I also drove back to Nichols Field as quickly as I could, and I picked a devious route that avoided stoplights. There were Filipinos in Manila hungry enough to jump into your stopped truck and throw down your ration boxes to waiting friends. Because I took an out-of·the-way route I never lost any rations. The only drawback to the job was that I had to drive to the commissary on Saturday mornings, too, which gave me a six day work week. On the positive side, I was excused from Saturday morning inspections. Our new squadron commander, a forty-year-old captain who had been passed over for promotion once and was terrified that he would be passed over again, which would put him out of the Air Corps forever, held inspections every Saturday—in ranks, and in the barracks. Major Burns had only held inspections once a month at Clark Field, and sometimes he skipped a month. But Nichols Field was in Manila, and everything had to look nice all of the time in case some visiting V.I.P. came onto the post. Saluting was enforced, and a man had to be in proper uniform. If you wore civilian clothes, you had to wear a necktie. Red Thompson, gone, now, back to the States, wouldn't have lasted very long in this spiffy garrison atmosphere. There were M.P. foot patrols walking around the post, and strange officers, not from our squadron, were always looking for some enlisted man to pass them by without saluting. I liked it better this way. After all, if a man is going to play soldier, which is what Air Corps soldiers are doing, he might as well play by the rules. I missed the old houseboys we had at Clark, however; these new Manila houseboys never polished my shoes as well as the boys at Clark had polished them.
On October 1, when I was relieved from duty, I told the first sergeant that I wouldn't mind driving the rations truck right up until the day I left. But the first sergeant turned down my offer.
"Nothing doing, Willeford," he said. "I know you too well. If I didn't relieve you from duty, you'd probably complain to the Inspector General that I discriminated against you. Now, get out of here."
I didn't argue, because it would have been pointless. But I would never have gone to the I.G. about anything: the first sergeant misjudged me there.
Once a month an officer from the Inspector General's Department came on the post, and he sat in an otiice at headquarters all day, waiting to hear grievances from enlisted men. The date he was on the post was always printed on a memo on each squadron bulletin board, but no enlisted man in his right mind ever went to see him, Whether a man had a legitimate grievance or not, just to see the I.G. automatically marked that man as a troublemaker. From then on, his ass was up for grabs.
On paper, I guess the idea of an Inspector General's Department looks like a good one. The I.G., who is accountable to no one, can go right to the top to correct any and all complaints. But when he leaves, the man who made the complaint is still there. The only thing worse than complaining to the I.G. is to write a letter of complaint to your congressman. The congressman will take care of your complaint all right, but you will probably end up being transferred to some isolated station in Brownsville, Texas, or some other horrible place, and spend the rest of your enlistment guarding an empty warehouse on a midnight to eight A.M. shift.
One guy at Nichols Field, a parachute rigger, wrote to his congressman about some injustice or other, and was transferred to the morgue at Port Area. He spent the rest of his tour embalming dead soldiers and sailors who were to be shipped back to the States for burial. On the other hand, he learned a new trade, so perhaps he came out ahead of the game at that. But he was just the exception that proves the rule.
***
To GET SOME SPENDING MONEY 1 SOLD MY TWO LINEN suits, the blue one and the oyster-colored one, and all of my civilian shirts, socks, and neckties. Wearing my uniform, I would ride into the city with the new rations truck driver in the morning, get out downtown, and spend the day in Manila. As a rule I ate lunch at the Steinberg Hospital mess hall, where no one ever checked on casuals in uniform, and then I would go to the Y.M.C.A. and get free tickets to a movie. Toward sundown I·would make my way back to Paranaque, take a swim in the bay, or perhaps help some of the guys who owned outrigger canoes secure their boats for the night.
I could have found a few bars in Paranaque where I could establish jawbone, and where no one knew I was leaving, but I wouldn't do that. Those small bars operated on a marginal basis anyway, and it would have been a chickenshit thing to do.
On my last night before leaving I spent the last of my money getting laid and bought a bottle of macakabuhay, a sweet wine with a low alcohol content. Three days out on the water I came down with a case of crabs, an infestation I had managed to avoid successfully for two years.
***
As SOON AS 1 PUT MY TWO BARRACKS BAGS AWAY ON MY assigned bunk in the forward hold, I made a beeline for the chaplain's office. Henderson was already there, and sowas Isaacs, the Q.M. man from Camp John Hay, in Baguio. The same chaplain was on the boat, and I realized that this poor guy had been riding the U. S. Grant for two full years. The chaplain was a bald, fat, genial Presbyterian, and he had mastered the art of delegating almost every one of his duties to someone else. Except on Sundays, when he held a fifteen-minute service on the afterwell deck for a handful of enlisted men, and the same fifteen minute service for a few officers and their wives in the officers' lounge, he didn't do a damned thing.
There were about eight hundred men aboard, and the chaplain could pick as many helpers from them as he wanted to maintain morale. He remembered the men who had worked for him before, so Isaacs got the newspaper again, and Henderson became a runner again. He had another guy to run the P.A. system and play records, a guy to emcee the soldier shows, and an experienced projectionist to show the movies at night.
As I saw all these jobs disappear (which meant being excused from K.P. and every other detail), I got a little desperate, and when my turn came to talk to the chaplain I told him that I wanted to form a choral group to sing at the G.I. shows. (The men who performed at the various shows that were put on during the voyage were each given a free carton of Red Cross cigarettes.)
"That sounds interesting," he said. "How many men will you need?"
"Five, at least. But I'll have no trouble getting volunteers if I have a pass to do some recruiting. Also, I'll have to rehearse these men."
Henderson, who was standing there grinning, put in a good word for me. "Willeford has a fantastic voice, Chaplain."
The chaplain shrugged. "Give him a pass," he told his assistant.
I got my pass, which excused me from duty and gave me free run of the ship, plus access to the mess hall for early chow. Being able to go to the head of the line was perhaps the best part of the deal, because the chow line usually took two or three hours to get through.
The day before we reached Guam, which was four days out of Manila, the crabs appeared. I went to the iniirmary, and the medic made me shave my pubic hair. He gave me a tube of blue ointment to rub into my genital area. Larkspur lotion is much better for getting rid of crabs, because you don't have to shave your pubic hair, but there was none available on a ship at sea so I had to undergo this messy blue ointment treatment. It worked, though, and in a few days the crabs were gone.
There was a G.I. show scheduled on the afterwell deck on the night after we left Guam, and I realized that I had to get some kind of singing group together. This proved to be more difficult than I had thought it would be. Soldiers like to watch these amateur variety shows, but they enjoy them most when they can boo and ridicule the performances. As a consequence, it's hard to get volunteers to perform. Even guys with good voices, or musicians who truly know how to play their instruments, are reluctant to appear. But there were several men who were flat broke, like me, who needed a free carton of cigarettes. I finally found three guys, all of them unhappy with the idea, and none of them could sing worth a damn. The only song I knew by heart was "A Tisket, a Tasket." I had learned this song by hearing it on the radio constantly all over Manila, as sung by Ella Fitzgerald. These other guys didn't know the words, so I got Isaacs to type them, a
nd we practiced singing the song in the forward head.
The singers I had recruited were unhappy as hell with "A Tisket, a Tasket" but none of them had an altemative to suggest. I decided would go on with just this one song, and then, if the audience wanted an encore, we could sing it again. I didn't expect an encore, and I was iight. When our turn came, we sang the song, reading the words from the typed sheets as we went along, and not only were our voices unharmonious, there was a slight feedback from the P.A. system, and that made us sound even worse than we were. We were booed throughout the song, and for the next few days, everywhere I went on the boat, guys would call out, "Hey, Willeford, did you ever find your little yellow basket?"
But I didn't give a shit. I had my pass; I could still eat early chow; I didn't have to pull K.P. in 110-degree heat; and I had a free carton of Chesteriields. I spent most of my time on deck, thinking. I was trying to decide what to do—get out, or re-enlist. A decision like this is not an easy one to make. Even soldiers with twelve and fifteen years of service call it the "horrible decision" that comes up every three years. By reading Time and Life I had kept up with what was going on in the States, and I knew that there was no improvement in the Depression.
If anything, economic conditions were worse now than they had been two years earlier. The Supreme Court was shooting down most of Roosevelt's government spending programs. I had learned how to drive a truck in the Army, but there were thousands of experienced unemployed truck drivers in the United States.
On the other hand, I knew I didn't want to re-enlist in the Air Corps. The only practical way to get ahead in the Air Corps was to become a mechanic. The only way to ensure advancement as a mechanic was to attend the Air Mechanics School at Chanute Field, in Rantoul, Illinois. But to get into the school, which already had a two-year waiting list of applicants, a man had to be a mechanic already. For a while there, the Air Corps had established an oil reclamation school at Chanute Field. Used oil can be cleaned and reclaimed and used again and again. The process would save the Air Corps thousands of dollars a year, and for a while it did. Then Standard Oil Company recruiters came to Chanute Field and bought the discharges of all the oil reclamation graduates, and gave them good jobs with their company, so the Air Corps had to reluctantly close the school. Standard Oil, naturally, didn't want the Air Corps to use reclaimed oil, so the Air Corps, unable to retain technicians, phased out its use of reclaimed oil. And this had been one of the few technical jobs in the Air Corps that had interested me.
I talked over my prospects with Coslow, the old guy who had been our squadron clerk at Clark Field. Coslow had twelve years of service, and he was big. He was about 250 pounds, and he had large puffy fingers, but he could type one hundred words a minute on a standard Underwood. When he was typing a long report, men would stand in the doorway and watch him, marveling at his speed. He used a method called the "rhythm system," which caused him to bounce up and down in his chair as he typed. With his big ass overlapping the typing chair, and bouncing and typing away, he was a sight to marvel at, all right. Coslow's real name was Costello, but when he enlisted the first time the recruiting sergeant had spelled it "Coslow" on all of the enlistment forms. Rather than change it, he told Coslow that he would just have to use the new name.
Coslow knew that he was going to re-enlist, and he was happy because this would be the first time in his military service that he would get an "Excellent" character discharge. Before that, the best he ever got was "Very Good," which had caused him problems in getting a waiver to reenlist. Coslow was a dedicated, but periodic, alcoholic, yet Major Burns, before he left, had given instructions to give Coslow an "Excellent" character. On paydays Coslow disappeared for two or three days to drink up his money. He then returned, and because he was now broke he worked hard all month, including putting in overtime. He accomplished more work than anyone else in headquarters, so Major Burns put him on an automatic three-day pass every payday instead of listing him as A.W.O.L. While he was in Wheeler Field, in Hawaii, Coslow had taken the Ten-Series ofiicer's correspondence course. He had passed all the tests with high grades, and he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the infantry. He had never served any active duty as an ofticer, but he was a reserve lieutenant, and if there was ever an emergency or a war, he would be called in as a lieutenant.
Coslow told me that the best job in the Army was to be a straight-duty infantryman. All a man had to do was to keep his rifle and his nose clean, and he would be let alone. But that didn't appeal to me. Coslow had loved being an anonymous infantry private, but because he got out of shape physically, and could no longer march twenty-five miles with a full pack, he had been forced to re-enlist in the Air Corps and take a desk job.
Henderson was planning to re-enlist in the infantry and go to Chilcoot Barracks, in Alaska. In Alaska infantryman were given ten-day hunting passes, and they could sell the valuable skins of the grizzly bears they shot with their Army rifles. During the summer months enlisted men were given time off to work as stevedores unloading ships and were paid union wages. During a two-year tour in Alaska, Henderson claimed, a man could make and save two or three thousand dollars.
"You'll freeze your ass off up in Alaska," I told him.
"So what? Think what you could do with two thousand bucks back in San Francisco."
"Think of all the things you'll have to do to make that two thousand. You'll freeze all winter, and in the summer, working on the docks, monster mosquitoes will suck out your last drop of blood. Besides, you'll still have to train as a rifleman, which means long hikes in freezing weather, and guard duty at night in snowstorms."
"What do you know about it? You've never been to Alaska."
"No, but I've read Jack London. Did you ever read The Call of the Wild, White Fang?"
"Those are kids' books. All I read is Tiffany Thayer."
"I've read him, too. The Old Goat, and Three Sheet. But he doesn't write about Alaska. And that's another thing, talking about Tiffany Thayer—except for Eskimos, who don't take baths, you won't get laid in Alaska either."
"I don't worry about gettin' laid. If there's an army barracks around, there'll be women within spitting distance."
Henderson was probably right about that.
***
I ALSO RENEWED MY ACQUAINTANCE WITH TULI0 Micaloni. He was no longer the same guy I had met on the boat coming over to P.I. He was still in good physical shape, except for a small beer belly, but his olive face was lined and drawn. His personality was subdued, and his sienna eyes had receded into his head. His skin was a couple of shades darker than I remembered, and he was no longer the cheerful person he had been two years earlier. His speech was slower, almost halting, and he rarely laughed.
What had happened to Tullio Micaloni was Fort Drum. On the way over, Tullio had thought he was going to spend a couple of pleasant years at Corregidor slapping Cosmoline on the artillery pieces, but he had been sent to Fort Drum instead. The big artillery pieces on Corregidor could easily prevent any naval invasion of Manila, but there was one blind spot, a gap that couldn't be covered by Corregidor's guns. So the Army had built a small concrete platform in the bay, armed it with some large guns to cover the blind spot, and then put a small complement of artillerymen aboard the concrete fort. Fort Drum could only be reached by boat from Corregidor. Some weeks, when the tide was running high and hard, or there were rough seas, and they couldn't send a small boat over to Fort Drum, supplies ran low. For recreation the men on the concrete platform had a sixteen-millimeter movie projector and two silent films. They alternated running these films every night. Tullio said that eventually every man knew what the actors and actresses were saying, and the dialogue bore no resemblance to the printed captions flashed between scenes.
The men Cosmolined the guns after breakfast, and then, at eleven A.M., a recorded bugle sounded "Beer Call." Fort Drum was the only camp, post, or station in the Army that had an official Beer Call. The men drank beer until lunch, and then, after eating, they
were through for the day. They could sleep or drink more beer. Sometimes, Tullio said, they would fish off the rail if the bay was calm. Few fish were caught, but it was something to do. So long as a man had to site or stand around anyway, he might as well stand there with a fishing pole. But even when beer is only ten cents a bottle, twenty-one dollars a month won't last a man till the next payday. There are too many other expenses—laundry, toilet articles, cigarettes, losses at blackjack and poker—and a man needed a few pesos to spend when he took a monthly weekend pass to Corregidor. Some men, Tullio said, flat broke from gambling losses, never left Fort Drum for the full two years. Tullio had only been to Manila once, although he went to Corregidor several times during his tour. During the rainy season, when it rained for eight or ten days in a row, life on Fort Drum became even more dismal. Tempers were short, and a good many fistfights broke out.
"I always looked forward to K.P.," Tullio said. "It gave me something to do."
I can't say that Tullio was unhappy, I can only say that he was resigned to whatever it was that was going to happen to him. When a man is resigned, it is not the same as being indifferent. Indifference means that a man has a choice but doesn't make it because he doesn't care. But when a man is resigned, it means that he has given up on the idea of making choices. When I thought about what had happened to Tullio Micaloni at Fort Drum, it seemed to me that common sense should have given the commanding officer at Corregidor enough insight to rotate the men at Fort Drum every thirty days or so. Any man can stand a month on a concrete rock without too much trouble, but to be stationed out there for two full years could only be considered by the man who was sent there as some kind of dire punishment. And if he was being punished, what had he done?— Not knowing, he would feel guilty for the rest of his life. I never discussed these ideas with Tullio, however. My tour had been so much better than his, there was no real comparison.
Something About a Soldier - Charles Willeford Page 17
