Basic was finally over and it was time for the next adventure: deployment overseas! In the final days we were "outfitted" by the Quartermasters for whatever Theater of Ops we had been assigned to. Charlie got assigned - largely - to Japan. We were going to be the first troops into the Land of the Rising Sun!

That is, those of us with small enough feet were. In my case, my feet - never on the small side - had managed to "grow" considerably since Induction... and it wasn't just the good chow (grin!)... It was all the heavy packs and stuff to schlepp around all the time! Believe me! I now wore a size 14 boot. For some reason this was seen as near to outrageous by our Quartermasters and no depot in the Continental United States was found up to the job to supply me with the requisite complement of boots. I can't remember the exact figures now, but it was something like this: to go overseas, you had to have let us say, three pairs of combat boots, two pairs low dress shoes and whatever. These were issued to you in advance (in the States). I guess there were no shoe depots overseas whatever. These shoes and boots were all rough calf hide turned inside out - sort of a rough chamois effect you might call it. They had to be religiously "dubbed" (with "dubbing" - a WWII concoction I had never heard of before nor since...). It was a heavy sort of grease that came in small O.D. colored cans, sort of like shoe polish, and you had to rub this "dubbing" into your boots to waterproof them every time before inspection. (How a tough little old combat sergeant with a .45 always at his side, later was to draft me as his jeep driver in his Black Market Operation to sell dubbing to the Germans as "canned butter" - is another story...).

Sigh.

Everyone else had their complement of boots and shoes and they dubbed them up for inspection and lined them up before their footlockers. But not me! My name was "on hold" till a source for boots and shoes for me could be located. Everyone else's papers were "cut" for Japan - but mine were "pending." Finally one day, Depp came into the barracks dragging a full duffle bag behind him. He stopped in front of my bunk. "Yore shoes, Powell. They finally came in." He dropped the bag and left.

Jeezul did I have shoes and boots! Six pairs of combat boots (that's twelve No. 14 cowhide boots - and four pairs of low-cuts!) I mean I had footgear up the wahzoo! It was Friday and Inspection loomed. So I set to work at dubbing my new footwear I went through about three cans lickety-split. Shortly before inspection, a huddle was held with the Squad Leader as to how Powell was to display his many boots and shoes: most troops just lined them up in front of their footlockers. But I had a whole platoon of boots and shoes! They would have to be in ranks before my footlocker! It was decided (and became the modus operandi thereafter) that I was to sort of "ring" my bunk and locker down both sides and across the front with my boots and shoes. Man, the ribbing I took over that! Uncle Remus had his dong, and I had my feet!

Nor was that all. Due to the "hold up" while my size had been found, I had "phased into" another group and was now to be sent not to Japan - but to Germany! All because of my foot size!

It was our final week now and one night Depp seemed kinda odd and kept to his little cubicle. Coming back from the latrine I saw his door was ajar and the light coming out. I looked in: he was sitting on his bunk, looking real dismal, and a paper in his hand. He saw me and I said, "Everything o.k., Sarge?" He waved me in sorta desultorily like - and held the paper out to me... I said, "What's wrong, Sarge?" He said, kinda choked up and all... "It's my mom... she's been took bad." He had been given emergency furlough by Company Headquarters and was packing his kit even then to catch the bus to downtown Macon. Without his skunk-stripe helmet liner on, and recipient of bad family news, he just seemed like what he really was: a guy with a lot on his plate and hurtin' to boot.

I stayed and rapped with him a bit. The usual stuff about how it was probably not all so bad as portrayed and all - you know like you do. This seemed about the most I could do. But even so, it seemed to relieve him a lot. His worried face relaxed ever so little and he stood up. Then he stuck his hand out - and shook mine! "Powell," he said, "I will be leavin' on the Macon bus soonest,. and it not likely I ever gonna see any of you daggone men here again. I taught y'all's all I know how to do and y'all's done just fine. Y'all's a good bunch of men - and you can tell the barracks that when you go back out." Then he paused a bit... and said, "Even if'n y'all's mainly a bunch of Yankees!" He gave a wan grin then, and I left, closing his door behind me. I - we - never saw him again: a few days later we all shipped out.

"An' thus in mem'ry's cinematograph,
Now that the show is over, I recall
The peevish voice an' 'oary mushroom 'ead
Of 'im we owned was greater than us all,
'Oo give instruction to the quick an' the dead--"

My orders were cut for Blackstone, VA, with a brief overlay which I "jumped" for a short last trip home. My new base was Camp Pickett (memorable perhaps more for the fact that Telly Savalas ("Bald is beautiful, baby!") of TV "Kojak" fame once trained there in a medical unit during WWII - than for the fact that I once graced its barracks...). At Macon, we got on an old Seaboard Line railroad - I can't remember the exact name of this rolling junkpile, but I sure remember those cars and that trip! This was a regular, civilian train and I was just a passenger like everyone else. It was early winter now and getting cold. The old cars were actually heated by wood-burning cast iron stoves! The way it worked was we chugged-chugged-chugged mile after mile over an old one track road through the woods and boonies. Up through seaboard Georgia, and the Carolinas and on into Virginia. Now and then at the little one-horse towns, the train would stop and they would load armfuls of cut firewood and kindling into the vestibules between cars. It was sort of common knowledge what you did when walking from car to car is pick up a stick or two of firewood out in the vestibule and bring it back in with you to poke into the stove in the middle of the car you were passing through....!

For some reason or another I got put off the train in Dunham (not Durham) NC... I remember it well. It was a cold, bright sunny Sunday afternoon. I think the MP's put me off if I recall rightly - but it was not for disorderliness or anything like that. There was a vast volume of travelers on these antique trains in those days and lots of them were wounded, returning Servicemen from all over trying to get home for the holidays and so anyone that was not wounded had to relinquish his seat if someone else wanted it. I remember a sailor with a bottle who was going home after many months at sea in the South Pacific. We shared a drink or two and he took a shine to me. He was a real old "Southren" redneck and he told me of the turkey his momma would be fixing when he got there and all his relations would come. It was some long-forgotten "hollow" or "cove" as they call them down there, way back up in the hills I remember. He was insistent that I break off wherever I was going and come home with him for the holidays. There would be deer to shoot and turkeys - and he had a whole passel of "cuzins" that would be there and they played fiddles and banjos and all... I said well if I were to do that the MP's would be after me forever for being AWOL and so on and he said that doesn't matter: no one ever comes back up to the "hollow" and I could live there forever if I liked and so on. Lotsa folks did that, etc.

One of those Yogi Berra "I came to a fork in the road and (this time) I didn't take it" things.... Life has often presented me - as likely you, too - with such options. Nights sometimes you lay awake wondering what it would have been like had you "taken the fork in the road" as the peripatetic Mr. Berra said he always did! Grin...

Well, anyhow in Durham I walked up the little main street looking for the Police Station. (What you were supposed to do in those days if you were en route and got delayed or something is go to the nearest Police Station and get the Chief to sign a piece of paper with the date and time on it saying you had appeared before him and were not drunk or disorderly at the time and in proper uniform, etc). Then when you got back to your base even if you were AWOL by now, you showed this paper to the Provost and it stood you in good stead. There was another "gravel pounder' with me from the train and we finally found the Police Station. In the glass door hung a hand lettered sign, all askew :"Gone Deerhunting. Go to Diner."

We looked around and spotted the diner and went over. Back in an end booth sat a real Dodge Sheriff type - dark glasses and all. We went down to his booth. After the obligatory , "Y'all's boys not from around here, are ya?" greeting, this kindly old guy filled out our paper for us, attesting to our orderly deportment and all, and we were soon again on our way.

We slept that night aboard another crowded train, rolling north, and in the morning we pulled into Penn Station. I caught the subway "shuttle" to Grand Central and in no time was on a "local" headed out to Connecticut. I made it home, and was greeted warmly. Christmas came and went and finally New Year's Eve was upon me: I was due back at this Camp Pickett in VA in a day or so. Time to go. Truth to tell, I was somewhat "nervous-in-the-service" as we used to say back then, as I had over-jumped the "limit" of travel (distance) I was allowed to go under my furlough, and was pushing the envelope (we didn't say that back then, either!) on my "time" frame...

Were the MP's to stop me anywhere along the line, even if I was sober and presentable, I would likely be taken to the "Stockade" somewhere as AWOL... The weakest link in my return back South, would be the dash from Grand Central over to Penn Station. And on New Year's Eve! The city would be full of fun-seekers and revelers and drunks a-plenty along the way and so on - and predictably the white-helmeted MP's would be out in force to nab any derelict servicemen...

At that point my Mom stepped in and announced: "Your father and I will go in ("into" the city with you) and we will cross over through Times Square and get you down to Penn Station in time. And if we are either side of you - your own parents! - there's no MP in the United States Army that is going to grab my son!"

No time to argue or demur. (Beside with my Mom, it would have been waste of time anyhow). Thus, a couple day's later found me linked arm-in-arm with my aging parents - pushing through the throng in the heart of Times Square just a few minutes before midnite, New Year's Eve! And true to central casting - a big old White-helmeted MP suddenly emerges from the pack and singles me out. "I want to see your papers!," he said. Adding, "And pull your dogtags out!" I could feel Mom's arm stiffening beside me. Oh, Lordy! I thought... I'm going to wind up in the Stockade for sure - and Mom is likely going to greet the New Year's morn from some Precinct Station House...

She was already speaking, "Good Evening, Officer! (he was not an Officer - just a Sergeant, of course, but that was immaterial now). Sarge was busy examining my papers. Mom went on... "This is my son, Officer, and we are seeing him off here tonight - for the last time. (That last phrase sort of brought me up smart). Sarge was kind of listening but he was also looking me right in the eye, and he said, "Says here you supposed to be within hundred miles of Camp Pickett - you know your geography, Soldier?" As I sought for words, Mom continued nonstop... "You see, Sir (he was not a 'Sir!" of course, but Mom cared little for such military niceties)... My son has been with us for this his last stay and he is due to go overseas within the week!"

At this Sarge finally turned and looked full at my Mom and Pop - and he seemed to relax a bit at the same time. "Yes'm, " he said, "that's true, Maa'm. He surely is due to leave, as you say." Then he returned my papers to me as he said, "And I think he best be getting on his way here now... we wouldn't want him to miss that troopship, would we?" Then he sort of saluted with his billy, and disappeared into the crowd. There were no further events till I was safe aboard and pulling out of Penn Station in the wee small hours... rumbling towards the old New Jersey 'skeeter flats.

Next day I checked into Blackstone (Camp Pickett). All new faces (they to me, as I to them). My old squad was history now - these were all "new" guys who had undergone similar "Basic" in other camps across the Southeast. We lay in our bunks and compared details of our various adventures and experiences. We were (all) soldiers now and our heels hit the deck in unison when Reveille blew, and we habitually marched in step and correctly, and moved and thought and ate and lived as a unit. You could substitute various new members - but the actual living "unit" was the squad or platoon or company - like the social order that biologists tell us is the actual or real structure of a beehive. The individual bees are as nothing - the hive is all.

The next day we went on a long march in the cold Viriginia woods under lifeless, leafless trees and sodden skies. Frost and snow lay in pockets in the woods. They marched us into a clearing - and there in front of us was the entire side of a troopship! De ja vu! The full scale realistic mockup of an entire grey-steel side of a troopship standing way out in the Virginia woods. And down its side hung a great festoon of a 'landing net" - a vast net of interwoven ropes down which we had to learn to descend - after first climbing up flights of stairs on the back side of the ship's "side." Over and over we did this till we got the hang of it. It wasn't that easy with packs and rifles and all - but we eventually (most of us) mastered it... the ropes moved unaccountably under your feet and swayed in and out, and guys above stepped on your fingers while you in turn stepped on helmeted heads below you. Time sure passes when you're having fun.

At the bottom the nets terminated just above or in box-like containers that simulated landing barges. You had to drop into them and take your place. The afternoon wore on. It got colder and colder. A contingent of WACS appeared out of nowhere - marching by on a road. There were a few catcalls back and forth but not many.

Finally, "landing drill" was done and we all "flaked out" for a breather. There was to be one final "touch" before we re-assembled and marched back to barracks. The sergeants distributed K-Ration dinners from a 3/4-ton that had pulled up. Joy! Joy! We were to have a cold supper in cold surroundings. So be it.

I opened my box and took out the (obligatory) O.D. colored pack of toilet paper.* And the two Chesterfield cigarettes. Then I opened the O.D. colored can of ham-and-cheese - so condensed it was like eating a brick. Crackers and a candy snack followed. Yum! Yum! I lit one of the Chesterfields and rummaged further down in the box. Dusk was now falling and a cold and wintry sun sat on the far western horizon. I shivered, and dumped out a tiny packet (O.D. colored, of course) with two tiny pills in it and tiny printed directions on the packet exterior. I held it up close to my eyes to read. It said: "Warning! If you are in a Tropic Zone, be sure to take these Anti-Malaria pills. And if you are in a Tropic Zone - be sure to roll down your sleeves after sunset!"

With that, Old Sol winked out over the far Virginia hills and the Sergeants marched us back to our barracks. Next morning we entrained for Camp Kilmer, NJ.

*This may be bit tasteless for some sensibilities, but true to his calling, Depp early-on instructed us in EVERY detail of military life - including how to use the toilet paper packet that came in each K-Ration box. Since the packet was rather skimpy, there was none to waste. So, said Depp, you must open it out flat - just so - and tear a tiny hole in the middle of the expanse of paper. Most importantly - the tiny piece you tore out was to be saved for a final use... You then poked your finger up through the hole and well, I guess I need get no more graphic at this point. Sigh... (Oh, yes! - that tiny piece you had saved, what of it please, Sarge? All eyes upon him: "Why y'all's all here nuthin' but a dumb-ass bunch of Yankees: y'all's take that tiny piece y'all's saved, and clean out under yore fingernail!)

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