Parades,Visitors, End of Basic Training

Usually after having a hard and full day’s work and training, we’d get back to the company just in time to hear the charge of quarters come and tell us that we were having a BN or regimental retreat parade, and be ready to fall out in 20 minutes. In that time, we’d have to shave, clean our rifle, take a shower, shine our shoes, and put on a clean pair of pants, and pressed ones at that, this was the infantry. We’d fall out on the Company street and usually wait. They’d pick out the 6 ft fellas and put them up in front of the column, that took quite a while to do this. After the CO was organized we’d go pick the rest of the companies up, and that was the same thing over again, finally we’d get down past the parade grounds and we’d stand there until we’d looked like a dish rag, clean clothes didn’t look clean anymore. It was retreat time and the rat race was on. By that time this Mississippi sun was beating down on us. You could look around almost anywhere and see fellas just fall down on a heap. Pass out from heat. Finally it was over with, and were we glad BOY. We’d get back to the tent, rest up a bit, grab chow, sometimes we didn’t wait for it as it sometimes wasn’t worth waiting for. We’d head for the PX and that beer would taste mighty good to us. They’d call us out to the Company street and always make some kind of a comment on the parade, sometimes it was OK other times we did rotten, so said the battalion commander. So then we’d practice again the next night for the same thing. By that time our morale wasn’t any too good. What could we do about it? The weekends were always welcome at camp. Albert Duhn, a kid from EMMETSBURG, IA, would usually go over to the park just across from the service club and spend the afternoons on Sundays, writing letters, and taking in a good show in the evening. By this time we had a few bad actors in the outfit. One fellow named Garvey was acting nuttier than hell, guess maybe the heat was getting him. He managed to give the boys in his tent the run for their money one day. He took after them with a straight edge razor. Well the boys took off on the double, and kept on going until they were way out of his sight. Couldn’t blame them anyway. Garvey was watched pretty closely the following days. He did go to FT ORD, CALIF with us, but that was the last we heard of him. We had one alert while we were at Shelby, and that came while “GONE WITH THE BREEZE” was showing at the post theater. Pretty nearly all of the guys took off to see the show, only to be rudely interrupted by this alert that was pulled, everybody was chased out. That night we stood by. We thought this was it, that we were going to be on the way now, but it wasn’t. We had to pack all of our stuff and be ready to pull out, packing all of our clothes, equipment and be ready to fall out in the Company street with our combat equipment on our backs, also including our gas mask, steel helmet, rifle, side arms, and pack. This alert lasted about an hour, and the next day we were told that our company pulled the alert faster than the rest of the companies in the battalion. We felt as though our morale had gone up quite a little. Our efforts hadn’t been in vain at that. Then a few weeks before we left SHELBY I received a telegram one day, that BILL and JO were paying me a weekend visit. Boy wasn’t that going to be a good weekend for me. Well then I had to get busy and find a place for them to stay. I got my pass, and then started looking. I had them stay at the service club, a good place for visitors to get a bed, And they were pretty well satisfied with it. They came to have a good time, so I showed them the best I could, especially in an army camp. In the mean time we had plenty of good eats at the club, where we took all of our meals, including some good Dixie watermelon, that was delicious. We spent one night at HATTIESBURG, what a town. We took in a show one Saturday night to a wild west thriller, then going in for a bit more to eat, and hitting the hay and calling it a day. Here my company saw a retreat parade for the first time in our lives, and on Sunday we went to the show at the post theater. Bill got quite a bang out of those G.I.’s ramming around there. He thought that song we had there at that time was quite a deal and the name of it was “We’ll slap that dirty little Jap.” By the way we did. We had fun that night. We saw the best movie on the post and all for the grand sum of 20 cents too, that’s all it ever did cost us. Bill met Hill, Pop Rholf, and quite a few of the boys in the outfit. Of course Pop Rholf had to show Bill the manual of arms. POP thought he was hot shit, maybe he was. Bill and Jo left for home Monday morning. guess they had quite an experience that weekend way down south way. They stopped off in Chicago and took in a few sights in the windy city. We weren’t in Shelby very long after that, in fact we were on an alert then. Our basic training was almost concluded and we were getting ready for a long train ride to the west coast.