 |
| Camp Hayden |
'Feshbach, with soldiers like you it's no wonder that we're losing this fucking war', the First Sergeant spat out at me.
He didn't think much of me. Being a Jew didn't help. Being a New York Jew made me even worse. How did he know that I was a Jew? It was easy. Anti Semitism was so prevalent in the army that in order to protect myself from listening to the slurs I wore a Jewish chip on my shoulder. The occasional slur did lead to an occasional fist fight.
The son of a bitch of a First Sergeant detested me before I left for radio operators school and after I returned as well. He was Regular Army and hard as nails. Regular Army guys came from tough environments. They signed up for the Army in the thirties to get jobs. Three squares a day and $21 a month and they were in hog heaven.
Watch from Here to Eternity to get a real sense of those hard ass pricks who thought that we, the newbies, were worthless...and treated us that way. Asshole was our title.
Fort Worden was the home of the 14th Coast Artillery Regiment. I always had thought that regiments had horses. No horses, but there were massive cannons facing the Straits of Juan de Fuqua. While it was a really beautiful place (It is now a National Park.) Fort Worden was colder than a whore’s heart for reveille in particular and it seemed like it was always fucking raining…cold, bone chilling, fucking rain. We wore overcoats for reveille, shirt sleeves later in the day.
About the time of my return to Fort Worden from radio operator's school, they opened an outpost, Camp Hayden, near Port Angeles, further up the coast. It was created for about 150 of us G I's to 'watch' the Straits of Juan de Fuqua.
My 'friend', the prick of a First Sergeant, shipped my ass there, giving me hardly any time after my return to Fort Worden to move my clothes from the duffel bag to the foot locker. He thought that he was burying me alive but I loved it.
We were on duty at odd hours so when the reveille bugle blew (no recording) there were no early morning formations and no KP for me: a technician, a radio operator, a big shot. And with a First Sergeant who didn't know me from Adam's odd ox and hadn't yet discovered that I could be, for him, an abrasive Bronx Jew. An enormous pain in the ass, always bitching about something.
Camp Hayden was Hog Heaven. Because I knew how to drive, which was uncommon in those days, I got to drive the jeep to our 'observing' installation which was on a hill top. It overlooked Crescent Beach with a spectacular view of the Straits. With little to do, I had time to learn how to type, use a bug (side to side rather than up and down with a radio operator's key) and became a High Speed Radio operator, 35 words a minute. We checked in every hour with Headquarters and did drills with other radio installations on the West Coast.
Yeah, I became so good at it that the Lieutenant wanted to promote me to PFC. I turned the opportunity down. Told the Lt. that I was the Ranking Private at Camp Hayden and didn't want to lose that distinction. Also told him to give the fucking raise of $4 a month to someone who needed it, plus I'd been a private for over a year and didn't want to be part of the mob. Really pissed him off, a lot.
After my PFC turndown the transfer I'd requested to an outfit that was going to go overseas was, very, very quick in coming. Before you could say that Feshbach is a pain in the ass, I was on the way to the 241st Signal Corps Battalion in Fort Lewis preparing to go to the Pacific Theatre and, as it turned out, Okinawa.
As Oscar Wilde prophesied, “The real disasters in life begin when you get what you want."
