Above the Thunder (13 page)

Next morning, I caught the first bus going to the post. It stopped at the gate, and an MP came aboard, spot-checking passes. He didn't ask for mine. I slipped into our hutment and into a proper uniform barely in time to make roll call.

I was just lucky. If the taxi driver hadn't spoken, I'd never have gotten an Army commission. A classmate named Johnson did the same thing one night, except that he got married while he was in town. A few days later, a brief notice of the wedding having taken place at 9:30 on a certain evening appeared in the Lawton paper. One of the tac officers saw it, recognized the name, and Johnson was thrown out of the school. Others were disqualified for breaches of the high standards set for candidates, and I've always been humbly grateful to that cab driver, the MP who did not check my pass, and to the kind Fates that protected me in this as in so many other aspects of my life. And I want to assure you, an American citizen, that this incident does not accurately represent the standards of honor and ethics I maintained during my service, either before or after the incident.

Instruction in gunnery lasted five weeks, and the fourth week was known as “The Bloody Fourth.” Not only was it a week in which there were notoriously difficult exams that sent many a candidate packing or back to a less advanced class or even to a prep course, as in the case of Howard Kenyon, but during that week each candidate was required to turn in to the administrative office his written appraisal of each of the
other nineteen candidates in his section. These reports served several purposes. For one, they gave an indication of each candidate's ability to evaluate the character, capabilities, and shortcomings of other men and to express his evaluation in writing. The evaluations of each candidate could be boiled down to an appraisal that could hardly be anything less than honest, and it might be favorable or not. An individual who tried to use the evaluation to injure someone against whom he held a grudge was very likely to be readily spotted, and the resulting injury would be to himself. And so there was many a candidate who was academically strong but lost out by having impressed most of his associates in some unfavorable way or who betrayed his dishonesty to the tac officers by his appraisals of others. Our class was slimmer after The Bloody Fourth.

One day early in December, the class was interrupted by a visit from two officers who briefed us on a new program for providing an organic air observation capability to field artillery units. The general idea was to give each field artillery battalion and division artillery headquarters a couple of light airplanes to be flown by artillery officers organic to the units. The training program was already in progress and needed volunteers for pilot training. It was emphasized that the pilots would be artillery officers first, aviators second. The planes were merely a means for getting into position to observe the targets and adjust fire. Volunteers from the class were asked to apply at Post Field.

In the hutment that night, I announced my intention of volunteering for flight training, and I started trying to sell my hutment mates on going with me. A day or two later, Bud Kelly, Everett Kelley, and I went together over to the field and applied. Col. Rollie Harrison, the first and, at that time, only flight surgeon involved in the program gave us physical and psychological evaluations.

The last big event before graduation of FAOCS Class #44 was Reconnaissance, Selection, and Occupation of Position (RSOP) 12. It was a three-day exercise, employing actual troop units, with candidates occupying certain critical positions in each. Each candidate's duty assignment was changed frequently so he could gain experience and have his performance observed in a variety of situations. In one phase, I was in charge of conducting a survey on which an actual division artillery concentration
was later fired. Again, I filled the role of an enlisted telephone operator, and in one of the most interesting problems, I was commander of a battery of four 105 mm howitzers that, on a road march behind advancing infantry, had to go quickly into position to put down covering fire for the infantry's withdrawal in front of an attacking enemy armored force, then to fight the tanks with direct fire. I managed to get satisfactory solutions in all cases—but, of course, barring some unimaginable catastrophe, my graduation and commissioning were already assured. My best memory of RSOP 12 is of the frosty, moonlit nights out on the ranges with coyotes yapping and howling on the hills after our bivouac was quiet.

We arrived back in quarters after RSOP 12 early in the evening the day before graduation. Most of us were up until after midnight, getting all in order for the big day, which started early with our formation for the graduation ceremonies in the post theater. There was the traditional tossing of the caps, discarding the enlisted man's scarlet artillery braid for the black and gold of the officer corps, and then we hurried back to our hutments to change into our new officers' “pinks and greens” before lining up for payment of our $250 initial clothing allowance.

But I had a wee bit of a problem. My new uniforms had come in by Railway Express, COD, and were over at the Fort Sill railway station waiting to be picked up. I didn't have enough money to pick them up until after I received my clothing allowance. I was far back in the slow-moving line, and already it was almost time for the departure of the special bus on which I had a ticket to Oklahoma City. In desperation, I asked Bud Kelly if he could loan me $80 to pay for the uniform, so I could pick it up and return by the time the end of the line reached the little shack where the pay office had been set up.

With Kelly's money in hand, I began trying to get a taxi. So did everyone else. By the time I finally got back from the station, the pay line was gone and they told me I'd have to go to the main finance office on the old post to get my uniform allowance. But the guards were being taken off the hutment area, so all candidates had to have their gear out of there. The buses were mostly loaded, some had already left, and Bud was delaying his bus, hoping to get his $80 back. I hastily explained and told him I'd mail it to him. Then I hurried to our hutment, changed into
my new lieutenant's uniform, grabbed my suitcase, and started hurrying over to the old post—a good quarter of a mile away.

As I left the hutment area, I encountered the sergeant in charge of the security guard, which he had just relieved. He greeted me with a big smile and a salute, the first salute for my gold bars. I returned it and gave him a dollar, in accordance with tradition, and he stuffed it into a bulging pocket.

I lugged my heavy suitcase across the post as fast as I could, and the finance people were glad to see me—now they could close out the special payroll. I hurried back toward the OCS area, but just as I turned a corner and came into view of the street where all the buses had been lined up, I saw the last one pull out and turn down toward Gate 3, on the way to Oklahoma City. I set my suitcase down and stood beside it, just about exhausted, discouraged, and cursing in a most ungentlemanly way. I had missed the bus, and that would cause me to miss the train, which would cause me to miss at least a day of the first leave I'd ever had in my twenty-seven months of Army service. And I had my ticket for that particular bus in my pocket. One other minor detail: it was Christmas Eve 1942.

A civilian car stopped beside me and a sergeant driving it asked me whether I needed a ride. I was in the car faster than I can tell about it. I told him there was a bus going down toward Gate 3 and up the highway to Oklahoma City. I asked him to catch it for me, and he did. About two miles up the highway, he pulled alongside and I waved my ticket at the bus driver. He stopped. I left $3 on the seat of the sergeant's car and boarded the bus.

Going into Oklahoma City, the bus was ascending a grade up to a bridge over several railroad tracks when it suddenly stopped. After a quick check back in the engine compartment, the driver told us he would call for another bus from the downtown terminal to come out and get us. The wait seemed interminable, but the new bus finally got there and we were mobile once again.

As I hurried into the railway depot, I was aware that I barely had time to get my ticket before my train would depart. There was only one person ahead of me at the window, a most fortunate circumstance,
except for one thing: she was an old lady with a ticket as long as her arm, and the agent had to explain to her each change she'd have to make and answer innumerable questions about every aspect of her trip. The minutes, and then the seconds, ticked rapidly away. The time came for my train to leave. At last, I got my ticket in hand and ran for the boarding platform, still carrying my heavy suitcase. The train was starting to roll, the conductor already aboard and hooking the chain across the platform between cars. I ran to catch up, he unhooked the chain for me, and I was on my way to Columbus, Ohio.

Most of the passengers—maybe all of them—in my car were military, either on leave or en route to new assignments. Some were from my OCS class. In the usual juvenile manner of young men away from the constraints of normal society, there was much loud talk, much parading up and down the aisle, much passing of bottles, and much singing and laughing that went on and on through the night as the train rolled eastward. There was little chance to sleep, and I'd had practically none for the past three nights. So when I arrived in Columbus late the next afternoon to be met by Dorie, I was not the sharpest kid in town. By the time we caught another train and rode to Xenia, the greetings by Mom and my sisters, Carolyn and Peggy, seemed wrapped in a dreamlike haze of unreality. And there was my younger brother, Bob, who insisted on calling me “Lute.” When my best friend, Buzz Perkins, came around next morning, I still felt numb in mind and body.

And then there was a bus trip to Kentucky, rain and mud and riding bareback on a wet horse across a flooded creek to reach Dad's house, visits with various aunts and uncles, introducing Dorie to my Kentucky relatives, and then it was back to Ohio once more. Before I knew it, Dorie and I were on a train and headed for Denton, Texas, in compliance with orders I had received at Fort Sill.

The floods were widespread, and damage to bridges and culverts and long stretches of track was extensive all along the line, so the train never ran fast, usually creeping along, actually stopping at each culvert until trainmen could examine it. So our entire trip was by the traditional “slow train through Arkansas.” But we arrived in time for me to report to Capt. Roy Marrs, commandant of the 25th Liaison Pilot Training Detachment
(LPTD), U.S. Army Air Force Gulf Coast Training Command, at Denton, in full compliance with my orders.

Tommy Calvert, a red-faced, square-jawed young Dallasite and a fine fellow, was my first flight instructor, as well as a good one. We took off in an Aeronca (nicknamed “Air-Knocker”) L-3, right into a blinding snowstorm. Tommy made a hasty circuit of the field and landed; we logged five minutes. That was my orientation ride and my first government flying time. It was 4 January 1943.

The next day there was a wedding in Denton, and Dorie and I moved to 1112 North Highland Street, where we and Bud and Marie Kelly had rented rooms. It was conveniently near the campus of North Texas State Teacher's College (later to be North Texas State University), but we were there for only a few days before moving to a more suitable room with a fireplace and a private bath in the large Victorian home of a Mrs. Lomax on West Oak Street.

Like a great many places in this country, Denton has grown a lot since 1943. Then it was just a small town centered on the courthouse, its economy primarily agricultural but significantly augmented by two colleges: the North Texas State Teachers College and the Texas State College for Women. If it had any fame, it was as the onetime home of the Old West outlaw, Sam Bass. But it did have the red-brick Southern Hotel, where several of us had found temporary lodging while reporting to the commandant of the 25th LPTD and getting administratively squared away.

We were required to maintain quarters on the campus of the teachers college, which was to teach the ground-school subjects in our course, and we were authorized to use the college's on-campus cafeteria. From there, Army trucks would transport us to a sod field about four miles from town, at which Harte Flying Service, under contract with the government, would provide the actual flight instruction. Captain Marrs, the military commandant, had a small administrative staff, and all of our check rides would be given by Army Air Force officers brought in as required.

The class of twenty students, alternating with another class, spent half of each day in ground school, half in flying. I was surprised to see
in the class ahead of ours a familiar face from the prewar Schofield Bar racks and from my OCS board experience, Capt. Claude Shepard.

During the cold weather, the trip to the field in the open trucks called for everyone to wear the heavy sheepskin flying jackets and caps such as were issued to bomber crews in those days; and the padding, the chilly weather, and the youthful high spirits of the students made the steel bed of the truck a sort of wrestling arena. There was much horseplay and much fun to be had between Denton and the field. When we piled out in front of the little operations building, we were warmed up and ready to go.