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Chapter 2: Preparing for War

When Japan attacked the U.S. at Pearl Harbor in 1941, I tried to enter military service where I might do the most good.  15 months later, having graduated from the Harvard Law School, the U.S. army accepted me as a Private in the artillery being trained for the invasion of France.  My military career was distinctive without distinction; my travails in the army are here described.

Story 10
Getting Into the Army

On Sunday, December 7, 1941, “a day that will live in infamy,” I was sitting at my desk in a small attic room that I shared with another Harvard Law School student in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  We were stunned by the radio report that Japan had launched a massive attack against the United States at Pearl Harbor.  Almost immediately, students from all over the University assembled in Harvard Yard in a rally of solidarity and support for our government.  Everyone I met was ready to enlist in defense of our country.
 
Hitler had already conquered most of Europe.  His murderous blitzkrieg had spread eastward as he and his allies declared war against the United States.   I wrote to the War Department and suggested that I might most effectively be used in the intelligence services.  Since my French was pretty good, I thought I might be dropped behind the lines in France. I could probably get by on my skills in Hungarian, Yiddish, and possibly German, and had gotten a 98 on my high school final exam in Spanish, which embarrassed my teacher at Townsend Harris who had wanted to flunk me.  Soon the disappointing reply came back from Washington saying that no one could serve in the intelligence services who had not been a U.S. citizen for at least 15 years.  My citizenship was derived from my father’s papers issued in 1933.  An inquiry with the army paratroopers was brushed aside with the observation that because of my size and Bantam weight I might more likely go up than down. As subsequent events would prove, the army never did recognize my hidden talents as a parachutist.
 
It was near the end of the first semester and I had won a scholarship for the excellence of my exam in criminal law.  The Dean, James Landis, addressed a letter to my draft board noting that I was a student of promise and requesting that I be allowed to finish the term.  I presented the letter to the Clerk of the Draft board in the Bronx where I had been registered. He queried me briefly and said there would be no problem in deferring my induction.  When the term was over, I packed up my books and went home, expecting to enter the military service shortly.  But the summer passed and there was no call.  My mother strongly urged me to go back to school to continue my education.  I didn’t want to reject her earnest appeal. I was her only son.  “If they need you,” she said, “they’ll call you.”  Her logic was impeccable. I went back to school.
 
Back in Cambridge, I continued my efforts to enlist in a military service of my choice.  My roommate, Austin Graham, was accepted as an Ensign by the Navy.  Although I had qualified as a Red Cross lifeguard, despite my inability to float, the idea of drowning at sea did not particularly appeal to me. Because of my size, I was sure the Marines wouldn’t take me.  Joining the army lost its attraction when I considered the war wounds described in Eric Remarque’s great book All Quiet in the Western Front, which had made quite a profound impression on me. The Air Corps, on the other hand, had great appeal.  The uniforms were nice, and as a popular song said, I would “wear a pair of silver wings.”  Most attractive was their slogan, “Your first mistake will be your last!”  That was a nice, quick, and clean way to go. 

My love affair with the Air Corps was not mutual.  No matter how I tried, they wouldn’t have me.  First, I was too short to become a pilot—they said I wouldn’t reach the pedals.  For similar reasons, they wouldn’t even take me as a navigator.  That was very fortunate for them since I have a terrible sense of direction and if they ordered me to bomb Tokyo I might have been lost over Berlin.  When they later lowered the height requirements, I still couldn’t qualify.  One of my eyes missed one of the letters on the 20/20 line.  An optometrist suggested that I try eye exercises such as following the point of a moving pencil for hours.   When my classmates observed my peculiar gyrations in class, some wondered whether I had been studying too hard and had gone out of my mind.  The exercises didn’t help; on my next physical exam for an assignment for pilot training, my left eye missed two letters rather than one.
 
Noting my disappointment, one of the examiners offered me the name of someone at the Boston airfield who could help me become a pilot.  I found the gentleman and sure enough, he said he could fix it.  He pulled out some papers and said, “Just sign here!”  Now, if there is one thing you learn at Harvard, it is not to sign anything without reading it first.  The paper would sign me up for training as a Glider Pilot.  I didn’t know what a Glider Pilot was.  When he explained, I respectfully declined his kind offer.  I consider myself a patriot, but if I am going to fly, I want a machine that can go up and not merely down.  When, on D-day, I watched from the beaches at Lands-End in England and saw the hoards of little gliders being pulled by aircraft to be dropped over the Normandy beaches, my admiration for glider pilots was unlimited.  But, very frankly, I was glad I wasn’t one of them. About 70% of them became war casualties.

My studies during the last two years at law school suffered from the anticipation that I would have to leave at any moment. I didn’t even buy the expensive law books that I couldn’t afford.  My primary focus was on trying to get into military service where I could do the most good.  I was not a militarist but I was eager to do my share in the war. The thought that others might risk their lives for me, while I remained at home, was not something I could live with.  I was waiting for the draft call that never came.  My mother kept up her reassurances, “If they want you, they’ll call you.”

As soon as I graduated from Law School, I went back to my draft board in the Bronx.  I explained that I had been given a brief deferment to complete the semester and I hadn’t heard anything since.  The clerk, who looked familiar, said he would send me my induction notice the next day.  I thanked him and left the room.  When he followed me toward the elevator, I got a bit apprehensive.   “Ferencz,” he said, “How did you do in law school?”  I replied that I had done all right.  “Do you want some more time to take your bar exam?” he asked.  I was really uncomfortable.  I noted that I could take the exam while I was in the army.  Then, as we stood alone in the hallway, he explained. He told me that he had been a Yale Law Student when World War I broke out.  He had enlisted in the air corps and had been a bit of hero, but had lost a leg in combat.  I had barely noticed his limp.  He told me that he had never been able to return to his legal studies and had regretted that all of his life.  When he saw me come in to the draft office and saw the letter from the Harvard dean, he decided that he would not let happen to me what had happened to him.  So he had held my file until I became a lawyer.  I expressed my appreciation, and never saw him again. The stranger who had quietly taken me under his wing certainly changed the course of my life.  Was Fate saving me for something else?

Story 11
Basic Training

No sooner had I graduated from the Harvard Law School than the U.S. Army, in its infinite wisdom, made me a buck private in the artillery.  I was assigned to be a typist in the supply room of a battalion being trained for the invasion of France.  I never did learn how to type or how to fire a cannon.  My prior education had taught me that “All men are created equal.  They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, including among these are the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”  This sacred declaration seems to have escaped the attention of the War Department.  American officers paraded under a different banner, “Rank has its privileges!”  My military career was distinguished primarily by my determined drive to defend the principles enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.  In defense of equal rights and the pursuit of happiness, my primary adversary was not the German army, but the U.S. Army bureaucracy.
 
From March to September 1943, I was a guest of my country in Camp Davis, North Carolina. It appeared that the basic lesson of basic training was to teach adults how to distinguish the right foot from the left.  We were required to spend hour after hour marching around in the hot sun listening to a stupid Master Sergeant bellowing, again and again, “Turn right, turn left, column right, column left....”  I decided to assert my endowed right to liberty and refused to march.  I explained to the drillmaster, a massive brute from Texas who boasted of beating his wife, that close order drill was invented by the Romans for a reason that was valid in medieval times.  Those on the right of a marching unit carried their shields on their right arm, those on the left carried shields on their left and those in the middle held their shields overhead.  Thus, like a modern tank, they were protected on all sides against the spears that might be thrown from an enemy on a hill.  I pointed out that we were not likely to encounter spears thrown from a hill.  A solid block of American footsoldiers approaching the machine guns of an entrenched enemy position would be mowed down if we did what he was training us to do.  The “Sarge” listened with obvious contempt and retaliated by declaring war on me!

He stuck a pencil on the top of my head and screamed, “Your (expletive) hair is too (expletive) long.  No higher than one inch, soldier!”  Being an obedient fellow, I promptly went to the barber and ordered that my head be shaved clean.  I then went to the medics and inquired whether I could risk marching around in the hot sun with a completely bald scalp.  I noted, truthfully, that I had tried that once as a teenager and the result was that my cranium swelled up like a pudgy balloon.  The doctor, a Captain, agreed that marching under such conditions might cause a fatal sunstroke.  At my request he wrote out an order that I was not permitted to march outdoors until I recovered a full head of protective hair.  I thanked him profusely for his great medical acumen and marched out singing in loud military cadence, “Left right, left, right... left, right....”

The next morning, when we were summoned to our usual “parade of the wooden soldiers,” I brandished the medical captain’s prescription in the face of the blustering Sergeant.  “OK you (expletive) wise guy,” came the shouted retort, “I’ll fix your (expletive) wagon!”  Since I didn’t have a wagon and it didn’t need repair, I guessed that the burly bully had something else in mind. In short order, I was subjected to a special assortment of tortures designed, I guess, to make a good soldier out of me.  I brushed the wooden barrack floor with a toothbrush, wiped out the toilets, stepped into and cleaned the stinking greasepits, and scrubbed the pots and pans for the officer’s mess.  When I was through it really earned the name “mess.”  The utensils were even more grimy and greasy than when I started.  I explained, apologetically, that my hands were not used to near-boiling water and my tender skin could only tolerate lukewarm immersion.  I was relieved from duty as an incompetent dishwasher.  Since they couldn’t fire me, a host of worse chores became my daily bread.  As long as it was work that was useful and necessary, no matter how dirty the job and how malicious the assignment, I served my country without complaint.  But things like chopping down trees and planting them around the sandy barracks and tearing them up again as soon as an inspection by a commanding officer was over was the type of revolting stupidity that encouraged me to revolt.

Fortunately, some relief was at hand.  As a supply clerk, one of my more useful army duties, surprisingly, was to order supplies.  One of my first requisitions was for the official rubber stamps needed to authenticate every military action.  I was directed to request one such seal for the battalion commander and one for the company commander.  Since it was such a vital instrument, I thought it might be prudent to request an extra one as a reserve.  For safekeeping, I kept it in my own pocket.  I would sooner have parted with my rifle.  The official stamp and an extra book of blank passes became an instrument of justice.  When all the officers and the Sergeant had left the camp for the weekend, a line formed around my bunk.  My buddies knew that a pass from Benny, validated with the official seal, would get them past all of the MPs.  I was simply demonstrating the equality of all men as guaranteed by our noble constitution.  There was no limit to my patriotism.  I also tried to be kind and charitable whenever it appeared that those virtues were being neglected by the U.S. military or justice was being unfairly denied.

Part of our basic training required us to jump over a big hole filled with mud.  One guy from the Bronx, “Prince the Klutz,” landed in the muck every time.  He was given three minutes to reappear in clean uniform and try again.  How he was expected to improve during that interval escaped me.  Each time, Prince tripped.  He finally collapsed on his face in the mud.  The sadist Sergeant laughed with glee at the helpless and exhausted private.  For appearing in a soiled uniform, the “Sarge” directed that his victim be confined to barracks until he could perform the feat that physically he was simply unable to perform.  There was a risk that he would be shipped out to war without any chance to see his family again.  The extra official seal and pass book made it possible to assert the principles of fairness and justice that made America great. I saw to it that Private Prince got back to the Bronx in time to say good-bye to his dear mother.

My battalion, along with many others, was being trained to make a landing on the beach of a secret foreign shore.  We were transported by truck to a barren coast near Carolina where our mission was explained.  We were expected to go ashore under enemy fire and could expect enemy tanks to descend upon us and try to drive us from the beachhead.  We were to defend ourselves by digging a deep hole in the sand and jumping into it so that we could not be seen by the gunners on the tank.  We were reassured that the treads of the wide tanks would pass right over the hole and we would remain safe from harm.  We were informed that the underbelly of tanks carried no armor so we could blow them up from below with a hand grenade that we were all expected to carry.  I must admit that the idea of training to become a suicide bomber on the sands of Carolina was not particularly appealing.
 
Infantrymen carried a small shovel but I was expected to dig my hole using only the aluminum plate of my mess kit.  I never learned how a dig a hole in law school and I was really no good at it.  I had dug only a shallow grave when I could hear the rumbling of the training tanks that were descending upon us.  I don’t think I am a coward but I recalled that “retreat is the better part of valor.”  Under the circumstances, I concluded that it would be prudent to just stick a big branch that I found on the beach, into the unfinished hole and run like hell.  From a safe distance, hiding behind some hedges, I observed what would happen to my branch.  Sure enough, the tanks came rolling and one ran right over my spot.  It stopped as if to look for me and then turned slowly grinding its treads into the soft surf.  My branch was buried forever.  If I had stayed there, as instructed, there would have been be no more Benny.

You may ask, “Where was poor ole Prince, the Klutz?”  Well, he was with us when we were being trained to board the big ships that had to carry us to the foreign shore and then unload us into small landing craft that would dump us on the beach, where we were expected to dig a hole and pray.  A big rope net, thrown down the side of the heaving ship, was to serve as the ladder to the bobbing landing craft below.  My anxious friend was near me as we descended the ropes, carrying all our gear.  As might have been expected, Prince couldn’t hold on.  If he had landed in the water he would have sunk like a rock.  He probably couldn’t swim either.  He was lucky to have landed on his back in the tiny landing craft.  I later learned that he survived and received a medical discharge.  Justice triumphed again.

Of course, as soon as I found myself in the artillery, I applied for admission into Officers Candidate School.  When I was summoned to appear before the OCS Board, I was surprised to see that its Presiding Officer was an old friend who had sat next to me at Harvard.  He was then known as Major Hickman, a West Point graduate who was sent to law school by the army.  In those days we exchanged notes.  He was now on his way to becoming the Judge Advocate General.  We expressed mutual joy at finding each other again.  He assured me immediately that my application would be approved.  I heard nothing further until we were ready to sail off to war.
 
One day when I was on leave, thanks to my own official pass, I visited an army detention center. I was not trying to survey my future home, but merely keeping up with my studies on crime prevention.  Based on my observations, I wrote an article on “Rehabilitating Army Offenders” that appeared in the prestigious Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology on November 1943.  The author was identified as Corporal Benjamin Ferencz, 115th AAA Gun Battalion, U.S. Army.  The commandant of the Detention Center sent a request to my Battalion Commander asking if I could be transferred to his unit where expert help was badly needed.  I learned of the request and the answer at the same time as I received news about my application to go to Officers Training School.

It was December 1943 when the sadistic Master Sergeant called me into his office with a happy sneer.  “Well,” he said, “we’ve finally received orders to ship overseas.  I’ve been holding some papers here that may interest you.  I see you want to be an officer.  I also see that a request has been made to transfer you to another outfit.  All transfers are now prohibited.”  He tore up both papers before my eyes and tossed them into the trashcan with a flourish.  “The only way you’ll get out of this outfit is in a box!”  A few days later, we sailed off to war.

Story 12
Mutiny on the HMS Strathnaver

The name of the ship was the Strathnaver and before being conscripted for war service as a troop transport, she had sailed the Indian oceans as a passenger liner.  Now she was commanded by British naval officers and staffed by an Indian crew.  Cabins above deck were reserved for officers.  The rest of the ship was jammed with Yanks being transported to an unnamed secret destination. The 115th AAA Battalion, assigned to the galley area far below deck, was allowed up for air for one hour a day.  The rest of the time was spent crouched on the floor of the galley, sitting on hammocks that were unfurled at night to serve as sleeping quarters.  The mesh nets were hooked to supports that enabled five or six hammocks to be stacked from floor to ceiling - one man per hammock.  If the soldier in the net above was heavy, some part of his anatomy was bound to rest on the man below.  I scurried for the hammock on top.

A row of long tables served as eating space when the hammocks above it were not in use.  The food was quite interesting.  I had never seen anything quite like it before.  The usual repast of frankfurters had an olive green color to match our uniforms.  I don’t think they were really moldy, they just looked and tasted as if they were.  A bucket full of them was placed on each table to be divided among about a dozen GIs.  There was a canteen on board where soldiers could buy a coke or American candy bars.  That source of nourishment ran dry after about two days at sea.  Crates of wholesome food could be seen through the locked gates of the storeroom near the galley.  But that was “off limits” and reserved for the officers.  Enlisted men who could afford it turned to the black market run by the cook.  A baked potato would go for only a quarter but an apple pie cost as much as five dollars.

Our First Sergeant, it turned out, was not cut out to be a sailor.  After a day of bobbing in stormy seas he turned a sickly green to match the frankfurters.  He lay on the floor moaning and leaning his head into a bucket before him.  Every time the ship heaved, so did he.  I am not one to bear a grudge; it’s true that I hated him for his mean and vicious tricks but it nearly (but not quite) broke my heart to watch his agony.  So, out of my spirit of loving kindness, I offered to get him some more frankfurters, or maybe even a plate of nice greasy pork chops.  Each time I mentioned food he seemed to retch some more.  So I kept mentioning different delicacies, like baked reptiles or Chinese fried dog, to see if I could find one that might tempt him.  No luck.  After a while, as I was nearly running out of my list of exotic edibles, he slowly raised his head and snarled, “You little (expletive), I swear I’m going to kill you!”  No matter how hard you try, there is just no pleasing some people.
 
During our hour-long daily march on deck we could peer into the officer’s mess.  Since “rank has its privileges,” the British naval officers and U.S. commanders of the American units on board were dining on fresh fruit, salmon, and steaks.  This crass discrimination soon gave rise to rumbling in the ranks.  The discontent about the food began to spread.  We had on board members of the 101st Airborne Division, known as some of the toughest men in the army.  They were used to real American food, not British cooking, and they were men of action.  One late afternoon, the 101st took flight and landed in the galley.  As one of the ship’s half-naked Indian crew members was carrying a crate of oranges on his shoulder up the ladder, a paratrooper was waiting at the top.  “I’ll take that,” said the husky soldier, pushing the Indian down the steps with his paratrooper boot.  That was the signal.  Paratroopers swooped down like the screaming eagles on their insignia.  The doors to the storerooms were broken open.  Crates of oranges and apples were lifted wholesale and hauled away.  Within minutes, everything edible had disappeared.  The mutiny on the Strathnaver was over without firing a shot.

As a Harvard lawyer, I of course knew that mutiny was a crime and that pirates and their accomplices usually walked the plank.  In fact, the British and American officers didn’t know how to react.  They were responsible for the food and for an accounting of what happened to it.  An investigation would reveal the abuses to which the enlisted men were subjected daily.  Hanging Americans from the yardarm might make a bad impression.  So they decided that it would be best if they absorbed the cost and remained silent.  One might conclude that justice triumphed or that justice did not triumph, depending upon the eye of the beholder.  That’s what makes the legal profession so fascinating.  My own view was, and is, that the rule of law must be upheld.  My only complaint was that I found it quite difficult to sleep in my hammock which was filled with apples and oranges of mysterious origin.

Our ship was part of a convoy of many ships being escorted across the Atlantic.  We were being tracked and followed by German submarines.  Naval escort vessels kept circling our ships as we zigzagged slowly across the vast sea.  Each night, guards were posted all over each ship to keep an eye out for German periscopes or lights.  Guard duty usually lasted four hours. The old guard was then replaced by fresh soldiers covering the same vantage point. By the time we sailed, I had been promoted to corporal and my elevated rank imposed certain duties that I was able to avoid as a private. When my turn came as Corporal of the Guard to post the new sentinels, the corporal who had posted the prior guards accompanied me to be sure that each of his men would be properly replaced. As every good soldier knows, leaving your post without being relieved is punishable by death. Well, I may have mentioned before that I have a very bad sense of direction; on a ship it’s even worse.  I didn’t know my starboard from my port or that in the navy, the head was a toilet.  They didn’t teach me that at Harvard.  It was a stormy night and my men had been placed in every nook and cranny of the rolling ship.  I posted 24 men but when I returned with the new replacements all I could locate were about 15.  For all I know, the missing guards may still be waiting for me impatiently on the Strathnaver. I guess I just wasn’t cut out to be a sailor.

Story 13
England as a Staging Area

As night was falling on December 16, 1943, the HMS Strathnaver pulled into port.  We soon learned, to our surprise, that we were in Liverpool, England.  We disembarked and boarded a train that took us to Manchester.  We left the train in darkness with each man carrying all of his equipment on his back.  After dragging a mile or two that seemed like ten, we plodded through the entrance of what had been a large amusement park.  By the dawn’s early light I could make out a large marquee saying “Bellevue.”  I immediately recalled the hospital in New York by that name, which specialized in treating the insane.  I felt homesick.  We had come to the right place.

Our accommodations were rather improvised.  Soldiers in British uniforms directed us to our new abode.  It had previously been the elephant house; the prior residents had left us some evidence of their presence.  The floor was covered with piles of straw, mostly clean.  The British, speaking a foreign tongue they called English, pointed to the straw and seemed to be saying something obscene.  It was only when they handed out empty sacks that I understood where we were expected to stuff the straw.

As far as I could figure out, our mission in the Manchester staging area was to wait.  We were well trained to do nothing.  There was no prohibition against the pursuit of happiness.  Bellevue’s surroundings included several pubs and a dance hall. The lovely lassies of Manchester, whose husbands were serving overseas, had been encouraged to raise the morale of the visiting “Yonks.”  They performed their patriotic duties in a variety of ways.  There were dances every night and morale was high, even if morals were low.  A major problem soon arose.  The British girls had never known about racial discrimination.  White soldiers from the South had heard that “all men are created equal” but they insisted that some were more equal than others.  If an English girl started to dance with a black soldier a violent brawl was sure to erupt.  It got so bad that blacks, who were segregated in separate companies, were confined to barracks on those days that only whites were allowed to go into town.  Before leaving barracks, every man was searched to see if he carried a hidden knife or bayonet.  I didn’t realize when I joined the army that the first war I would witness would be between black and white American soldiers.

One evening, I was assigned to do routine Military Police duty at the Bellevue pub.  I was given a brassard with the letters MP that I could wrap around my arm.  I was assured that it was just a formality since nothing ever happened.  I was sitting quietly at the pub when all hell broke loose.  It looked like a scene from a John Wayne movie.  Chairs and bottles were flying in all directions.  Two burly American soldiers were punching each other furiously while a crowd of other inebriates jumped into the fray.  Being the military authority in charge, I immediately retreated to the adjacent Ladies Room (not to be confused with the WC) and hid under a table. The two drunks who started the fracas were thrown into the back yard to sleep it off, and things simmered down.  I was never one to shirk my duty, and I approached them cautiously and managed to get their names.  When my tour as temporary MP was over, I wrote a detailed report on how I had heroically quelled a riot in the Bellevue pub.  I thought I might get a bronze star or maybe even a silver star.  But I was only a corporal, so I got nothing.

Manchester, like all of England, was completely blacked out at night to avoid being targeted by German planes.  The V-2 rockets being perfected by Hitler’s prodigy Werner von Braun (who later was treated as an American hero) had not yet been able to reach much past London.  Our antiaircraft guns were useless.  But American soldiers are noted for their ingenuity as well as their patriotism and they figured out something that might help win the war.  They would work hard to raise the morale of the suffering British public.  Unfortunately, most British men were serving overseas.  The forlorn females were home alone, in the dark, and in need of consolation.  I was consoled by letters and photos from my pinup girl Gertrude, back home in the Bronx, who anxiously awaited my return. Bellevue was surrounded by a tall brick wall.  Every night, by moonlight, one could detect that every few yards, pressed along that wall, was an American soldier wearing a heavy woolen coat wrapped around someone to shelter them from the cold.  Lonely ladies of Manchester were being consoled.  For obvious reasons, they all hated to leave the friendly people of Manchester.
 
Our next move was south toward Salisbury—much closer to the French coast we were expected to attack.  The flat plain seemed a good place to assemble the countless tanks and armored vehicles that would be needed for an invasion of Europe.  My tent was literally pitched against one of the famous prehistoric rocks at Stonehenge.  One morning at daybreak, I was awakened to find my tent surrounded by a circle of people chanting in white robes.  It looked more like the Ku Klux Klan than the German army, but I grabbed my rifle anyway.  It turned out that they were harmless pilgrims come to celebrate at what they believed was an ancient religious shrine

The accommodations there had not been renovated since the stone age.  No lights, no heat, no running water—no nothing.  The plain was made of solid chalk, as I can attest from the latrines I dug there.  I recall the resourcefulness of a G.I. who had an open trailer attached to his jeep.  He had pinched a spigot from a brewery somewhere and he plugged it into a hole he bored in the bottom of his trailer.  He collected rainwater in the trailer and then lit a fire under it.  The genius had invented a way to have a hot bath where there was no plumbing.  Hot water on tap!  Since he was a friend of mine, he allowed me to put my helmet under the beer spout and he would fill it with “slightly used” hot water.  Sometimes he gave me a pint even before he had taken his bath.  The warm water was always good for a sponge bath and even for washing socks. Getting the sequence right was important.

In the distance stood the magnificent Salisbury Cathedral, which I visited repeatedly to study its beautiful architecture.  Not far away was an old English nobleman’s castle.  I don’t remember his name but he was noble in spirit as well as title, and I shall never forget his kindness.  In the basement of the castle he had built a row of about 6 bathtubs.  He would invite the Yanks to come by truck and “have a wash.”  Since fuel and water were limited, only a few inches of water were available for each tub.  Praise the Lord—whatever his name was.  He was a real English gentleman!

One day, while doing my routine filing of army regulations, I came upon an announcement that a special club was being formed to allow distinguished English gentlemen and American gentlemen to come together socially and thereby strengthen relations between the two armies.  “The Churchill Club” would meet in the Dean’s Yard of Westminster Abbey in London.  Since no American could get into London without having a confirmed place to stay, I immediately applied for membership in the Club.  Upon seeing my application, my company Captain also applied and then the battalion Colonel, who had to approve the applications, did the same.  I soon received my membership card.  Neither the Captain nor the Colonel received any reply. I volunteered to go to my Club in London and find out the cause of the unfortunate and inexplicable delay. I received a legitimate three-day pass to enter the forbidden city.

There were about a million Yanks in London at that time.  The common joke among British men was that “the trouble with the Yanks is that they are overpaid, overfed, over sexed, and over here.”  I proceeded to “My Club” where I presented my membership card and was greeted with the icy stare of a British doorman.  The luxurious surroundings, tapestries and old paintings on the walls, fine rugs, and paneled walls were just like in the movies.  I never saw such opulence before; not even at home in The States.  I was escorted to the bar where a number of high ranking British and American officers were strengthening relations.  No one spoke to me until a British Colonel with a flowing mustache, and a swagger stick under his arm, asked contemptuously, “Corporal, where is your officer?”  I said that I was there alone.  In England, every college graduate is automatically entitled to officer’s rank.  In both the English and American armies fraternization between officers and enlisted men is prohibited. I was the only enlisted-man visible.  No officer in the Churchill Club ever deigned to engage me in conversation. I thought of the American Declaration of Independence that it was self-evident that all men are created equal. Obviously, that does not apply when one puts on a military uniform. I was not cowed or impressed by high-ranking snobs.  I left and never visited the Churchill Club again.

Story 14
Preparing for War

My brief sojourn in London was not a happy one.  I wandered around the rainy streets trying to identify landmarks described in a little guidebook I carried in my pocket.  I visited the criminal court, but the judges and bailiffs, in contrast to the bellowing heard in New York tribunals, spoke in such a whisper and such a strange tongue that I understood practically nothing.  A brief trip to see the nearby beach at Brighton was even more depressing.  The beach was completely covered with barbed wire and steel barricades designed to thwart any possible German invasion.  When I bounced a ball back to a little girl playing near the strand, her mother pulled her away quickly.  I guess she feared I was a German spy.  If I approached a young lady with a request for directions, she reacted as though she was being targeted for an imminent attack.  I finally found shelter in a building run by the Red Cross where I was allowed to sleep on a blanket on the floor of a crowded gymnasium.  After my London sojourn, I was almost eager to get back to the greater hospitality of my barren stones at Stonehenge.

The men of the 115th were assembled on the Salisbury Plain, and a General explained our mission.  We would hit the beach after the engineers had cleared the mines and barriers under the water.  A battery of men would go ashore with barrage balloons that would be released with hanging cables to intercept low flying enemy craft.  Our battalion would go ashore and set up its guns to shoot down high flying German airplanes that were expected to attack the men on the beach.  Not to worry.  Our secret radar would see the planes coming and our new remote control devices would automatically fire and destroy all enemy aircraft as soon as they came within range.  In fact, as we later discovered, it didn’t quite work out that way.  The Germans had better radar, and they dropped aluminum foil and silver covered pigeons from their incoming planes to blur detection by our radar and targeting by our guns.  Those on the beach were like sitting ducks.  But that was to be known only later.  Sorry about that, boys.
 
The 115th was designated as a “mobile” battalion.  Within 15 minutes, the whole outfit, guns and all, had to be able to start rolling.  We frequently moved from one staging area to another, closer to our planned point of embarkation.  This gave me an opportunity to see different parts of England, since I could explain that I needed to travel to a distant depot to pick up battalion supplies.  (Which was usually true.)  Since I had to drive on the wrong side of the road (as was the British practice), and all road signs had been removed to foil invaders, it was always a hazardous undertaking for me.  Occasionally, I must admit, in the course of my duties I would go astray.  Attribute this to my poor sense of direction.

One day, my former roommate at Harvard, who had become an Ensign in the Navy, got word to me that he wanted me as his best man.  His wedding was to take place in a few days in the port city of Plymouth.  How could I refuse the request of a naval officer about to go off to war?  Of course, I got lost along the way.  When I asked for directions, the typical response was, “Oh, that’s simple. You go to the turnabout at the bottom of the hill till you see an elm tree next to a big oak, and then you turn two miles before the church.  You can’t miss it!”  They underestimated me.  When I finally reached Portsmouth, my buddy had already been wed and was called back to his ship in the harbor.  I didn’t miss much.  His bride was a beauty who, it soon turned out, wanted either a widow’s pension or a passport to America.  He survived the war and they were promptly divorced in New York.  The beauteous bride went off to Hollywood as she had planned.  My roommate was one of many soldiers who learned to their sorrow that marriage in heat or haste can be a hazard of war.

It was not that I neglected my official duties as a supply sergeant to go sight-seeing around England—quite the contrary.  I was known as a guy who could always get the job done.  When, for example, practically all of the battalion field stoves failed to function, I discovered that it was usually only one particular part that was defective.  The manufacturer, no doubt with connections to his congressman, was located near Kentucky.  All broken stoves had to be shipped back there for repairs.  It was estimated that it might take six months.  I tracked down the freight cars full of broken field stoves waiting on a siding in England.  With the use of a screwdriver, I quickly cannibalized the broken stoves, collected bags full of useable replacement parts, and returned to base in triumph.  Without a functioning stove there could have been no hot meals on the battlefield.  To think—they didn’t even give me a medal.

My most heroic achievement was when I was responsible for “wiping out” a whole battalion.  It is not modesty but delicacy that gives me pause in telling the story.  Since we were ready to invade France, and that was on the other side of the English Channel, the army figured out that we would have to cross a body of water.  Being very meticulous and cautious planners, they concluded that all needed supplies had to be sealed in waterproof containers.  That was done.  There was no problem until we ran out of vital supplies and we were still on shore.  In short, when the invasion was delayed, we desperately needed toilet paper.  But it was all safely packed up, sealed, and stored in the bottom of the boats waiting in the harbors.  What to do?

Calls to all the warehouses and supply depots in England were to no avail.  No toilet paper on hand anywhere.  Even the Stars and Stripes, the army newspaper (not the flag, thank God), were all gone down the clogged drains.  The situation called for creative imagination.  My superior officers told me a thousand times that I was not supposed to think.  They insisted that I was in the army.  All I had to do was to obey.  Nevertheless, the evolutionary urge to use my little gray cells could no longer be repressed.  This was urgent, this was an emergency, this was WAR!

From my vast army experience as an unskilled typist, I knew that the army would never run out of typing paper.  The second sheets, disguised under the name of “manifold,” were used for carbon copies.  Their thin and delicate texture was also suitable for other purposes.  There were plenty of manifolds around and I raced out to get them.  Then I found a butcher company that had big cleavers.  I persuaded a few husky butchers to demonstrate their skill and they hacked each pack of manifolds into four squares with two strong whacks of a meat cleaver.  With a truckload of improved toilet tissue, I returned to base in triumph.  My whole battalion was saved from a fate worse than death.  My rank wasn’t high enough for me to qualify for any special commendation.

Gradually we moved closer to the beach.  At the very tip of England, at a place called Land’s End, our battalion was standing by for the long awaited invasion.  I recall the early morning hours of June 6, 1944 that would become famous as D Day.  I was on guard duty, as usual.  I watched the sky turn black with planes.  Many of them dragged one or two gliders behind them.  I knew that the ships that I had seen clogging the harbors all along the British coast had set sail for the beaches of France.  The tension of the waiting, the excitement of what was happening, and the knowledge that we were finally engaging a hated enemy caused a surprising sensation to rise in my breast.  I let out a loud cheer.  I wanted to be with the invading force.