10. Paris Again

I packed my bags once more, had my money changed from German marks back to French francs, picked up my orders, signed out, bade farewell to Germany, and went out to the airfield and boarded the plane. I went through these motions automatically. I had made so many moves since coming to Europe that moving had become a habit. And I was beginning to think that the Romans had had it all wrong. All roads didn’t lead to Rome. They all led to Paris. No matter where I went, it seemed that sooner or later I would wind up back in Paris.

When I landed back at the same field on which I had first arrived in Paris, I called the headquarters of the 844th Aviation Engineer Battalion and told them to send a truck for me and my baggage—their new chaplain had at last arrived. In short order the truck arrived and I was driven over to the battalion area. Much to my surprise, the place was deserted. I had had visions of the commanding officer and his staff turning out the whole battalion in a parade of welcome. But no one was there to bid me welcome—not even the battalion mascot, a mongrel pup. The driver of my truck hastened to explain this terrible breach of courtesy. It seemed that everybody had gone to a beer party.

I was curious to know what they were celebrating. Surely, it wasn’t the fact that they had a new chaplain.

At my question, the truck driver reassured me, “No, sir. We just got a new commanding officer, and we like him so much better than we did the last one that we thought we had better have a little party about it.”

It was about five o’clock in the afternoon and I was hungry. There was little chance of getting anything in the officer’s mess, so I decided to go to the party too. I couldn’t and wouldn’t drink any of the beer, but I might be able to find a sandwich or two. So after I had unloaded all my baggage in the tent that had been assigned to me, I asked the truck driver to take me to the battalion party.

When I got there, I found that most of the men were down at the swimming pool. On my way to the pool I met several of the battalion officers … all dripping wet.

“What’s the matter with you?” I asked one of these officers.

“Just took a swim in the pool,” he smilingly replied while the water made a little puddle where he stood.

“No bathing suit, I suppose,” I commented.

He grimaced. “Wouldn’t have had a chance to put one on even if I had owned one. I was thrown in the pool—entirely against my will. You had better stay away from there. This is a party for the enlisted men of the battalion, and they have decided to throw all the officers in the pool without benefit of a bathing suit. If you go down there, they will probably throw you in too.”

I thanked him for the warning, but decided that I would go down to the pool anyway. It was a cold day and the prospects of taking a swim in the pool while fully dressed were not pleasing. But it would be fun to see the others tossed in. When I got to the pool I was surprised to see that the enlisted men had taken hold of the commanding officer, a lieutenant colonel, and were preparing to throw him into the icy waters of the pool. He was putting up some resistance but I could see that it was all in fun. The enlisted men pulled the colonel up onto one of the diving towers. One of them got hold of an arm and a leg while another took the colonel’s other arm and leg. Then they gave the colonel a great heave ho and sent him flying through the air and into the pool. He came up spluttering and uttering a few unprintable descriptions of the G.I.’s.

All the enlisted men on the warm, dry bank of the pool roared in laughter. It was a great day for them. The colonel swam to the edge of the pool and climbed out. Then he climbed back onto the diving tower from which he had been hurled, and on which the two enlisted men who had hurled him were still standing. When the colonel got to the top, he dared the two enlisted men to follow him in some dives. But their clothes were dry and the tower was high, so they demurred. The colonel insisted until one of the men gave in and agreed to follow the colonel. He was supposed to be an expert diver, and felt that he could do anything the colonel could do. To everybody’s surprise, that plucky little colonel executed a most beautiful and difficult dive (the name of which I don’t know)—and he did this while dressed in dripping-wet G.I. clothes. The enlisted man who had taken the colonel’s dare stood there in open-mouthed amazement. His embarrassment was great because he knew that he couldn’t make that good a dive. He had to back down. And the new colonel became the hero of the battalion.

By the way, they didn’t throw me into the pool—they were too busy with the colonel.

Three weeks after I had joined the staff of the 844th Aviation Engineer Battalion, we got our orders to move from Paris to Camp Detroit, a mudhole located just far enough away from Rheims, France, to make it impossible to get into that city on a regular pass. As I have indicated, the outfit to which I had been assigned was slated for transfer to the Pacific Theater of Operations. The order sending us to Camp Detroit was the first step in the plan to send us on to some island in the Pacific. Camp Detroit was one of the so-called redeployment camps. I have often wondered who the guy was that set up those camps and gave them their names. Even though all the men who were sent to these camps were destined for further overseas service, the camps were all given nostalgic names. When I rode around through the Rheims area, I saw camps with such names as Detroit, Washington, San Antonio, Macon, New York, Chicago, and the like. To ride over this area and see the names of the camps, one would think he was right in the heart of the good old U.S.A.

Ever since I had learned that I was going to be sent on to the Pacific, I had been reading with special interest all the information put out about these redeployment camps—where they were, how they were set up, what facilities they had, and other things about them. I had known that there was the possibility that I would be in one of them for several months, so I had wanted to know all I could about them. The best source of information was the Army newspaper Stars and Stripes. Hardly a week passed without its pages echoing the praises of the redeployment camps. I had been particularly interested in the things they had said about Camp Detroit, though at that time I had had no idea that I would be sent there; I hadn’t thought I would be that lucky. To be sent to Camp Detroit would be like being sent on a vacation with pay, it had seemed to me. Stars and Stripes had boasted that Camp Detroit had hot and cold running water, an adequate supply of showers, a theatre, and a 110-per-cent-efficient special services office that provided all kinds of good entertainment for the men while they waited. Camp Detroit was beautifully landscaped, the newspaper had gone on, with paved roads, gravel paths, and grassy terraces. Dining rooms were set up there that even had tablecloths and real silverware. And as for entertainment—the U.S.O. used this camp as its headquarters. There was a good show going on all the time. … It hadn’t seemed possible that there could be such a place in all of Europe. You can imagine my surprise when I learned that our own battalion was going to this very same Camp Detroit for redeployment.

Since it had rained nearly every day I had been in “sunny” France, I wasn’t surprised when I got up on the morning when we were to move and saw that it was still raining. I had hoped that we would have a good day for the move. But, rain or no rain, like the mail, we had to go. Brother, let me assure you it was a miserable trip. If you would like to know what it was like, pick a day when the temperature is down to about thirty-five and the rain is coming down pretty steady. Then get in an open truck, so that the wind and rain can beat in on you all the time, and take a hundred-mile trip. I don’t think you will want to do that very often.

However, since we all knew that we were going to such a delightful spot as Camp Detroit, we just gritted our teeth and toughed it out. At long last we reached Camp Detroit and were assigned to our camping areas. We skidded and slipped down the “paved streets” to this area, and pulled our convoy to a halt before the beautifully landscaped hollow in which we were supposed to camp. Naturally, we thought the camp officers had made a mistake. The place where we had been told to make our camp was a lake, and a very lovely one at that. Undaunted by this setback, we unloaded our trucks and made camp in the lake. Fortunately, the water in it turned out to be only about six inches deep. For two feet of insecure footing below the water, the lake was soupy mud. But this had great advantages. As long as we camped there we were never troubled by things getting dusty.

As for the showers, we found out they had them all right. The only trouble was that the water never had been connected to them. And the only hot water was what you could heat in your helmet. The way to get it to run was to get someone to stand on a box and pour it over your head as you tried to bathe.

The much-bragged-about theatres of Camp Detroit turned out to be about as big a flop as Casey at the Bat. We had all read in Stars and Stripes, (sometimes called “Bars and Gripes,” and sometimes more accurately than that but less printably) that Camp Detroit had the finest theaters in all the E.T.O. I couldn’t question the authority of that statement; but if it was true, then the Army Special Service Division should be investigated by the Truman Committee when Harry gets back to the Senate. Like the rest of “beautiful, luxurious, comfortable Camp Detroit,” the theatres were still in the blueprint stage. The authorities there, however, had managed to throw up a large tent and install seats consisting of a single, one-by-six-inch board.

Our luck was good in one respect. The day after we landed in camp, news went out that the famous Rockettes from New York were to appear in the theater. Since the theater would hold only a thousand soldiers (that is, it was large enough to hold two hundred and fifty civilians), tickets were issued for the three-day-run of the show; only those holding tickets would be allowed to see the show. I was lucky and drew a ticket which was good on the first day of the show.

So, at the time appointed I hustled over to the theater to see the show. I could almost say I swam over, since there was a regular downpour of rain. The line had already formed and I took my place, along with the nine hundred other soldiers—all ahead of me. This was the first chance most of these men had had in a long time to see American beauty in the flesh, and the boys weren’t taking any chances of missing out on this. After about an hour of standing in line I got inside the theatre. Another hour passed, while I balanced like a chicken on the one-by-six-inch plank called a seat, before the show got started. I was so far back in the theater that I couldn’t hear a word that was said by the characters on the stage. This situation was remedied by the use of a public address system—which worked off and on, mostly off. Just about the time some comedian would get to his punch line, the speaker would sputter and buzz and die out. But that didn’t keep me from looking. However, even the enjoyment of just looking was destined to be short-lived. The show had been under way about half an hour when some of the G.I.s crowding around the center pole holding up the canvas roof of the theater got to pushing and playing around. The first thing we knew, the pole had been knocked down and the whole roof was floating down on us. Then I couldn’t even see. I decided it wasn’t worth the trouble and went back to my tent. Some day I am going to New York and see the rest of that show.

For some weeks I had been bothered with a pain in my stomach that I felt was not altogether due to the things I had to gripe about. Now that we were settled in Camp Detroit, I felt that this would be as good a time as I would find for some time to let our battalion doctor know about it and to ask him to give me something to remedy the situation. I should have known better than to reveal my troubles to such an inquisitive person. He wanted to know how I slept, what I ate (as if he didn’t know), what my grandmother’s first cousin had died of, and a lot of other information that had nothing to do with my stomachache. When he had completed this inquisition that would have put the Spanish to shame, his verdict was that there was nothing he could do for me. But, being a kind and considerate man by nature, he made arrangements for me to go to the nearest general hospital— whether I wanted to or not. And them were his words, pard- ner: I was trapped and couldn’t escape. Just a simple question like “Doc, what can I do for my stomachache?” had gotten me smacked right into a general hospital, from which there was no turning back. I was soon to come to a deeper appreciation of that dismal warning, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” You wouldn’t guess it, but those words were written expressly about Army general hospitals. They were the easiest things in the world to get into and the hardest things in the world to get out of—just like riding boots.