The train pulled into the siding at Ft. Devens later that evening - maybe around 7:30 or so. They mustered us into rough "platoons" in our ungraded heights (in those days we were still assigned places in ranks ultimately by height - with exceptions of course, for those with special "MOS": (Military Occupational Specialty) - but largely the tall ones marched in front. Probably dates to the Hoplites and Phalanx days of Alexander the Great... what I know anyway?). But for now we were a ragtag, Cox's Army if ever there was one: bright civilian clothes, odd, mismatched suitcases and bundles wrapped in paper-and-string (every Mom's going away cookies; clean underwear ("If anything should happen to you, you don't want to be found without clean underwear on" - an American dictum of the times...), etc.

"I'm 'ere in a ticky ulster an' a broken billycock 'at,
A-layin' on the sergeant I don't know a gun from a bat;
My shirt's doin' duty for a jacket,my sock's stickin' out o' my boots,
An I'm learnin' the damned old goose-step along o' the new recruits!"

"Now, you all men here - you shut up here, you hear? - and you listen to me!" bellowed a Sergeant at the head of the company. (They didn't say - "we" didn't say - back then, "Listen Up!"... that was an expression that came later - maybe even up to Vietnam years, I don't know. But the movies got it all wrong when they have WWII scenes in which that expression is used. It's a real anachronism: like the clock in Shakespeare's Julius Ceasar, and I have an ear for anachronisms - if nothing else!).

So there, too!

Then he said, "You are going to get some dinner now. In that mess hall up ahead. Now, you all dumb-ass Civilians, you listen to me, you hear? You are going to go in that door there (pointing)... and pick up one of those metal trays in the stacks you will see. Then you just get in line behind the guy in front of you and you go down the line. And those guys in the white cook's aprons and all behind the steam tables, will ladle your chow into the sections in your trays. Now, you listen to me real close here now, you understand?"

You could have heard a pin drop.

"Now it's going to be the case that "they" will now and then ladle some hot mashed potatoes onto your hands. Maybe pour a little hot gravy up your wrist. Maybe even pour a little hot coffee on your pinky... And if they do - I don't want to hear one goddam peep out of the likes of any of you! Not one peep you hear?"

Another pin.

"Because these here 'KP's' are P.O.W.'s , you see. You likely don' see - so I will spell it out for you. These guys here are Prisoners-of-War, and they were former Panzertruppen - guys from Hitler's 'Panzer' divisions - tanks to you! - from the Afrika Corps - in North Africa. The most of them been "soldiers" since they were about knee high to a grasshopper - maybe eight, nine years old is when them Krauts get started over there. And you s.o.b.'s been "in the army" about 5 hours now - way I reckon all the way up from New Haven. (pause) And if I hear of one single fight, or one punch thrown here tonight - in getting you idiots chowed down - you gonna' have to deal with me! Any questions?"

There were none. Final pin.

Then we filed, round-eyed and silent, into our first mess hall...

Later, we emerged and grouped up for whatever was next. Now it was dark. We were on the edge of a big, square field: like a big square football field. Around the edges were rows - endless rows - of two-story army barracks buildings.

Our Sergeant materialized out of the dark again. (This is something all Sergeants seemed to learn to do.. kinda like Mothers almost.. materialize out of the dark and always "where the action is going down" - and we didn't say that back then, either! Ha! Ha! - Caught ya: told you I was expert at anachronisms. It's called "...having an ear for the language.")

Sigh.

What he did say was this:

"Now, we are gonna' walk across this field here. All of us. Together. And you all are gonna go to those barracks on the other side, and pick out bunks and go to sleep! You hear me good?"

We heard him good.

"The young recruit is 'ammered -- 'e takes it very hard;
'E 'angs 'is 'ead an' mutters -- 'e sulks about the yard;
'E talks o' "cruel tyrants" which 'e'll swing for by-an'-by,
An' the others 'ears an' mocks 'im, an' the boy goes orf to cry."

Then he said, "Now when we start across this field here, you gonna see guys here and there coming back from the PX and the washrooms and all. Now you listen to me: these guys here have been in this man's army all of five days longer'n you! But they gonna holler at you and sass you and all like they was bigtime combat vets coming back from the ETO and all. And I don't want any of you to pay any attention. (pause) Tomorrow, you see, you gonna get the first of your shots. From the Medics. Piece of cake. Believe me! Piece of cake! But these guys gonna yell at you.... so you don't pay them any mind."

With that he strode off across the Quad. We followed on. Soon a small group of figures appeared off on our left - crossing at an angle to us - bound for some other nameless barracks in the sea of such around the Quad.

They began to yell and jeer at us: "Watch the hook! Watch the hook!" (We had already heard about the dread "hook" - a mythological hypodermic the medics stuck you with, and it had a little barbed hook on the end and they twisted it in your flesh.... to and fro. You know....

We pushed stonily on.

But soon another larger, shadowy group joined the first group coming from some other direction and now the jeers and catcalls grew louder:

"Watch the hook! Watch out for the hook!" And then... "Watch out for the one with the propeller on it!"

We had been doing pretty good up to now. But that last jab did it. A big guy - I think he was from East Haddam maybe - somewhere upstate - in the front row of our group, suddenly groaned and fainted dead away! Just like that! And fell face forward on the ground...

The Sergeant swore.

"Couple you guys - pick that man up and bring him along... now! " he barked. They got the big guy on his feet again, someone took his suitcase and the rest of us divided around him as we passed - like a rock in the stream - and continued on after the Sergeant.

The barracks offered scant protection from this alien environment. Bare bulbs hung down on cords from the ceiling, and bare pine boards were everywhere. Each man took a bunk. Some went to the latrine and brushed their teeth. Forlornly. A bugle blew somewhere, and simultaneously the lights went out! I crawled into my bunk and pulled the o.d. blanket up to my chin. Later, I dreamt of the Alamo and hordes of Mesican (as we learned it in Texas) soldiers...who swarmed over it and finally did it in...

Another bugle blew just scant hours later it seemed: sunlight was streaming into the barracks in almost horizontal rays. Everyone of course, recognized "Reveille" - and so we all poured out into the Company Street. Blinking. Scratching. I remember there was one guy right across from me didn't get up. Just kept on blissfully snoring - sound asleep. This Sergeant shook him awake! "What in hell is the matter with you, Soldier? Can't you hear the bugle?" The guy looked sort of confused and sat up in his bunk. "Why no, Sergeant, I can't," he said.

"What you mean, 'you can't'?," the Sergeant said.

"I mean I am deaf in one ear," he said, "and I was sleeping with my good ear down."

"Well, you're going to the MP's, that's what, and that's for sure," the Sergeant said. "We can't use you in the Infantry! There will be a truck around here about 8'o'clock to pick you up."

He marshalled the rest of us and we went off to eat with the Panzertruppen again. We came back to the barracks and he told us what we were going to do that day. "First," he said, "you are going to strip down to just your skivvies, and then you are all going to put on your ponchos." (They had given each of us an O.D. vinyl rain poncho when we got off the train the night before).

"Then you are to fall out again in the company street."

His practiced eye ran down the rabble rank. "You there," he said to one guy. "Step forward." Guy stepped out of ranks.

"Where at is yore finger at,"? the Sergeant said. We all looked. Guy had no index finger on his right hand! His (future)trigger finger!

"I don't have a right finger here, Sergeant," this guy said, holding his hand up for all to see. A collective murmur ran through the ranks attesting to same.

"Well, you no good in the Infantry either without a trigger finger," the Sergeant said. "So you gonna fall out here and wait with Mr. One Ear here till the truck comes around. (pause) You likely both gonna go to MP training."

Then he turned to us.

"And don't any of you gettting to think you are such fine specimens, either," he said. "They don' t need guns in the MP's - they teach them to use billy clubs you see, and long as you can close your fist, they can teach you how to hold it there and how to use it on numbskulls. You heard it from me first: you guys get drunk and disorderly in town or in your first bars here - these here MP's will beat yore brains out with those billy clubs - missing fingers, ears, or whatever. Don't try it."

Some of us, at least, made mental notes...

And thus we marched off to "shots" for the day. Sometimes two at a time: long lines, and the medics stuck us in alternate shoulders simultaneously with their hypodermics. Typhus, smallpox, flu, dengue fever - I have no idea. On and on we shuffled under our vinyl ponchos, sweat streaming down the slick insides. At last we came to shoes. Boots really. It was in this long Quartermaster shed: A grizzled old Sergeant had you step up, in your sock feet, onto a platform maybe two three feet higher than the floor. At his command, you bent down and seized two handles flush with the floor on either side. And then stood up. The handles led to ropes tied to two water buckets underneath the stand, full of sand - about 80-pounds in all they said. As you came erect and lifted the buckets off the floor, you could feel your feet just sort of spread out. That's when a couple of guys measured them for size and sung out to the clerks behind the counter what size to draw for you. The trick was to get boots big enough to hold your foot when you shouldered your Infantry pack...

And so it went for several days: shots and more shots. Boots, uniforms, field gear, packs - all lugged back each night to the barracks and stowed away under the eyes of beetle-browed sergeants. We, of course, had had no training really in anything but standing and moving in line. But our lines were not quite so ragged as in the beginning. And our civvies were all gone - mailed home to Mom for the duration. And a couple of krauts got kicked in the sore leg when they weren't looking, so meal service was going smoothly. We could go to the Post movies at night, and when returning to our barracks, as we crossed the Quad, we too could now whistle and catcall to the new arrivals on that day's train. "Watch the hook! Watch the hook!" We were well on our way to soldierdom.

One day we had mail call. A vast sea of upturned faces and the Mail Sergeant shouting out names from a box he stood on. "Powell, B.W." Three of us in the crowd raised our arms! The Sergeant looked at us and back at the letter: "Bernard W.," he said. One arm went down. We two remaining looked quizzically at each other. The Sergeant, reading off more from his address, intoned "9771" - the last four digits of my dog tag serial number. The other guy dropped his arm and looked off in disgust. I thought to myself, "Wow! three Bernard W. Powell's".... the horizons of the world I had always known, were fast receding...

That weekend they gave us a furlough. To go home one last time before we were "sent to basic" from which there could be no such reprieve for four long months. Save, perhaps, for dire emergencies of some sort at home. Once "in basic," they sort of slammed the gate behind you, as we were beginning to hear about it, and threw away the key... Our orders were to go strictly to our homes or whatever specific destination was listed thereon, and we were to return by 9:00 p.m. Sunday night here to Devens without fail. And here, the Sergeant was most adamant - we were to be sober, in proper uniform, and fully presentable - or else!

I got off the rain at Riverside. I can't remember - I probably walked home - we lived just a very short way from the station. The Prodigal's return. (There was to be another memorable such return many years later - from my first archeological dig in South Dakota - when I arrived in dead of night, with a suitcase full of rocks and fossils, while an Officer-of-the-Law watched discreetly from the frontyard bushes... but that lay yet years into the future...). Mom answered the door. Obligatory shrieks, kisses, hugs. Pop not far behind her. Next day was a hot summer day and nothing would do but we would all "go to the beach" for a few hours. We did - Tod's Point, down on the Sound. I never even got out of my uniform. I was still so woozy with the shots I had been pumped full of, that swimming was not really on my mind. A few neighbors spotted me and came up to congratulate me. And a few friends from high school.

Then back to the house and a big dinner Mom prepared. Sunday was more of the same. Low key. Late in the day, it was time to leave. They drove me to the Greenwich RR Station where service back up to Massachusetts was a bit better. We all hugged and said goodbye and then they were gone. A sort of invisible gap was opening somewhere... Age/youth, civilian/military, parent/son... "felt" rather than seen. I sat down on the bench to wait. I had only been there a few minutes when I heard a wild whoop and someone called out my name. I looked around. There was Blackwell - I cannot at this distance now recall his first name. From Greenwich, and we had been in school together and been inducted the same day. We had been separated at Devens, but he too, was on his one and only "furlough" and due back same as me.

But there all similarity ended. Blackwell looked vaguely like he had been run over by a truck. His uniform was a mess and his shirt-tail half out, blouse unbuttoned. And in his hand he was waving a funny looking bottle with a long green neck. I got him to sit down and had a look at the bottle: "Dom Benedictine" it said -and it was half empty. Blackwell was really out of it. We had never been close friends but we had known each other is all. I remember he was an exceedingly handsome guy - he looked just like Tyrone Power the onetime movie star of about that same era.

"Listen, Blackwell," I said, "You got to shape up here some. You can't just run around here with your shirttail out and whooping it up like it was Prom night here or something. These here are uniforms, and those sergeants back at Devens won't take kindly to seeing you all messed up this way."

"Yes, makin' mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than them uniforms, an' they're starvation cheap;
An' hustlin' drunken soldiers when they're goin' large a bit
Is five times better business than paradin' in full kit."

Tommy....(R. Kipling)

I tried with more or less success to pull him together some. He was in the affable first stages of his toot and feeling rather well-disposed to one and all. Soon the train pulled in and he and I got on board. I got him next to a window seat and slid in on the aisle side - thinking I could maybe "contain" him this way until he either passed out or fell asleep or both. For a while it worked, but next thing I knew, Blackwell had wriggled free and had his bottle again and "was going out into the vestibule for fresh air." The coach door closed behind him.

Lulled by the rhythmic clack-clack-clack of the wheels I sort of dozed and dreamed some. After a while I woke and noticed he was still gone. I rose and went out into the vestibule myself. Blackwell had fallen asleep in the "stair well" - right where the conductors pull up the floor when they open the train doors. His bottle was nowhere to be seen. Someone had thrown up a bit on the canvas expanders over the car couplings, but his front at least was clean...

I got him up and back into the coach - not without some arm waving and difficulty. Rowdy soldiers (and sailors!) were no novelty in those days, so my mainly civilian fellow travelers pointedly ignored us for the time being. I got him into his seat and he was soon fast asleep again.

We had to get off the train at our destination...some station whose name now escapes me, and take a Special bus from there back to Devens. Now things began to fall apart. The bus we were supposed to get had already departed. It was the one that went to the Main Gate. Had you entered here, the MP's stamped your papers noting that you were presentable, and had signed in at the correct time. Since we were now late, 9:00 p.m. having come and gone through no fault of ours actually, it meant the bus we were on now had to go around to another Gate on the far side of the Fort - the gate where the latecomers and losers all signed in.

Damn!

Well the rest is pretty much routine. I got Blackwell off the bus - but he was nearly in rag doll shape now as to being able to stand. The bus pulled away and we were standing before the Gate. Couple helmeted MP's came over, one with his billy out, idly slapping it in his other open palm. I looked: he had all his fingers this guy... The other one had a clip board and began an interminable rundown of names. Finally he said, "You are both AWOL: supposed to be back here 9:00 p.m. sharp - Main Gate." I allowed as how this was true, but the train was late and all. He said "Who's your friend?"

"Oh, him?"

"Yeah,...him!" said the MP.

"Oh, that's just old Blackwell," I said. " I wasn't really with him you see (something was telling me I should distance myself rapidly from Blackwell's near-destiny in this world). "It's like he was more nearly with me... (that didn't sound right, either...). " I mean I ran into him. He ran into me. We went to High School together and well - I just sort of found him in the Greenwich RR Station. And so he came along with me. I mean we came along together..."

"Well," I can't tell if you two guys going steady together here or what," says the MP, sarcastically, but then he broke into a broad grin: "But I can see which one here is drunk and unpresentable. And it's not you. We are going to sign you in late - and excused, is all. And not hold you. Only hitch here is that you are now about 3 miles from where you are supposed to be, and there is no transportation back. You got to walk it. As for your pal here, I'm afraid he's going to the stockade he is, to sleep it all off, and then he will have to explain it all to the Provost in the morning."

Thus, my first furlough.

I never saw Blackwell again. I don't know if he slept it all off okay - or whether he maybe still doing time in the Stockade. Or what. Actually, his serial number was either the one immediately following mine, or the one immediately preceding it - I cannot remember which. There was another guy from Greenwich I did not know - a Polish guy - Grumbowski or something like that - and which ever number Blackwell wasn't , Grumbowski was. But I have never seen or heard of either of them again for 60 years now.

Long time. Long time passing.

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