It was procedure at the school, however, for our company to be commanded by a student officer from our own ranks. As Lieutenant Murdock, the young staff officer in charge of our metamorphosis informed us of this, there was a not quite imperceptible flinching back, the faceless mass not yet ready to assume responsibility, leadership, or even individual personalities. After all, we were not men. We were zombies in khaki. It seemed an affront to our conglomerate anonymity to attempt to single one of us out.
“We’ll alternate the job of Company Commander so that as many men as possible will have an opportunity to gain the experience,” the staff officer said. “All right, now, who wants to lead off? Anybody here with previous military experience?”
There was another uneasy silence, and although all of us were staring straight ahead, we gave the impression of dropping our eyes and lowering our heads to avoid being seen.
The young staff officer gave a small smile of superiority that was meant to be sympathetic. “Come on now, don’t be shy. You’ll probably all have to do it sooner or later.”
But we were not to be coaxed out from the protective herd.
“No previous military experience at all?”
Then, in the silence, a voice from somewhere in the rear spoke up. “I’ve had previous military experience, sir.”
Irresistibly, all our heads turned. Every one of us had to mark for himself this first one to disassociate himself from the group.
“All right, eyes front,” the staff officer snapped. “You men are still at attention.” Then he turned to the man who had answered his question, and told him to come front and center.
Even in our stiffened attitudes of attention, I could feel all of us in the ranks leaning slightly forward in our eagerness to see the volunteer. A short, wiry fellow, with a face his mother must call alert but which impressed us as cocky, he stepped out smartly, executed his flank turn with clean movements and, when he had come within proper distance of the staff officer, threw him a salute with plenty of snap (we were supersensitive to things like this because we were just then learning how much more difficult proper saluting was than it looked at first glance). While he held his salute nicely until the staff officer returned it, I recognized this eager beaver as the little fellow who had the upper bunk right next to mine in the barracks.
“Your name, sir?”
“Wessel, sir.”
“How much military training have you had, Wessel?”
“Naval ROTC in high school, sir.”
Someone down the line snorted. The staff officer addressed us soberly. “I am going to appoint Mr. Wessel your first Student Commander. He will be in exactly the same authority here that I have been since you reported. You understand, men, the fact that he is a Student Officer like yourself in no way limits his authority for the period of his command. Any act of disrespect or disobedience toward him will be considered an act of insubordination under the Articles of War.” He turned to Wessel and said officially, “Mr. Wessel, assume command.”
Wessel saluted again, very salty, and faced us solemnly. I don’t know if all of us did, but I think most of us could sense what was coming. By some law of compensation, men who are deprived of the natural means of self-expression and exchange of opinion can become so sensitized to each other that one can feel little silent waves of approval or apprehension or resentment running through an entire company. What we felt now had no approval in it. Something in the way Wessel looked, in the way he changed when he stepped forward to assume command, gave us a hint of what we were in for.
The bark of Wessel’s commands was keyed to a self-conscious stridency as he dressed us off, brought us back to attention and then put us “at ease.” Then he stepped forward and addressed us with exactly that tone of condescension that often passes for a confidential man-to-man talk from a ranking military leader to his men.
“Men,” he began, “I couldn’t help noticing a few moments ago that when I told Lieutenant Murdock I had had naval ROTC training, one of you laughed.” He paused, for emphasis, and though I think every one of us in the ranks wanted to laugh again, we all waited dumbly with poker faces. “Maybe none of you realize that if you had all been in the naval ROTC, if our country had been more fully prepared, Pearl Harbor would never have happened. So when you laugh at naval ROTC you’re casting aspersions on the Navy itself, and our flag.”
If it had been a movie, a great Old Glory in technicolor would have unfurled majestically behind Wessel at this moment. Or perhaps phantom images of Roosevelt, Marshall and King would have grouped around him. But this was just Wessel all alone, a small figure against the high walls and towers of the fort. Lieutenant Murdock was looking on, but there was no way of telling from his young, carefully indoctrinated face which side he was on. In the silence, if there is any such thing as a hate-detector, our rising resentment would have sent it on past the danger point. But Wessel was too insulated by sudden power to feel the hate waves that rose from us and curled around him.
“Now I would like to ask that man who laughed to please step forward,” he persisted.
No one moved. We all just stood there hating Wessel.
“Mr. Wessel,” Lieutenant Murdock said, “if you wish to call a man out from the ranks officially, I suggest you bring your company to attention and give him the command, one step forward, march.”
Now we knew where Lieutenant Murdock stood, and we regarded him as a human being for the first time since we had come to the fort. “Thank you, sir,” Wessel said, and saluted. He was a little flustered. He gave the command, “Attention” and about half the company snapped to attention, but those of us who remembered what we had been taught the day before, that you don’t have to respond to a command unless it is given properly, remained smugly ‘at ease.’ “Company, attention,” Wessel quickly corrected himself, and he glared at us for capitalizing on his mistake. He had not been out there in front of us more than two minutes, but that had been time enough for a declaration of war on both sides. We had sighted each other and were moving forward to engage each other, as we were learning to say.
“Now,” Wessel faced us for the showdown, “the gentleman who laughed, on his honor as a naval officer, one step forward, march.”
There was a split-second pause and then a large, red-faced easygoing fellow with quite a belly on him stepped forward. Wessel marched toward him with his back very stiff, the expression on his face a small-fry imitation of Admiral King’s. He was a full head shorter than the man he had called out, which lent a certain absurdity to the severity with which he regarded him.
“Your name?”
“Finnegan … sir.”
The way Finnegan added that dutiful monosyllable would have had to be heard to be fully appreciated. It slipped out in a kind of effeminate slur that met the official requirements of respect while at the same time oozing disrespect. Now, under the pressure of Wessel’s reign, our phalanx anonymity was giving way to individuality again. We were beginning to have our villains and our heroes and soon we would find our jesters, our drones, our worriers, our politicians, our agitators, our rebels and our Babbitts, like any other family of men. It was as if we had all been lying together in a dark box like identical matches, and now, struck against the flint of Student Commander Wessel, we flared into flames of different sizes, hues and intensity. By the end of this day, for instance, we would know that our friend Jim Finnegan was a Hiram Walker distributor for Eastern New Jersey, that he called his wife “Ginger,” that he had played second-string guard for Rutgers, that he was rather proud of his imitation of Amos and Andy, with which he had once wowed a wholesale liquor convention, and that he liked to form barracks quartets to sing old ones like “I Want a Girl Just Like the Girl Who Married Dear Old Dad.” But right now he was a one-man patrol feeling out the enemy in the first skirmish of one of those innumerable little wars that rage within larger wars that are fought within still larger wars.
Now Wessel was firing at point-blank range. “Didn’t you und
erstand Lieutenant Murdock when he explained that I was to receive exactly the same respect as if I were your regular Commanding Officer? If you were to laugh at a remark of your Commanding Officer, you would be guilty of insubordination and …”
“Excuse me … sir,” Finnegan interrupted. “I laughed at you before you had taken command. Lieutenant Murdock hadn’t appointed you yet.”
None of us moved or made a sound, but we all smiled. That was one time when a generality like “the company smiled” would have been absolutely accurate.
“Mr. Wessel”—Lieutenant Murdock came into it—”I would suggest you return Mr. Finnegan to his squad without further reprimand. You are absolutely right to stress military discipline, and there is certainly no place for levity here. But in this initial stage of the indoctrination course, we can be a little more lenient with newly commissioned officers than we might be later on. After all, we must remember that they have not had your advantage of previous military training.” All of us searched the proper face of the recent Annapolis graduate for some sign of sarcasm as he addressed his colleague from the naval ROTC. But we searched in vain. It was like looking for something you have dropped under the seat of your car. You are sure it must be there, but you can’t find it. “Mr. Wessel,” Lieutenant Murdock said, “I assume you are familiar with the commands and proper execution of close-order drill.”
“Yes, sir,” Wessel said emphatically.
“Then for the next forty-five minutes you will drill your men. Have them back here by 1600 and dismiss them for recreation and showers until chow call.”
Then Lieutenant Murdock was gone. We had been delivered over to Mr. Wessel.
We were on our way out to the drill field, and doing pretty well for beginners, we thought, when Wessel gave the command, “Third platoon, to the rear, harch.” The entire company, with the exception of the inevitable two or three who forgot to turn at all, reversed its course. Wessel shouted “Company, halt,” in an angry voice. “I gave you that command on purpose to see if you were on your toes,” he scolded. “I distinctly said third platoon, not company. Now let’s see you fellows get on the ball. You’re being trained for a war, not a tea party.”
It was a warm day and streaks of sweat had begun to stain our blouses. Wessel got us back in formation, turned us around and started us off again, counting cadence for us in his best military manner, “Hun, tuh, thr, fuh, heft, right …” Then, because some of us were out of step he gave the order for us all to count cadence in unison. It started somewhere in the rear squad, and spread forward, so in time with the cadence that it could hardly be distinguished. But it was there all right: “We—hate—Wes—sel—all—right …”
When Wessel finally detected this mutiny in the ranks an extra bit of color flushed his cheeks, but he fought back stubbornly. “All right, wise guys, knock it off.” Then he countered with a “Change step, harch.” We hadn’t been taught this yet, so the result was pretty much of a foul-up. We knew the only reason Wessel had given us this was to show off his military virtuosity, but another reason it made us mad was because we were just reaching that stage of indoctrination where we had begun to take pride in ourselves as a unit, enjoying the rhythm of doing things right.
“What’s the matter with you joes, two left feet?” Wessel scolded again.
This time a lean, bony-faced, red-haired squad leader spoke up. “No, sir, it was your fault, sir. You were out of step.”
We all looked at him gratefully, another individual added to our growing list. We had our villain, we had our hero, now we had our expert.
Wessel went up to him excitedly. “I was out of step? How could I be out of step? Aren’t you supposed to keep in step with my count?”
“That command can only be given when the right foot touches the ground, so you can step out on the left foot, sir.”
Wessel looked at him and frowned. He had counted on being the only drill man in the outfit. But he knew that answer was right out of the Bluejackets’ Manual. “Where did you learn that?” he asked suspiciously.
“I’ve served two hitches in the Navy,” the redhead said. This was a direct hit. “I’ve just been commissioned from Chief.”
“Then why didn’t you put your hand up when Lieutenant Murdock asked who had previous military experience?” Wessel demanded.
“Because I’ve been in the Navy long enough to learn to keep my mouth shut and never volunteer for anything, sir,” this redhead said.
It was a broadside all right, and Wessel didn’t have enough sense of humor to roll with it. He took it hard. All the rest of us laughed, though. The redhead had timed it beautifully. We had something there in that redhead.
“All right, knock it off, knock it off,” Wessel screamed, his voice going high in frustration. He reassembled us again, barking his commands with an extra zip to make up for that right-foot business.
So far we figured we were out to an early lead. But it wasn’t 1600 yet. By this time we were a good half-mile from the muster ground on the other side of the fort. It was time we started back. But instead of giving us an ordinary “Forward, march,” Wessel gave us a double time. Nearly all of us still had the bodies of middle-class civilians in sedentary jobs and one hundred yards of that double time was just about our speed. But when we had run two hundred yards, Wessel still gave no sign of slowing down to ordinary cadence. We were a pretty sick-looking lot by that time. Gorham, a fat boy who had been recruited from an advertising agency and who had done all of his training at Toots Shor’s bar, had to give up at the halfway mark. We didn’t look back, but we could hear what he was doing as we left him behind. “We ought to rub that little bastard’s nose in it,” someone muttered.
The rest of us managed to finish, but it was pretty bad. It reminded me of a movie about the mad Czar of Russia I had seen when I was a kid. All about how Paul the First marched his soldiers up and down all day long until some of them dropped dead. Then, for laughs, he faced a squad toward a cliff, told them to forward march and then went in to have his dinner. Two soldiers who refused to commit themselves to the ravine as per Paul’s command were shot for disobedience. That’s what I was thinking about Wessel while I was trying to catch my breath. A couple of fellows had the heaves.
Only Flanders, the redheaded ex-Chief, and Gersh, the Jewish boy who had been a Brooklyn handball champion, and one or two others I hadn’t noticed before were able to stand up without struggling for breath. We were too exhausted even to hate Wessel the way we were going to when we caught our breaths.
“Sixteen hundred to seventeen-thirty, turn to for recreation,” Wessel announced. “Company dismissed.”
“How about this for recreation?” Finnegan suggested to a couple of new friends as we headed wearily for the barracks. “Let’s throw Wessel on his back and we’ll all jump on him, in cadence, double time.” In our weakened conditions, needing a safety valve for our anger, that seemed funny enough to be worth passing on to the entire company.
We all walked back to the barracks in two’s and three’s. Only Wessel walked alone, an erect, solitary little figure, feeling the weight of his responsibilities. That evening at mess no one would pass him anything and no one would speak to him. I think, in a way, we were all glad to have Wessel there to focus our anger on. A body of men in training needs something like that to break the monotony. Tojo and Der Führer were too far away. We were all wandering around blindfold and we needed something to pin the tail on. The existence of Wessel gave all of us our first chance to express ourselves. I made up a limerick about him which won me my first recognition. Finnegan worked up an imitation that proved very popular. Flanders called him “The Admiral,” and that name pleased us for a while. Somebody else called him “Little Napoleon,” and a serious high-school teacher from Troy amended that to “Napoleon the Fourth.” Our imaginations seemed limitless, our wit endlessly resourceful where Wessel was concerned. Thanks to Wessel, we had our first sense of morale. That was the first evening that real laughter was heard
in the mess hall. We began to discover that we were not just a line of mechanical men out of some blue-jacketed RUR. Each one of us had his own individual way of reacting to the tyranny of Student Commander Wessel and we were drawn toward one another in the common cause.
Wessel and I had to undress in the same narrow space between the double-decker beds. “Sure wish we had a little more room to stow our gear, mate,” he said. He talked as if he had been born in the navy. He was a salty little character, all right. I didn’t say anything. Even if I had wanted to, I was silenced by the spontaneous unwritten law. There wasn’t going to be any fraternization with the enemy.
After Wessel got undressed and came back from the head, he knelt on the stone floor against the sack under his and said his prayers. I was a little sorry to see him do this. It nicked the sharp edge of my indignation just a little bit. Not that I was sentimental about people saying their prayers. It was just that from my upper he looked awfully small and vulnerable down there. He didn’t look quite formidable enough to be worth the emotion we were all expending. But even after taps, with the lights out, the war went on. Someone, I think it was Finnegan, but it might have been another wag, Cosgrove, began giving falsetto commands in an outrageous take-off of Wessel.
“All right, pipe down,” Wessel called.
“Pipe down,” the falsetto echoed. “Change step, harch,” a high voice mimicked.
“Come on, knock it off,” Wessel demanded.
But his military authority couldn’t do him much good in the dark. “Knock it off, girls,” a series of falsettos trilled through the barracks.
But next morning Wessel returned to the attack. At morning muster he laced into one platoon leader for not keeping his fingers together when he saluted on the “all present and accounted for.” During the morning it began to drizzle and the uniform of the day was changed to include rain covers and raincoats. When we mustered after noon chow, Wessel’s sharp eyes discovered that a small, somewhat comical ensign by the name of Botts was not wearing the plastic cover that fitted over our cloth hat covers. Botts was a pharmacist from Oxford, Mississippi, who had already come to Wessel’s attention because of an inability to keep in step that was so consistent it appeared to be congenital. Wessel bore down on him now exactly as one has read the first Napoleon did, upbraiding his man for inattention to regulations. In his slow, naive drawl, Botts explained that rain covers had sold out at the PX before he could get one.
Some Faces in the Crowd Page 14
