12. Paris Once More

Coming back to Paris was almost like coming back home. I had been there so many times, and had been free to wander over the city so much of the time I was there, that I had become rather familiar with the city and had made some friends among the natives. The people at the Red Cross Clubs had gotten to the point where they could set their clocks by my coming and going. But I have an idea that they were beginning to think I was A.W.O.L. because I was free so much of my time.

On this particular trip to Paris I was associated with the Air Evacuation Hospital, which was located at Orly, about fifteen miles from downtown Paris. It was to this point that I was carried when our hospital train arrived in Paris. At the hospital we were accorded the traditional Army welcome: a long waiting line. Again I had reason to rejoice that I wasn’t ill. I stood in line for four hours, waiting to be received into the hospital and assigned to a bed. The reason for this delay was that this hospital had to make out its own fifteen reams of orders, questionnaires, forms, classifications, and whatnot before we newcomers could be received into the hospital. There is one cardinal rule in Army hospitals: Never accept or believe anything written or said about a patient coming from another hospital. After all, all the other hospitals may be working hand in glove with the enemy. One simply cannot be too careful about the patients one takes into one’s hospital. Just because a man comes in with his leg missing, and a set of records from another hospital that verifies the fact that the leg is missing, is no sign that it is true. The most obvious cases can provide the setting for some kind of skullduggery. So examinations, forms, questions, records and anything else the commanding officer and his aides can think up must be set up and completed before a soldier can be admitted with a diagnosis of a missing leg.

When I was at last given the official stamp as being O.K. for admission into the Air Evacuation Hospital, a beaming, smiling, bowing, and kowtowing special service officer began to congratulate me and slap me on the back.

“What a lucky, lucky boy you are,” he purred enthusiastically. “You, even you, are to be sent to the United States by air. Can you imagine that?”

I said nothing, so he continued his ranting. “Yes, sir. The Army looks after its own. There is nothing too good for the men who are sick. They will receive first choice and first place.” Such enthusiasm inspired me to ask the seemingly practical question, “When? When will I catch the plane for New York?” That took the smile off his face. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to wonder about such trivial matters. He sputtered for a moment and then said, “Oh, I’m sure you will be gone in not more than three days. Most of the men leave within two days after coming here. But I am sure you can count on three days as the absolute limit.”

I’ll bet he is still wondering why I gave him the Bronx cheer. You see, I was beginning to catch on. That joker didn’t know any more than I did when I would be sent home. For all he knew, it would be three years. And that is what burned me up. He had the lack of intelligence to pass out this optimistic but wholly unverified promise of an early departure. Luckily, I knew better than to believe him.

When I got to the ward to which I had been assigned, I soon got acquainted with the other officers there. There were twenty of us on that ward, all waiting for air evacuation back to the States. Naturally, I was interested in how long they had been waiting. I didn’t have a chance to ask them. One officer, himself a medic, but this time on the receiving end (which was a gratifying thing to see), asked me rather sarcastically, “Well, I suppose they told you your plane would be ready in not more than three days?”

“Yes,” I replied, and mocking the officer who had tried to hoodwink me, I went on, “and you just have no idea how thrilled I am.”

Everybody laughed. Then some of them made some unprintable remarks about how slowly the men were being evacuated to the States.

I asked the medic, “How long have you been in here?”

“Only eighteen days. But I’m a new recruit. Some of these other men have been waiting for over a month.”

I prepared to spend the winter in Paris.

Fifteen days later I was told by the ward nurse that my name would be called the next day for air evacuation. That meant that I actually was getting out before the snow came to Paris. I went to bed that night a mighty happy young man. The next morning I was up bright and early, packing my bags and getting my things in shape for the trip home. I sang and whistled as I worked, for the world was all gay and lovely to me; I was going home, so what did anything else matter?

When I came back to the ward from breakfast, the nurse told all the patients to pay special attention to an important announcement that would be made about noon. But it didn’t bother me. Let them announce any old thing they can think of, I thought; I am going home. They could tear the hospital down, for all I cared. Nevertheless, just after noon I was all ears when the special announcement came out and the nurse read it for us on our ward. This is what she read:

All officers, enlisted personnel, and patients of this hospital are hereby notified that in the very near future the First General Hospital will take over the operation of this unit. Until such transfer is completed all evacuation of patients will cease.

Brother, that straightened out my dimples.

As things turned out, however, it wasn’t as bad as it sounded. Only six days after this, the situation had improved so much that I was again slated for evacuation. This time I made it. I actually got on the plane, bag and baggage.

One officer I had met when I had first come to the Air Evacuation Hospital was with me when we went out to board the plane to take us home. Ever since he had found out that he was to be sent back to the States by air, he had been dreading the trip worse than I dread a cold shower. He had never flown before and he told me that he just knew he was going to be sick. To tell the truth, I think he was plain scared. When he got on the plane, he found a seat as quickly as possible and immediately sat down. He was pretty nervous, and pale as flour. It so happened that from where he was sitting it was impossible for him to see the ground. He could look out the window but couldn’t see the ground unless he stood up, and that he was afraid to do. We hadn’t been in the plane long before the pilot began to warm up the engines. If you have ever been in an Army plane during that process, you know what we went through then. If you haven’t, just imagine what an egg feels like when you apply the beater; that will give you a fairly good idea of how the plane roars, shakes, shimmies, vibrates, and generally dances around while the engines are being warmed up. Well, when all that vibrating started, that poor officer who was so afraid of flying started getting sick. He yelled for the nurse to bring him a cup—and quick! He was airsick, he said . . . couldn’t stand the altitude. The nurse brought him the cup; then she asked him to stand up and look out the window—we hadn’t left the runway.

Transcontinental travel is an interesting thing. You never can tell just where you are in relation to the passage of time and the usual routine of life. At least, I never could. To show you what I mean: We left Paris at about five o’clock in the afternoon, with our first stop scheduled to take place on an island in the Azores. Somewhere along the route night overtook us, or maybe we overtook night. As I say, I never could tell about those things. At any rate, it was night when we landed in the Azores. As soon as we had been checked in by the authorities there, we were told where we could find the mess hall. It was two o’clock in the morning by their time, so naturally the mess hall was serving breakfast . . . and what a breakfast it wasl Now, I have nothing against the way the Army fed us while we were in Europe. I know they did the best they could, even if I did eat dehydrated eggs for two solid weeks. But when I sat down to eat on that island in the Azores, I sat down to a genuine guaranteed-to-please-or-your-money-back American breakfast: fresh eggs, bacon, toast, and milk. What a delight that was! We had an hour waitover on that island and I spent the whole time eating one breakfast after another.

When we left the Azores, we headed northwest to Newfoundland. Unfortunately, most of this trip was made at night and I was unable to see the ocean. Even when daylight came, there wasn’t much to see as we flew above the clouds most of the time. But it was certainly beautiful up there. One simply cannot adequately describe the brilliant blue of the sky above, and the dazzling white of the rolling, tumbling clouds beneath. Occasionally we would pass over great valleys and chasms in the clouds, and sometimes the floors of these deep-walled, snow- white valleys would open and I could see the slate gray of the ocean, with the little wrinkles of waves across it. When you are on a ship on the ocean, the waves are quite clear and distinct. But when you fly over those waves at ten or twelve thousand feet, they look like little wrinkles, or wind rows, in the sand.

As we approached Newfoundland, the pilot of our plane learned that the field where we were supposed to land was fogged in and the base authorities would not allow us to attempt a landing. Instead, they directed us to fly across the island to a second base, on the western side, which was reported clear of fog. That was all right with us, except for one minor detail: The crew of our plane was to have been relieved at the first base. There was no relief crew at the field where we had to land. That meant that we would have to wait there for at least eight hours while our crew got some sleep and rested up a bit—just another of those unavoidable delays that cropped up so often.

As soon as we were safely down on Newfoundland, we were escorted to the mess hall. There we learned that it was eight o’clock in the morning by their time. They too were serving breakfast. The fact that I had already stuffed myself to the gills with breakfasts in the Azores didn’t disturb them or me in the least. I sat down as though I had never seen an egg before, especially one trimmed with bacon, and went after it. It was wonderful, but I couldn’t get over the idea that something was wrong. Have you ever done that—eaten two breakfasts in the same day? Or maybe it wasn’t the same day . . . I didn’t know. All I knew was that I had eaten one breakfast and was now eating another one, with no dinner or supper between. Breaking up your fixed habits like that can get a person all mixed up.

After about ten hours in Newfoundland we started for the good old U.S.A. Our next stop would be Mitchell Field, New York. We landed there at about midnight—their time. By the time we got to the hospital and got checked in, it was two- thirty in the morning. Of course, the personnel there felt that they had to give us something to eat before they put us to bed. We were taken to the mess hall, where we were served a wonderful breakfast. (Well, what did you expect, dinner?) Again we had bacon and eggs. Somehow they didn’t look quite so good, but I managed to eat several just to keep from hurting anybody’s feelings.

My home was in southern Alabama, so when the time came for me to indicate my choice of hospitals to the authorities in the hospital at Mitchell Field, I told them I would prefer to go to one that was located about two hundred miles from my home. I was tempted to choose one in California; then I would be sure to go to one in Alabama. But I am too much of a conservative, and in spite of all that had happened, I had too much faith in the Army’s ultimate wisdom to take such a chance as that. Besides, if I had asked for California, it might have been just my luck to be sent there. It turned out that I had acted wisely, for I was sent to a hospital in Jackson, Mississippi, only four hundred miles from my home. I was pretty elated over this good fortune. Four days later I landed in the hospital in Jackson.

We had been told that when we got back to the States the first thing we would get would be a thirty-day leave. Naturally, that was what all of us were looking for. And I must admit that I probably made myself seem a bit worrisome in the eyes of the hospital authorities by constantly asking them when I was going to be granted my thirty-day leave. The medics at Jackson told me that I would have to go through the usual routine of examinations and record-making before I could go home. So the attack began.

First, I was assailed by a medic whose worthy task it was to get my history. By this time I had accumulated a set of records that looked like the transcript of a Huey Long filibuster. Anyone who was the least bit interested in my case could find out what he needed to know about me and my forbears from the landing of the Mayflower to the present date simply by looking at those records. But, no—the fact that I had a medical history as long as Jimmy Durante’s nose didn’t faze those medics a bit. They simply ignored it and plunged into the monumental task of making up their own set of records. I had to start from the beginning and tell every little detail. But I had the advantage now. I had recited this tale of woe so many times, I knew it by heart. I sounded like a schoolboy reciting in a singsong voice “The Village Blacksmith.” The poor medic who was trying to get my history had a terrible time trying to take it all down as I reeled it off. He must have been impressed with the uselessness of it all, for when I had finished he didn’t even ask a question, just said thanks and left. And I had a few more reams of records to add to my growing collection.

Once the records and examinations were all in order, I began the intricate process of trying to get my leave. Filling out the request for orders granting me leave was simple. But before I could pick up my orders I had to clear the post. That meant that I had to get a signed statement from every department in the hospital that I didn’t owe them anything and hadn’t borrowed a corkscrew from them. I had been in the hospital less than a week and had hardly stepped out of the ward in that time. Nonetheless, I had to get clearance from the library, Post Engineers, mess hall, Quartermaster, M.P.’s, and seventeen other agencies that I had never heard of and that had never heard of me. It was educational. The chances are that I would never have seen many of the places on that base if it hadn’t been for my running around with this clearance sheet. I accomplished the job in a day by madly rushing from one place to another. I wondered how the men who were really sick ever got cleared from a hospital. It took a man with pretty good health and a lot of wind and stamina to go through the job of getting clearance.