World War II (Part Three)

My dad didn’t receive his degree from UNM, because one year from graduation, the military decided that had enough engineers, so he received orders to train to be a bombardier-navigator.

If memory serves me correctly, the course was twenty six weeks long. My dad enjoyed the experience and was doing well in the program, when he came down with double pneumonia. By the time he was out of the hospital, he had missed too much class to be able to make it up. The Army Air Corps discussed finding him something to do until the next class started, but about that time the need for flight crews started to taper off, since the war in Europe was beginning to wind down.

Instead, my father was sent to a rehabilitation unit in Arizona, where they did a lot of physical training. When not out in the hot sun taking a long stroll complete with an M-1, and full field pack, my father was assigned light kitchen duties.

When I write light kitchen duties, I mean very light duties because there were German P.O.W.s doing most of the heavy lifting in the kitchen. Since my dad spoke passable German, the way things worked in the kitchen was that the head cook gave orders to his helpers–my father and several others. Then my father would translate the orders to the P.O.W. sergeant in German and things would be done rapidly with great Teutonic efficiency.

Once my dad had gotten himself back in shape, he was pronounced ready for strenuous duty in February, 1945. He expected orders any day sending him either to Europe or to a unit preparing for the anticipated invasion of Japan. Nothing happened. So he waited and waited as soldiers have done from time immemorial to the present.

Eventually he received word to report to the commanding officer of the rehabilitation unit, a bird colonel doctor who was regular Army. The colonel explained to my dad that the Army had a problem with him and needed his help.

From the Army’s standpoint, they would have loved to have shipped him off to a combat unit as a replacement, but they couldn’t do that because he never had completed basic training. The colonel explained that it would be a public relations nightmare if he or any other G.I. were to be killed in action and the word got out that he hadn’t been properly trained.

Similarly, too many questions would have asked if they would have tried to send my dad to finish basic training after he’d been on active duty for almost three years.

So, the colonel asked my dad if he would agree to keep working in the kitchen, supervising the German P.O.W.s for the duration of the war. Since my dad wasn’t the gung ho type, he said that he would do whatever was in the best interests of the service.

The colonel liked that response, so he told my dad that he had gotten the War Department to waive the requirement of having to have completed successfully basic training, so that he could receive his Good Conduct Medal. By receiving his medal, my dad was then eligible to finally make P.F.C. So, after being in the Army for almost three years, my father finally got to wear a stripe on his sleeve.

Needless to say, my father was rapidly demobilized at after V-J Day. For the rest of his life, my father held bureaucracy in contempt. I wonder why?