The land there was red sand and the trees mostly pine. It was very hot and muggy as we were there in June, July and August. We wore one piece coveralls and every time we got back to the barracks we would step in the shower with our clothes on and would dry off in about 10 minutes. We had to got up at 5:30 am and pick up all the cigarette butts and papers on the grounds before breakfast. This was loads of fun when it was raining... We spent most of our time in marching drills, rifle range, obstacle course and 1earning., about the big gun. The drill sergeants were mean, miserable and yelled at us all the time. They yelled at me continually for being out of step while marching. I couldn't figure out why because I was always in step. After 13 weeks, I could have easily killed both of them.
The obstacle course was about a mile long through woods, gullies and across water. I had such a competitive spirit that I would run the whole route and try to finish first. Some guys would walk, take short cuts and really goof off. It didn't seem to make any difference how you did it, but I still ran all the way.
The food was not too good and I especially remember when they served spare ribs. We sat seven to a table and if the bowl started at the other end of the table by the time it got to the last person there would only be bones 1eft. The PX did a big business selling candy bars in the evenings. I remember one time my stepmother sent me a package of goodies. She put in some pickled seckle pears and just wrapped them in wax paper. The entire package was a squashed mess smelling of vinegar.
We were not allowed off the base during this period. When we had Saturday afternoon and Sunday off we wrote 1etters home did laundry and rested. I finally had time to make friends, especially with the men in my barracks. There was one man from Canandaigua and several from Buffalo, Syracuse and western New York. You can make good friends in a short time when you are that far from home. Ray Smith was in the Army too and I kept in touch with him even though we moved around a lot. We used to write gooey love letters to each other saying how much we missed each other. I took pictures and the ones that were so black they were nearly blank I sent to him "with love" It is a good thing no one saw those letters or they surely would have thought we were gay. (It is interesting that I never did run into any of that type in the service) There were all types of men in this outfit and they were from all over the east coast. Some couldn't read or write and one was straight out of the Kentucky backwoods. It made you wonder how they were taken into the service. There was one, Cliff Boll, who could neither read nor write so he got several of us to write his letters to his girlfriend. He was a real character so we wrote torrid love letters and included all the fantastic things he was doing. When he got a letter from her, we would all gather around and read it to him. I often wonder what happened when he went home on leave. I was accustomed to writing a lot of letters an I wrote to my dad, four sisters and three brothers. I also wrote to Duke and Mabel Montanye and Mabel's letters back were the longest of any I received. She would write about everyone in Cheshire, especially the Bunnell boys, who were always getting into trouble. Their barn burnt down, the house burnt down, the tractor tipped over and they would wreck cars. When I read her letters, all the guys in the barracks would gather round and I would read them aloud. Just like a serial on TV. Mabel wrote long letters in such a delicate hand that it must have taken her forever, but she wrote every month.
Marion Bunnell was in the service and he was home on leave when he ran into a wooden guard rail on the curve south of Cheshire and the rail went through the windshield. He was hit in the head and should have died, but after much surgery he survived. He was left retarded and was given a 100% disability from the government. I can't remember the year, but soon after the war Al Bunnell and another guy held up a bank in Rochester and were chased all the way-back to Canandaigua before the police caught them down on Coach Street. He spent several years in prison.
During training while loading the logs that braced the big guns, I broke a finger on my right hand and consequently had difficulty doing my laundry and writing letters. The medics put a splint of two tongue depressors on it and I still have one knuckle that doesn't bond. Sometimes at night we would have an alert drill and drive all the vehicles from the motor pool into the pine woods. Sometimes I would have to drive one of the big personnel carriers and I would grab blankets or anything big to put behind me so could reach the floor pedals. We drove without lights up steep banks and around curves in that deep sand. It was pitch dark and quite an experience. Then we would stop grab our gas masks and run into the woods as far as we could and lay on the ground. We were supposed to put our gas masks on, but we never did.
One day I was laying in my bunk looking at my gas mask hanging on the wall and decided to get it down and see if it fit. it was filled solid with cockroaches! Guess what would have happened I had put it on out there in the dark in the woods some night! The washroom had a cement floor and when we went in there at night We would turn on the lights and wait for the cockroaches to disappear. The boy from the Kentucky hills spent all his extra time doing laundry for others for a small fee and we all thought he was just too stupid to know any better. At the end of the 13 weeks, however, we were given a three day pass. Nobody had any money except the hillbilly and he went home for the three days and really lived it up. Sometimes the brains are not where they think they are. I used my three days to visit Ken Montanye who was at Ft. Jackson in South Carolina. We met in a small dusty Southern town halfway in between and stayed in a tourist home. There was nothing to do in the little town so we just visited and walked the streets. I traveled by Greyhound bus and it was so crowded I had to stand up in front next to the driver. When I arrived back at base they were getting ready to ship the men out to their next outfits. I received a letter telling me that I had passed the test for the Air Corp and the company commander told me to stay there and not leave with the rest.
The camp was empty for a week except for the sergeants who were instructors and myself. I did KP duty and cleaned barracks until the next group arrived. The next thirteen weeks I spent working around the base and when they went an maneuvers I drove the supply truck. We would go ahead about ten miles and I would set up the officer's tent, Wood floor and cots. The new group would hike the ten miles and pitch their pup tents. I Just crawled under a truck and slept in the sand. Sometimes during this period I got a pass and went down to Ft. Jackson and stayed a few days with Ken in his barracks. Nobody knew what to do with me so they just gave me jobs and I had my share of washing pots and pans and peeling potatoes.
When this group shipped out, I got an order to see the camp commander, a colonel. I didn't know what to expect but found out that I had been listed as AWOL for the prior three months as they couldn't find me. I was supposed to be at home waiting for them to call me! This is the way everything went for me in the service. I could have been home living on that big $21 a month and not doing all the dirty work. My orders finally came and I went to Nashville, Tenn. by myself, probably by train to the classification center. At the center we had three days of intensive tests of all kinds to find out what we were best qualified for: navigator, bombardier or pilot. Naturally, everyone was hoping for pilot.
The tests were from morning till night and covered everything from physicals, eye, hearing and coordination to reaction time. The test for depth perception was particularly interesting. At the end of a long tunnel about a foot in diameter and dimly lit were two wooden pegs. You had to pull them with strings until they were opposite each other. Another one involved a board in front of you while you sat at a desk and the board had little red lights with switches below them. When a light came on, you had to turn the switch off and you had to move quickly to keep up. Another was a small hole in a board with a wooden peg that would just go in without touching the sides. While you held the peg there, the instructor, Wolfgang Loganowiche ( I remember him well and later read somewhere that he was a famous German scientist and inventor) would yell and holler at us. He had a tremendous loud voice and would sometimes sneak up behind you, yell, wave his arms and stomp his feet. Ht would scare the daylights out of you and every time you moved the peg would hit the sides and the loud buzzer would go off.