Chapter 5 Joining the Army

For almost two years since I left Nebraska I’d worked different jobs, mostly hard labor. In March of 1941, I asked my brother to drive me the 35 or 40 miles into Fort Stockton in Pecos County Texas. I volunteered for the draft. The draft center put me on a bus to El Paso and I was finally inducted into the Army at Fort Bliss, on May 9, 1941.

I didn’t join the Army to “serve or defend my country” or to “fight for our freedom.” I’d spent about six years since graduating from high school eeking out an existence during the Depression and the years of drought. I’d been a dirt farmer and had worked from dawn to daylight, driving a tractor all day and most of the night, six days a week, sleeping on a cot at the end of the field I was farming. I’d worked on a cotton inspecting team following the harvest from South Texas to North Texas and into Arizona during the hottest, driest weather I’d ever experienced. I’d worked on a cattle ranch, waited tables at restaurants and stocked grocery shelves. I knew there was a better life out there and I wanted to use my brain, not my back. I’d spent a lot of time in farmland fields stopping to watch when a plane flew over. I’d dreamed of being a pilot and leaving dirt, dust and boll weevils far below in my own dust. When I joined the Army I wanted to be trained as a pilot. I wanted to get more education and be able to pursue a career. At the time, Europe was already under siege by Hitler but in America we had no notion that almost six months to the day from my induction into the Army Pearl Harbor would be attacked by Japan.