Central Officers Training School - Shavetail Yearbook (Fort Gordon, GA)

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STHBN ,F COTS made no difference to any of us But we got along Yes, we got along As a matter of fact, when the time came we were there a little bit ahead of any of the rest Midway ln the course Captain Welch and Lleutenants Boyd Ackerman and Hall left us The partlng knocked us flat Of course, they had bawled us out, run us ragged, double timed us dizzy and all that but dammlt, they were ours They belonged to us We had brought them up, we felt and now somebody was trying to take them away from us It didnt go But they did, and mournfully we watched their departure, weighed down by the considera t10n that now we must take hold of and get a new bunch of officers used to us, all over again Captain Adkin s first talk to us was in the nature of maltecl milk to a lion Here we were, lnured to a diet of shrapnel rawhide, ten-penny nails and other conversa- tional indiffestibles, when suddenly by force of circum- stance and the transfer list, we were handed psycho- philosophical hash We couldnt get it at first It was too ethereal too subtle, too something-or-other to get across to us. It was as turning from Jack London to Henry James, from Titian to Chavannes, from Michael- angelo to Paul Troubetsky We smiled, then listened, then ffrew serious We grew more serious We left the study hall finally with the assurance that the new captaln certainly did know his manual of vocables But we got his number soon It was a number nine, rlght foot, C wldth You could tell the captain s temper by the pos1t1on of his rlght leg The angle he llfted lt from the vertical was an infallible barometer of his feeling 1n the matter at issue, and when he got lt up to forty five de grees, and simultaneously pulled about a fifty per cent Hughle Jennings pose, brlnglng the rlght fist dlagonally downward to a position 1n front of the center of the body C par 79 J , lt was time to move To move quick To move, in fact, damn quick We learned to move that way, as we learned many other things from him, and as we learned other things, too, from Lieutenants Mathews, Waldman and the incomparable Crlsp Many things Yea, many, many things The first real sign of disintegration in our company arrived on the tall of the modlfied demobillzation order from Washington Previously we had sent a few men to the dry cleaners, but only a few-1t took the War s end to make a real hole in our front Many went, many stayed but whether they went or stayed lt is clear they Wlll not soon forget that embodied spirit of soldlery and song of which they were a part-the old Twenty-Second Some company Yea, bo, some company . - ,- 'www OX-ff' 05, ,L-N 'f -:tr 1 , i ' - ' -... A V -Q ,D hr W Y---I - ' ' N-M W- - - rt --I - 1 - V l A--

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11 1 111l 1111.11 i'l1 l1'11-'I 111.1111 1 1,1 Ii1l:1l 'l Ill 11 1 1 111 -. 1117.1 iflflll 111111111 1-- 11111 111 5.1.1, 1 111,11 11 1i1il1'i 11 , 11. 1 1 fi 1 1,1 ' 1 1 Y' '1I 1l'11 1 1 H., 11 , l11l,11ii1l1 1- ' '111I1f11'11'1fl lfiE11f111E11Zf1 31l1f1'11 1i 1. l 11111111 ,111 1:1 I 1.1gff-1'l'!'11 11311311 ' 11 1 1 11111 11 1:1 1 1 ' l 11 11 11, 11 lv, 111 1 1 1 1 11 1111 11,1,1,,, , 1l111111, 12 1 1 1111111 1 11 .1 .1 1 11 ! 1 111. 1 ... 1 1 1 1 1 1 11 full. W L 1 ,. 1 fail 11' 1 wfem l1 T 1' Iwi 1 61 1 5 pi 553711-5' ' , 1. rr., 1 .111 1 1 ', 1 1 11,'.:' .-x '11 1 ,flip ' 1 1 1 ' 1 1 H 1 1 . 1 . l X1 1 l Q 1 1 11+ 1 1 111 E 1. . 2,1 1 1 . 1,11 1 11 11 . ,111 1 ' 1. 1 1 33 '- 1 1 I , V 1 l 1 1'1 l' 1 11- 1 '. 1 1 1- 1 1 1 I ' 1 1 . 5' -5, f I 1 'a l ' Li t' l 1 I 1 1 1 i N-1 -W, -.Y-, ,If '11 1 K tg ,Q H-3 f 5158! if- COTS. is:-ftnrp Z EFORE Captain Welch had been in the mess hall two minutes we knew him to possess a pro- ff ff! ,f foundly rel1g1ous strain He spoke with pul- pitous fervor of the impression we had made since our arrival Ca matter of half a dayj , and, at inter- vals, with pulpitous language, too. We were about two hundred and fifty, fresh in from camp, office and farm, and any erroneous idea we might otherwise have gained of the captain's personal force and decision in those in- troductory moments was instantly dispelled. In the suc- ceeding days we connected severally and individually with our other leaders-Lieutenants Boyd, Ackerman, Teeters, Miles, Salmon, Hall, Brodsky, and the rest-and anything the captain may inadvertently have omitted to say regarding our inaptitude and general worthlessness, his subordinates furnished with promptitude and in full. They got away with it, too, and for a considerable time we believed them. We were an oddly assorted company-hard-boiled, soft-hearted, short-winded, long-headed, lazy, persevering, soldierly, boisterous, half-disciplined, loyal, inharmo- nious, game, sometimes, maybe often, misunderstood- however you happened to take us. We were a sort of Cinderella of the battalion, there was little of the parader or the boulevard soldier about usg but deep inside our ribs each one of us persisted in the conviction that we were a fighting company, and that as such, once we were put within our rightful environment, we would repay with interest all the concern and weariness we had given x .XX 1 , X 1 x N.. our leaders. We sensed, somehow, that our collective personality was one that at once exasperated and engaged the men who handled us, we were the kind of company that arouses no tepid regard either way-our chiefs either damned or loved us, we were, we felt, the ne'er-do-wells, the irresponsibles, the devil-take-us, everybody-like-us crew of the whole outfitg the cylinder that missed fire every time except when it was needed and then never missedg the dirty-screwhead and clean-bore type of or- ganization, the gang whose shoes were always dusty, but whose powder was always dry. We grumbled. Night long and day through we grumbled. We grumbled at first call, grumbled at mess, grumbled at inspection, grumbled at the gargle, particu- larly did we grumble at that daily and eternal procession of beds out, ftwol beds in. Anyone with half an eye who watched us through a formation could tell we were sol- diers by the way we grumbled. Of course, we did all the things that were asked of us-many of them we did by habit when they were no longer required of us-but we grumbled anyhow. It seemed to go with the kind of an outfit we were. We grumbled at the officers we had. But let any outsider cast a disparaging remark at any of the said officers, and from then on he was a questionable in- surance risk. We grumbled at the cook, and yet any one of us would have taken off our shirt for him. 11Which we did, too often, in the course of K. PJ We slumped on the range, we flunked at exams, we were impossible on the march, we were skinned so often that a few more -A ,.g...,,, -11 ,.,.,..1, 'H 11 ,J-'3 ',,,,.,1-,-.,.,,. l.,1 1 . 1: 1 - Mgr M ,,,, .1 . .1 .,,1 , 1 , . -M --11 ----f K ' .1 1 ' -.-.-'-'-- 231 5-1115--Q p 1 1.... ..-..., AK -MQ ,Wx 1 1 ar.. 1 -- ,.r - Ag :..+- -' V W-'A LY. W qi'-4 rn-M T wif.. W N-Y , -W, 1 T ge 'liisgg-grwzgaz-rlmgjii '-'1 1

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