WWII Experiences
- BOTTOM OF THE BARREL -
THE SEGREGATED SERVICE
Rewriting history "facts" to conform to current trendy ideas - and not alerting the less cautious - is not defensible. When I was in the Service, it was a segregated service, and no manner of wishful thinking by moderns can rewrite it otherwise.
Afropersons, as is the vogue today, were nearly all relegated to support and non-combat outfits: the Quartermaster Corps being a favored spot in the Army. My understanding of the corresponding naval service, and specifically as stationed at Pearl, was blacks still staffed an (odious?) corps of "ward boys" who maintained the sideboards and tables of the largely white officers on the capitol ships...(?) All services numbered large numbers of black cooks. I remember a race riot between black Quartermaster replacements and we white Infantry replacements which broke out on my troopship about halfway across the Atlantic right under my bunk stack (I was five bunks up right under the deck). It raged for days - took Military Police to quell - resulted in sealing the watertight bulkhead doors, arrests, accusations, courts marshals, and what not. The issue? Whether to share a latrine at that same locus or not...
Fortunately, fate delivered me a raging case of (super contagious) pink eye just as the first punch was thrown (contracted at Camp Kilmer just before we shipped out) and so I was put in quarantine topside as a greater threat to the entire ship's company than any black or white aboard! (I really lucked out: private quarters and hot showers and my own private bunk!) Hot chow with the medics. They were testing (!) a new and relatively untried "medicine" on me that even they did not know quite what it was. Had the strange name of "penicillin" and required jabs in my bare butt with huge needle and syringe every 2 or 3 hours! LOL. Piece of cake, man! Piece of cake, for what I got in return....!
Recreation
I guess this might be as good a spot as any to introduce the one universal pasttime we had: gambling. Day and night the bones rolled against the bulkheads down below. But the really high-rollers sat in on card games and dice tables rigged up on deck. The "games" went on non-stop around the clock; participants folding and leaving and new ones taking their place. This was all mostly run by the black troops - but no "segregation" obtained here: black and white shouldered up alike to the tables...
There was one big, old, black sargeant I particularly remember. He ran several "tables" after toward the fantail. The way these tables were set up was ingenuity itself. His "boys" would bring up plain wood tables from some distant deck way down below where they had found them. These were quickly up-ended and the four legs at each corner broken off. Almost as rapidly then, several O.D. blankets were tucked up into the bottom side (which still had intact the surrounding wooden apron between the legs). This made a dandy backstop for the dice... Other tables were kept upright for the poker games.
This sargeant was right out of Amos and Andy... I mean, he was the "Kingfish" come to life: his eyes were everywhere at once, and he not only ran the tables, he sat in on the games, as well! He had a big old puffy white scar that ran down one cheek and across his neck and throat - memento of some long ago dispute over a payoff somewhere no doubt... His shirt pockets bulged out on his front like two big bosoms - filled to bursting with fountain pens taken in the games. (This was long before the throwaway ballpoints of today -back then a "good" fountain pen was an investment, and many had gold clips and nibs...). Best of all was when he stretched his arms out of his khaki shirtsleeves - about the size of most men's thighs: it was solid wristwatches all the way up to his armpits I suppose - on both sides. A gambler's reserve stock ever ready to hand. Also ready-to-hand was a straight-edge razor that lay right beside his deck when he dealt. Squabbles were short and few on his watch; his "brothers" staged here and there in the shuffling throng could reassemble those tables and sequester those blankets quicker than a wink, at the mere whisper "officers coming" down the line from up forward...
It helped to pass the time.
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