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.

~

Growing Up, Travel (Not First Class)

"Bernie doesn't get ulcers. He gives them".

Words of wisdom from my first ex-wife, The Princess. A 10 year marriage that lasted 27 years.

At 20, when the bullet went through my leg my leg on Okinawa, in 1945, at 21 years of age, I grew up in one hell of a hurry. Realized that I was not going to gain immortality by living forever.

My life of travel, while in the Army, started with my going from Fort Dix in Jersey to Fort Sill in Oklahoma to Fort Worden in Washington State.12 weeks in the Army and I had already spent over a week on trains, aka 'fucking cattle cars'.

The Army moved me around a lot. After being transferred from Camp Hayden in Washington State to the 241st. Signal Corps Co., I became a man in motion.

With a general idea, based on rumors, that we were going to Hawaii, we shipped out from Seattle and headed West on a troop transport, aka 'merchant ship'. About one day out a wild ass storm broke out and the ship heaved and lurched like a whore on Saturday night. We fucking land lubbers did a lot of vomiting.

After a few days of feeling like shit we headed back to Seattle. The ship needed repairs. And so did we.

Discrimination was part of life on a troop ship with officers getting privileges and GI's like me getting bubkas. Hell, we had to scramble to get a seat for a movie aboard ship. The officers had a reserved section. The blacks were forced into their own segregated viewing section.

We made it to Hawaii and Schofield Barracks, then aboard a form of LST to Okinawa. Hello gun shot wound. Only hurt for a minute. Effects have lasted a fucking lifetime.

Landing Ship, Tank (LST)

Hospital ship to Saipan for a few days. First day aboard, in strolls a Navy Steward with a tray of orange juice.We all got jacked up until we found out that our ward was a short cut to to the officer's ward. For sure our recovery didn't need orange juice, even canned.

Another ship from Saipan, back to my outfit and Okinawa. Followed by yet another ship in a typhoon going to Seoul and for occupying Korea. Not quite as much vomiting.

Aborted hospital airplane ride to Yokohama and that theoretically was to take us Stateside. The wings of the airplane had, along with my ass, frozen over.

But God takes care of drunks and fools and they put my sorry ass on a hospital ship back to Wilmington, California and Camp Haan, with a drunken one day lay over in Hawaii. I had 45 days of shooting craps, playing cards for O'Henry bar slices and swapping bullshit 'How'd you get hit?' stories.

Actually the camaraderie of all of us gimpy, goofy, shot up, full of shit GI's is memorable. 45 days for that non-cruise like trip.

Four days of a dead sober, boring, fucking train ride to the Fort Devens, Mass Hospital from Camp Haan, California and eventual discharge from the Army.

Three years in the Service of continuing wandering and wondering, while having the privilege of serving my country and being rewarded with a head full of great experiences and the memories that go with them.

Redundantly: From Fiddler On The Roof: 'Those were the days my friend.We thought they'd never end.'
~

Wartime Planes and Trains

How the hell do you sleep while standing up?

It's easy. You lean against a fucking wall, close your eyes and you doze off. It's something like masturbating. Easy to do at 20. Not so easy at 85. GI's standing and sleeping were as common as an old shoe.Officers got chairs, we got walls.

Wartime traveling was always an experience especially for a GI. There were so damn many of us that the only time you felt special was when you went home. But getting home once in a three year span certainly didn't give me the chance to get a big head.

It took the book 'The Greatest Generation' for WWII guys and dolls to be recognized for who we were and what we did.

My first train ride, while in the service, was on a rattler and shaker going from Fort Dix, New Jersey to Ft.Sill (Lawton) Oklahoma for basic training. Sleeping sitting up became a learned art form and was a relief from the fucking boredom of sitting and doing nothing on a train for three days with a bunch of guys you didn't know and weren't sure that you cared to know.

But it beat the hell out of 'short arm' inspections where you dropped your pants and drawers and gave your schlong a few tugs to prove that you didn't have a 'dose'. If your dick dripped, the doctors would ship your ass to the hospital. The second 'short arm' inspection of my army career of  'short arm'  inspections was pure bullshit. It happened when we checked into Fort Sill after a three day train ride. While abstinence may make the heart grow fonder it can't generate gonorrhea.

Going from Fort Sill, after basic training, to Fort Worden,Wash. was different. Not being part of a group of GI's, traveling alone, made me feel like a big shot for a few days. I didn't have to try to to contain my non-filtered opinions. Trying to avoid my First Sergeant, who by definition, was an asshole, was not necessary.

Took the ferry, which was forever more terrific, from Seattle. Arrived at Fort Worden, when some noncom or officer took an instant dislike to me and I was assigned to be on permanent KP.

Washed more fucking pots and pans, mopped more floors and peeled more potatoes than one Bronx Jew should have had to do. Peeling spuds wasn't all bad though, since it was done sitting down.

After a month of that bullshit (24 hours on, 48 hours off) I made enough noise to be sent to radio school outside of Sacramento.The train ride from Seattle to Sacramento was terrific.The train went close by Mt.Shasta, a beautiful, mind boggling sight for this city kid. Summertime with snow knocked my brains out.

After radio school, another day on the Southern Pacific. Leaving California, even hot, dry Sacramento was kinda sad for me but with my new talent as a dot-dash guy KP duty was, thank God, history.

Getting from Fort Lewis to NYC by way of Minneapolis in 1944 was no small stunt. Taking four days and nights for the trip by train would chew up eight of my ten day furlough real easy. 'Fly away' was the only logical solution to beating eight days and nights sitting on a train.

So I went to the airfield, put my ass on the floor and waited for my name to be called for a ride on an Air Force transport plane to Minneapolis, to see my 'special friend'. When it happened, I was ecstatic, even with a fucking orange crate for a seat for the ride.

Then the shocker. After a few hours out this voice spewed out over the speaker, the bad news.We were landing and the few other GI's and I were being unloaded in fucking Wyoming. The last time that I even thought about Wyoming was in my grade school geography class. It could have been on the moon along with its Cowboys and Indians.

Then I sat on the floor for another bunch of hours in the station in Wyoming until some plane landed for a stop on the way to Minneapolis and we were good to go. A night and day in Minneapolis and off to New York for me on a train.

Going back to Seattle from NY, by train, was a drinking experience as a few other GI's and I enjoyed my duffel bag full of booze. Great train ride even with the layover in Chicago to switch trains. In those days there weren't any coast to coast trains. Kinda like going from one fucking cattle car to another except that each trip was an adventure in killing time.Why GI's didn't die of boredom is a surprise to me.

Trying to go from Korea back to the states on a 'hospital' Air Force plane turned out badly. Standing in the plane we were boiling from head to waist. Below the waist we were fucking freezing. The wings started 'freezing up' over Osaka so back to Seoul we went, a little worse for the wear. But shooting craps in the hospital latrine was better than than being on that fucking airplane.

Did get back to the States on a hospital ship, shooting craps, playing cards and writing letters all the way while being looked down on with disgust by the officers.We lowly GI's, in turn, didn't think a whole hell of a lot of the officers. The letters were sent to the States in bunches from our stops.

Wrote my folks every day.Writing daily letters on that 45 day boat ride was a real challenge, great training for developing my bullshitting abilities. But I was up to the task. Sometimes I think that I invented bullshit. And so do my closest friends.

You can take the guys and gals out of the Army but you can never take the Army out of the guys and gals. Or the Marines, Navy and Air Force.

~

Camp Hayden to Ft.Lewis to the Troop Transport...

At 19 years old, being a loud mouth, abrasive, know it all, Bronx Jew were points of pride for me but for Lt. Hamlin, my CO at Camp Hayden, I was a real pain in the ass.

His breaking point with me came when he, in his office, told me that I had done a terrific job in raising my speed on the dot dash key from 18 words a minute to over 35 words a minute and teaching myself how to type.

As a reward the Lt. wanted to promote me to PFC, with a pay raise from $50 a month to $54 a month. I told the Lt. that having been a private longer than any other private in the outfit, making me the ranking private in the outfit, made me special and I didn't want to to be one of the fucking mob.

I also told the Lt. to give the fucking PFC stripes and the extra $4.00 a month to someone who needed the money. My refusing the promotion really pissed off the Lieutenant but I thought, fuck him and the horse he rode in on. The $4 a month could fit nicely, stuck up his ass.

The Lt. actively disliked me, which wasn't a bad trade, since my opinion of him was lower, if possible, than his opinion of me. He really thought that he was clever. I thought he was operating above his deserved pay grade and totally full of shit. He thought that his silver bars made him special. I thought that they made him even more of a self-important asshole.

How that schmuck became a second lieutenant didn't really surprise me. The bar was pretty low in wartime. After all, Lieutenant Hamlin could walk, talk and chew gum at the same time.That seemed to be the qualifying requirement. His being promoted to first lieutenant proved that success in the service sometimes had little to do with talent.

The lieutenant had fat lips. Probably got larger from puckering up for sincere ass kissing. A practice not restricted to officers but certainly a specialty of theirs. Me kissing a Sergeant's ass would have been as useful as tits on a boar pig.

The Lt. was the ultimate people pleaser and wanted everyone to like him, except enlisted men like me. I, on the other hand knew, even at 19, that if everyone likes you, you are one innocuous son of a bitch. Not having a filter between my brains and my mouth kept me from being innocuous and helped generate some sincere dislikes of me.Which suited me then, as now, fine.

So when I asked to be transferred to an outfit that was going overseas Lt. Hamil was all over that request like a clam in mud.Or more like a pig in shit. A genre that I grew to know all too well while farming.

So less than 60 days after telling the Lt. to stick the army's $4 a month where the 'sun don't shine' my Jewish ass was on its way to Fort Lewis and the 241st Signal Corp Co.with its cadre of Boston Scollay Square Irishmen. They invented tough and nasty. It was out of the frying pan into the fire. As Oscar Wilde said, 'While it is disagreeable to be frustrated the real disasters in life begin when you get what you want'.

It only took 10 minutes of having my first chow in Ft.Lewis to realize that the 241st was loaded with anti Semites who talked about Yids and Kikes which in turn forced an 'I am Jewish' chip on my shoulder. I promptly, sincerely, in a loud voice, announced my Jewishness and that if anyone took exception to me that I was ready to step outside. So they mostly kept their hate in tow. Got into a few fist fights. Won some, got the shot kicked out of me as well.

After a few days in Ft. Lewis there was this guy packing up his duffel bag. Naturally, I asked him where he was going.

'Got a 10 day furlough.' he said.

Having been turned down, I erupted and went to the company office to confront Captain Gooch, a filling station operator in civilian life who rose to captain in the National Guard, a very lightly regarded group, in those days.

Once in his office, I earned the undying hate of Captain Gooch by threatening to go over his head and complain if I didn't get my fucking furlough.The threat and my grating voice (I'd been through puberty.) pushed that genius over the side and I got the 10 day furlough.

Back in the barracks while packing my duffel bag, I was having multiple orgasms knowing that I would see my special girl, who I later married in Minneapolis. Went back to the Bronx after a year and a half. You can take the guy out of the Bronx never the Bronx out of the guy.

But getting to New York City by way of Wyoming and Minneapolis, for a GI, in wartime 1944, really took some doing and being a street smart Bronx Jew helped like crazy. Wasn't at all like a blind hog finding an acorn. It took effort ....an adventure for another time.

~

Typhoon, Seoul, Pleurisy and Warm Saki

'It's not the years, it's the mileage.', Harrison Ford, Indiana Jones.

On that basis my next birthday should make me at least 115 years old.

September 10,1945 puts me on a merchant ship in a convoy going from Okinawa to Korea when Typhoon Ida hit. My stomach was not built for being on a lurching ship and every time that fucking ship slammed into the wild ass ocean my stomach went with it. Puking didn't happen happen but at the time I was hoping to have a relief vomit.

The Captain, God bless his gay soul (He had made a pass at me and the other two GI's stationed aboard the ship.) broke away from the convoy and found a cove out of the typhoon. So while the storm raged away from the cove my two buddies and I spent 4-5 days swimming off the side of the ship.

It was one hell of a long way down from the deck to the water and we didn't have the balls to dive so we jumped. The water was colder than a whore's heart but when you're 20 years old you're too stupid to care.We used a Jacobs ladder to get back to the deck. That was even more stupid.

Climbing a Jacobs ladder, attached to a gently rolling ship, put you in danger of getting slammed against the side of the fucking ship and breaking a few bones.

Seoul was a world unto itself. By comparison hot, dusty Fort Sill and Lawton, Oklahoma were garden spots.There must have been concrete roads but I don't remember any. Our barracks had been Japanese officer's quarters. No showers but small, circular, copper bath tubs that we had to fill by hand with water.

After we set up our so called radio command post there wasn't anything to do but sit around. No incoming messages, no outgoing messages. By then I was a Sergeant and knew that I was overpaid. Should have, as they said in the army 'backed up to the pay table'.

Going into Seoul sounded terrific until I tried it. Getting laid sounded even better until you saw the hookers who just looked like shit.Getting smashed on saki was the big deal but one time was enough for me, forever. Heated saki is not for sissies or any social drinkers.

So the first alternative was for me to get pleurisy which is some kind of a fucking experience, even at 20.
Going to the 'radio shack' in a jeep that seemed to find every fucking pot hole in the dirt road. The ride an exercise in sharp, stabbing pain with every hole.

Shooting craps in the latrine was our major distraction. For some weird reason we were not allowed to shoot craps in the barrack's sleeping quarters. We didn't care.The officers thought we were disgusting shooting craps in a latrine. But again, we didn't care.

A favorite cousin of mine Seymour, tracked me down. Great fun. Seymour was an officer assigned to the Military Police and had hair raising stories of how the GI's treated Korean women and ordinary Koreans who were found wearing three pieces of GI clothes. Two was the limit, three meant that the American GI would beat the shit out of the Korean.

Other very memorable memories include seeing women on their knees washing clothes in the ditch along the side of the road. And who could forget seeing the women with a baby on their backs, one in the belly and one in their arms while carrying something on their heads. The husbands walked about five paces ahead of the wives carrying nothing but their superiority.

That was my first exposure to 'male superiority'.

Jewish homes, in my day, were matriarchal. The man made a living, the wife ran the house.My Mom, whose name was Ida, was no slave.

My Pop was, basically, pussy whipped. And he seemed, in retrospect, to enjoy it.

~

Babe Ruth, The Southern Pacific Freight Yards, CZ, Silver Dollars

"I had a better year than he did.", was Babe Ruth's response when asked to justify why his $100,000 a year contract was more than President Herbert Hoover's annual salary.

Seeing Babe Ruth play, while sitting in what was then the right field bleachers (now the right field grandstands) is a not to be forgotten thrill. Memorial Day, July 4th and Labor Day had double headers at the Stadium and came with Babe Ruth playing for .55 cents each holiday.

We brought our own peanuts. No way we're we going to get fucked and pay .10 cents for a small bag of fucking peanuts.

Ruth's swings at the ball were unreal with his graceful rhythm. Watching the 'Bambino' talking to the 'Bleacherites' and watching him trot into the dugout by way of second base (a superstition of the Babe's) are memories embedded in my mind's eye.

Memorable also, was grinding my heel into the right eye glass lens while at radio operators school. The lens couldn't be replaced at Camp Kohler and going into Sacramento to see an optician to be able replace the lens was the only solution. So I got a three day pass into Sacramento with a purchase order and a ton of free time to make money.

Making a $1.00 an hour plus the opportunity to make double and triple time working at the Southern Pacific yards was a serious money making opportunity. When you were making $50 a month as a GI, a dollar an hour was hog heaven. Time and half  for $1.50 was Nirvana .

Carrying hot molten lead in pots from one place to another for 12 straight hours, shirtless, pants rolled up and sweating like a stuck hog bleeds turned out to be my emotional limit. Hauling molten lead in pots from one damn place to another was too nerve wracking, even at 20 years old.

Being paid in silver dollars was wonderful and used back at Camp Kohler for shooting craps. And I saved a few for my next trip into Sacramento to get in the bag. 3.2 % beer at the Enlisted Man's Club, just made me piss a lot.

But my weirdest civilian jobs were in Port Angeles while stationed at Camp Hayden. They were at at the Crown Zellerbach paper plant. Finding civilians to do those jobs during the war was plenty fucking tough. So jackass, greedy GI's like me were welcomed with open arms.

The first 8 hour job was at the Crown Zellerbach paper plant where I worked in a huge room with newly produced paper on rollers acting as the 'ceiling'. My job, every time there was a break in the paper, which was real fucking often, was to drag the very warm paper over to a stream that would carry the paper, while chopping up the paper into small pieces, back to be remade into paper.

After an hour in that paper hell and dragging it to the stream I was generating enough fucking static electricity to light the City of Philadelphia. I couldn't touch anything without generating an electrical charge. The next time in Port Angeles, I turned down the opportunity to spend my time dragging paper breaks for eight hours and ending up like a fucking walking electric charge storage plant.

But when you're 20 years old, and in the Army, you think that you're tough, smart and omnipotent. Certainly my body fat content was probably under 15%.

So this time, in my unfucking arrogance, I took a life and limb threatening job at CZ pushing logs into the 'grinder', (to be converted into paper) with a long pole. The logs were in a fast moving water stream fed by really cold, really fast flowing water from the Straits of Juan de Fuca.

The water sloshed over to where the other dummies and me were standing raising the serious risk, that while pushing the logs along of slipping, falling into the stream and getting chopped up with the fucking logs. My heart rate had to be through the roof.

Never went back to Crown Zellerbach. Left my $1.00 an hour greed in the the San Juan de Fuca Straits' water with the logs. And really started grinding my Captain to transfer me to an outfit going overseas.

And then came Okinawa and earning a Purple Heart. But I believe that I got more than I gave in the Army, starting with the privilege of serving my country.

~

Before Okinawa

Ah, life was simple in the Army.

Getting in the bag, aka drunk,was our big deal. Never even thought of crack cocaine or heroin. Never heard of 'meth' or oxycodone pain pill addiction. How would any of us, 1940's GI's, know that 'sucking on a glass dick' meant smoking a crack pipe?

The doctors in the Army were bored spit-less especially when talking to us ignorant, stupid enlisted men. I think they were resentful of their medical school 4F buddies who were home raking in the big bucks while they were pissing their lives away on a bunch of ignorant dummies who didn't have shiney bars on their shoulders.

It all seemed like the Catch 22 theme ruled where if you complained about being crazy, you had to be sane. How else would you know that you were crazy?

Going to the enlisted man's club bar to drink 3.2% beer was a big fucking deal. I volunteered for a job, for money, as a bartender. As smart and as quick as I thought I was, I couldn't get myself into the routine of collecting money for the beer and allocating the receipts, three for the club and one for me. That, even for me, with my consummate greed, crossed the line.

One night of bartending was enough for me. Guys screaming at me for their fucking bottles of Pabst, Millers, Schaefer's or whatever, crossed my emotional limit. And when one of my fellow schmucks started fucking fumble fingering in his pants pockets looking for change to pay, I would go nuts.

Everyone was screaming at me to get them a fucking beer while this guy was probably jacking off. He probably, didn't have any pockets up front and kept his money in his rear pocket pants. Fooling with his ass didn't turn him on.

Common labor was in very short supply during WWII. Sacramento with a vegetable packing plant, the Southern Pacific freight yards and a big time almond packing plant really needed common, unskilled labor. Phillip Wylie said the the trouble with the common man is that there are too many of them, too common.

Being a good soldier, while being noisy, pissing and groaning was my big drive in life. My non Army major commitments, at the time, were to make some money, get drunk and get laid. The first one required me to work at a civilian job, the second to have the money to go into town and get drunk. $54 a month, plus the $20 my Mom sent me, didn't go far enough to suit my voracious liquid booze appetite.

Getting laid, while important, was not that important. I had outgrown the fear that jacking off would cause hair to grow in the palm of my hand or cause me to go blind. Doing it so that 40 other guys in the barracks didn't know what I was doing was a minor problem. I mostly quit breathing.

Wrangling a three day pass by grinding my heel into the right lens of my eye glasses worked at Camp Kohler in Sacramento, so I gave it a shot at Fort Worden and Camp Hayden. Worked like a fucking slot machine since none of them had facilities to replace the specs and without them I was a useful as teats on a boar pig.

While stationed at Camp Kohler, I would go into Sacramento.On one three day span I worked at a tomato canning plant putting four cans of tomato paste at a time into boxes. Eight hours of looking at the blinding tops of the fucking cans made me believe that going blind seemed like a possibility. One eight hour shift cured me of ever wanting to go back.

The next day I worked at the Southern Pacific yards unloading freight cars which was wonderful. The other 'unloaders' were GI's. Plus the cars had little in them so we spent most of the time sprawled out in the freight cars dozing. Most GI's could sleep standing while leaning against the wall.

The third day was working at the almond packing plant packing almonds.Got the usual $1.00 an hour and a big time case of constipation.Couldn't look at a fucking almond for years much less eat one. Now my fucking dentures won't let me eat almonds though I do get constipated from time to time but not because of almonds.

Next blog will talk about working in the Southern Pacific foundry for 24 straight hours: $1.00 an hour for the first eight hours, $.1.50 per for the next four and $2.00 an hour for the last four. My two times at the Crown Zellerbach paper plant in Port Angeles proved that greed and the fearlessness of youth always overwhelms common sense.

'Everything changes. Everything remains the same.'