Travel, Hospital WW II ~ Army Style

All aboard....

Going from Los Angeles to Boston/Fort Devens, Mass. by train was my last cross country train ride, in the Army or otherwise. Boredom reigned supreme which we all (the other GI's and myself) filled with looking out the window, sleeping sitting up and telling war stories, mostly true but with some bullshit, aka embellishments, thrown in for fillers. A simple fucking gun shot wound became an example of heroism.

At the Fort Devens hospital, a guy by the name of Woody Daher from Lansing, Michigan and I became Best Friends Forever.

It was from Fort Devens that I was discharged from the Army after a shiny new Army doctor asked me one morning how I felt. I told him that I felt like shit. Why not? He didn't really care. Army doctors always asked you how you felt, while you knew that they didn't give a fiddler's fuck about how you felt.

I organized on the hospital ship a routine that drove the doctors a little crazy. Every morning a doctor would come into our ward.We stood by our bunks while the doctor asked each one of us how we felt. A different guy, each day, would say 'Not so good Doc', knowing that there wasn't a God damn thing the doctor could or would do.

Drove the doctors a little nuts but not so nuts to quit asking that fucking ridiculous question. Me, as the routine organizer, and the other guys loved the unbelievable look on the doctor's faces.

One morning at Fort Devens when the doctor asked me that ridiculous question, I said that I felt like getting the hell out of the fucking Army. I could barely walk, even with a limp but I wanted to go home. I wanted my Ruptured Duck on my suit coat lapel, not stripes on my blouse.

I was in love, also known as letting my little head run my big one. I had been training it back to the Big Apple every weekend to see my girlfriend, fantasizing about having sex (getting laid) with her. Turns out that I had to marry her to get that done but we did have great times with plays plus basketball and hockey every weekend at the Garden.

The doctor told me that The Army was keeping me in until the disability pension board reviewed my 'case' to see how big a pension I had earned. I told the doctor to have the Army shove the pension where 'the sun don't shine'.

Two days later Woody Daher and I were in the Separation Center. We had just heard a boring lecture about our options which included filling out a form about disabilities incurred in the service. I said to Woody, "Let's go to the movies". He responded by calling me an idiot and convincing me to go to the room to fill out the form.

Once out of the service a government check arrived. There was a scandal in those days with unearned government checks being sent to undeserving people so not wishing to go to fucking jail I didn't cash the check. After the third one arrived I phoned the VA to discover that I was declared 30% disabled.( Physically not mentally).

Today that monthly WWII disability check is of great importance to me.Woody Daher? Tried to track him down a few years ago. Sadly, Woody is looking up at the grass.

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