2. My First Assignment

When I knocked at the door marked Staff Chaplain, a voice from the inside called out, “Come in.” I opened the door and beheld a dried-up little Army officer sitting behind a very large desk. The first thing I saw was his bald head. When my eyes grew accustomed to the glare I noticed that he was wearing a colonel’s insignia. That almost took the starch out of my collar. I had seen colonels before. As a matter of fact, I had even been on the same elevator with one once. But this was the first time that I had ever been in the same office with one who was about to transact Army business with me. All the instructions I had received at Chaplains’ School as to how I should conduct myself when interviewing a commanding officer came flooding into my mind: Always take your hat off. Stand at attention. Hold your hat in your left hand. Use these words: “Chaplain Blank reporting for duty, sir.” Then don’t say any more or do anything until he says you can. And so on. But it was all wasted effort, as far as I was concerned. I was so flustered that I snatched my hat off with my left hand, put all my papers on top of my head, and said to the colonel, “Don’t speak until you are spoken to.” Thank heavens the colonel was also a chaplain! And thank somebody that he also had seen quite a number of other chaplains come through that same door. He just returned what was supposed to be my salute and asked me to be seated. That I did quickly and with great relief.

After a few questions and pleasantries about where my home was, how long I had been in service (as if he couldn’t tell!) and how glad (groan!) he was to have me in his command, the chief got down to the business of the interview.

“We have decided to send you to Pinedale, a camp about two hundred miles south of here,” the colonel remarked.

“Pinedale,” I grinned back at him (I was beginning to feel quite cozy with him). But I little dreamed that I was about to step into a nightmare of horrors.

“Yes. You’ll like the place,” continued the chief. “It’s really a swell place.”

That was a dead giveaway that trouble was brewing in the old pot for me, but my untrained ears failed to catch the warning. Later I was to learn that any time a commanding officer refers to an assignment he is about to send you on as “swell,” he really means another word that rhymes with it. I had my mouth opened, all prepared to ask him where it was, what it was, when I would be sent there, and a few other equally unimportant questions. But I never got the chance.

“I’ve already arranged reservations for you on the 1800 train,” the colonel informed me. “You had better be off now. Be at the station at 1745.”

I leaped to my feet, sending my hat and armful of orders and other assorted papers showering to the floor. “Yes, sir,” I snapped, showing him just how military I could be.

The chief stood up and started to the door. My agile mind suddenly arrived at the conclusion that the interview was over. He was showing me out. I had been in his office exactly four minutes. In those four minutes my young life had been taken and set in a new direction—a direction that would lead to experiences that would determine what remained of what I hoped would be a long and useful life.

The door was opened and I walked out—without even a chance to salute, as the drill sergeant had patiently taught me I must do.

“Good luck,” the chief said. “You’ll need it. Don’t forget to take your calisthenics every day.”

The door shut behind me. I was on my way.

As I started out the front door, I had a brilliant idea. I turned to the guard who was stationed at the entrance of the building. “Say, soldier…” When I spoke to him, he jerked to attention with such ferocity that it frightened me. I leaped back in fear that he might be about to whack me across the bean with his bayonet. But he didn’t do anything rash, so I edged back up to him. “Say, soldier,” I started all over, “what did the colonel mean when he said I should be at the train at 1745?”

I know now what that soldier must have thought, but he showed no sign of his contempt then.

“Sir, the colonel meant that you should be at the station at 1745 hours; that is, at five forty-five p.m.”

“Oh,” I said very meekly, “then I suppose I am to catch the train to Pinedale tonight.”

Despite his totem pole position, the guard managed to repeat in an incredulous voice. “Pinedale? Sir, did I understand you to say you were going to Pinedale?”

“Yes.”

“Are you being assigned there, sir?” He was still incredulous.

“Yes.” I was beginning to smell a rodent. “Why?”

“Oh nothing, sir. Nothing at all. But I was just thinking—if the Chaplain will excuse me—you are so young-looking.”

“What about it?” I asked growing more curious. “Is Pinedale the Army’s old-age home?”

The guard hastened to reassure me. “Oh, no, sir, nothing like that. I was just thinking that what is about to happen to you ought not to happen to anyone.”

By this time he had relaxed enough so that he was looking at me as if he were St. Peter and I were the world’s worst sinner scratching at the Pearly Gates. I was afraid to hear more, so I thanked him and went on my way.

As I walked along the streets of San Francisco, I began to receive salutes from enlisted men I passed. There is nothing like a few brisk salutes from crisp-looking soldiers to inflate a deflated ego. It makes you feel like a king whose subjects are knocking their heads on the floor in your honor. With each salute my morale went higher and higher. By the time I reached my hotel I was really in the pink. Pine- dale couldn’t possibly be that bad. That guard was just a “goof-off” who had gotten himself into trouble. Naturally, he wouldn’t like the camp. It was more than likely that he had been kicked out of the camp because he didn’t show the proper appreciation for its intrinsic beauty and loveliness. Beauty . . . ah, yes. Surely, a place with a name like that had gently swaying pine trees. Everywhere there would be gracefully rolling, grass-covered hills. Of course, there would be a cool stream running close by to give a flavor of freshness and cleanness to the air. And then in my imagination I saw the camp itself . . . long, shaded, adobe barracks, around which soldiers lolled in the shade and listened to the song of the wind in the pines. Richly colored flowers bordered all the buildings, streets, and walkways. Overhead, huge Army bombers (I was in the Air Force, so there must be bombers there) droned and rolled lazily in the azure sky. Pinedale! The very word had music in every letter. What a place to spend the war! And to think that Sherman had said that war was… well, he had thought so anyway. But he had never seen Pinedale.

Believe it or not, I caught the 6 p.m.—I mean the 1800—train (I’ve got to watch that civilian talk, and I wish you would remind me of it when you see me slip into some despised civilian lingo). I arrived in the city of Fresno about 2200. One of the chaplains met me at the station and drove me out to the camp, some seven miles away. Three times during the space of the brief ride I asked him to tell me something about Pinedale. All he would say was, “Wait and see for yourself.” Of course he didn’t actually say anything— but it was just his not saying anything which aroused some very grave anxieties in my overly suspicious mind.

The chaplain said that he had arranged for me to sleep that night in one of the temporary barracks. The next day I would be assigned to a room called the B.O.Q. (sometimes lengthened to “B.O. Quarters” by the enlisted men who had to clean it up), in one of the other barracks. When I went into the barracks where I was to sleep that night, I could see for myself that it was a temporary building—so temporary in fact, that I was not at all sure that it would be there when I awoke the next morning. The front screen door had already decided that it was time to move and had, on its own initiative, partly disconnected itself from the door facing. It remained suspended by about as much as holds up my wife’s strapless evening gown. The floor of the building had several large spaces between the boards. Those spaces weren’t altogether accidental in origin. One look at the roof—of a cheap tar paper, as were the walls—showed that one could count the stars from one’s bed and that a shelter half would be a very good thing to have in case of rain. The cracks in the floor took care of indoor drainage.

I finally reached the cubbyhole euphoniously called “my room.” It consisted of three pieces of heavy cardboard nailed on a wooden framework in such a manner as to form two side walls and one front wall. The side of the building served as the fourth wall. The cardboard partition made a wall about five feet high. It was one foot off the floor and lacked two feet of reaching the ceiling. The door was just a hole cut in the front partition. These walls created the sensation that I was sleeping in a shower stall. On several occasions when I switched on the overhead light, I ducked for fear that I had thoughtlessly turned on the shower. Afterwards I always felt foolish about this.

There were two single cots and one table made from an old crating box as furniture in the room. No chair, no rug, no closet; not even a nail in the wall. But luckily I was the only occupant for the night, so I put my clothes on the extra cot. I slept that night from sheer exhaustion—physical, mental, and emotional.

The next morning was October 1, and I awoke to greet the new day at the crack of dawn simply because a bunch of two-ton trucks kept racing down a road just outside my window. Yes, I awoke, in more ways than one.

By tiie time I had dressed and walked across a hundred yards of ankle-deep dust to the latrine (given prestige by a sign over the door which read: Officers’ Latrine) to shave, it was light enough for me to see all around the camp. I looked —and my whole soul looked with me. What I saw stunned me —and stunned my whole soul. There wasn’t a tree . . . not even one scrawny little pine. There wasn’t any grass . . . not even one bold little blade. There were no flowers. There was nothing, nothing I had looked for and dreamed of. But there was dust—everywhere. The ground was flat. It was red. It was all covered with two or three inches of powdery dust that whirled up in little clouds around your feet when you walked.

The streets were marked only by a ditch on either side and by the tracks the trucks left in the dust. All around me were buildings—all of them “temporary” buildings like the one I had slept in. There was more tar paper collected there than I had ever seen in one place in all my life.

Just then a truck came down the road. Behind it billowed out a great dense cloud of dust, a perfect smoke screen. A group of ten or twelve soldiers slushed by me. I supposed they were soldiers. The dust rose so thick from their feet that all I could see was the dim outlines of their shoulders and heads.

I don’t know how long I stood there. I was having a terrific fight within myself. All my dreams and imaginings . . . my fondest hopes about my new assignment . . . crumbled to the powdery dust in which I stood. It was a terrific shock. Instead of a garden I had found a desert. Instead of trees I had found desolation. Instead of lovely buildings I had found “temporary structures.” Everything was so different. Everything was so backward from the way it should have been. This was Pinedale.

As my stunned senses began to convince my mind that this was real, that I was actually awake and not suffering in a horrible nightmare, a very mean and ugly thought crept into my mind. I recalled that the chief had wished me good luck and then had added, “You’ll need it.” And that guard … I knew now why he had looked at me with such pity. He had seen Pinedale. “What’s about to happen to you shouldn’t happen to anyone”—that’s what he had said. I could see myself gradually choking to death in this dust. Or maybe I wouldn’t die that easily. Maybe the dust would gradually cut away my lungs like sandpaper, and I would die a slow, horrible death with heavings, coughing, and painful convulsions. I would suffer excruciating pain until sweet death finally released me from my miseries. The very thought frightened me. I couldn’t face it, I said. I wouldn’t stand for it. I was too young to die—like that, anyway. I would leave. I would escape. It would be easy. After all, Stalin had escaped from the salt mines of Siberia. I could manage this.

Then the good angel started talking back. Where would I go? What would my wife think? What could I tell my children in the years to come? Could I tell them that I had dared to fight the Japs at Guadalcanal, I had charged the beaches of Tarawa, and I had routed the Germans at Cassino—but I had broken down in the Battle of Pinedale? What would they think? And what would these men at Pinedale think? They had to stay . . . dust or not. They had to choose between the agonies of Pinedale and the firing squad. Was I less a man than any of them? No! I would stay. I wouldn’t choose the firing squad, either. I wouldn’t take the easy way out. I was at Pinedale and here I would remain so long as this old body held together.

Well, after that terrific battle I felt the need of physical nourishment, so I felt my way through the dust clouds to the mess hall. They had rigged fans in the windows there to blow the dust away from the building. This made the visibility fairly good inside, and I was able to find a table without too great difficulty. When I sat down I noticed that there was dry cereal and milk already on the table. I ate this, and after several futile attempts, finally managed to snare a waiter. My experiences of the morning had taken a heavy toll of my energies and I felt the need of a good, hearty breakfast. So I told the waiter, who was an enlisted man, to bring me some toast, coffee, and ham and eggs.

“I’m sorry, sir,” he said, “but I’m not allowed to do that.”

“This is a mess hall, isn’t it?” I still was not too sure I was in the right place.

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, you have ham and eggs, don’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then why aren’t you allowed to serve me?”

“Because, sir, you are on the wrong side of the mess hall.”

“I’m what… ?”

“On the wrong side.” He could tell by the look on my flabbergasted pan that I didn’t understand, so he continued. “On this side of the mess hall we serve only cereal and milk. If you want the regular breakfast, you must sit on the other side.”

It all soaked in, but slowly.

I tried again. “If I move over there, can I have ham and eggs?”

“Not this morning, sir,” he answered briskly.

“Why?”

“We have only hot cakes this morning.”

My usually gentle nature was about to get disturbed. “All right. All right. I’ll move over there and you can bring me hot cakes, dust cakes, mud cakes . . . anything you have . . . just so it’s something I can eat.”

Then the waiter almost apologized. “I’m sorry, sir, but we can’t serve you hot cakes this morning.” He said it gently but firmly.

I didn’t answer. It didn’t help much to question him. Perhaps if I just let him alone, I thought, I would get the story. Sure enough, here it came.

“The mess hall closes at eight o’clock, sir. And while we have been talking, that time has come and gone. It is now too late for me to serve you anything.”

What would you have done? Several ideas occurred to me, mayhem not being the least of them.