About 3:00 pm one hot afternoon, our company came out into a fairly large clearing in the “Pineys.” A company street was designated and the platoons told off to pitch pup tents for the night. Soon the cook tent was up and the always short-tempered, harassed cooks were busy at their trade…
Sgt. Depp spied me a short time later – taking my ease outside our shelter, probably smoking a Lucky Strike (whatever became of Lucky Strikes?)… “Old Redding” – our Squad Leader and my shelter partner, was down on his hands and knees in the grass and pine needles looking for his false teeth… he was always losing his false teeth it seemed. The sight of such domestic tranquility I guess just naturally upset Depp no end. He stopped in front of our tent.
"Sitting by the roadside on a summer's day,
Chatting with my mess-mates, passing time away
Lying in the shadows underneath the trees
Goodness, how delicious, eating goober peas."
“Well, Powell – since I see you are all rested up now from our little hike today.....” (We had left at dawn with full field packs and been marching over the red clay hills and through the Georgia Pineys ever since).
“....So’s I was thinking,” he continued,” that maybe a big, strong, all-rested-up fellow like you could maybe lend a hand up at the cook tent. Like maybe you could dig the garbage pit for all your buddies here tonight…”
Redding never even turned his head when he heard me groan, as I rose to my “aching dogs” and stumbled off in the direction Depp indicated.
This big old hairy Mess Sergeant was standing outside the mess tent as I approached. I explained I was there to dig his garbage pit.
He looked disdainfully at me, and said, “From the looks of you, you look to be one of Depp’s people, right?” At this I beamed and smiled my best smile and said, “Why, yes, Sarge, that’s a fact it is, that is so…”
“Oh, well,” he said resignedly, “what the hell I care anyhow?” And with this cryptic comment, bid me follow him to a certain spot of bare ground and he pointed down at it and said, simply, “You dig it here.”
Now garbage pits as best I recall (and I ought to know), were like maybe 6 by 6 feet or so and maybe – yes- 6 feet deep. When done, over the opening was then drawn about an 8 by 8 foot sturdy wood platform with a trapdoor in the middle. The way it worked you see is that when your meal was done you got in the garbage-pit-line and shuffled forward over the platform and scraped your leavings from your mess kit or tray into the trapdoor. Even the untutored coal-crackers from Eastern Pennsylvania I had somehow got assigned among understood that. One thing the Army did not have to teach you was how to eat and how to dump your leavings thereafter…
I took off my fatigue jacket, picked up my shovel (“idiot stick” for those taking notes in the back of the room). And I began to dig. It was hot, sweaty work but I stuck to it and before long I had a pretty appreciable hole. And that’s when the Lieutenant happened to come by. Swagger stick and all and he stopped and gazed down long and hard at me. Then he went off and returned soon thereafter with the Mess Sergeant in tow.
“Sergeant,” he said,” why is this man digging this garbage pit here on THIS side of the Mess Tent? The pit is supposed to be on the other side of the Tent – beyond – not in front of the chow lines.”
The Mess Sergeant was sort of nonplussed and gazed down at me with unseeing eyes. “Lieutenant, I don’t rightly know. I know I told him what to do several hours ago – but he is one of Depp’s folks, you know…” His voice trailed off…
The Lieutenant then sent for Sgt. Depp. Soon Depp came up and he was some unhappy I could tell from my mole-like view of affairs from down in my hole. “Powell,” he hissed, as he went by. “You daggone Yankee… Can’t you ever get anything right?” Soon he and the Lieutenant and the Mess Sergeant were in heated discussion about the exact location of my hole. After much palaver beyond my earshot they came to some kind of understanding and the Lieutenant and the Mess Sergeant left. Depp came over and peered down at me.
In a most conciliatory (and unusual) fashion, he leaned over then and said,
“Listen Powell, I know you are tired and you have done your best - and somehow I will make it up to you and all… (I didn’t much like this new conciliatory tone I was beginning to think..) and then he says all at once, “But the g-damn lieutenant has a hard on for me, and for you, and our platoon generally, and this Mother of a Mess Sergeant has his ear to boot, so they said what they would like you to do is move the garbage pit over to the other side of their Mess Tent.”
Well, by now I was feeling some tuckered I admit, but I thought what the hell, that’s not so bad, and started to scramble out of the hole to size up the new spot.. But Depp gently pushed me back down. “No, no, Powell, you don’t understand – they want you to move the hole over to the other side of the Tent!”
“Move it?” I said. “What you mean, Sarge? There no wheels under this thing…”
He said, “Move it you know – through the dirt and all – with your shovel…” His voice tailed off weakly.
Then it dawned on me: I was to “move” this god-damn garbage pit about 20 feet away to the other side of the tent – digging out one face ahead of me and filling in behind me as I went forward sideways through solid dirt! Depp saw the dawning comprehension in my eyes.
“Listen.” he said. “You got to do it – for me – for the platoon, for Company C – for us all.”
“Do what? To hell with that!", I said. “What Company C ever do for me anyhow?”
“Powell, I know you can do it – you are big boy now and I’ll stand treat at the PX when you are done and your squad too” (he threw them in as an afterthought).
And so I picked up my shovel, dog-tired as I was, and began again: to “move” this garbage pit through a solid wall of red Georgia clay before me to the other side of the tent.
Well, I want you to know the word got out that something was going on up at the Mess Tent. Guys began to stray up from nowhere and squat down and watch. Soon, my whole squad was there and making book on me. The sun was going down and mess lines were forming… The cooks’ helpers with the wood platform arrived and in puzzlement asked “Where in hell are we supposed to put this thing anyhow? What the hell going on here – you guys starting a garden or what?” The growing throng clued them in, and so they lay the platform on the ground and the helpers began pulling it foot by foot after me as me and my pit moved slowly toward the designated spot. Now and then there were organized chants and cheers by way of urging on my flagging strength…
And I want you to know I did it! The sun had set and garbage was already “holding,” but the platform was at last skidded over my hole – but not before my buddies helped me bodily out of it as I could never have climbed out alone, and would have gone under an ignominious pile of table scraps to moulder away forever ‘neath the red clay soil of central Georgia had I not had a “a leg up” to get out of that hole! I chowed-down with the rest of Squad – then sought out my shelter half with Old Redding – already fast asleep on the ground. Not even his plate-less snores and gurgles during the night could keep me awake…
True to his word, Depp stood treat to several rounds of “3.2” at the PX that weekend - even though the lot of us he considered to be 'crimnul Yankees' - and the tale of the “Sad Sack Who Moved a Garbage Pit” became part of the lore of Charley Company, 4th Battalion, Camp Wheeler “Reppel-Depple” on the old Ocmulgee River that hot summer back in 1945….
"Just before the battle, the General hears a row
He says "The Yanks are coming, I hear their rifles now."
He looks down the roadway, and what d'ya think he sees?
The Georgia Militia cracking goober peas."
Scrape Here for more 'Barrel...'