The Taste of War:
CHAPTER NINETEEN

THE SLOW BOAT HOME

THE rage to return might have made smart travellers out of the men. Why organize a complex and universally disgusting system for conveying them home? The Army Command and Paymaster should simply have given the first hundred thousand men with the highest number of points an extra thousand dollars with their June pay and a permission, valid for three months, to go home if they wished -- and then let them get home however they could manage; double the number for July; and so on, raising the number to a half-million per month in October. Everyone who deserved to go home and wanted to go home would be home by Christmas.

Here is what could well have happened in most cases, and might have happened to the five men and the Captain from the Seventh Army Combat Propaganda Team. One hour after being paid off, they would have departed in the command car with a driver who would return the car. Stopping only to eat from their enormous picnic basket, they would have driven to Calais in a single day. They would sleep comfortably on the ground because of the crowd (unless local boys had set up cots and tents at a price), found a boat driven by an Englishman to take them to Dover (the crush of boats coming and going would be greater and much more joyful than Dunkirk), crossed over to Ireland, drunk Guiness and found there a ship bound for the Caribbean islands, landed in Cuba, played a few rounds of roulette while waiting for the regular launch to Miami, and, once landed in the U.S. of A., taken a bus, train, share-a-ride car or airplane for home. Elapsed time, fifteen days.

Misery of 15 days at a level of 2 on a ten-point Misery-Scale. Average fun level 7 on a ten-point Fun-Experience-Learning Scale. A hundred variants of this scenario would have brought the hundred thousand men home on the average in a month's time, a most interesting time, one should add, that they would forever remember favorably.

Within weeks, the free enterprise system would have brought in a dozen travel agenices and a host of carriers, especially if the Army and Navy had begun to release its contractors. The families of the troops would begin to buy their boys tickets, put pressure on the commercial carriers, and even call for their soldiers in cars and buses and planes at incoming places like Halifax and Montreal and New York and Hampton Roads. The Texas State Legislature would vote a free ticket to Any Soldier, Sailor or Marine from Texas. The Pacific situation would be much the same. (Incidentally, I note my failure to mention the Japanese Surrender; it was a foregone conclusion when it came and barely raised a drinking arm at the Hohenhaufen bar.)

Instead of this happy mad Victory send-off Party for millions of men, the Army found the worst solution. Recall the jeering paraphrase: "There's the right way and there's the Army way." Score on the Misery Scale = 9.5; score on the FEL Scale = 1.2.

The high-point men returned in bands of several soldiers that became larger groups at each stage of their journey. Though physically never more crowded, they were lonely in the sense that they usually left units to which they had been closely bound for a long time. The Captain's six set out from Bad Homburg on August 22 in a weapons carrier. They had a morose party the night before in the Team's villa, and were given a send-off in the morning by Colonel Stanley, who had called out all of the officers and presented the travellers with a bottle of Cognac. Their orders read "Return by Air." They drove as far as Luxembourg the first evening, figuring upon a pleasant evening there among friends and a quick journey to their destination, the 14th Reinforcement Depot near Thionville, in the morning. Sgt. Joe Green, who had operated a loud-speaker truck for them down South, had become Manager of the Hotel Continental. They ate, drank and slept splendidly. Two officers, out for the night from the Depot, disquieted them by speaking of poor conditions and delays.

In the heavy rain the road to Thionville was as ugly as Europe could afford, showing dirty and lifeless villages, grim rows of factory buildings making one think uneasily of East Chicago. Dead fortifications obtruded: it was the Maginot Line, with its holes, pill- boxes, blind roads, dragon teeth, and wasteland. The Depot itself turned out to be a cluster of jaundiced and cracked pink stuccoed buildings.

The men were despatched to a so-called squadron in one direction. The Captain waited until several other officers were collected. They were led to bungalows, and told to help themselves to a room and bed. He found in one of them its last empty room, up a narrow staircase, and plunked himself on its only cot. Three officers came in together, a Lieutenant Colonel, a Major, and a Lieutenant, looked in, swore, went down and came back carrying cots. So there were four roommates and they might all curse together.

The sharpest irritation came with news that air flights from Thionville to America had been canceled and the usual stay here was now eight to ten days. Almost immediately the officers began talking of a subject that became increasingly emotional and tiresome with the passage of the days, of how well they had lived in Germany and how disgusted they were with France. It became more and more of a tirade, moving from the depreciation of privileges to absurdities. It became hard to say on whose side they had fought. Cast the accounts for this to a couple of million men and it is fair to say that there was almost no good will left among the American expeditionary forces in Europe toward France and the French. The Captain found himself on one occasion in a stark mad eyeball-to- eyeball confrontation with an officer after he had finally reminded the man that "the French did not start this war; the Germans did."

In the dilapidated dining halls, the worst of Army rations were served, the oldest type of C-rations, a canned fruit compote and a weak bad coffee. The implements were banged up. The tables were cleared and coffee poured by slovenly French girls. Aside from the meals there was little to do. The enlisted men were restricted to camp; the officers could escape only if they had kept their vehicle. They were alerted to a speech by the Camp Commandant the next morning and looked forward to it. It went like this, almost to the word:

I know things are tough here, but they're tough for us too. I wouldn't ask you to do anything that I wouldn't do. I wash out of a helmet just like everyone else. We're understaffed; we have a lot of limited-service people; our personnel is constantly being lost through re-deployment, and we have a much larger number of men than we ever expected to handle.

However, I know that you can take anything for a few days. We expect to get you out of here just as soon as possible. But we have no control over that. You'll probably be here eight to ten days. We can't get labor to fix up your quarters. Don't think the men in this outfit don't realize your situation. A lot of them are old combat men themselves. We were supplying reinforcements to the infantry before we took over the job of redeploying troops home. I hope you enjoy your stay here, and if there is anything you have to complain about, you can see me at any time.

Unfortunately the next day he left for Paris, where he was inaccessible. Said a Lieutenant, "If that old bastard is dumb enough to wash himself in his helmet, that's no reason for making the rest of us do it." No one could figure out a good reason for the camp, since the men could have stayed with their units until called to a departure point on twenty-four hours' notice. The real reason was that the total operation was mismanaged, snafu ( One is permitted to use the hoary phrase this once in 500 pages: Situation Normal: All Fucked Up.)

In the morning the enlisted men were formed into a long straggling column that wandered out of the "Konzentrationslager" and down the road a while. They rested and smoked. No one deserted; this was the only route home. Then they walked back. Bad old movies were shown in a small crowded room full of smoke. Here and there card and crap games went on. The ugly indigestive boredom continued, spiced by rumors that they were to fly and not to fly. They were placed into "Project Green" to go by air; genuine orders were cut to this effect. Clothing that had been issued for boat was exchanged for clothing for passage by air, and baggage was stripped down to 35 pounds. This allowed almost nothing besides a man's souvenirs for the folks back home.

The Green Plan promised an air trip at the end of a train trip to Marseilles. The same day a message came through to fly them quickly to Marseilles, where planes had suddenly become available to fly them to America. But the planes were not to be had locally. Two more days at Thionville followed, and the whole lot of them were told to assemble to ride the train to Marseille and to fly from there. Off they trucked to the rail head, on the evening of September 3.

The long train was composed mainly of wooden-benched third- class carriages. They were full and the men took turns sleeping on the floor night and day. The toilets malfunctioned and the right of way served instead, during stops. Officers had a second-class carriage. All places were occupied and they slept in place. A Major who was permanent train commander lived in a comfortably furnished boxcar with his several men. He was a former regular Army sergeant, lean, hard-faced, impassive at unpleasantries. Once the train had chugged off, he sat down to poker with several officers and played out the trip, emerging comfortably ahead of the game. There were two old boxcars stocked with rations and holding kitchen ranges, with two mess crews in residence.

The 1800 men lined up at each meal stop, which took three hours. The train spent almost the full second night in the Lyons rail yards, shifting about from time to time. At one point the train stopped where there was water to wash oneself. South of this a ways, the train locked into a long tunnel where the troops almost suffocated and panic began to take hold; after forty minutes, the voyage resumed, with a frightful scrambling to jump aboard. Midway into the third night the train arrived fifteen miles from a camp at Calas and detrained into trucks for the ride there. They were shown to showers and told they would have to wait several days for airplanes. Food, in case they were hungry after fifteen hours of fasting, would come in the morning. The camp turned out to be excellent; German prisoners did all the dirty work.

The Captain and his lot were given a time of departure by plane, but shortly beforehand were notified that their departure would be delayed for an emergency flight; a call had been sent out for railroaders, they discovered, men who had been over no matter how

short a time provided they had once worked for a railroad. They were being sent back to rescue the railroad system from chaos at home. It would appear that all the civilians who had postponed their vacations were now moving about, and that all the businessmen who had been under restraints for the sake of all-out warfare, were now making up for lost time. Moreover, the railroaders had been assured that upon their return they would be given leave before getting up steam for the great railroad rescue. These were all paranoiac suppositions, of course.

Now the Captain's consignment was alerted. Two days later it was driven down to the docks and loaded aboard ship. Some 2800 men passed into the recesses of the Hawaiian Shipper, a medium-sized, fast, diesel-powered cargo ship, constructed with a subsidy from the Maritime Commission, now converted into a troop carrier and operated by the Matson Steamship Company. It was a sweet deal for the Company, also a tolerable well-paid arrangement for the civilian Merchant Marine crew, a nonsensical assignment for forty Naval personnel, and a misery for the passenger troops.

The civilian crew hogged far too much of the ship, with perhaps ten times the space of a soldier; their attitude stank; several were selling T-shirts at twice their cost in the ship's store (and were forced to return the money and had their wages docked). The crew and Navy lived in a super-structure that covered over what had been deck space. They had their own deck above, that they hardly used. The Navy merely loafed; they said their camp for armed guards back home was crowded and they had to live on the sea, like the Flying Dutchman. No one had thought to give them indefinite home leave.

The troops were ordered into four holds, forward port and starboard, aft port and starboard. In the holds hammocks stood and swayed in stacks of four, that marched to far dark corners. There were two hundred too few, but more than that many men refused to climb into one under any conditions, and many more men were seasick most of the time and gasping for breath on deck. Barracks bags swung dizzying off the hook of each man's hammock. Here and there a dim bulb shined. They could not unpack, they could not sit. Very little ventilation entered, this from the open bulkheads. All were ordered to wear unspeakably filthy life jackets at all times (they did not, could not). The few passageways below decks, up and down and above decks, were filled at all hours with restless exhausted men. A good part of their time was taken up with waiting in line for a toilet or waiting in line for food. Only salt water was available except for an occasional cup of fresh water.

Crap games went on throughout the voyage: lucky the ones who could manage to observe it from above or alongside! The main crap game, aft of the superstructures, was unending. Players hated to give up their place. The stakes were as high as soldiers could afford. Many dropped out broke. By the time the voyage ended, one man had won fifteen thousand dollars in small bills and change, and paid two sidekicks to help him carry it all ashore safely.

A system of book distribution had been worked out. A branching of assistants was arranged so that a man could get his vague expression of interest handed up two levels to the Ship's Library and might get a book on the down turn that would interest him. The Library was open one hour a day to the representatives. A Special Service Officer, a Lieutenant, labored heroically to sponsor a Ship's Newspaper, organize a Ship's Band, manage the Library, and distribute games. Volunteers assisted him in typing, cutting, pasting, mimeographing the daily afternoon bulletin, sitting pasty-faced from the rocking ship and insufferable air of the Lieutenant's tiny cabin.

The same Officer found other officers to organize and put on a daily music recital and variety show. Battered instruments were brought out and instrumentalists persuaded that they might make music on them; they did not, but played anyway: what can you do with a tenor sax missing three keys? An accordionist, Corporal Bizek from Cleveland, appeared from the dark of a hold and performed an extensive repertoire of Slovak polkas and mazurkas. A Corporal Schmidt from Nebraska became Master of Ceremonies by virtue of a corn-fed country humor; he saved the show occasionally, when the performers or their instruments collapsed. On Sunday, he could hardly preside, because his religion forbad him to swear on the Sabbath. Motion pictures were shown, too; the screen was set according to the wind, where, if they could resist choking to death from the oily smoke of the funnel, some men might view them. The passenger-officers had in their cabins a little more room than the men below decks, and had a small mess hall that was cleared an hour each evening so that they might write or play cards.

The Chaplain, preacher to three thousand men, tried nobly. The men no longer feared death and mutilation in combat and were disgusted with the Army, especially now, with gripes that God would certainly find too petty for intercession. The Chaplain found a volunteer to play the portable organ he had brought up on deck and each morning at ten-thirty would preach a sermon. Then he would lift his voice atonally in song, and beat the air in hopes of arousing some of the soldiers to sacred song. He looked into the faces of perhaps a dozen men at some degree of attention. The rest of the crowd had their eyes shut in exhaustion or their backs turned, while as many as could were watching the crap game. On Sunday, for his sake, gambling was forbidden; nevertheless the huge game, mentioned earlier, kept on going flagrantly, throughout Sunday, and even through the religious services and all.

At four-thirty in the morning, biting roughly into one's bunk, blared the ship's loudspeaker with the call, "All mess tickets Number One form in the mess line." Each hour the call would be repeated until nine shifts had gone through the line. The food was sufficient and good at breakfast and dinner, but there was no reward for those who sweated out the lunch line except an orange and a baloney sandwich. Three days out to sea, cans of fruit, cookies and cigarettes were sold, in a one-time sale. For their part, the officers ate in four shifts, beginning at six-thirty in the morning.

On September 29, the thirty-ninth day after leaving the Table of the Victors at Bad Homburg, feeding began at two A.M. The ship was approaching Hampton Roads heading toward Newport News, Virginia. Orders were out to change from fatigues into woolen uniforms, whatever the heat outdoors, and to shave. It was a time to reflect upon the miseries of war, or at least a time for us to reflect, since he was but a numb scarecrow from the effects of the tedious voyage.

He would soon have been gone for 850 days from the United States. That is 20,400 hours. How much of this experience had been pleasant, how much agreeable, how much tolerable, how much unpleasant, and how much distressing? Please look again and see that I have a five-point scale here, ranging from best to worst. If I could get into his far-stored memories deeply, and could fit them to these five words, then add them up and figure what percentage they made up of the 20,400 hours, I might well comprehend this man's taste of war.

The biggest problem in becoming a statistician of his feelings over time is that no experience -- his, yours, or mine -- is likely to be encompassed under one emotion, and, worse than that, under one category of behavior.

For instance, he is riding in a jeep from his bivouac to a hospital near Naples, and enjoys the beautiful terrible eruption of Mt. Vesuvius (do you recall it?). His primary feeling is distress, but he is also feeling exaltation, a pleasant feeling. Or, to exemplify the second problem, he is talking sociably to others at dinner under the volcano of Mt. Etna; there are two tolerable if not agreeable activities going on here; yet should the activity and time spent upon it be accredited to eating or to sociability? This and other problems could be solved in a volume or two of applied sociological analysis; here, I may have gone too far already, and therefore I shall not construct the multiple ratings and the many graphs needed to cut in microscopically: Sufficient unto the day is the evil (and good) thereof.

We end up therefore with a table of his principal activities overseas, the time in hours spent on each one, and the average feelings he had about each kind of activity.

PAINS AND PLEASURES

(* Not included are the 11,992 hours of Army time spent before leaving the States;
"genug ist genug.")

I have not allowed him the sardonic victory of placing in the column a category for "Homesickness/Lovesickness," gnawing ailments that cast a melancholy haze over the total picture. Not that these are not tormenting and even deadly illnesses. I justify myself by saying that this dimension of suffering is reflected in the ratings of everything else he did, lowering them somewhat in agreeability.

However, more important, I have not included a category for "Pride of Cause and Nation." Now, he was no German who could wet his (or her) pants with pride at the salute and sacrifice to Der Führer und Das Reich. He suppressed all such extravagant expression and feeling. But he did obtain a continuous positive charge from fighting for the "good ol' U.S.A." and the "Four Freedoms". His war morale was never less than high. And that is why I am not letting him insert "Homesickness/Lovesickness" into the list. These positive and negative ions mixed in a fine ideological fog that overhung his thousands of hours.

Note also that "distressing" periods must have been brief and scattered throughout the hours and months and activities. They could and did crop up at any time. Where they were intense and prolonged I put them in a special category of "anguish." Any such anguish or distress was rapidly diminishing now. Yet, do not count it out!

Five hours later the Hawaiian Shipper docked, a military band struck up a tune, and Red Cross girls appeared to show what American beauty must be like. Any further reception would seem out of place. The dream of the glorious homecoming proved to be one of the more prominent illusions of the war. Perhaps the meanness of the return was better than parades and lavish honors that would delude the veteran into over-estimating his achievements, his worth, and his place to come in the strange new society.

The arrivals were segregated into officers, white soldiers, and black soldiers -- yes -- and each troop marched off in a column to the trains that brought them to Camp Patrick Henry. There they were treated gravely and wonderfully, served steaks by German P.O.W.'s, and let loose upon a battery of telephones. Bands played all night for contingents going out.

Shipment #2097, bound for Fort Sheridan, Illinois, got going the next day. It contained the Captain, now a Car Commander, and several score men on one of a train of twenty cars, that could afford an upper bunk to one man, a lower bunk to every two enlisted men, and a bunk to the officer in charge.

The trip should have taken eighteen hours; it took fifty. There had occurred an avalanche along the Chesapeake and Ohio right-of- way. But that was only incidental. The main delay was the large number of halts on sidings to let freight trains and passenger trains pass them. The food gave out on the second evening and the train paused in Cincinnati to pick up C-rations and coffee for next morning's breakfast. This was the last of food until the end of the trip near midnight.

When the train entered the great switching yards of the South Side of Chicago, it was halted, while countless commuter and passenger trains zoomed by. None of the railroad personnel admitted to understanding the delay, much less to any responsibility for it. One said that after all the men did have bunks, another that he could appreciate their restlessness. The philosophical discussion of the treatment provided by the railroads to the returning soldiers found expression in a few expletives, clear, precise, but to no avail.

Some of the men were in a frenzy. Their homes were only a few blocks away. The Captain was himself only a couple of miles from home. Several just took off across the tracks. He urged the men to hold on for a few more hours so they could get their discharge papers and money. When, after several hours of waiting, the train moved on and shortly into Fort Sheridan, he reported that the missing men, half starved, had run off to buy hot dogs, and were left behind. So they all colluded and sadly affirmed.

By midnight the Captain has been signed out of Fort Sheridan. There are few people out and around. He catches a bus, then an electric train, then an elevated train, then a cab, and by three o'clock is cautiously reconnoitering a tan brick apartment building numbered 5436 S. Ridgewood Court, then carefully rings the doorbell where it is written that he lives.

She wakes up. She lets him in, with a polite hug and kiss. Then you stand back, and test reality: yes, she is there and I am here. Now see in the light of the hallway what has happened over the past 845 days. In her cotton nightgown she looks just as she did then, pink- faced, twinkling eyes of Baltic blue, thick tousled reddish light hair, high-pitched voice, a good body smell, embraceable, nothing to worry about at first sight. A drink of whiskey is called for. A shower. Chit- chat.

Time for bed. Laughing at her big Murphy bed that springs out from the wall helps them feel close again. Time to make love. He has prefigured well this first night, our clever Captain, whose beribboned jacket hangs flagrant upon a chair.

From the baby's room comes a call. "Shh!" An impatient call. "Don't answer." A loud cry, then, really loud, an imperative shriek, unending. She won't stop, dammit. "Oh, honestly!" Jill exclaims, "What a nuisance!" And she gets out of bed. "Kathy!.. What is it Darling?.. Daddy has come home!..You know Daddy!.. Wouldn't you like to see Daddy?"

"No!"