Countrycompatables,
Yes, yes, I know. I'm running behind schedule. The fact is, lightning did hit our computer. You have your doubts? How about, an elephant stepped on our monitor? Here in the New Hampshire rain forest that sort of thing happens all the time.
In any case, here is the third and final installment of my three parter on racism in the military during the nineteen fifties, already recognized as the most promising interlude during our unsuccessful experiment with empire. I served 1957-1959. A couple of vignettes should help establish the period.
One member of my platoon during basic training was a sleek young black boxer from Harlem, already accomplished enough for Sugar Ray Robinson -- often enough referred to as "pound-for-pound" the greatest middleweight we had ever developed -- to have bought up the contract on the fellow and to be training him personally. My fellow recruit was good-natured but perhaps a bit withheld; he obviously regarded the army, its rules, the entire system as designed mainly for farmboys and jailbirds, but not for him. I'd been invited to join the army boxing team -- I didn't, wised up by having sparred from time to time with my friend for a few minutes behind the barracks. As a courtesy he refrained from knocking my block off. He told me my arms weren't that bad but my legs needed work.
As it happened he occupied the bunk under my own. During basic training he had a way of mounding his clothes underneath his blanket and stealing out for a night in the nearby town, Killeen. Whenever there was bed-check, and one of the sergeants came by with a flashlight and saw that he wasn't there, I mumbled something about his having probably left for the latrine.
Once the Fourth Armored Division was gyroed and sent to Germany we wound up in different units, if in the same camp. Then one day word got around the camp that somebody had been killed much earlier that morning. It was my friend. Predictably, he'd fallen into the habit of slipping out of the barracks and frolicking with the Frauleins and returning to camp without a pass during the wee hours. That night an officer of the guard had heard him making his way through the brush around the guard post, challenged him repeatedly, then -- when he did not surrender -- blown him away with his standard-issue .45. This sort of thing happened all the time. There was no investigation.
Another, perhaps more telling incidence of military justice broke around me a few months before I was discharged. When we got to Germany I had picked up a very old Opel, which got me to the camp every day -- as a newly married man I lived off post -- and even had miles enough in it to get Ellen and me to Brussels for The World's Fair, then Paris, then back to Goeppingen, our base near Stuttgart. Then we bought a new blue Opel wagon, an event which caused something of a stir around the camp when word got out that we'd paid cash for it --@$1500, as I remember. I sold its predecessor to a mild-mannered black staff sergeant from the adjacent company, for $400.
The next thing I heard was that the staff sergeant's company commander, a stocky, single-minded popoff who had supposedly won the Congressional Medal of Honor in Korea, was bringing the staff sergeant before a court martial proceeding for allegedly stealing the car from me. I was called to testify. I assured the board that the staff sergeant had bought the car from me for cash. The sergeant got off.
The next move the company commander made was to arrange for me to be transferred to his unit from the headquarters battalion. He intended to make me pay. For days he kept me on my hands and knees scrubbing the floor of his orderly room. While I was scrubbing devotedly the company commander issued word that he wanted to call a special formation that afternoon. He'd made sure I never got the word. Then he informed me that he was instituting a court martial action against me, for "missing a movement." as the military parlance went.
That burned me up, immediately. Characteristically, I came back hard if not that far-sightedly. "If you do that," I told him, "I will bring over the best defense attorney in Manhattan. Before this is over I'll have your captain's bars. Furthermore, you'd better leave that staff sergeant alone."
I suspect that what convinced the vengeful old reprobate was the rumor that I had paid cash for my new car. The professional military of the period lived by time payments and borrowed money. If I had $1500 at my disposal, God knows what resources I might bring to bear. I was bluffing, totally, but he crumpled at once. The next day he released me back to the headquarters company. I hope he left the staff sergeant in peace.
Later, when I began writing novels, it occurred to me that here was an episode parallel to the plot in "From Here To Eternity." But by then a lot more had happened to me. I present you all with the bare bones.
Salut,
Burton
are all available in a highly affordable electronic format at treefarmbooks.com
Showing posts with label 1950s army and race. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1950s army and race. Show all posts
Monday, July 2, 2012
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
White Like Me II
Countrycompadres,
So now we proceed, our familiar collection of monsters except holding forth from another galaxy. Back now in Photoscenic New Hampshire, after driving for days through a hurricane that thankfully degenerated into a nasty tropical storm. Like two days of plowing through a car-wash, with 18-wheelers jack-knifed and crumpled into the cement retaining walls along I-95 and an incessant downpour that never really let up, so that a few seconds forging through an underpass was cognitive bliss.
After two days we landed in D.C. for a short visit. Research for my next novel, in and around the Supreme Court. Finally arriving at the Mother Ship in Bradford, NH, where the storm that had been stalking us up the East Coast overtook us again and blew the guts out of our computer. But we are finally on line, as you might surmise.
Most followers of this blog seemed captivated by my barracks story last time around. One, the courageous investigative reporter and biographer -- and professor -- Joan Mellen admonished me about getting into race and/or sex as subject matter. She is undoubtedly right, but when did I ever listen?
The next incident I remember from my army days involving color came about once Basic Training was over and I was stationed for several months in what was then Camp Gordon -- now Fort Gordon -- in Augusta Georgia. I was training to become an 053, a radio operator. Our classes were held in a big grid of one-story buildings; we were expected to double-time in the fearful August heat between classes, our "Tessie-rolls" -- rolled-up raincoats -- under our right arms and paired off according to height, the tallest pair in front and the rest of the trainees in descending order. Very military.
It happened that the classmate who was exactly my height was a black draftee who had just gotten his PH.D. in physics at the University of Chicago. I had studied the subject a little in both high school and college, and during the breaks he brought me up to speed as regarded developments in quantum mechanics and uncertainty theory. I definitely wanted to hear more, and so I invited him over for dinner one Saturday to the one-room apartment in which my new wife -- we had gotten married perhaps a month earlier -- and I were starting out. Essentially, the place was an abandoned gas station, with a huge plate-glass window facing -- yes, really! -- the original Tobacco Road and a bed and a couch and a primitive little stove. The place was literally crawling with field mice, and after lights-out we lay in bed together and listened to the traps my wife had set all over the block-linoleum floor snap shut. Once we had counted down, and were sure each contained a dead mouse, we turned to our newlywed obligations. This was no honeymoon for the squeamish.
My fellow draftee got off the bus from Camp Gordon at the appointed time, and I ushered him into our flat and mixed us a couple of drinks. My wife had come up with hors d'oeuvres. The conversation was just getting interesting when my red-neck landlord happened to pass the big plate glass window, and peered in, and immediately all but kicked the door open and joined our party. "Git that nigguh outta mah house!" he roared; all of us stood up.
What happened during the next few minutes promised a race riot. Hillbillies literally brandishing pitchforks stormed through the surrounding weeds; GIs who were renting in the upper reaches of the building -- both Northerners and Southern youngsters who were obviously rethinking Jim Crow after months in the desegregated military -- clambered down the fire escape steps to help us out. The local sheriff rolled up in a battered prowl car, a heavy-set fellow who attempted to explain to my wife and myself that "Understand, boy, the red birds do not congregate with the black birds in this world. The nigruhs, they don't want that neither...."
I had by God invited this fellow over for a meal, and I was determined to show him hospitality. Our guest had another idea. Lynchings were still common in the Eisenhower-era South, and he obviously had another notion as to how he wanted his life to play out. I had a car, a dented green Buick sedan with lots of portholes, over a decade old. Perhaps I might give our guest a ride into Augusta? There was a blacks-only nightclub where nobody would give him trouble.
I suspect I learned a lot more about Race in America that evening than my guest did. But there was more to come, once we were deployed to Germany.
As you will discover.
Ever,
Burton
So now we proceed, our familiar collection of monsters except holding forth from another galaxy. Back now in Photoscenic New Hampshire, after driving for days through a hurricane that thankfully degenerated into a nasty tropical storm. Like two days of plowing through a car-wash, with 18-wheelers jack-knifed and crumpled into the cement retaining walls along I-95 and an incessant downpour that never really let up, so that a few seconds forging through an underpass was cognitive bliss.
After two days we landed in D.C. for a short visit. Research for my next novel, in and around the Supreme Court. Finally arriving at the Mother Ship in Bradford, NH, where the storm that had been stalking us up the East Coast overtook us again and blew the guts out of our computer. But we are finally on line, as you might surmise.
Most followers of this blog seemed captivated by my barracks story last time around. One, the courageous investigative reporter and biographer -- and professor -- Joan Mellen admonished me about getting into race and/or sex as subject matter. She is undoubtedly right, but when did I ever listen?
The next incident I remember from my army days involving color came about once Basic Training was over and I was stationed for several months in what was then Camp Gordon -- now Fort Gordon -- in Augusta Georgia. I was training to become an 053, a radio operator. Our classes were held in a big grid of one-story buildings; we were expected to double-time in the fearful August heat between classes, our "Tessie-rolls" -- rolled-up raincoats -- under our right arms and paired off according to height, the tallest pair in front and the rest of the trainees in descending order. Very military.
It happened that the classmate who was exactly my height was a black draftee who had just gotten his PH.D. in physics at the University of Chicago. I had studied the subject a little in both high school and college, and during the breaks he brought me up to speed as regarded developments in quantum mechanics and uncertainty theory. I definitely wanted to hear more, and so I invited him over for dinner one Saturday to the one-room apartment in which my new wife -- we had gotten married perhaps a month earlier -- and I were starting out. Essentially, the place was an abandoned gas station, with a huge plate-glass window facing -- yes, really! -- the original Tobacco Road and a bed and a couch and a primitive little stove. The place was literally crawling with field mice, and after lights-out we lay in bed together and listened to the traps my wife had set all over the block-linoleum floor snap shut. Once we had counted down, and were sure each contained a dead mouse, we turned to our newlywed obligations. This was no honeymoon for the squeamish.
My fellow draftee got off the bus from Camp Gordon at the appointed time, and I ushered him into our flat and mixed us a couple of drinks. My wife had come up with hors d'oeuvres. The conversation was just getting interesting when my red-neck landlord happened to pass the big plate glass window, and peered in, and immediately all but kicked the door open and joined our party. "Git that nigguh outta mah house!" he roared; all of us stood up.
What happened during the next few minutes promised a race riot. Hillbillies literally brandishing pitchforks stormed through the surrounding weeds; GIs who were renting in the upper reaches of the building -- both Northerners and Southern youngsters who were obviously rethinking Jim Crow after months in the desegregated military -- clambered down the fire escape steps to help us out. The local sheriff rolled up in a battered prowl car, a heavy-set fellow who attempted to explain to my wife and myself that "Understand, boy, the red birds do not congregate with the black birds in this world. The nigruhs, they don't want that neither...."
I had by God invited this fellow over for a meal, and I was determined to show him hospitality. Our guest had another idea. Lynchings were still common in the Eisenhower-era South, and he obviously had another notion as to how he wanted his life to play out. I had a car, a dented green Buick sedan with lots of portholes, over a decade old. Perhaps I might give our guest a ride into Augusta? There was a blacks-only nightclub where nobody would give him trouble.
I suspect I learned a lot more about Race in America that evening than my guest did. But there was more to come, once we were deployed to Germany.
As you will discover.
Ever,
Burton
Saturday, May 26, 2012
White Like Me
Countryconverts,
Here in Florida the sticky waterless spring is deepening into summer. Our bags are packed. When next I rant, it will be from the hills of Photoscenic New Hampshire.
The Trayvon Martin shooting and the embroilments of its legal aftermath have started me musing about race in America. Race relations during my lifetime. It's been a choppy graph.
In 1960 a novelist named John Howard Griffin published a book called Black Like Me. Griffin, a susceptible white man, had dyed his body black and floated around the Jim Crow South of the later fifties. He had been insulted, condescended to, and brutalized hour by hour as he hitchhiked through the Old Confederacy, and hearing it from an educated Caucasian had quite an impact on genteel white America. Martin Luther King was rising.
During the same decade, the fifties, I put in my two-year hitch in the U.S. Army. The spring of 1957 I went through basic training in the reconstituted Fourth Armored Division at Fort Hood, Texas. Roughly half of my fellow trainees were black. The Negros of the period, as they were then called, probably spanned a cultural range wider than their white counterparts. The few I had known in college were a select culling -- one of my classmates, Cliff Alexander, went on to become Secretary of the Army, and another, my friend Nat Lamar, was no doubt the most promising novelist of his generation.
The draftees in my platoon during basic were unquestionably more representative. But across an enormous social range. One mild soul with whom I boarded the Army bus in Minneapolis that carried us to Texas was an accountant in civlian life. We hit a rest stop in Arkansas, where he was not only refused counter service but denied access to the washroom. He'd have to hold his water. The South was rising again.
My sharpest memory of interrace conflict during our training months involved a face-off I managed to get into in the barracks after hours. I was already in my middle twenties. The days of double-timing for miles and tossing fragmentation grenades over barriers produced a definite craving for sleep by nine PM, when the lights went out, and as I lay on my upper bunk the blaring rock and roll coming out of the transistor radio of a black teenaged kid across the aisle was keeping me awake, night after night. In time, I blew. After asking -- semi-politely -- that this harebrained jitterbug turn the frigging thing off, I swung down clad solely in my boxer shorts and went for the radio.
The kid reached into his locker and grabbed an entrenching tool, a heavy stubbed foldable shovel that would have served nicely as a mace, perfect for laying my head open. A few steps before I got squarely into range, through the last of the twilight, another black recruit, a huge but amiable fellow I later learned was a Christian minister in the deep South, slipped in between us and gripped each of us by the wrist and hoisted us both off the floor. We dangled like chickens in a poultry shop. "Now, mens," he recommended in his deep, soothing voice, "does you really have to fight like this? They catch you, you wind up in the stockade fo' years. Ain't hardly worth it, seem lahk to me."
We both stopped wriggling. The minister dropped us. The jitterbug slumped over and turned the radio off. I slouched across the aisle and swung back up onto my upper bunk. The Lord had been served.
I'm still a hothead, but that was a lesson I never forgot. It tuned me up for the incidents later on.
Stay tuned.
As always,
Burton Hersh
Here in Florida the sticky waterless spring is deepening into summer. Our bags are packed. When next I rant, it will be from the hills of Photoscenic New Hampshire.
The Trayvon Martin shooting and the embroilments of its legal aftermath have started me musing about race in America. Race relations during my lifetime. It's been a choppy graph.
In 1960 a novelist named John Howard Griffin published a book called Black Like Me. Griffin, a susceptible white man, had dyed his body black and floated around the Jim Crow South of the later fifties. He had been insulted, condescended to, and brutalized hour by hour as he hitchhiked through the Old Confederacy, and hearing it from an educated Caucasian had quite an impact on genteel white America. Martin Luther King was rising.
During the same decade, the fifties, I put in my two-year hitch in the U.S. Army. The spring of 1957 I went through basic training in the reconstituted Fourth Armored Division at Fort Hood, Texas. Roughly half of my fellow trainees were black. The Negros of the period, as they were then called, probably spanned a cultural range wider than their white counterparts. The few I had known in college were a select culling -- one of my classmates, Cliff Alexander, went on to become Secretary of the Army, and another, my friend Nat Lamar, was no doubt the most promising novelist of his generation.
The draftees in my platoon during basic were unquestionably more representative. But across an enormous social range. One mild soul with whom I boarded the Army bus in Minneapolis that carried us to Texas was an accountant in civlian life. We hit a rest stop in Arkansas, where he was not only refused counter service but denied access to the washroom. He'd have to hold his water. The South was rising again.
My sharpest memory of interrace conflict during our training months involved a face-off I managed to get into in the barracks after hours. I was already in my middle twenties. The days of double-timing for miles and tossing fragmentation grenades over barriers produced a definite craving for sleep by nine PM, when the lights went out, and as I lay on my upper bunk the blaring rock and roll coming out of the transistor radio of a black teenaged kid across the aisle was keeping me awake, night after night. In time, I blew. After asking -- semi-politely -- that this harebrained jitterbug turn the frigging thing off, I swung down clad solely in my boxer shorts and went for the radio.
The kid reached into his locker and grabbed an entrenching tool, a heavy stubbed foldable shovel that would have served nicely as a mace, perfect for laying my head open. A few steps before I got squarely into range, through the last of the twilight, another black recruit, a huge but amiable fellow I later learned was a Christian minister in the deep South, slipped in between us and gripped each of us by the wrist and hoisted us both off the floor. We dangled like chickens in a poultry shop. "Now, mens," he recommended in his deep, soothing voice, "does you really have to fight like this? They catch you, you wind up in the stockade fo' years. Ain't hardly worth it, seem lahk to me."
We both stopped wriggling. The minister dropped us. The jitterbug slumped over and turned the radio off. I slouched across the aisle and swung back up onto my upper bunk. The Lord had been served.
I'm still a hothead, but that was a lesson I never forgot. It tuned me up for the incidents later on.
Stay tuned.
As always,
Burton Hersh
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