An Infantryman is nothing so much as his rifle. His "piece" as you will. (Never, ever, ever ...his "gun."!) Gott in Himmel, already yet!

Ours was the famous Garand, or better "M-1" (Model 1), named for its inventor, John C. Garand. It was, as we were all taught to mumble even in our sleep back then, a " .30-caliber, clip-fed, gas-operated, air-cooled, semiautomatic shoulder weapon". (I thought I would never forget that entire mantra - and I may have omitted one or two parts... which bodes ill (does it not?) for priests and others (perhaps even Sergeants - wherever it is they have got off to), and their confidence in the memories of their charges...

Sigh.

But we got them (issued) early, and we ate and slept late with the Mothers. Long before you fired your first round (third week maybe? - whatever), you learned about "M-1 Thumb".

That is you were first taught the Manual of Arms - which is the Infantryman's Code of the Hills on how to carry, handle, pick up, put down, caress, kiss, and clean his "piece" - among other things. This led by degrees to field-stripping: an arcane (to outsiders) rigamarole of taking this Mother apart (eventually in the dark!) and putting it all back together again - with its own or even substitute or replacement parts - and all with minimum to NO noise or clicking, snapping and rapping of said parts! ("Powell! I know it is you - you crimnul Yankee recruit - 'cause I heerd a snap! over there where I know you are sittting - thinking in the dark you won't be noticed... I heer'd it all same as I'da heer'd it in daylight!"). Depp's observations often entrained these sort of "Yogi Berra-isms."

This required concentration - but since there was nothing else to do nights around the campfire, and the Sergeants with their poke sticks were ever about - the group moved steadily along. (Unlike modern theories of schooling which stress that we should all "learn to get along with each other", the Sergeants stressed back then we should rather learn the subject at hand - the M-1, that is - and could care less about how we got along together).

Sigh again.

But about M-1 Thumb. Yes. When the soldier under arms stands at attention to present his "piece" to the Inspecting Officer, he assumes the stance known as "Port Arms". Here he must hold the piece across his mid-section at roughly a 45-degree angle (viewed head-on), and with the receiver open (in the breech, where the bullets (rounds!) go), the officer will take the piece from his hands and examine it minutely for dirt or other dereliction. Satisfied at last, he will then thrust it back into the soldier's hands.

At this point the soldier is supposed to snap the breech (receiver) shut... by depressing a spring plate at the bottom of the receiver with his thumb (see below) - and then smartly (it all depends on that "smartly" now!) withdrawing his thumb from the receiver opening.

If your mind was "in Egypt" as the Sergeants often alleged, then the bolt simply "caught" your thumb on its way forward and "loaded" it into the chamber opening. (Boy! THAT smarted - you betcha! Take it from a graduate! Grin!). Sequale included swelling (for sure good buddy, for sure!) and maybe even bleeding if the skin was broken. But one must learn to stand to one's knocks in this world, mustn't one?, and so the trick was to "learn" to avoid M-1 Thumb in the future. And for now when the Sergeants or the beady-eyed young lieutenants were inches from your face as your digit was loaded "home" into this gas-operated, clip-fed, etcetera monster - never to wince or flick an eyelid. Worse than committing this boo-boo in the first place, was to show pain or distress. So you stood until their gaze relaxed and moved on to the next man in line.

Dang!

After we had all mastered the "Manual of Arms" (I had a leg up here since I had known the Manual of Arms since I was about 12 years old...result of a Texas upbringing where ROTC was the norm instead of "gym" as was the alternate in the northern schools...) we "Sling... ARM S!" one day and marched off to our first range.

Ranges came in many varieties at Wheeler. There were flat-out, trajectory ranges - all on the level and usually to 500 yards as I recall. But there were other ranges whose field-of-fire led across ravines and gulleys and up and down hills and slopes (so you would learn how to judge distances accurately over different types of intervening ground...).

The Company would divide roughly in half - and one half would march off to take up duty in the individual "rifle pits" or down behind the target line parapet. The other half "assumed the position" on the Firing Line - under the watchful eyes of their Sergeants and Officers. There were four basic positions you must master, ere you graduated as a bona fide infantry rifleman. You had to score so many points out of so many points... the ratings ran from (basic) Marksman, to Sharpshooter, to Expert Rifleman. It was mandatory that you at least qualify for Marksman...

Those positions were prone, sitting, kneeling, and standing. For each, there was a prescribed placement for every inch of your body and angle of your limbs and we did this over and over in "dry runs." Plus the mandatory use of, and constant adjustment of, the leather rifle slings. The rounds came as I recall 8 to a clip - plain "ball" ammunition. You were issued these and carried them in your cartridge waist-belt pockets. For some purposes, and often for night drill, you would receive a number of tracers which were fun to fire and see the red line zing! out to the distant targets. (But we were taught that what can be seen zinging out one way, can be seen zanging! back up the line-of-sight the other way to its source (by enemy spotters), too... so " ' Ware the tracers!"

The targets (on the range) were standard bullseye type with black concentric 10-spots, surrounded outward by ever larger concentric circles of lower denomination (in the white). (In field firing, we shot at pop-up Jap targets: full-size charging Japanese Infantrymen, with thick, bottle-bottom glasses, and huge grinning buck teeth! Let him who would prate-at-this-late-date about racist sentiment forbear, please... As Mark Twain said: "Better to remain silent and be suspected of being a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt!"). When all was ready on the "Firing Line" the Range Officer in the tower midway of the line, bellowed his query, to be answered distantly by a "Ready on the Left!" and then a "Ready on the Right!" - his signal then to bellow once more..."Commence Firing!"

And so we learned our trade. Our Military Occupational Specialty - if memory serves - a "745." (Basic rifleman). A "345" was a Jeep Driver - an additional achievement I eventually rated...

After a set number of rounds was fired, the order was given to cease firing. Now the gang down in the rifle pits or target line set to work determining the individual "scores." The targets - set in hoist-able wooden frame affairs, were lowered out of sight and inspected closely by the target men. Bullet holes were counted and tallyed up. Those nicking or just clipping the next higher or lower (printed) ring or circle, were determined by various arcane methods, as to which they were. (As training wound on, and a certain bell-shape curve segment of well-defined "bolos" emerged (guys who just could not for the sake of them learn to fire a rifle well enough to make Marksman), resort was had to "M-1 pencil."

M-1 pencil, you see, was just your ordinary pencil as it were, carried by most trainees and their Sergeants. To speed along the "qualifying" of bolos, these pencils were inserted in extant holes that maybe lay just next to a circle line, and by judicious wiggling could enlarge the hole just enough that it now "nicked" the next higher zone - to the bolo's credit. By the final days of rifle training, and the hard core bolo group who were now being hounded by their line sergeants to "Hit the target, dammit! or els'n I gonna order you to fix bayonet and charge!" and all such nerve-steadying admonishments as that, use of M-1 pencil had culminated in the hands of various target experts into the wholesale punching of pencil holes here and there in targets which were being consistently missed... while Lieutenants and others looked the other way.

Sigh. Now it can be told.

And "Maggie's Drawers" was a torn, red scrap of cloth on a pole, that the target men waved back and forth over their heads and in front of individual targets, as a signal that the entire target had been missed to those back on the firing line after every few rounds. Another pole had a white disc on one end and a black disc on the other, and they signalled in similar fashion when hits were in the black and white target zones, respectively...

And so by degrees we learned to lay down covering fire, rapid fire, and so on and moved on to the B.A.R. (Browning Automatic Rifle). These heavier weapons with the bipod out front were assigned one to the Squad (usually about the second or third man as I recall). But all had to qualify. They were a fine weapon, if somewhat older in design than the Garand.

There was also a lighter, bipod-mounted version of this weapon - the "A-4", as I best recall. Two men could service it. Canvas belts, whose loops often swelled in damp and foiled extraction of rounds in use, had largely been abandoned by now and our belts were mostly interlinked metal clips which flew apart on firing but could be gathered up (at least in training) and recycled...

The .30-cal also came in a water-cooled model, but we had only minimal training with these. They were mainly consigned to Heavy Weapons Companies. (This is the big ol' Mother you used to see Lloyd Nolan and his ilk shooting in WWII movies - traversing it right and left with hard smacks of their palm heels.) It is the same gun as the air-cooled models, but instead of being air-cooled, the barrel is surrounded by a water jacket, and it has a number of altogether heavier parts, etc. Where there are fortified positions and access to water, these are able to maintain longer sustained, more accurate fire. But should the jackets go dry, firing must cease as the weapon will ruin itself by overheating.

Hence the tales dating all the way back to WWI of troops having to urinate in (or on!) their water-cooled weapons to keep them firing! And hence Sgt Depp's (and other sergeants) gleeful threat to us first-timers at it all, firing this noisy barking monster with our eyeballs out on stalks, and he would crawl up and say, "Hawww! An' supposin' she runs out of water, fellows? Whut at y'all gonna do then? Why Powell, and McClellan, and Shorty Metcalf can whip out their whangs and lay them upside that smoking hot barrel jacket and maybe pee a little bit in it fer the good of the Service and y'all's buddies here, etc. etc." But we were in maybe Week Ten or so now - half way to being half-soldiers - and so we didn't much "pay him 'eeny mind." Grin!

Bazookas followed in season. Man! They were a kick in the head. Rocket launchers have come full circle and are highly sophisticated weapons now, but back then a couple G.I.'s with this stovepipe affair and couple of rockets could really raise a big bang out front. First time I ever fired one, I hit a (practice) tank right in the bogey wheels (the preferred Achilles' Heel here - break the treads...). One guy trained the weapon over his shoulder, while his buddy inserted the rocket and fastened the wire leads. Then the loader tapped the firer on the helmet and the latter pulled the trigger. There would be a grand "whoosh!" of particles in the

Rifle grenades were another weapon, not too much known outside the "trade." A separate attachment at the muzzle end of our Garands utilized the gas-pressure from a round (a "blank" or non-ball round) to "toss" the grenade higher and farther out than could be thrown by hand. Then, of course, we had lots of drill with tossing "hand" grenades - learning such arcane techniques as how to run up to a first story wall, flatten your back to it, pull the ring on your grenade (you had 5 seconds to Show Time!) and with a sweeping gesture upwards toss the grenade sight unseen up and over your head and backwards in through a second story "window" cut into the dummy wall for training purposes. Real John Wayne stuff...

Speaking of which, I must be sure to tell you of a famous fellow alumnus of Camp Wheeler and personal friend of John Wayne's to boot: the celebrated James Arness (Matt Dillon) of yesteryear's classic TV series, "Gunsmoke", tha's who!. "Big Jim" Arness cycled through Wheeler I believe in 1943, as a regular repple-depple recruit, and was assigned to the Third Infantry Division, to be seriously wounded later by German machine-gun fire at the Battle of Anzio. Sort of a "camp hero" of those who had gone just before...

Gas Drill came in there somewhere, too. First, the obligate lectures up in the Pecan Grove on how to don and use the gas mask which was standard part of our gear then - a hangover from WWI as I don't think gas was ever actually used in WWII - at least by major combatants, though it may be the Japanese used it on Chinese civilians... I cannot recall). Then more lectures on all the different poison gases and how to detect them and how to smell them and give the alarm ("Mustard gas will smell like the odor of onions or garlic - only stronger; Lewisite smells just like geraniums - and and and..." the Lieutenants droned on. Details, details, details!)

Then came your first (controlled) exposure to them and you got the message! For Tear gas, for instance, we were herded into an empty building, and then a cannister was popped on us - and we were told to (quickly) remove our masks and just as quickly put them back on! Man! I will never forget Tear gas! It grabs your every mucus lining all at once and you just cannot breathe! And where it gets on your skin you burn like the dickens! We were taught to run out the door and strip off our mask and then face into the prevailing breeze and hope for the best as the currents carried the fumes away from your person and your clothes. The back of my neck burned for days and I never forgot "Tear Gas Drill."

Thus in ways subtle - and not so subtle - we were turned week by week, into Infantry Replacements.

* See Item 2

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