PAY ATTENTION: You’re in the Army Now

PAY ATTENTION: You’re in the Army Now

By John Sherman Part 1

This is a recall—-or the best I can make of it—-of two years in the Army in France. Lyndon Johnson was president. I confess adding a pinch or two of artistry to thicken the tale.

The 29th Base Post Office was not a combat unit.  I don’t remember having a helmet, never mind a .45 that could stop a bayonet charge.  After all, we were stationed just outside Orleans, France.

I arrived the spring of 1965, months ahead of President Lyndon Johnson’s big buildup in Vietnam.  I’m still ashamed to mention my assignment to my veteran friends.  “Luck of the draw.”

The base post office was the major collection center for about six bases in the Loire region—-a kind of Merrifield. We numbered about 50, mostly privates and corporals, a dozen sergeants and four officers, including me, a Second Lieutenant.

The operation was enclosed in a former bakery—-a very, very large bakery, (maybe 70 yards wall to wall.)  A good portion was a loading area for the nightly run to Paris.  We each had an office and a metal desk and two chairs.  Hanging anything on the wall, like a poster of the Eiffel Tower, was forbidden.  Uniformity was the army’s mantra.

Second Lieutenants are given a slew of additional duties: armorer, recreation director, graves registration, pay officer.  The most demanding was supply officer, whose burden rarely registered with us innocent incoming officers.

For me it all started with a blue, cloth textured book called the Table of Organization and Equipment (TOE).  Oblong, it opened from the top.  I can’t remember how many pages it ran; about the only items not included were ball point pens and carbon paper.

It stretched from pillow cases to gas masks, to 2 1/2-ton trucks, with a very wide in between.  The deal was, if you were short, it came out of your paycheck.  I was making $222 a month.  Those who had been in for a while treated supply like a craps table. For the clever, there was real money to be made, for the not so clever, there was constant crisis.

The Army demanded that each of the hundreds of items in the TOE had to be perfectly accounted for.  In a perverse logic, overages were just as punishable as shortages—-a reality that slapped me upside the head too late.

Dick Bonesteel, a toothpick-chewing, sly-smiling sergeant from Tennessee, was the acting supply officer who was to formally pass the job on to me.  He and a few other non-coms in the unit had fought in World War II.  He was being discharged at the end of the week to return home.

“See that big hump over there, lieutenant, that’s a 485-9 tent, canvas, field, postal operations. The poles are underneath it.”  Bonesteel continued the tour of the categories I was to inherit.

“Over there, in the corner, stacked up, are ammo containers.  And those wrapped up packages should be 500 sheets…Those small packs over there are atropine curettes in case we get gassed.”

I followed his gestures as we went trough the TOE.  The transfer took about an hour, ending with “Well, lieutenant, you’re good to go.”  We shook hands.  I signed. A week or so later, a call came from the barracks requesting sheets.  Turns out that the stack of sheets was boosted by a hidden 2x4 frame, so what looked like 500 turned out to be 200.

The unit tent, on closer inspection, was eight pup tent halves snapped together, hiding a pile of boxes and wadded-up newspapers.  The first aid kit was empty.  Panicked, I went straight for the ammo canisters.  Half were empty.  Sheets were one thing, ammo was quite another.  The shortage list lengthened.  I had been badly snookered by the amiable sergeant from Tennessee.  A stupid, trusting, bungling Second Lieutenant—-a complete dumkopf.

I put a call in to a guy who flew in with me from the States.  He worked in personnel, the thickest bureaucracy in the Army.

“I need a supply sergeant,” I said with authority.  I gave him my unit and he told me to hang on.  He returned to the phone to report that our TOE did not call for a supply sergeant.  I reminded him of our brief friendship on the flight—-and then begged him to send me someone to lift me out of my nightmare. I may even have whimpered.  “See what I can do.” Then he hung up.

Robert Thompson reported five says later.  I thought it was a mistake.  He was Black, in his late 30s or early 40s. Nothing in his dress was crisp or straight.  His brass buckle, unpolished, had slid left.  His cap was worn at a forty-five degree angle.  Most striking of all he was a Specialist 4, a rank most GIs make after two years.

I asked him when he joined the army.  He said 1951.  So, how in hell was he still a Spec. 4?

“I’ve been busted down a few times.”

For what?

“Hitting officers.”

Given my own losses, I’d have overlooked a couple of manslaughter charges. Over the next couple of days I walked him through my shame.  At every discovery he just nodded.  It seemed a sign of wisdom.  At the end, he confirmed that I was in a “pretty deep hole, sir.”

To be continued…