ENSIGN JOE GISH reports his presence, sir, for active duty with the CCC.” Thus, a few months ago, the first contingent of the Naval Reserve reported to the adjutants of various Army posts throughout the country.
A few blue figures in a sea of khaki, having no clear conception of what would be expected of them, or what sort of duty they might draw, other than scuttle-butt rumors and a hazy impression from the reading of newspapers of CCC boys felling trees in immense forests, or planting small bushes in drought areas.
What lay behind all this, how the Army made the wheels of administration and supply go around and just where they would fit in the scheme of things, was still shrouded in mystery.
On that first morning, however, the immediate concern was, “Where and to whom do we report?” The orders read, “To the Commanding General, Fort Knox, Kentucky.”
Well, aboard ship it’s the O.O.D. and then the “Exec,” so there must be someone like that here.
Upon arrival at the administration building, questions were answered and things squared away in the first brief, but universally pleasant, contact with Army officers, who realized that Army procedure was somewhat different from that to which we were accustomed and did their best to make us feel a little less strange.
Ordinarily after the routine medical examination, new officers are put through a 2-week training course in Army paper work and other problems of camp administration and supply for companies in the field. However, we had arrived at an off time and since there were no new Army Reserve officers to be trained, we were ordered direct to companies in the field to be attached for training. We three, all ensigns, drew a veteran company located in southwestern Kentucky. The CCC is divided into two main groups consisting of juniors, boys 17-28 years of age, whose families are on relief, and former service men who are classed as veterans.
The sun arose in a smiling cloudless sky, under which we bowled along over the winding roads of the Kentucky foothills that now and then abruptly blundered into a sleepy little town, each with its own particular charm and inevitable over- ailed group lounging on the benches and steps before the “cou’thouse squah.”
Upon arrival at our destination, we stopped in town to overhaul our gear in order to present a more shipshape appearance when reporting. Of course we were a curiosity to the townspeople in our uniforms. Their guesses ranged all the way from ticket takers for a little tent show which had just been pitched on the outskirts of the town to bus drivers on a holiday.
Our first glimpse of the camp, however, was an agreeable surprise. The orderly rows of barracks were situated under a grove of trees lining a park-like space which had once been the local picnic grounds, and gave the impression of a self-contained community within the limits of the town.
These barracks were of the conventional Army design but the ugliness of the bare supporting pillars had been hidden by carefully trimmed hedges. White graveled walks were laid out over lawns, whose greenness was relieved here and there by the bright color of flower beds. A rustic bridge spanned a small stream which wandered through the camp and the rustic benches along the walks were filled with groups of men quietly enjoying their evening pipes.
This camp had been built by a naval officer and many old familiar names appeared above the doors, “Galley,” “Sick Bay,” “Crew’s Head,” etc. An anchor tipped rakishly on its side amid a bed of petunias, and a ship’s bell, upon which the Army still struck the hours of the watch, was mounted on a rustic framework alongside the outdoor bulletin board. A small hill that shouldered its way through the far end of the camp and skirted the edge of the baseball field made an ideal spot for the outdoor auditorium which had been terraced into its side.
The officers’ quarters, cosily tucked away under the rustling shade trees, consisted of a long barracks building with a center passageway, into which the door of each officer’s room opened. This passageway ended in a large room which gave the pleasing effect of a hunting lodge, with its stone fireplace, rustic furniture, window seats covered with brightly colored quilts, and sporting prints lining the walls. On first impression the walls seemed to be of unfinished maple, but closer inspection showed them to be ordinary building lumber which had been treated with two or three coats of oil. This room, in which we found the company officers smoking after-dinner pipes, still retained its seagoing name, “The Wardroom.”
The officer personnel consisted of a reserve captain as camp commander, a first lieutenant medical reserve camp surgeon, and a reserve second lieutenant as junior officer. After mutual introductions, we were assigned to our rooms and, assisted by the striker for the officer’s mess, a genial darky by the name of “Ed,” we stowed our gear.
We soon discovered that ensign means nothing to the Army. They just called us lieutenant and were done with it.
The next day we started on a tour of inspection through the storeroom, the root cellar, the various barracks, kitchens, and mess hall. Each building was given a careful check for dust, dirt, or other unsanitary conditions as well as a mark on its general appearance. Our last stop was the recreation hall used by the men, a large building of only one room, with a stone fireplace at one end. The room was filled with rustic chairs and tables, the tops of the tables being entire cross sections of large trees. Newspaper and magazine racks lined the walls and in one corner of the room, partitioned off, the canteen was located. Here the necessities, together with “baccy” and beer, are sold to the vets at a very low price. Alongside the canteen was the office of the educational adviser, containing the library, the mimeograph machine on which the camp’s paper is run off, together with the bats, balls, tennis rackets, and other gear of the camp’s recreational department. Alongside this building, a very presentable tennis court had been built.
In passing be it understood that all the extra equipment that I have mentioned, the rustic furniture, stone fireplaces, picture frames, tennis court, ball field, were all hand-made and are, along with the trimmed hedges, the flower beds, and the carefully tended lawns, products of CCC ingenuity and tended by the men in their spare time.
We soon discovered that the junior officer must fill half a dozen jobs. He is adjutant of the camp, post exchange and mess officer, the first duty requiring a daily, and the second a weekly inventory as well as the planning of menus and the ordering of stock. He is acting quartermaster, supply officer, acting agent finance officer who as such pays off the company, as well as motor transport officer, responsible for the two Army trucks and other vehicles attached to the company.
Each of these duties requires detailed reports and in some cases the handling of funds or accountable supplies, which means that any mistakes are paid for by the J.O.’s check to cover, when the auditing officer discovers them at the end of the month.
The thing that struck me most forcibly in my first contacts with the CCC was the reclamation in human values as well as work projects. Here were defeated men, men who had been facing a blank wall for years. Their simple existence had been utterly dependent upon the mysterious demands of business and suddenly there was no demand. When work ceased, so did the small trickle of life’s necessities. Here a totally unexpected chance is offered them to provide for their families and to feel once more that there is still some hope of security.
For the great majority of these veterans, the CCC provides better living conditions than they have ever known. They sleep between clean sheets in quarters that are immaculately policed. They wear neat, serviceable clothes and their shoes are in excellent repair. The food is good and delicacies not too far apart. For many this is the first opportunity to learn to read and write. For those who can read, there are the books in the library, as well as newspapers and magazines to read of an evening as they listen to the camp’s radio. Loneliness is gone in the sociability of a card game, or in watching the horseshoe pitching or ball game that’s sure to be on every evening.
The greatest change, however, is evident after a week or two in the field. Men who were sent to the company in a half anemic condition with sallow complexions are taking on weight and their skin is becoming a healthy sunburnt brown. Although the work allotted to veteran companies is not as strenuous as that assigned to juniors, it rebuilds the muscles of bodies that have done little but loaf about the village squares the past five years.
Upon return from work in the field, all hands scrub up and shift into clean uniform for the evening meal, after which they stroll out to the benches and light their pipes. There are always several who break out pruning shears, trowels, and lawn mowers and turn to on the hedges, lawns, and flower beds.
I have said that this camp had a very seagoing atmosphere, and so it did in more ways than one. On my second day there, a big, ambling individual came up alongside my port quarter. “Are you to be stationed here, sir?” I replied that I didn’t think so, but that I’d probably be there for the next few weeks. “Well, I’m glad o’ that, sir. I’m an old chief petty officer an’ it sure looks good to see the uniform again.”
It developed that this former chief was the first sergeant of the company and a very good one too. All he had to do was to look at a veteran and say, “Do I have to tell you that again?” and all signs of an incipient mutiny dissolved into thin air. Of course his being six foot two might have had something to do with the magical effect. With a few beers under his hatches the old chief grew reminiscent about the “Silver Dollar” in Manila and several other bright spots known to Asiatic sailormen. Then with all the earnestness in the world, he’d ask if one of us wouldn’t put in for him when we were transferred to other companies, “because these Army men don’t talk sailorman’s lingo, didn’t know what you meant by bulkheads and scuppers and with a naval officer you called him ‘Mister’ and didn’t have to be saying ‘The Lieutenant’ and ‘The Captain’ all the time, just ‘Mister.’ ” Several former Navy men among the veterans, with that free masonry of sailormen the world over, made themselves known during the next few days.
After a pleasant and informative month with the company, orders arrive from the big fort transferring us to our posts. One ensign takes over the duties and tangled affairs of an Army officer who had been court-martialed. The other officer takes over welfare duties of four adjacent companies in a national park area, part of these duties being to oversee the completion and supervise the operation of a new motion picture theater being built for the use of CCC boys in this area.
I am ordered to the fort to relieve a regular Army officer as enrollment officer for the state and as liaison officer between the Army, the state relief agency, and the Veterans’ Bureau. The duties of enrollment officer are to maintain the companies at full strength by estimating future replacement needs, securing authority for increased state quota from corps area, then requisitioning the Relief or Veterans’ Bureau for certified selectees. Certain CCC companies and government city recruiting stations are designated to operate as acceptance stations. These stations only accept selectees for enrollment, they do not enroll for the CCC. The orders for operating these stations must be issued, giving the estimate of the number of applicants who will report. Officer personnel must be ordered temporarily to these stations from adjacent companies to take charge. Medical officers and supplies must be requisitioned from the district medical officer.
The men and boys are directed by the relief and Veterans’ Bureau to report to these stations on designated days, to be given physical examination for selection in the CCC.
The enrollment officer then contacts rail carriers, or corps area in the case of trainload shipments, and draws up a schedule for the transportation of the new selectees to the corps area reconditioning camp. Or, as in the case of the last expansion period, the schedules are made for transportation direct to other states, some of which go to the Western and Pacific States of the 9th Corps Area.
For weeks, letters, telegrams, and radios flow in and out through this nerve center until the very day of acceptance station operations, on which the machinery of processing begins to operate.
The huge reconditioning camp at the fort, covering two old war-time brigade areas filled with barracks and tents, has been put in readiness to receive the several thousand boys who will come flooding in during the next few days. Messes and kitchens have been set up, cots and bedding are in readiness, and details have been assigned to handle the various stages of processing.
On the evening on which the first trainloads of selectees are to arrive, I decide to go down to the station to watch the disembarkation and the first steps in the processing of the boys who, until now, have only been figures and quotas on slips of paper.
A few officers are grouped in the slanting ray of light that falls from the station- master’s window. One or two who stand beyond the direct beam can be marked only by the small glow of a cigarette, describing an occasional arc.
Far away and very faint comes the vibrant melancholy whistle of the train, which dying seems to leave a deeper quiet in the night.
Several M.P.’s detach themselves from the shadows and stroll toward the tracks. The officers shuffle sheets of paper in their hands and fish in pockets for pencils to have in readiness.
Again the mournful whistle of the train, grown louder and nearer, and immediately the slight note of its bell and the swift rush of its wheels on the track. A glow of light fills the air above the bend in the tracks, growing steadily brighter. The tracks are beginning to hum. There’s a rush of scarlet light upward as the firebox is opened, and the blinding glare of the headlight as the train rounds the bend. The tracks are two ribbons of fire, growing steadily shorter, until with the clank of metal and roar of escaping steam, the engine slows to a panting halt. The lights in the coaches seem dim and faintly green after the glare of the headlight.
The first few boys are descending from the coaches, carrying small, battered suitcases in their hands or cardboard boxes wrapped in twine. They look around with a curious, dazed air and send shy, awkward glances toward the M.P.’s who are marshaling them into line. Most of them are small-town and farm boys, who haven’t been so far from home in all their lives. There’s very little talking; the voices of the M.P.’s can be distinctly heard, “All right, boys, form line of two’s, follow me,” and a column formed from each coach moves off into the darkness.
A half hour later the columns are halted before the issuing barracks in the reconditioning camp, into which a steady file is passing down the long corridor filled with clerks. First an identification dog tag is placed over the boy’s head as he enters. A few feet farther along, another CCC hands him a new barrack bag, into which is thrust, as he walks along, a new raincoat, canteen with canvas cover, and mess kit together with knife and fork. Another CCC clerk calls him over, enters his name and a few other items of general information on a form, and hands it to the boy who, with his arms loaded down, is now directed out of the building toward another column which has formed in the darkness.
This column is much livelier; there’s a clank and clatter of mess kits being opened and every now and then a clash, as some unaccustomed hand loses its hold on the elusive hardware.
Finally the line moves off toward three large cans containing scalding hot water. The mess gear is dipped in each of these and the hungry line is ready to make its acquaintance with a famous Army institution, “The Beanery.”
A fat, regular Army mess sergeant (did anyone ever see a lean one?) and his assistants preside over several large boilers of beans, trays of bread, and cans of steaming hot coffee. Which fare, though hardly epicurean, has yet to be turned down by a hungry selectee just arrived from a 12- to 15-hour train ride.
After the meal, which produces a very heartening effect, the mess gear is again cleansed. The columns are marched off to the company areas awaiting them, where they are soon lost in sound sleep after the excitement of the day.
“I can’t get ’em up, I can’t get ’em up, I can’t get ’em up in the mornin’.” The cold, clear notes of the bugle awaken the boy to his new existence, where there’s no lying abed, but its “up and out with you,” while the sun is still new in the morning sky. After the boy is dressed, there’s the first lesson in how to make up an Army cot and how to police the barrack or tent. Then the welcome notes of mess call.
About 8:00 a.m. the lines are again before the processing barracks. Those who are waiting for admittance are sprawled out on the grass, a motley group in all sorts of clothing, mostly none too clean.
The first “lucky ones” are lead into a tent where a few more entries are made in the form which had been given the boy the preceding evening. The boys then divest themselves of clothing and, covered only by a raincoat, proceed along a screened passageway to a large tent where examination is made for evidences of venereal disease. From there the passageway leads to a large auditorium where the raincoat is folded and left in charge of a regular soldier. The boys are then sent to a shower-room where every man jack gives himself a good scrub down.
Some of the boys from mountain and hinterland sections are quite bewildered by the mechanics of the showers, they “cain’t make ’em squirt,” or if they do, like as not they’ll come out howling, with the handle of the shower set on “Hot.”
After the shower, the line climbs a stairway to a large room on the second deck, where several medical officers are awaiting them. A batch of ten boys are selected and put through together. Most of these boys have already been examined at the local acceptance station to which they reported, so there are very few “rejects” at this stage of the game.
The physical examination over, their measurements are entered on a slip of paper, and raincoats are donned. The slip of paper with the clothing sizes is placed in their mouths and with both hands holding a barracks bag open, they walk down the aisle in the issuing storeroom. A CCC clerk looks at the slip and plump, 6 suits of underwear land in the bag, another clerk sticks out his neck and plop, 2 shirts, OD, woolen, are in the bag, and so on, with slacks or breeches, socks, leggings, blue denim work clothes, overseas cap, tie, etc., until the shoe-fitting machine is reached. The boy places his foot in the machine which registers the size, while an old Q.M. sergeant stands by. If the size is doubtful, he takes a look at the foot and sings out a size. The shoes are dropped in the bag and off the boy goes to put on his new outfit. Be it said that few shoes have to be returned after the Q. M. sergeant gives a foot the once over.
Out in the sunshine a great difference is apparent. On one side of the street, the “poor stiffs” still awaiting their turn through the mill are sprawled out on the grass, a seedy looking bunch. But across the way, just a half-hour distant, are a group of boys who look surprisingly different in their new OD slacks, and shirt with black tie down the front, topped off by an over-seas cap set at a jaunty angle, and shining in the sun are brand new russet shoes on feet that have been accustomed too long to the feel of every stone and pebble through paper-thin soles. This metamorphosis alone might almost justify the entire CCC program. For the ten days during which they are receiving their shots these boys are not worked, but are given light tasks in addition to the routine duties of camp maintenance.
As in any large group of people there are funny incidents. The story and reason behind some of them might surprise many people in this “land of plenty.” There was the incident in the mess hall at a table assigned to a group from one of the mountainous sections. After the meal had been served, a dessert of ice cream was placed on the table. Imagine the surprise of the mess sergeant when the whole table got up and left the dishes of ice cream standing untouched. They had never eaten ice cream before. After being assured by the sergeant that it was good to eat, they quickly acquired a taste for it and came back for another helping of “that cold stuff.” Then there’s the story of another boy who went thirsty all one afternoon because he couldn’t find a spring or well anywhere, and had never heard of water coming out of a pipe. Another boy became quite scared when a toilet was flushed— he dashed out and called to an officer that there was a flood of water filling the building. Of course, when they arrived there was no evidence of water, to the complete mystification of the boy.
The majority of these boys are to be sent as replacements to companies in the 9th Corps Area. To most of them, the adventure of traveling such a great distance is something to look forward to. Many are just indifferent and some quietly pack their belongings and steal “over the hill” toward home. No effort is made to detain or apprehend a deserter. After eight days he is discharged from the CCC and whatever pay is due him, together with the allowance due the allotee, is forwarded at the end of the month. There are many, even among the veterans, who can’t bear the separation from home. I have seen them sobbing in their bunks for mothers and families.
After two weeks reconditioning at the fort, the boys are issued overcoats and extra blankets, for although it’s summer here it will be cold in the mountains. Several baggage cars shunted into a siding have been converted into rolling kitchens, or loaded with company baggage for the 5,000 boys who are to be shipped out in five days.
On the afternoon of the first day, two trains of fifteen coaches each are backed into the siding. Each train is to carry two companies and their impedimenta.
After the cars are coupled and property checked, the boys are marched down, each one dressed in new uniform, carrying an overcoat on one arm and a cardboard box filled with extra gear in the other.
What a difference from the first quiet, awkward group who descended on this station just two short weeks ago. They are animated and cheerful. Each one no longer lives a separate existence; already they have the beginnings of an esprit de corps. There’s a friendly banter between trains as to the relative merit of the companies to which they’ve been assigned and the desirableness of their various destinations thousands of miles away. For many it’s the first time they have ever set foot outside the limits of their home state.
Promptly at zero hour the train whistles blow. Farewells are called to new-made friends in other companies. The slack is out of the couplings and the first thousand are on their way to the great adventure— not of death and destruction, but of peaceful constructive building both for their own future and that of generations of Americans to come.
For the betterment of the CCC as a corps and as an instrument of public service, the following suggestions are offered, based on talks with commanding officers of camps and on my own observations:
(1) The compulsory educational program should be enlarged to contain at least the equivalent of a grade-school education. The program at present goes only as far as the fourth grade. Attendance at some of the more advanced classes should be made compulsory for those who have completed the equivalent of a grade-school education.
(2) Some form of close order drill should be authorized. Simple evolutions such as “squads east and west” would answer the purpose. I realize that such a suggestion made by military men and appearing in a service publication might to the uninformed smack of militarism. Such is far from being the case. The aim is solely to better the morale and efficiency of the CCC. Present regulations authorize formations for colors, roll call, etc., but close order drill as well as any semblance of military instruction is strictly forbidden. This suggestion is made to correct a natural tendency toward laxness, which is soon reflected in work and desire to cooperate, as well as in the dress of members and appearance of quarters, that exists whenever there is little opportunity of maintaining a close-knit organization.
(3) And very closely connected with the last suggestion is the strengthening of disciplinary measures. At present the loosely formulated methods of control admit of too many loopholes, and unless the company commander is a forceful leader, defects in discipline affect the entire company, setting at naught every well-intentioned corrective measure.