[Following a three-month furlough he received for reenlisting, my father had reported to Fort Devens, Mass. where he awaited his new assignment orders. He had spent his furlough with his family in North Troy, Vermont, while making several trips to visit with friends at Middlebury College and in New York and Rhode Island. This entry paints the scene at Fort Devens, as new recruits mixed with returning veterans, and as my father contemplated his choice to reenlist.]
April 6, 1946 (Fort Devens, MA)
At Fort Devens on these April days a hard wind blows from the West, and it isn’t an exuberant breath of Spring, but a saucy reminder that Winter is not dead, but is simply in retirement for a few months, and not yet too far away to send back a sharp reminder of his recent reign. This is the first day of the baseball season, too, but if the teams insist on playing in Boston, they will do plenty of shivering. Here at the Fort the ground in most places around the barracks is bare gravel. The wind scoops up clouds of gritty dust and sprays the soldiers who are standing in formation or walking up and down along the streets. These soldiers are a restless bunch for most of them are here only for the week or so of processing preliminary to their assignment overseas or to some other camp in the country.
There are always several hundred eighteen year old kids drafted into the Army for the first time. For a few hours they walk about in their civilian clothes. Then they go through the clothing mill, and emerge from its stacks of clothes and equipment dressed in wrinkled green fatigues, GI shoes, with duffel bags full of their new possessions rolling on their shoulders,. Now they are soldiers, and can write their names on painted walls: “Joseph Blow was here.” They take their tests, are classified, and wonder where they’re going. In their spare time of waiting around, they begin to learn how to dodge details. One morning after they have been here about a week they’re called out into the wind-swept area in front of the orderly room to hear their names called off on the shipping list. By nightfall the barracks they have just emptied are filled again by other kids dressed in civilian clothes struggling to make up their first GI bunks.
These days, too, there are many older men who have reenlisted, and are returning to camp from their furloughs. Some have been out of the Army as long as half a year and are back now because civilian life didn’t meet their expectations. One fellow explains that he tried three or four civilian jobs, and none of them suited him. A few are former reserve officers who are taking advantage of the provision which allows them to reenlist as master sergeants. They mix in readily enough with the other men, or it might be more accurate to say that the other men gravitate to them as to symbols of splendor suddenly brought within their reach. The majority of these older men have seen more than three years service, and their overseas time ranges up to forty-two months. Most of them have signed up for the three-year hitch and probably intend to make an Army career. The rest, for various reasons, have chosen to sweat out the GI life for one more year before calling it quits.
I have several times during the past week taken a dim view of my remaining ten and a half months of service, have cursed myself for making a foolish choice. Had I waited on Okinawa, I’d be getting my final discharge at just about this time. But my most foolish mistake now would be to maintain this attitude of regret. I must remember that I didn’t find the past three months at home too exhilarating. The externals of life, after all, are largely incidental. If I have something to do in the way of writing, I can work at it as well in the Army as out, and perhaps better. If the Army has accentuated certain personal problems, I can at least hope to make some progress towards solving them while I’m still in the Army. In some salubrious hours I’ve looked forward to this year as a great opportunity. Though I’m not as trigger-happy with my high resolves as I was a few years ago, I still know that I can make just about as much of my time as I choose. My main change from my college days is perhaps a lessening of my confidence in my ability or willingness to choose wisely.
Paul Davis Journals Blog 