Something About a Soldier - Charles Willeford

by Charles Willeford

  When I asked Corporal Royale if I could get into his squad when we were turned to duty, he seemed surprised.

  "Christ, Willeford," he said, "aren't you tired of listening to me by now?"

  "In a way, yes, but I think you're going to be the next corporal to get a section. And when Colwell gets your two stripes, I want to be the next number one gunner in your squad."

  He looked at me a little funny, and then he laughed. "I see what you mean, Willeford, but there are six corporals in the troop senior to me. I don't expect to make sergeant this enlistment. Right now, I can't think of a single sergeant in the troop who won't re-enlist to fill his own vacancy."

  He was being modest. At least, this was the way I looked at the situation. Seniority didn't count all that much for corporals, except on day-to-day assignments. Once a man made sergeant, however, everything changed. Captain Bradshaw would promote any man Sergeant Brasely recommended. It was easy to see, from the way Brasely and Royale talked together about the progress we were making, and so on, that the Hrst sergeant had a lot of respect for Corporal Royale's ability. Royale was noncommittal and said he would see what he could do. Later on, when I came back from my three-day pass, I found myself assigned to Corporal "Kayo" Malin—'s squad. (I put a dash after Malin— because there were four more syllables in his Polish name, a mixture of k's, y's, z's, and ish's, and except for the first sergeant and Kayo himself, no one else could spell or pronounce his name right: so mostly he was just called Corporal Kayo or Malin. It occurred to me that I had made a mistake in asking Royale to get into his squad. He had probably considered me too eager.

  ***

  MICALONI AND I HAD A GOOD TIME IN SALINAS. WE EVEN had breakfast served in our room in the Fremont Hotel. Our money went for whores, for the most part. There were several blocks of whorehouses in Salinas, and we spent the afternoons in the cribs instead of going down to the district at night with all of the lettuce pickers, artichoke choppers, and railroad workers. We wore civilian clothes, but the white stripes on our cheeks, left there by the chin straps we wore every day, gave us away as horse soldiers. We were out for a good time, not for any fights with Chicano field hands. There were several good bars in Salinas on the main drag; we usually just drank beer in the evening, listening to western music, and then, after a steak dinner, finished the evening with whiskey and water in our room.

  A hot soaking tub bath; a pleasant buzz in your head from whiskey; a lazy rehash of the day's activities; that's all a man wants from a three-day pass.

  I was, I must admit, a little disappointed in the Salinas whores. They were friendly enough, but these big farm girls from the Salinas Valley, unlike the women, say, in San Francisco, were not cut out to be professional prostitutes. These girls, I thought, if they had had a choice during the Depression, would much rather have had a job of some kind, or a working husband. But Micaloni, who liked big women and always picked the biggest and fattest women in each new place we tried, was just as happy as if he had good sense. Perhaps during his two years of exile on Fort Drum, with no women at all, he had fantasized about big women, and they had gotten bigger in his mind as the months passed; so here, at last, he had all of the fat women he wanted. I didn't say anything to Micaloni about his choice of women. A piece of ass still cost two dollars, whether the woman was large, medium, or small, or, as in one case, if she had only one leg.

  Corporal Kayo, my new squad leader, was a sleazy amoral bastard, and I took an instant dislike to him. He was married to a whore on Cannery Row, and he owned a new 1938 Chevrolet. He was also the middleweight boxing champion of the Presidio and had never lost a fight. He had on two occasions been in a draw, and that was a source of irritation to him. Fights were held once a month in the large dance hall/recreation area on the post. Admission was a dollar. In the ten-round main event the winner got sixty dollars and the loser got forty. But if the judges and the referee called it a draw, the two lighters were paid only twenty dollars apiece. This rule may have been unfair, but it was designed to prevent fighters from coasting, so they went into the ring to win.

  I disliked Kayo because he was a pimp—or what we used to call in the Philippines a bougau. I didn't want to be in the same squad with a corporal who pimped for his wife.

  Wilcox, the Mormon, and I were both assigned to Kayo's squad as horseholders. The first thing Kayo told us was how fortunate we were to be assigned to his squad. Because we were members of his squad, he said, we could fuck his wife, Marie, on paydays for only a dollar instead of two. Marie worked at Flora Wood's house on the Row, and had to give that one dollar to Flora.

  After being in the Army for as long as I had been I thought I had heard just about everything, but I was startled by this offer of largesse on Kayo's part. Wilcox, who was still religious, and still cried himself to sleep two or three nights a week, turned as white as a peeled almond. In fact, Kayo went on (not noticing how uncomfortable we were), he always drove his squad members down to the Row on payday in his car so that no one would have to walk.

  A little numbed by this information, we just nodded, unable to come up with suitable replies. How a man could pimp for his wife was beyond my comprehension. I disliked Kayo, but Leech Quinn, the number one gunner in the squad, detested him. Quinn was nicknamed "Leech" because that is what he was, a leech. If you lit a cigarette, tailor-made or oll-your-own, he would say immediately, "Let me have the duck on that." He would stick to you like a leech, and even follow you to make sure you gave him the butt to smoke. Quinn never had any money because he was hopelessly in debt to the post tailor. As I mentioned earlier, a tailor-made green gabardine shirt cost ten dollars. The payments were taken out of your pay at the rate of two, three, or five dollars a month, depending upon the terms you arranged with the tailor. Quinn liked to wear tailor-made shirts with his gold P.F.C. stripes crossstitched in yellow thread on the arms. The poor bastard would order a tailor-made shirt. He would get the new shirt, wear it, and then toward the end of the month, being broke, would sell it to someone with money—usually Kayo—for five dollars in cash. Quinn would still owe ten dollars for the shirt, but he would order a new one, also on jawbone, so he had ended up owing the tailor for at least a half dozen tailor-made shirts. He didn't have money for razor blades, and he sharpened the one Gillette blade he did have on a piece of broken glass every morning. He used the strong brown G.I. soap in the latrine, and he even had to borrow shoe polish to shine his boots. He hated Kayo because the squad leader owned three of his beautiful green gabardine shirts, and yet he needed Kayo when he had to sell another one.

  Later that evening, after Kayo left the squad-room to go down to Cannery Row, I asked Leech if he had ever fucked Kayo's wife.

  "Once," he said, "but Marie's a lousy piece of ass and not worth the dollar. She chews gum and talks all the time you're screwing her, telling you how lucky you are to be in her husband's squad. When a woman talks all the time, it's hard to get off."

  "Does Kayo hold it against you if you don't fuck her? I'd like to know the ground rules, and so would Wilcox here." .

  "I do not lay with harlots!" Wilcox said. "He would have to kill me first!"

  "What's the matter with him?" Leech said, looking at me.

  "Wilcox is a Monnon."

  "Oh. He won't kill you, Wilcox. And he doesn't give a shit whether you fuck his wife or not. If you do, Marie loses a dollar, but he wants us to be on his side, you see. If you don't, he'll just think you're an asshole for not taking advantage of a good thing. He sees nothing wrong with it. And he'll never hit you, because he's a professional fighter. If he ever hit you, he'd go to jail for assault with a deadly weapon, his fists. I have—" I lit a cigarette "—let me have the duck on that, Willeford—goaded the shit out of him, trying to get him to hit me. He ain't too bright, but he's too smart to take a swing at me."

  "What kind of squad leader is he? Otherwise, I mean?"

  "Good as any, I guess. He's been in the Army for nine years, so he knows how to run a squad. But Sergeant D
ixon, the platoon sergeant, doesn't like him because he's a pimp, a Polack, and he goes to Mass."

  "He goes to Mass?" Wilcox said.

  "Every fucking Sunday. In fact, they're so short on Catholics on this post, half the time Kayo serves as an altar boy."

  "If Sergeant Dixon doesn't like him, that kind of affects us too, doesn't it?" I said.

  "You're fucking A it does. Watch how often this squad gets extra details. When the first sergeant isn't around, Dixon calls Kayo ‘Altar Boy' and then laughs like hell. How far down are you gonna smoke that thing, anyway?"

  "Here," I said, "take it."

  I arranged my stuff in my foot- and wall locker, feeling a little bitter.

  Furler and Micaloni had both been assigned to squads in the .50 caliber machine gun platoon, and I was in a .30 caliber machine gun squad. At least I had a break there; it was easier to make expert on the .30 caliber than it was on the .50 caliber machine gun. If a man made expert on his assigned weapon, he was paid five dollars a month for a twelve·month period, so I had an advantage over them. I decided to practice dry-run manipulation of the machine gun every chance I got until we went to the range. As a horseholder I was armed with a rifle and a .45 pistol, so I also had another chance to make expert with the rifle. Everybody had a pistol, but the only men who could qualify for pay with a pistol were N.C.O.'s. With no hope of promotion in Kayo's squad, my only chance to make some extra money was to make expert on either the rifle or the machine gun.

  Then my entire perspective was changed when I was told to report to the first sergeant in the orderly room.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  BECAUSE OF THE DEPRESSION, AND TO REDUCE government spending, every regiment in the Army had been reduced to eighty percent of its authorized Table of Organization strength. Officer personnel was also greatly reduced. Machine Gun Troop, which was entitled to have a captain, an executive officer, and three second lieutenant platoon leaders, had just one officer, Captain Bradshaw, our troop commander. The only time we ever saw any junior officers was when a reserve second lieutenant was called to duty for two or three weeks. N.C.O.'s did all of the work that would have been done by ofticers, if we had had any junior ofiicers. This personnel shortage made a world of difference in our day-to-day training and operations. Our assigned horses, unlike personnel, were up to full strength, and we still had to take care of them without the necessary manpower to do the best possible job. We didn't pack out and take the machine guns out every morning for drill because we had all of these extra horses to exercise. We trained only two or three days out of five, and on the other days we just went out for horse exercise.

  Each man rode his own horse and led two more (except for N.C.O.'s, of course), and we spent the morning riding around and around in a huge sandy field about two miles south of the stables. Then we came back, cleaned our riding equipment, and groomed three horses apiece.

  On the days we drilled, we packed out. There were three pack horses in a squad, one for the machine gun and two for the ammunition. We didn't pack live ammo on the pack horses, but we carried empty ammo boxes on them. As a horseholder, I had to lead an ammo pack horse and clean the pack-saddle as well as my own saddle when we got back. Drill consisted of putting the machine gun into action from a walk, a trot, or a canter. The hand signal was given for action front, left, or right. We reined to an abrupt halt at the signal. The number one and number two gunners got the machine gun off the lead pack horse and set it up in the direction indicated by the squad leader. Then we, the horseholders, took the reins of the horses belonging to the squad leader, the two gunners, and the ammo carrier, and rode to a place nearby under cover, if possible, but away from the machine gun. We dismounted and waited, holding the horses, until the squad leader blew his whistle before we mounted again and rode back. The machine gun was put back on the pack horse; everyone else mounted, and we were ready to go through the drill again.

  From the time the squad leader gave the signal until the machine gun was set up and ready to fire took about forty-five seconds. If it took more than a minute to go into action, we all got our ass chewed out. Leech Quinn was so fast in setting up the tripod to receive the machine gun, however, our squad rarely exceeded forty-five seconds. Of course, for training purposes, we rotated positions. When my turn came with the tripod, my movements were not as precise as they should have been, so I often got my ass reamed. If I set the tripod up quickly enough, it wasn't always perfectly level. Or, if I concentrated on getting it level, I didn't get the legs locked fast enough.

  There was also competition when the platoon, as a unit, went into action with all four squads at- the same time. Naturally, each squad leader wanted to be the first one to signal that he was ready to fire, and the slowest squad was chewed outby Sergeant Dixon, our platoon sergeant. Quinn may have been an asshole in economic matters, but his ability frequently saved us from getting extra flak from Sergeant Dixon.

  I hadn't improved very much by the end of our first week of drill, but I felt that I was getting the hang of it. Then one morning, after horse exercise, while we were grooming horses on the line, Sergeant Dixon gave the order to "wipe eyes, nostrils, and dock." He then told me that Sergeant Brasely wanted to see me in the orderly room.

  When a private is singled out that way, it's a scary business. On the way to the orderly room, double-timing down into the gully and up the other side to get to the barracks, I wondered what I had done. Somehow, when a man is summoned to the orderly room, he reverts to being a child again. Once in grammar school when a teacher sent me to the principal's office, I pissed my pants. To be on the safe side I took a leak in the latrine before reporting to the orderly room.

  There were two offices in the orderly room, but the back office, which in other troops on the post was used as the captain's office, had been taken over by Sergeant Brasely as his own personal room. He had his bunk, footlocker, and wall locker in the room, plus a big easy chair and ottoman (which by rights belonged to the day-room), and two sets of bookshelves for his personal library. He also had dark blue velvet draperies on the two windows; and one wall had a G.I. blanket tacked to it, with all of his various horsemanship ribbons pinned on the blanket. Since he had taken over the back office, the front office was crowded because it now held the captain's desk and chair, as well as Brasely's and the troop clerk's desks. Sergeant

  Brasely, the first sergeant; Sergeant Bellows, the stable sergeant; and Sokoloski, the horseshoer, plus the troop clerk and the charge of quarters, were packed in the small office.

  When I came in, the charge of quarters left to distribute the mail, and the troop clerk went to early chow. The troop only got ten or twelve letters a day, and the C.Q., instead of holding mail call, usually just went to the various squad-rooms and put the letters on the recipients' bunks.

  "Do you know Wheeler, Willeford'?" Sergeant Brasely I asked, after I reported to him.

  "No," I said.

  "He's the third horseshoer. He re-enlisted two days ago , and took a ninety-day re-enlistment furlough. To Buffalo, New York."

  I nodded.

  "Someone," Brasely said, "has to take his place in the stable gang until he gets back. Corporal Royale recomI mended you as a good worker, and that's what we want to talk to you about."

  "I know this man," Sergeant Bellows, the stable sergeant, said, pointing. "Willeford. Your name is Willeford."

  "I already told you before he reported to me that his name was Willeford," Sergeant Brasely said, turning to the stable sergeant and frowning.

  "But I know Willeford from stable details. When he clipped horses at the stables." .

  The stable sergeant knew my name all right. Sergeant Bellows, who had played football for IX Corps when the Army was still allowed to have a West Coast football league in the late twenties and early thirties, had been known as "Five·Yard" Bellows because he averaged five yards every time he carried the ball. It usually took the other team about two quarters to injure him enough to put him out of the game. As a r
esult of all the physical damage he had taken for several years of ball-playing, he was a little punchy. Not much, but a little. When a detail came up to the stables to work, he would learn the name of one man in the group, and then he would call on that one guy, whose name he had memorized, to do everything that needed doing all afternoon. One afternoon the recruit platoon had ganged up on me as soon as we hit the stables. By calling out, "Hey, Willeford, got a match?"—"Wil1eford, what time is it?"—and so on, it didn't take Sergeant Bellows long to learn who I was. He had called me away from clipping horses several times that afternoon to perform other chores, simply because my name was the only one he knew.

  "Men in the stable gang are highly privileged," Sergeant Brasely said. "They're excused from K.P. and guard duty and all other troop details. They eat early chow at all meals, and they don't stand Saturday inspections."

  "That's right," Sokoloski said, raising the corners of his lipless mouth slightly. "The stable gang also gets to work a seven-day week, although, except for mucking out on Sunday mornings, they're off for the rest of the day."

  Sergeant Brasely turned to Socky. "Do you want this man or not'?"

  Socky shrugged. "I've got to have somebody. But I don't want some asshole in a size forty-four jacket and a size four hat. A man shoes horses needs some common sense."