (non-military) Merchant Marine, and you overstayed your shore leave, and you got caught – it was dry-land soldiering for you from there on out.
(Scrape… Scrape…)
So “Leetle Bugs” got his name the night he checked into our barracks – and had to take an unused and long empty bunk down at one end of the squad row. We gave him gruff greeting (misery loves company) and he showered down and then came back and by the light of just one lone bare bulb overhead, he sat down on his bunk.
There was a sound – audible throughout the first floor – like nothing so much as the wind through a vast pile of Autumn leaves.
“What the hell is that?” said several guys at once and sat up in their bunks. What they saw was a huge mat of scampering cockroaches – cascading down and out of the bunk taken by the new stranger. There were hundreds – maybe thousands for all I know – of cockroaches and they were scurrying in all directions. (Those Georgia cockroaches were something else: mostly they hung out in the cracks between the pine boards of our barracks, and nights you could see them back in there with their little tiny, green-emerald eyes gleaming where light got to them, and now and then a long pair of feelers waving out and testing the air...).
The stranger was dumbstruck. He raised his feet partly off the floor and tried to look under his chosen bed. “Leetle bugs! Leetle bugs!” was all he could say over and over in horror - and this is how he got his name…
(Scrape. Scrape…).
“Daddy” Radditz was from Ohio, and he was a pain-in the-butt from the gitgo. He was a tall, blond guy whose claim to fame resided in the fact that he had gone and got married a few months before he got drafted – and was thus proud papa to a couple of kids. To this (to him, unique) achievement was wedded one of the most o’er-weaning egos you ever saw: “Daddy” knew everything . Everything there was to know. Or so he thought. And so he endlessly intoned day and night. Including everything about military life, rites, rituals, procedures and whatever…the guy drove us all nuts.
About this time, we were issued our first leggings. Now leggings are what field troops wear in the rough. They are short, maybe half-shin-high wrap-around canvas sheaths, with a row of hooks down one closing edge and a row of “eyes” – or rather “loops” formed by a drawstring down the other. They had a strap that went under your boot just forward of the heel. The object, when you put them on, was to close off the bottom of your pants leg. Thus sealed, bugs, snakes and other critters could not dart up your leg so easily, and properly worn leggings could keep you warmer (not a factor in summertime Georgia, believe me!) and even could keep you dry for short runs across small creeks and (as they called them down there) “branches” when on the maneuver… These WWII leggings were “descendants” of the WWI “puttees” or leggings – which back then, appear in old photographs to have extended all the way almost to the knee and some of which involved laborious wrapping around and around the leg – somewhat like putting on a bandage.
Late that day, maybe in about our third week of training or something, we had all picked up our first pair of leggings from the Quartermaster to add to our growing stock of field- grade battle gear. The sergeants had given no lectures yet on how to put them on, and so we were sitting around on our footlockers, desultorily speculating on the matter (with no real interest in same)… when Daddy Radditz jumped into the circle and began to crow about how he knew all about leggings, etc. and they had had to wear them back in his Highschool Marching Band or some such thing, etc. etc. and he would show us all up for the dummies we really were and so on and so on.
With this he sat down and began to rapidly lace up his new leggings. Then he hopped up and began to manfully swagger up and down the aisle between our bunks…
"The young recruit is 'aughty -- 'e draf's from Gawd knows where;
They bid 'im show 'is stockin's an' lay 'is mattress square;
'E calls it bloomin' nonsense -- 'e doesn't know, no more --
An' then up comes 'is Company an'kicks'im round the floor!
But “Pride Goeth Before a Great Fall” as the Good Book has it, and suddenly that night this came home in a way like I have never seen. “Daddy” was strutting his stuff out in front of us, when suddenly this puzzled look came over his face: And simultaneously he began to fall. Slowly at first, then faster and faster, like a tall pine tree before the woodsman’s axe on some lonely, distant hill. He toppled straight forward onto his face – driving his nose into Depp’s precious pine floor boards, and almost knocking himself out.
There was silence but only for a few minutes. Then a roar of laughter all but raised the rafters: what this dimwit had done, you see, was put his leggings on with the “closure seam” (where they came together) on the inside of his insteps, instead of the outside of each calf. In this fashion when he strode along, it was only a question of time till the hooks on one leg engaged the loops on the other – and Voila! – instant lockup and down you go! BAM! Like a bulldogged steer in a Texas rodeo.
Tell you what, though. This, where nothing else had, got Daddy’s attention! He was a mighty humble bumble after that - and turned out to be not so bad a guy at all in the end. Peace be on you Daddy, wherever you are….
Remus (“Uncle Remus”) was another character. He had – and all hands agreed on this – the longest penis anyone had ever seen. (Maybe ten inches – what I know anyway?). But he was the butt of constant (and envious?) ribaldry. One of the main shenanigans being a loud whistle which was signal for everyone to come watch whenever Remus put on his trousers… with the obligate question, to him, of “Are you going to drop it down a trouser leg first, or tuck it in later, Remus?” and stuff like that. – including “Which trouser leg this time, Uncle?” and so on. As Remus bunked right across the aisle from me, the novelty of the whole thing soon wore off – but this was a nightly huurah that some simply could not forego. Remus was a few years older than most of us – maybe four or five, say. And he had been in the Regular Service years before and somehow discharged or whatever – and now back in, courtesy of the Universal Draft. But he was prone to nightmares, Remus was, and he would have a few beers up at the Beer Garden, and then come back and crash in his sack, and all night long he would shout about “Sharks!” and “Banditos!” and fierce storms and malaria and what not – and when told to “Shut the fuck up, Remus!” would mumble in his stupor about how all these things were going to get us all and just you wait and see. At first it was unnerving, and then it got to be old hat. When sober, we managed to get out of him that he had been stationed long before in Central America and the Panama Canal – and all these nightmares traced to those days…
Piscatelli was in the Second Squad. I don’t know where he was from… somewhere back in the Eastern cities I guess. His problem was simple: he never washed, and he never did his laundry. Like many, he kept a great big duffle bag slung over the end of his bunk and put his dirty clothes in there. But unlike the rest of us, his bag never got smaller periodically on washdays: it just got large and larger and smellier and smellier.
A council-of-war was held. A number of First Squad members helped underwrite this (after all, the aisle between us was only about 10 feet wide anyhow). The entire Second Squad voted “yay” to a man. It was resolved then: Piscatelli was to get a “G.I. Washdown.”
I took my bath, an' I wallered -- for, Gawd, I needed it so!
I smelt the smell o' the barricks, I 'eard the bugles go....
That night shortly after “Lights Out” and at a signal, an assortment of shadowy figures arose from their various bunks and descended on Piscatelli. Before he let out a yelp, both he and his offending laundry bag were hustled away into the latrine – and into the showers. Already there were other (naked) participants standing ready there with G.I. scrub brushes (like the ones we used on the floor in “Assholes and Elbows” night…). Piscatelli was dunked under the shower heads and his washdown begun in interest. His laundry accompanied him: spread out and tromped upon by numerous feet. He was warned not to scream out loud or shout or it would get worse. When he had been appropriately drubbed, and his wet wash was in disarray all over the latrine floor, he was bid Goodnight and everyone disappeared.
"The uniform 'e wore
Was nothin' much before,
An' rather less than 'arf o' that be'ind,..."
I want to tell you: it worked! From that day – or night – forward, Piscatelli became a model soldier – leastways as to personal hygiene. And we never had a problem again. (I heard a joke once – about how you teach mules to plow. First thing you do, the joke goes, is that you hit them between the eyes with a length of 2x4. “Why,” you ask, “would you do this if you are trying to teach them to plow?” The punchline is “…’cause when you’re teaching mules, the FIRST thing you got to do, is get their attention!).
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