Chapter 6 Not A Medic, Please

A couple of days after our arrival at Fort Bliss an orderly came to our tent and asked if any of us could type. I said yes so they took me up to headquarters and gave me a typing test. Not too long after that I was reassigned to the Receiving Office of the Hospital at newly constructed Camp Barkeley, a few miles southwest of Abilene, Texas. So, even though I had refused to enlist in the medics at Randolph Field I wound up in the medics anyway. At least I was working a typewriter, not a hypodermic needle.

It was only two weeks after I was inducted at Fort Bliss, and events in Europe were looking grim. The famous Walter Winchell, whose radio commentaries included politics as well as celebrity gossip, was insisting America should enter the War – as were many other outspoken Americans. Daily radio broadcasts, both locally and nationally, told of the day’s war events in Europe. Even the National Farm and Home Hour, a popular radio broadcast in the Midwest, reported the progress of the war in Europe on every show. On May 27th, 1941 President Roosevelt went on the radio to announce that Germans had overrun Greece and Yugoslavia and invaded Crete. Europe was at War and it was beginning to look like America was going to eventually be drawn into the war. Getting ready for whatever would happen, Fort Bliss was busy training soldiers.