1942/1943....Serious Days

Over hill, over dale, as we hit the dusty trail. Sing out your numbers, loud and strong.....For it's hi, hi, hee, for the Field Artillery....As the caissons go rolling along.

My older brother Herman, then a physics instructor at MIT, later to become a world renowned physicist, screamed at me."Roll the son of a bitch up in a carpet and throw him out of the fucking window.”

Herman, the egghead, was home for the weekend and had walked in on a farewell party for a guy leaving to go into the service. Herman was wild because this guy was passed out on my folk's bed. Since the bed was in a second floor bedroom throwing the guy out the fucking window didn't seem like a very good idea.

We had a farewell party each time someone was leaving to go into the service. There were a lot of them and they were always at my house, when my folks were gone. Without exception everyone got blind drunk. Passing out, vomiting and making a lot of fucking noise seemed normal to us. No girls ever invited. We were all virgins so that a tit squeeze was all that we could expect. Getting drunk was easier.

For me, it all started with going to the draft board and jumping up and down to get into the service. Manufacturing fur coats didn't seem like the thing to be doing while most everyone else was involved in the war effort. The self induced patriotic pressure to be useful in the fight against Hitler and Togo was really strong. The draft board classified me 4F because of my fucking eyesight and that really pissed me off. I was tired of throwing farewell parties for everyone else. Getting drunk and squeezing the occasional tit was no substitute for wearing a uniform.

After over a year of constantly hammering the draft board they finally agreed to draft me and slap my ass, bad eyes and all, into the Army. My papers were stamped, "Not to be shipped overseas ". Later and never meeting an officer who liked me, it didn't take much for those instructions to be ignored at my insistence. The universal feeling was anything to unload this noisy, loud mouth, obnoxious Bronx Jew, an in your face, fuck you, asshole.

The day I went into the service, March 30, 1943, I felt like King Kong as my Mom and Pop said goodbye to me at Pennsylvania Station. This scene is still emblazoned in my mind's eye. My Mom was crying with my Pop consoling her but proud as punch. He was a Romanian immigrant and, with My Mom, loved the United States. The idea that his kid was going to help protect the US made his eyes shine with pride.

For me it was the fulfillment of a dream come true and I was on my way to Fort Dix, NJ for "indoctrination". The three days in Ft. Dix of forgettable bullshit, awful food, getting shots and getting outfitted with heavy, scratchy Army clothes seemed forever. It also seemed that we were spending a lot of fucking time bare assed naked. At the time my paranoia showed through. Were we naked so much so that the Jews could be identified? Non Jews didn’t, in those days get circumcised.

Taking a Bronx Jew like me and slapping my ass into Oklahoma for basic training in a field artillery unit, was traumatic. Iowa, which I had visited, seemed like a garden state. Lawton, Oklahoma was not quite like 42nd Street in N.Y. As the only guy from NY, in my platoon, I was sure that no one else in the platoon knew jack shit. How could they? Fucking country hicks they were. I had little difficulty in pissing off almost everyone and didn't much care. But after being in a few fist fights and getting my head handed to me a few times, I toned that rhetoric down, a lot.

Marching to "Over Hill Over Dale" with a heavy rifle (no carbines at basic training) and a back pack that seemed to weigh 100 pounds was not like spending a day at the beach. I found that Oklahoma had absolutely nothing to recommend it. Downright ugly with downright hot ugly weather. Basic training was not, on any level, fun. Constant discomfort, with everyone pissing and moaning and groaning over the physical stress, weather plus something less then gourmet food became my lifestyle.

Then, after about 90 days my ass was shipped to Fort Worden and the Coast Artillery. Fort, Worden was on the Olympic Peninsula, very beautiful. The fort is currently a National Park. I "pulled" KP duty for my first three weeks there. My big mouth and my general fuck you attitude did me in again with the First Sergeant. After three solid weeks of peeling potatoes, I saw a guy packing his duffle bag and I asked him where he was going. "To radio operator school outside of Sacramento," he said. I quickly realized that I had just discovered my exit from a lifetime of peeling spuds and washing giant pots and pans. It was my day off (2 on 1 off, the "on" days were 16 hour days).

I hustled my fat ass down to headquarters and was allowed to see the company commander. He wanted to know why I wanted to go to radio operator's school. I told him the truth, that I just wanted get the hell out of my new career of "pulling" KP. I guess the truth startled him so he said okay and told the First Sergeant to draw up the papers.

The next day I was on a beautiful train ride from Seattle, past Mt. Shasta to Sacramento and my introduction to The Land of Milk and Honey and Fruits and Nuts, California.