Scofield Barracks

We were called to an assembly hall one morning and the officer in charge asked how many of us would like to take basic training where the average temperature was 65 degrees and the scenery was like something from a movie.

Most of us were skeptical, of course. Even at this early stage in our military careers we were hesitant to volunteer for anything. But some of us couldn’t resist and found out our destination would be Scofield Barracks, Hawaii. It’s hard to believe but they didn’t get enough volunteers and the quota had to be filled out with the unwilling. These were mostly married men who knew their families would not be able to visit them that far away.

My one and only assignment to the dreaded KP (kitchen police) came at Camp Crowder. We were busily cracking some 40 or 50 dozen hen fruits for scrambled eggs at 4 a.m. one day when we were told to go back to our barracks and get ready to ship out at 5 a.m. We obviously didn’t get any sleep that night but we made up for it on a troop train the next day headed for Camp Stoneman, California.

We had to lay around for a few days getting processed and for many of us, born and reared in sheltered Midwest homes, it was our first glimpse of a world for which we had little knowledge. The sophistication by even the youngest from this new world exhibited itself one Sunday morning when several boys no older than ten came to the barracks selling newspapers.

We were not really concerned with current affairs and some of the guys started giving the paper boys a hard time.

One said, “What do I want with a newspaper? I can’t read.”

The retort was instant. “You can smell, can’t you? It’s all bullshit anyway.”

It was also a first major encounter with someone from a different race. I was in a friendly penny-ante poker game when the bet was not called by anybody and the opener hauled in the pot without showing his hand.

A black fellow in the game asked what the winning hand was and the response was standard.

“If you want to see the hand, you have to call,” answered the winner.

The black man took offense at that and we had to restrain him. His inexperience in poker did not help our opinion of his race. That bad early impression was mitigated later by more positive encounters. My learning experience has been that no matter what your race, every individual should be judged on his actions, not his color.