Jack Heaton, wireless operator

by A. Frederick Collins

Moreover my arm had begun to pain me considerably at times and so I determined to get a disability discharge. This was not a hard thing to do for any one with a heart need not be told that a man with a game arm should not be made to continue in active service if he didn’t want to.

Consequently in February I received my discharge and after seeing my folks I concluded it would be best to have my arm operated on to remove the stiffness. This I did and after the plaster casts that had been around it for a month were removed I was once again the owner of two good, strong, healthy arms and in every way fit for service of any kind should I care to enlist again.

To get a commission as a lieutenant in the Flying Corps was not as easy as I thought it would be and I found the whole machinery of making an application so clogged with red-tape that the farthest I was able to get was to satisfy the insatiable curiosity of military authorities as to everything pertaining to myself, parents and even down to the dimensions of my great grandmother’s left ankle. I was simply out of luck!

The more I thought about it, though, the more I was determined to get to France where the big game was going on. So one bright May morning I went down to a recruiting station at 42nd Street and 6th Avenue, New York, with an entirely original idea and that was to enlist in the cavalry. I picked the cavalry because I thought the outdoor life would help to build me up and that riding a horse would not make my feet as sore as marching.

While I could have enlisted in the Signal Corps as a wireless operator I believed my chances for seeing red blooded life overseas were better if I joined one of the common or line branches of the service. Having eaten a salt mackerel for breakfast and washed it down with a bucket of water (I was a little underweight) I went down to the recruiting station. In a crowded downstairs room filled with a crew of other fellows waiting to enlist I filled out a card giving my age, residence and consent to be enlisted should I pass the physical examination which was held every couple of hours.

We were stripped of our clothes, lined up in a row and one by one we were examined by the recruiting officer who put us through eye, foot, breathing and other like tests. I had hard work to keep my game arm from failing me but I came through all right. Finally I was weighed in, cautioned against the extreme penalties of lying and then asked all about my past life. The officer in charge of the station was next called in and gave each of us a little physical inspection of his own, with the result that he threw out a few of the candidates as being unfit. Sixteen had been accepted and—oh, joy—I was one of them.

This done we dressed, signed a register which showed we had been accepted, were given sealed orders and transportation and told to report to Fort Slocum, on New York Harbor. After a long ride on the subway, trolley and government ferry I arrived at Fort Slocum. It is located on an island in the harbor and is formed chiefly of houses for the officers, regular barracks for the infantrymen, or doughboys as they are called, who are stationed there all the time, and a lot of wooden shacks and tents for the recruits who come in.

The examination I was given at the recruiting station wasn’t a marker to that which I received at Fort Slocum and as a result it was not until the night of the day after I got there that I was sworn in and duly became a recruit in the cavalry of the United States Army.

I stayed at Fort Slocum for the better part of two weeks waiting patiently for the time when I should hear my name called among the others of the daily outgoing list, and be one of the recruits to go away to be trained. I had hoped to be sent to Texas for my training but when at last I was on the outbound list it was for Fort D. A. Russell, Wyoming.

After a four-day ride on a troop train we arrived at Fort Russell which is about three miles from Cheyenne. There our cars were switched onto a siding and we landed just as the sun was setting in the golden west. And say, man, as far as the eye could reach except in one direction, where there were mountains, the land was as level as the sea in a doldrum. Oh, why, oh, why, did I ever leave my happy berth on the H-24?