3. Around Camp

A few days after I had arrived at Camp Pinedale and had become accustomed to seeing tar-paper buildings before my eyes all the time, I decided to take a walk around the camp to see if anything interesting was going on. I walked down one of the dust lanes, known as a “street” only because a sign at its end so designated it. I had not gone very far before I came upon the familiar scene of a sergeant giving a private a very thorough going-over. When I got within earshot I heard something like this (parts of the sergeants remarks are of necessity censored):

“How many times have I told you not to throw cigarette butts on the ground?” bawled the sergeant.

No answer came from the private.

Catching his breath, the sergeant continued, “You blue-livered dunderhead, we spend hours every day picking up trash that soldiers like you scatter about. It takes one soldier one minute to pick up a cigarette butt and throw it in a butt can. With eight million men in the Army, that’s eight million minutes that are wasted. That’s 103,333 hours every day that are spent all over the Army just picking up cigarette butts.”

The private was either unimpressed or too scared to speak. Anyway, he continued to stand silently.

The sergeant’s voice acquired an oily purple tone. “Now, I’ll tell you what you are going to do. You are going to get a shovel. And you are going to dig a hole … a hole six feet deep. And you are going to take this little cigarette butt and give it a decent burial right at the bottom of that hole.” Then his voice rose to a blistering shout. “And you are going to do it right now! Git that shovel and start digging!”

The private gulped down any comment he may have felt the desire to make, turned, and walked slowly to the supply room for the shovel. I leaned against a building and waited. Something was sure to come out of this and I wanted to be there when it all started.

In a moment the private returned with the shovel and began to dig the hole slowly and desperately. For about fifteen minutes he dug, and got down about three feet. By that time he had gotten through the dust and was down to solid ground. He stopped to rest. As he leaned on the shovel, two other privates approached him, and the three of them began to talk. They were talking in such subdued voices that I couldn’t hear what they were saying but I could tell that it was very interesting. They became more excited the longer they talked. In a moment the two newcomers left and our poor gravedigger started back to work with amazing enthusiasm. In almost nothing flat he had the remaining three feet of that hole dug and was standing back to admire his work. “Well done,” I heard him say aloud. Then he hurried off to get the sergeant to approve his work before he buried the cigarette. The hole was about two feet wide at the top and tapered gently so that it was about one foot wide at the bottom. It was fully six feet deep.

In a moment the private returned, following meekly behind the still infuriated sergeant, who stalked up to the hole, hands on hip, and scowl on face. He stood leering down into the hole. Then suddenly things began to happen. From behind the comer of a nearby building the two other privates emerged silently but rapidly. They rushed up behind the unsuspecting sergeant, and before he knew what was happening, one seized him around the waist, pinning his arms down, while the other grabbed him around his legs, holding them together and lifting at the same time. Before the sergeant even had time to cry out, his feet were over his head and he was sliding head first into the newly dug grave. Such kicking, screaming, and muffled cursing this old world had never witnessed! All the while our maltreated private stood silently by, watching the burial of the sergeant with smug satisfaction. The two culprits who had thrown the sergeant into the hole quickly vanished. The private stayed on, too overjoyed to move.

I thought it was about time for some one to come to the aid of the sergeant. After all, he couldn’t stay upside down in that hole forever.

“What’s going on here?” I asked the private when I walked up.

“O, hello, Chaplain,” cheerfully replied the private. “The sergeant is after an earthworm.”

“An earthworm?” I echoed.

“Yes, sir. You see, the sergeant is a very determined man. He saw this worm crawling along and about to go into a hole. He bet me a quarter that he could catch the worm before it went into the hole. I took him up on it. The worm saw the sergeant coming, and since even worms don’t like sergeants, the worm made a dive for the hole. The sergeant made a dive for the worm and missed. He saw his quarter getting away, so he started to dig. He kept on digging when he should have stopped, and this is what happened.”

It was a good yam, so I didn’t let on I knew the truth.

The sergeant was still yelling and kicking but he was getting tired. “Come on,” I said, “we have got to get him out. He might die if he stayed like that too long.”

“Then why bother to get him out?” The private asked innocently.

But we grabbed the sergeant’s legs and started pulling. When we got him out he was covered with dust and dirt. His face was very red and he was blowing hard. He was too exhausted to stand, so he remained sitting on the ground.

The private spoke first, “Your face is red, Sergeant.”

The sergeant drew his hand across his grimy face and wheezed an answer, “I know you didn’t do it, soldier. But I’m going to bury you in that hole for standing there and letting it happen!”

Then I spoke up. “Now, Sergeant, you want to be careful how you speak to the soldier. After all, if it hadn’t been for his help you would still be down in that hole. And if it hadn’t been for you the hole wouldn’t have been there.”

The sergeant got slowly to his feet. He looked at me and then at the private. Finally he said, “O.K., Chaplain. I guess I was a little hard on him. Thanks for helping me out. But after this” (and he said this pleadingly) “please, please, don’t throw your butt on the ground … or mine in the ground.”

It isn’t often that you get a chance to see a private come out the victor in a clash between a private and a sergeant. Although I was sorry for the sergeant, I couldn’t hold back a little feeling of gladness that things had turned out the way they had.

Continuing my tour of the camp, I walked down to the drill field to see if anything interesting was happening there. We had a battalion of colored troops on our base, and when I approached the drill field I noticed that a group of these colored soldiers were on the field, being put through the drills by their drill sergeant. The drill sergeant was a tall dark Negro. I don’t think I ever heard a man with a more resonant bass voice. He could be heard easily from one end of the drill field to the other, although he was not shouting, just talking to his men. I have seen many drill sessions, but as I look back on it now, I think this was the best drill I ever witnessed.

The sergeant had twelve men, all of them fine soldiers. They must have been drilling for the sport of it. I knew that all of them were far too good to need any extra drilling. They were as prompt and precise in the execution of the commands as any general could hope for his troops to be. And why they were that good was a complete mystery to me. The orders the sergeant was giving them could not have been found in any drill manual. If the same orders had been given to any other group of soldiers, I knew they would have made a terrible mess of things. They wouldn’t have known what the orders meant. When I stopped to watch the men drilling, the sergeant turned and saluted me. Then he turned back to his men and gave them an order that went like this:

Stand up now and look right sharp,
The Chaplain’s on our right.
The drill we’re gonna do now
Must surely be a sight.

This order was given in cadence. Translated it meant that the men were to come to attention, which they did promptly.

The sergeant went on:

Turn to your left and don’t look ’round;
Left foot up, then on the ground.

That, to my way of thinking, was a unique way to say, “Column left. Forward march.”

On the right there is a gal;
If you look there you’ll be her pal.

That meant “Eyes, right.”

Up in front is her pappy;
If you’ll look there you’ll make him happy.

All eyes snapped back to an “Eyes, front.”

Up in front there is some sin;
Better turn back or we’ll fall right in.

That may not be the orthodox way to get away from sin, and it may not be the approved order for the movement “To the rear, march,” but it got the same results.

On our left there is a man
Who has come to preach as best he can.
If we turn left we’ll show this fellow
That our friendship is so mellow.

The group of soldiers was just in front of me at the time. This order meant that they were to do a left-flank movement and come up in front of me. When they had come within about ten feet, the sergeant said:

Better stop and don’t get closer.
Don’t forget, he’s an offcer.

That was his worst rhyme, but it made out pretty well. It brought the men to a halt, and that is what it was meant to do.

The sergeant saluted me and asked, “Chaplain, how did you like our drill?”

“Fine,” I answered. “But tell me, how do you think up those rhyming orders?”

He laughed. “Oh, they ain’t much. I got a knack for it when I was calling square dances down in Memphis. It’s all about the same—dancing and drilling. Only difference is I would rather dance.”

“Do you give all your orders in rhyme?” I asked him.

“No, sir. That was sorta special for you. Mostly I give them in short orders. Would you like to hear some?”

I answered that I most certainly would. So the men fell in and the sergeant gave them the first of the “short orders.” “Deer strut now,” he commanded, and the soldiers marched off in perfect cadence. ‘Turkey gander on the right” meant “Eyes, right.” After the men had marched down the field a short distance, I heard the sergeant sing out, “Going home.” The men did a ‘To the rear, march.” The sergeant gave the command “Route step” on the way back, but the way he did it was to say, “Tossum walk and grumble.” That meant that the men could break step and walk to suit their own convenience, more or less, and were permitted to talk.

After getting the men back to me and calling them to a halt and to attention, the sergeant gave them the order “Colored boy’s special,” which meant they could fall out.

I stepped up then and commended the men for their fine exhibition of drilling. They were pleased that I had enjoyed their drill and asked me to come back and watch them again. I promised to do this, and did many times.

When I started back to my office in the chapel, it was nearing time for retreat. Many of the soldiers had already been released from their duties and were dressed in preparation for their night passes which would take them into town to see their girl friends, shows, and other forms of entertainment. Nearly all of them were dressed very nicely and would have passed a stiff inspection easily. As I walked along the company street I met one soldier, a colored soldier, who was dressed with meticulous care. He outranked all others in the perfection of his dress. In fact, he had dressed with such care that he had attained the look of being overdressed. As I look at him I thought vaguely that he looked like a colored preacher on his way to a funeral. And that is what he turned out to be. It so happened that a good many colored preachers were drafted into the Army. These men were usually more or less free-lance, or self-appointed, preachers. They had no church of their own, as a rule, but preached wherever and whenever they could get a congregation to listen to them. This particular soldier had been one of these free-lance preachers in civilian life. Now that he was in the Army, he tried to keep up his profession during his spare time. Of course, his being in uniform gave him added power and prestige when he was among his brethren. When I met him on the company street, this soldier was on his way to one of the downtown Negro churches for an appointment. I stopped him and engaged him in conversation. I learned that he was on his way to a funeral.

“Yes, sir, Chaplain,” confided the soldier, “I’m in a powerful big hurry to git to town.”

“What is all the rush?” I asked.

He put on a very serious air, pursing his lips, letting a deep frown wrinkle his brow, and clasping his coat lapels in both hands. Great humility fairly dripped from him.

“Well, you see, sir,” he said very slowly and gravely, “one of our good brothers passed away in town the other night. The pastor of his church asked me to come in and hold the funeral service. So I is on my way now to funeralize the corpse.”