5. Getting Orders

There come times during a chaplain’s stay at a post when he must go to headquarters and have a conference with the supervising chaplain of the area. Such consultations give the supervising chaplain an opportunity to see how his chaplains are coming along and to offer suggestions and help to them in the conduct of their work. After I had been at Pinedale for more than a year, the time came for me to make one of these pilgrimages to San Francisco to have a chat with the chief. Off I went one bright morning, fully expecting to have a miserable trip. And I would have, too, had it not been for the refreshing antics of some of the members of our armed forces.

When I got on the train that was to take me to San Francisco, I found myself sitting in a coach that was occupied chiefly by servicemen. I had not been in that car long before I became aware of a feeling of animosity that existed between the soldiers and the conductor. I had no idea of how this unfriendly feeling came into existence. But I was sure it was there. And it was greatly increased after our first stop. Frankly, I couldn’t blame the conductor too much if he felt no particular love for those soldiers.

Every time the conductor came through our car, the soldiers taunted him with catcalls, ribs, slandering remarks, and general insults. The conductor glared at the soldiers, made threatening remarks about putting them off the train, and then went on his way. He made a mistake, I think, when he said something about putting the soldiers off the train. That planted evil seeds in the minds of some of the bolder characters. I doubt if they would have thought of their next plan of action if the conductor had not made that remark. The conductor probably will regret to his dying day that the thought of issuing that warning ever entered his mind. O cursed thought that could lead to such humiliation! This is what happened.

We had not gone many miles before the train pulled into a station and stopped. It was one of those small, out-of-the- way stations that have such an attraction for trains. As conductors so often do, this conductor opened one of the doors at the end of the coach, raised the coach platform, and stepped down onto the station platform. Three of the soldiers had followed the conductor to the coach platform, but they meekly and timidly kept their distance. In fact, they didn’t even step from the train, but merely stood on the lower step of the coach platform, just waiting. The conductor walked for a short distance along the platform, toward the front of the train. He was the only train attendant who had dismounted at this station, so the door he had opened was the only one on the whole train that was open just at that time.

When his business at the station was completed and it was time to depart, the conductor gave his signal to the engineer to start the train. He was still standing on the station platform, waiting so he could catch on at his door when the train moved by him.

Two soldiers had been standing on the lower step of the coach platform, watching the conductor. When they saw him give the signal for the engineer to start the train, and then felt the train slowly get under way, they galvanized into action. They hurriedly retreated to the upper platform of the car. They banged down the platform cover and slammed shut the nioor, and thus closed the only opening in the train through which the conductor could re-enter. When the car rolled by, you really should have seen the look of utter bewilderment, then of purple anger and rage, that came to that conductor’s face. He was put off his own train . . . cast aside and left behind. He waved frantically to the engineer, but that noble person was busy looking in the other direction. Shouting was of no avail, since the train was making so much noise. Slowly at first, then more and more rapidly, the train pulled out of the station, leaving the conductor racing about madly on the station platform. I saw him out the window as we passed by, and I remember that I hoped vaguely that he would now know how a civilian felt when he missed his train.

I think we would have pulled out of the station and left the conductor for sure, had it not been for the fact that the brakeman was standing on the rear observation platform of the train. He saw the conductor as we left the station, and pulled the overhead emergency-stop cord, which brought the train to a grinding halt. The conductor scrambled onto the train and we got under way again, this time with a full crew aboard. I don’t know what happened later, but as long as I was on that train that particular conductor did not come through our car again.

I would hate myself to my dying day if I were to take up your time and mine by telling you about all the things that went on while I was having my conference with the staff chaplain. I was with him for the better part of the day. When I got through and started back to my base, I tried to remember some of the things that had been said and some part of the undoubtedly important discussion that had taken place. But for some strange reason, probably because of my rather slow mind and thick skull, I couldn’t remember much of what had transpired. As I sat on the train on my return trip, I tried to boil down the day’s discussion to a few salient facts. This I did purely by dint of determination. This is what it all came to: The chief asked me, “How would you like to go overseas?” “Fine!” I exclaimed. “That is why I came into the Army. Have you got any good chances for my getting over?”

“Well,” the chief drawled, assuming a confidential manner, “we are going to need twenty chaplains over in the South Pacific before the first of May. The staff chaplain over there wants to relieve some of the men he has on duty now. They have been over since the beginning of the war, so he wants to give them a chance to come back to the States for a while. He says he wants no one over there but the younger men. Now, he will probably draw all those chaplains from our command.”

Since I was about the youngest chaplain in the Fourth Air Force, I thought I would have a pretty good chance of getting over. And I was certainly ready to go. I started working up a pretty good elation over the possibilities of my getting an overseas assignment. The chief noticed that I was getting excited over this good news, so he hastened to add, “Now, that is not official. It is just a rumor so far. You must keep it strictly in the family. It came to me pretty straight, but I can’t be too sure about it. Maybe there is something to it and maybe not—I don’t know. At any rate, it is still just a rumor.” And that is the way it was with everything else we discussed. Everything was “just a rumor.” The chief didn’t know for certain. He had heard this and that, but he couldn’t be sure. I couldn’t tell these things outside since they had to be kept in the family. There might be something to them, and again, there might not be—the chief didn’t know. At the end of the day I had heard a good many things, but I could be sure of two things: One, rumors were flying thick and fast at headquarters; two, the chief didn’t know anything for certain. And I might say, without the slightest intention of being disrespectful, that I knew both these facts before I went up for the conference with the chief. That was one thing you soon learned in the Army: Nobody knew anything, but everybody had an abundant supply of latrine rumors.

I returned to Pinedale and resumed my duties there, more or less giving up the idea that I would be requisitioned for overseas duty at any time in the near future. May came and passed without my being called for those South Pacific assignments, thus confirming my belief that the chiefs information, though well intended, was really nothing more than a rumor. I resigned myself to the obvious: I would spend the entire war at Camp Pinedale. You can imagine my surprise, then, when early in June I answered the telephone in my office and heard the camp adjutant request me to come to his office right away. I hurried up, wondering what I had done wrong now. But the adjutant had good news for me. He said that orders had just come in for me to report to Greensboro, North Carolina, immediately. Greensboro happened to be the site of the Army Air Forces Overseas Replacement Depot. When I learned that my orders were sending me there, I knew that my time had finally come. I was going overseas!

The orders said that I must report without delay to Greensboro, but there remained a number of things that I had to do before I could leave Camp Pinedale. For one thing, I had to arrange for my family to be sent back home to Florida. You see, in October of the year before, our first baby had been born. Then, in January, my wife and baby had come out to California to be with me, since it looked as if I were going to spend the rest of my natural life there, and we wanted it to be as natural as possible. Now all our things had to be packed, reservations had to be made on the train back to Florida, and I had to rush out and buy all the odds and ends that a little baby girl needs when she is traveling. On top of this, all my records in the chapel had to be checked, my equipment turned in, and my work there finished up. Even by putting forth my best efforts I knew that I wouldn’t be able to get away from Pinedale in less than four days. It took considerable persuasion to convince the commanding officer that I needed that much time. Every time I mentioned the subject to him he pulled out my orders and said, “Your orders direct you to report without delay.” I finally won out, and he gave in to the generous extent of allowing me four days to get ready to leave; but he kept muttering under his breath about what would happen to me if I didn’t report “without delay.”

At last it was all over. After a great deal of confusion incident to my turning in equipment, drawing it out again, and getting vaccinated for everything from flat feet to halitosis, I was sent to the replacement depot for final processing before being sent overseas.

When the Army says that you are to be sent overseas immediately, it means just that. When I got to the replacement depot at Greensboro, I stayed right there for four solid weeks. During the course of these four weeks of inactivity, I was required (along with a group of other officers, most of them chaplains like myself) to attend the showing of a training film every morning. The fact that all of us had seen these films many times before meant nothing to those in charge of the depot. Regulations said that all personnel going overseas had to see these films, and so we saw them. We were also put through the chemical warfare training course and taught how to build a camp, how to put up a shelter half, and how to dig a slit trench. Then, to add a little drama to this dull routine of training, I suppose, we were taken out to a lake nearby and taught how to abandon a ship that had been torpedoed. I went through four weeks of this, getting ready to go overseas immediately.

The last week of my stay at the replacement depot, I was placed in what they chose to call a “shipment.” I discovered that eight other chaplains and about three hundred enlisted men were in the same shipment. That meant that wherever we went, we would all go together. I noticed that the only officers in this shipment were chaplains, but I didn’t pay much attention to the fact at the time. On the night we were ordered to the port of embarkation, I was to learn of the serious mistake the Army had made by not assigning a line officer to our shipment. The replacement depot was required to place some officer in charge of every shipment. They picked me. I am sure this choice was made because I was the youngest and also the meanest-looking of the nine chaplains. It meant that I would have upon my frail, young shoulders the responsibility for three hundred enlisted men and (worst of all) eight chaplains. I would be their commanding officer, so to speak, until I delivered them safe and sound to their overseas destination. What a job for a chaplain!

At last the waiting was over and we were sent to the New York Port of Embarkation. During the past month of inactivity I had come to feel a deeper appreciation of the remark once made by Oliver Wendell Holmes that war was nothing but organized boredom. At the port of embarkation we found ourselves in the stew again. Here again we were subjected to inspections, quizzes, and cross-examinations to be sure that we really wanted to go through with this thing.

One thing that stands out in my mind particularly about the port of embarkation was the discussion that arose about the “horseshoe packs.” Each of these packs consisted of a woolen blanket, ten tent pegs, two tent poles, and one complete change of clothing. These items were rolled up inside a pup tent into a neat roll about four feet long, and then securely tied. This roll was then bent in the form of a horseshoe and tied over a musette bag. Inside this musette bag one carried a raincoat, a change of clothing, shaving articles, and various odds and ends that he thought might be needed to make life comfortable for the next forty days. The completed pack was then fastened to one’s back by a series of intricate and confusing straps that no one but the man who had made them could figure out how to use. The whole rig weighed about forty pounds.

We had learned by this time that we were going to be sent to the European Theater of Operations. All the fighting had ended there the previous April. This was July. And we knew that by this time all the troops in Europe had abandoned their foxhole apartments for the more comfortable civilian hotels and homes that the Army requisitioned from the communities it occupied. For this reason we were no little annoyed at the idea of having to prepare and carry on our backs these horseshoe packs. We griped considerably when, with these heavy packs on our backs, we had to march several miles to the train that would take us to the docks. But what really burned us up was something we learned later. One of the officers in our shipment was a nephew of the port commander. The night before we sailed, this officer had dinner with the port commander. During the course of the evening the matter of the horseshoe packs was brought up, and the port commander was informed that the officers and men didn’t take well to the idea. It was reported that when the port commander heard this, he enjoyed a good laugh and then asked, “Do they still require the troops to wear those packs? I put out an order at the beginning of the war that the troops going overseas should wear them because there was a real need for them then. But that was more than two years ago.

The need for the horseshoe packs ended long ago. I’ve just forgotten to rescind the order.”

It was funny to him, but when those useless pack straps were cutting into our shoulders, it wasn’t funny to us. But that is the way the Army is run. If a general puts out an order covering some particular matter, his subordinates will continue to obey that order for a million years after the need for the order has ceased to exist, unless the general happens to remember to tell them to stop. And they tell me that the Army builds initiative.