Specialists' Corner

As a benign old veteran who was drafted at a time when Pearl Harbor was an annex of the beach at Waikiki, I finally find myself in a position where I can reminisce about The Old Army (not to be confused with The Old Old Army, which is the province of first sergeants, or The Old Old Old Army, which is what the grizzled master sergeants' fire talking about when they tell you what they said to First Lieutenant Ike Eisenhower said to them).

Yes, indeed, the time has come when I can get sentimental about $21 a month for four months, during which time a fat pay day was one on which the company commander handed you a whole solid five dollar bill and some change. That was when borrowing fifty cents till the first of the month meant leaving your gold teeth for security.

The greenest rookie I ever saw was the Georgia pine boy who was told to stand at the end of the line and came back to announce that he couldn't do it because someone was already there.

There was a father draft in those days, but no one realized then what a fine political football it would have made, especially since they got $21 just like the rest of us. I remember my basic training with a squad that contained seven fathers and me. During ten minute breaks I had to enthuse over baby pictures and listen to the latest report on what junior said. One daddy with four children kept going through the tough infantry course by imagining how pleasant it would be if he only had his kids along to help him--one to carry his rifle, another his canteen, the third his pipe, and the fourth his slippers.

Calisthenics period, 1941 model: "Counta one, stretch yer arms out... counta till leave 'em snap back."

As you can see, I was in with a bunch from Brooklyn. That was the year Mickey Owen dropped the third strike on Tommy Henrich. We were in the sunny southland, but I'll swear it didn't stop raining until the following February. And all on account of that third strike.

We soon learned that the South was still battling the Civil War, but it didn't bother us until the storekeepers tried to give us change in Jefferson Davis dollar bills.

You get to know the rest of the country pretty well in any army outfit. I'll never forget my first Texans. They were a militant minority in our barrack, and made themselves felt by playing six radios at once (each with a different hillbilly band) and inaugurating a series of concerts consisting of ten to twelve voices and three gee-tars on "Deep is the Heart of Texas." Complete with the handclaps.

The Texans nearly ruined one of the reviews once. They couldn't march without swaying from side to side on their parenthetical legs, but we'd have gotten by except that one of them thought the uniform of the day should include chaps. At that, we were lucky. His original idea was to lead the platoon on his boss.

There we go on horses again. The topic even came up in one of the usual Wednesday night lectures which we language men are subject to. We picked up something new in the way of what we might be doing when we finish our course here. It seems that the AMG had to busy a lot of dead horses shortly after landing in Sicily, and after all, why shouldn't future horses be buried in their native tongue?