EVERYBODY’S DANISH – Army Basic Training
By fred | January 23, 2010
EVERYBODY’S DANISH – Uncle Fred’s active duty – Peace time Army 1948 – 49
AT FORT LEWIS, STATE OF WASHINGTON – BASIC TRAINING
GETTING SETTLED
As soon as we arrived from California the training started. The cadre had to start from scratch. We had learned a little in our two weeks at Fort Ord, but not much. We had to learn how to salute properly, how to ‘field strip’ a cigarette, the proper care of our cloths, and especially how to clean our M-1 rifles. All sorts of classes were given, mostly in the field. There was also a long description we had to remember by heart that described our rifles.
I really can’t remember it all, but when a officer asked what kind of rifle we had we had to say, “Sir, this is a M-1 sixteen pound air cooled rifle, it ——(and so forth and so on). The description of that rifle went on and on. All of which had to be remembered to the letter.
One thing that was a little sad, was the homesickness of some of the guys. Fortunately I had gotten over that when I went to summer school in Solvang at the age of thirteen. Many of our guys just had never been away from home in their entire eighteen or nineteen years of age. We all missed home, especially those first couple of weeks.
At night you would often hear a sniffle that did not come from a cold. A guy would be crying in his cot. You have to realize that these were all just a bunch of young kids. They were turning into men, but it was hard. It is interesting that you could get ‘kidded’ about darn near anything, but never did anyone say anything about those evenings, the homesick crying stuff. All of us felt a little low about being away from home, it was a subject that was never brought up.
Fortunately most of the guys in our platoon were all from Southern California and Orange County. We all had similar interests, none of us had any of the bigot stuff Southern California is a melting pot of races. If you lived in California you went to school with kids of every color and race. You soon learned that the color of a person’s skin did not have a thing to do with his brain, what kind of person he was, or anything else for that matter.
I had a lot of friends at Polytechnic High School that were black, Afro Americans. They were smart, many far more intelligent than I, they were damn good friends, they would do anything for you. They also wore shoes all their lives, which is far more than those Southern jerks in the fourth platoon with all their bigotry could say.
I will discuss this later, but the bad thing about the army back in 1949 was that it was segregated as far as the Afro Americans were concerned. The Third Battalion of our Ninth Infantry Regiment was all black, we had no blacks in the other battalions.
MARCHING, HOUR AFTER HOUR OF MARCHING
In the infantry you march, you are not driven. How to hold you rifle, every rifle had to be carried exactly so. If you didn’t it would look like just a rabble of men. Each step together. You must be exactly one arms length from the man on the side of you or in front.
Too many years have gone by to remember all of the commands. Most of the training was done by our field first, Sergeant Jungbooth. I can still see him, standing straight on the parade ground shouting commands, “Right, right, left, right, left, to the left flank ho.”
One day Jungbooth was getting awful upset because we just kept bunching up, getting too close together. This old ex marine had finally had it. “Company halt,” he shouted. “Fix bayonets, hurry up get em on,” he yelled. “Shoulder arms,” he yelled.
Now if you have a guy in front of you with a rifle over his shoulder tipped with a foot long hunk of sharp gleaming steel, you just do not tend to get to close to him. Especially when the command is, “To the rear, ho.” In turning, the guy in front of you could very easily swipe you across the face with that overgrown knife. You had to be very careful to give him enough room. That one session with ‘raw’ bayonets was enough to convince us to do it right.
Many of us were in good shape physically. Sports and working kept us in shape, unfortunately a bunch of the guys were totally unprepared for this kind of stuff. Several guys admitted that when home if they had to go somewhere a block away, they would drive a car.
The exercise cessions at the beginning, only lasted about four hours a day. The rest of the time was devoted to classes on equipment, care of our rifle, army regulations, courtesy, saluting, and company chores. Some of the fellows found that the aching, the stiffness was slowly developing into muscle. Little did we know, it would get worse, a lot worse before we were through.
I LOVE MY RIFLE
We spent hours on that parade ground, the sixteen pound M-1 would weight a ton, at least it felt like it did by the time we were through. One thing about that rifle you did not do, drop it for any reason – that is about the worse no, no any rifleman can do in the Infantry.
The accepted penalty for this worst of all crimes was very grim. After our evening meal the guiltily person would have to get dressed in his dress class ‘A’ uniform, present himself to the acting platoon sergeant and then go to the street in front of the company building and march back and forth. Every so many steps, I believe it twenty steps he would have to stop, take his rifle from his shoulder and put it in a ‘present arms’ position, and yell at the top of his lungs, “I love my rifle.” Hour after hour he would do this, rain, cold, did not matter.
The first month that we were in training these penalties developed into a nightly occurrence. In fact the yelling, ‘I love my rifle,’ would sort of lull you to sleep. Finally, we got word from General headquarters to knock it off after ten P. M., the on post staff was complaining about the noise. The rifle dropping had stopped, if a guy went through this just once he soon remembered never to drop his rifle.
THE LITTLE STROLLS
The marches started to get longer, a few miles and back. Then what we considered to be a real killer, a ten miles march, still with that darn heavy rifle on your shoulder. We were feeling good about our selves, hell, we could take anything. Then the army decided to see just how much we could take.
We were given a class on packing our ‘field packs.’ Now we are talking about a lot more weight to carry beside that sixteen pound rifle. The field pack which you carried on your back, had the basic bag or pouch with extra clothes, some field rations, a shaving kit, towels, and pegs to set up your pup tent. On top of it there was a rolled up ‘shelter half.’ This was half of a pup tent. In the field you slept two to a tent, so a buddy would have the other half on his pack. Hooked to the bottom of the back pack was your rolled up sleeping bag. It seemed like every step you took the bag would hit you butt.
I don’t remember the exact amount of weight this all amounted to, I believe it was around thirty or forty pounds, put think about it. First, you had the sixteen pound rifle on you shoulder, plus your canteen of water and bayonet hooked to you belt. Then this pack with half a tent, your sleeping bag, clothes, K-rations, or whatever they called it. I would guess the average soldier was carrying about fifty to sixty pounds or more with the rifle included.
I was a six foot two inch guy that weighted about two hundred pounds. No fat, all muscle, at least that is what I thought. Now what about the guys that were only a hundred fifty pounds or less. We had a fair amount of guys in this group.
I remember the first few times we took off on marches with all this on our backs. It couldn’t have been two miles. We figured that we would never make it back. “Come on you candy asses, you haven’t seen nothing yet,” our field first Jungbooth would yell.
We eventually worked our way up to ten miles. Then it started getting interesting and competitive.
Whenever we took off on a long hike with our full field pack a medic truck would follow at the rear of the column. I found out later that our company commander, Captain Skelton was not required to go on these marches, but he did. He marched every step of the way.
Now a number of the companies in our training regiment were filling up the medic truck with guys that couldn’t make it. They would drop out from fatigue, heat exhaustion, or just plain pooped out. Not one of our two hundred guys was ever going to drop out of one of our formations. Not if the captain or our field first sergeant had anything to do with it.
We finally did a fifteen mile hike. About seven and a half miles out and then back. It hurt, but we were getting better. After every hike we checked all the guys feet, made sure they were taped up if a blister had occurred. Your feet had to be taken good care of. Foot powder dumped in the boots to keep the feet dry. Your feet had to take the punishment.
The big event was a twenty mile hike, we all knew this had been the goal. Twenty miles with a full field pack. So far we were leading the regiment, no one dropped out. Not one of our company’s two hundred men ever rode back with the medics. Could we keep it up? We sure were going to try. That was a real killer, the last few miles some of the smaller guys were really pooping out. The captain striding at the head of the column and looking back knew it.
The next break, he pointed to Leonard and I and went down the line until he had selected about ten of the strongest and biggest of his company. “Help the smaller guys,” he said. I grabbed a guys rifle, the captain took the field back from one little guy, and all of us took weight off the smaller guys. A lot of guys not pointed out by the captain took stuff off of their buddies if they looked shot.
We had maintained our record, no drop outs – captain Skelton still had ‘bragging’ rights over the regiment. He told us he was damn proud of us. The captain was not through yet, not by a long shot.
The other companies in the regiment started easing off the long hikes. I remember we would all ‘chew the fat’ with guys from the companies around us, and their training schedule sure seemed a lot easier than ours. We got ten mile marches, then another twenty miles, all with full field packs. It never was easy, but the pain did not seem to be quite as bad.
A few weeks later we were all half sitting, half lying at the side of a trail waiting for the order to take off our field packs. It was the end of a twenty mile hike – a real killer – we figured would end as a overnight bivouac. The captain strode down the line of all his boys resting and said, “How are you feeling?”
One of the guys said, “Heck Captain, nothing to it, maybe we should do it over.” He was kidding, no doubt about that. The captain started to laugh and said, “Well, that’s exactly what I would like to talk to you about. How about if we take a stroll back to the regiment and show em just who Charlie company is. Never been done before, but we can do it, my Charlie Company can do it!”
“Take a half hour break, take your packs off, take your boots off, take care of any blisters and put those spare socks on,” he said. I remember one of my buddies saying, “That bastard is crazy. He is going to kill us!”
After the half hour the captain, the second lieutenants, and the field first went down the line and said to saddle up. He yelled, “Help your buddy let’s show the rest of those candy asses at regiment a real infantry company.” How the hell we made it, is still a nightmare, but we did. I ended up with an extra rifle and a extra sleeping bag, trying to help another smaller fellow.
It was getting awful dark, and we were exhausted, we were about a hundred yards inside a wooded area, and would soon be coming out to the parade ground and street area of the regiment, when the captain called a halt.
“I know you are tired, hell I’m tired, but we did it, something that the rest of regiment, the whole damn Division never even tried. Give the equipment back to your buddies, let’s line up and look sharp. We are gonna show the whole damn Fort we are the best there is. Lets sound off, let em hear us coming,” the captain said. The sergeants and Lieutenants moved around making sure we were all looking ‘smart.’
“Sound off,” the field first yelled, as he counted cadence. “Your right, your right, left right left.” “I can’t hear you,” he would yell. We started to sing songs at the top of our lungs. ‘Your in the army now, your not behind a plow’ and a few that are not so nice, all at the top of our lungs. Lines straight, shoulders back, you would think that we had just taken a stroll around the parade area.
Windows opened in the various company buildings, guys were hanging out the windows watching those crazy bastards of Charlie Company march by. As we march past regimental headquarters the colonel and his staff came out and gave us a salute. Captain Skelton yelled, “Eyes right,” and returned the salute.
Never have I combined being so damn tired with so much pride. There was no doubt about the ‘bragging rights’ from then on. Forty miles with full field packs and no drop outs. We got the next day off.
We lost a buddy due to this march. A tall skinny kid by the name of Scanlin was in my platoon, and the next day told me he would have to go to sick call. This was really a heck of a nice guy, never bitched he always did everything he could for the platoon.
A asked him what was the matter, and he said, “Fred, I just have no feeling in my arms. When we got back from the march I just figured my arms had gone to sleep from the shoulder straps.” I immediately told my Sgt. and after a visit to the Medics he was immediately sent to the base hospital.
After two months he finally go the feeling back, and seemed to be fine. However, the doctors had recommended a medical discharge. We visited him a number of times in the hospital, he really did not want to leave. I remember we kept telling him how lucky he was to get to go home.
It was strange, all of us missed home, but I don’t think anyone wanted to go home until the tour was up. It would be sort of like quitting on your buddies.
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