Words from the War: Life in the Service

Everyday life in North Carolina was transformed in the years from 1941 to 1945, particularly for those who volunteered or were drafted into service. . . . Discipline, team work, self-sacrifice, and training to be physically fit changed service members in profound ways. The military meant absolute boredom for some and absolute terror for those in battle.

Letters written by Tar Heels in the service reveal the many facets of World War II. Lieutenant T. B. Baird wrote to his old friends at the Asheville Bakery Company in October, 1943 about his new life in India:

“Well, I’m having the time of my life. Travel, adventures, strange lands, and all that sort of thing.” . . .

Sergeant Laura Pfeiffer, a Buncombe County native, writing from Fort Sheridan, Illinois, commented on her life as a medical supply technician in the Women’s Army Corps (WAC):

“I’m very happy in this work. I have long hours. Hardly ever get out of the office before 8:00 at night and begin again at 6:45.”

Combat training was hazardous . . . as Private David B. Clayton of Asheville indicated in a letter written in July 1943 from Fort Hood, Texas:

“We got up at five o’clock Thursday morning and right after breakfast we went through the infiltration course . . . We had to crawl through tightly strung barbed wire for 100 yards, with machine gun bullets going right over your head. Lots of guys got hit on the helmet, but I dug a trench through the ground with my nose.”

Combat, of course, brought its own special experience. Consider this extraordinary story, told by First Lieutenant Rodger A. Grant, Jr., of Asheville, to his parents in a letter written from San Francisco on November 15, 1943. Grant, a P-40 pilot, had been shot down over New Guinea, on September 21, 1943:

I can’t include the whole story here but will tell you as much as possible. I was in the jungle eighteen days and walked approximately one hundred and twenty-five miles. The country is very similar to the Smoky Mountains except the mountains are covered with jungle instead of laurel. All the woodcraft, camping, etc., that I learned . . . in the woods stood me good stead there. For the most part, the trip would be like walking over the mountains from say Robbinsville to Cataloochie. All in all it was an enjoyable trip. I landed on the side of a mountain, climbed down out of the trees, wrapped up in the chute to sleep. Next day sighted a Jap camp and assumed the whole area under enemy influence. Lived on chocolate and slept in the day and walked at night for six days. Finally decided I was far enough away to approach natives, so did so and found them very friendly . . .

Lieutenant Alexander Simpson, Company D., 30th Engineers, tells of the invasion of Sicily in a letter written to Hattie Smith of Raleigh on July 23, 1943:

It seems that Sicily was invaded successfully, recently, and who was up here on one of the first waves but yours truly . . . As we approached the enemy shore through heavy seas . . . there was a mixture of feelings. You couldn’t very well tell if you were scared or seasick. I guess it was a little of both. Searchlights from the enemy shore proved that our approach was known to them. Naval batteries and shore batteries answered one another . . . You could see tracer bullets whiz down the beach in enfilade fire . . . Bullets started kicking up dirt around us, and mortars exploded with a descending ‘swish!’ I learned to ‘bite the dust!’ It’s amazing how soft that ground feels when you hear a bomb whistling, or a plane dives on you.

Writing to his mother in Raleigh in 1945, Corporal Johnnie O’Donnell, Headquarters Battery, 9th Infantry Division, talks hopefully about the coming end of the war:

Dear All—Everything is OK with me here in Germany at last. I hope my next ‘somewhere’ will be in the States . . . Just think Mom, from North Africa, to Sicily, England, France, Belgium, and now Germany itself. If only the war could end and it looks like it will soon. We are all sweating it out and I know you are too. We can only hope and pray for that happy day.’

. . . At military training camps all of these soldiers, airmen, sailors, and marines had shared the common experience of basic training. . . . With that training behind them, they were prepared to go “overseas.” Marion Hargrove [from Mount Olive] captured the transition from training camp to battlefront perfectly in his famous book, See Here, Private Hargrove, when he wrote about the end of training for soldiers at Fort Bragg’s Field Artillery Replacement Training Center:

This afternoon the sound of marching feet came up Headquarters Street from the south and a battery of departing soldiers approached. As they neared the headquarters building, there came the order, ‘Count cadence – command!’ and two hundred voices took up a chant. They passed, counting their footsteps in ringing ordered tones.

Laden with haversacks, they passed in perfect order. Their lines were even, their marching co-ordinated and confident. Their uniforms no longer bore the awkward stamp. Their caps were cocky but correct and their neckties were tucked between the right two buttons.
The cadence count is the scheme of the battery commander who feels proud of the men he has trained, who wants to show them off to the higher-ups in Center Headquarters. ‘The general might be standing by his window now, watching my men pass,’ they say, “If he isn’t, we should attract his attention.’

Just as their arrival marks an emotional ebb, their departure is the flood tide. The men who came in a few weeks ago, green and terrified, leave now as soldiers. The corporal whom they dreaded then is now just a jerk who’s bucking for sergeant. Although they are glad that they have been trained with other men on the same level here, the training center which was first a vast and awful place is now just a training center, all right in its way—for rookies. They themselves have outgrown their kindergarten.

The band is at the railroad siding, this time to see them off with a flourish. They pay more attention to the band this time. They know the “Caisson Song.” They know their own Replacement Center Marching Song, composed by one of their number, a quiet little ex-music teacher named Harvey Bosell. They hum the tune as they board the Shanghai Express.

They see the commanding general standing on the side lines with his aide. He is no longer an ogre out of Washington who might, for all they know, have the power of life and death over them to administer it at a whim. He is the commanding general, a good soldier and a good fellow.

They board the train and they sit waiting for it to take them to their permanent Army post and their part in the war.

As a special favor and for old times’ sake, the band swings slowly into the song that is the voice of their nostalgia, ‘The Sidewalks of New York.’ Yankee or Rebel, Minnesotan or Nevadan, they love that song.

You can see their faces tightening a little, and a gently melancholy look come into their eyes as the trombone wails beneath the current of the music. Their melancholy is melancholy with a shrug now. Home and whatever else was dearest to them a few months ago are still dear, but a soldier has to push them into the background when there’s a war to be fought.

With the music still playing, the train pulls slowly out and Sergeant Knowles waves it good-bye with his baton.

An old sergeant, kept in the Replacement Center to train the men whose fathers fought with him a generation ago, stands on the side and watches them with a firm, proud look.

‘Give ‘em hell, boys,’ he shouts behind them. ‘Give ‘em hell!’

Reprinted by permission from North Carolina during World War II: On Home Front and Battle Front, 1941–1945 by John S. Duvall, World War II Fiftieth Anniversary Commemorative Committee of the Airborne and Special Operations Museum Foundation, Fayetteville, N.C.: 1996.