In 1943 I started college at Dartmouth. Because of my eyesight, my ability to go into various parts of the military was limited. But I had an opportunity to enter the ASTP—Army Specialist Training Program. In this program, you would go to college and study engineering or languages or some other specialty. So late in my first term at Dartmouth I enlisted in the Army.

I was sent to Harvard University where I was in the Army Reserve. This was before I turned eighteen. On turning eighteen and after three terms at Harvard, I went to basic training in the regular army. After a quick trip of transition to Fort Devens, we went to Camp Banding, Florida, and in the summer of 1944 I endured basic training in Florida. This, of course, was before air conditioning, so it was hot as hell.

At the time most travel was by train, so we went on a sleeper from Fort Devens down to Camp Bending. We were on Pullmans, so we could sleep at night. It was very warm and I remember struggling to open the windows to get a little more air. Well, somehow or other, during the night we went on to some side track and the train had to be turned around. So the wind that had been at our feet was now blowing into our faces. We awoke to find our faces covered with cinders.

Camp Bending was a very large camp. There were a number of trainees and a small cadre of personnel assigned to train people. The trainings ran in cycles. We happened to be four or five days early for the next cycle. So they put us out like a chain gang with sledge hammers to break up rocks. For our first few days it was like we were prisoners.

We were assigned to various companies and given bedding and then assigned to various tents. We had a foot locker, and all our possessions were contained in it. We lived in barracks and had a common mess hall. At each meal, food was prepared for several hundred people. We stood in line with our mess kits to receive three meals a day.

We were required to do extensive physical training (PT). Because of the heat it was very enervating. They would introduce us to marches every day. We would have to march to one part of the camp or another for whatever the particular training was. We had PT first thing in the morning and off and on throughout the day.

Some days we had training with respect to firing bullets at targets and the use of various guns such as an M1 rifle, which was the basic weapon. We also learned to fire carbines, which are smaller .30 caliber rifles. We also worked on machine guns. We also had bayonet practice and practice with hand-to-hand combat.

There were a number of fellows who started out with long hair, but it didn’t last long. They gave everybody very short haircuts. We had a large latrine area that was common to everybody in our company. We were assigned to clean the latrine and PT—kitchen duty.

We had numerous lectures about health with special emphasis on venereal diseases. They would show very graphic films that would scare us to death. We also had lectures on various phases of army life.

Initially, we were trained to be specialists with radios. But somehow or other that disappeared, and we ended up basic infantry riflemen. We just had to adapt day-to-day to whatever was thrown at us.

I was a very young-looking eighteen-year-old, with a baby face, so everybody called me “Junior.” We were not allowed phone calls, but we wrote and received letters. We received our letters at mail call, where we stood around waiting for our named to be called out. It was a sad day when we left mail call empty handed.

The military is single-purposed. The mission is to teach discipline. I didn’t like the constant reminders that I should do this and not do that. My role was to keep other guys from getting in trouble. We were located not too far from Jacksonville Beach, and whenever we could obtain a weekend pass that’s where we went. I didn’t drink, and on more than one occasion, I took care of colleagues who had more than one drink too much.