Chanute and Points West

by CORPORAL GILBERT E. FULLER, JR.

1

CHANUTE FIELD is flat and full of barracks and coal dust. The landscape beyond the barbedwire-topped fence is tempting to the limited extent a flat landscape can be. Rather sexy when the weather is warm — rich and soft and half-liquid with a Watteau sort of haze, and trees like piled-up clouds ‘way out at the very edge; an underwater kind of scenery.

Our barracks and class are now a seething discontent. I may have praised the food here in a previous letter. I guess it’s still as good as ever, but much of the time we don’t get it. The cause of all this is our new system: breakfast at 5.10; school at 6.00, and steadily from then on (with two ten-minute breaks) until 12.27. Then we assemble outside, wait for four other classes to march off, and proceed ourselves in formation to the mess hall — about a mile away. This gets us there at 12.45, creating an interesting situation, because the mess hall is scheduled to close at 12.45.

Some of the boys took it rather hard when, just as they had reached the head of the chow line, the dishes were snatched from before their eyes and returned to the kitchen. It was a Bastille-like scene. An angry but silent (we wanted to give them no excuse for kicking us out) rabble waiting, with terrible determination, for food. A harassed mess hall force, anxious to clean up and start work on the next meal, refusing to give us any. A low murmur, amid the clash of trays and dishes being washed, in a room now empty of all save the two opposed forces. Finally a thin and trepidant lieutenant appeared: ham, slices of white bread, and half pints of milk were thrown at us fearfully. We seasoned them with muttered curses and left, big with vengeance, each man sworn to carry the matter personally to the C.O.

Yesterday as we left mess hall after lunch, a sound-truck, manned by a stentorian master sergeant, was saying something indistinguishable about “—violinist — concert — 3.30 P.M.” I paid little attention at the time, but when we reached the barracks, a couple of fellows filed in to ask my roommate, Boyle (corporal, acting barracks’ chief), if they could skip calisthenics and attend. Someone else chimed in, pointing out that someone in the orderly room had said it would be all right. Boyle, an obstinate Irish legalist at heart, said no, he had received no orders to that effect, and they would have to be marked “absent without excuse” from calisthenics (this means you are restricted on the next free day).

One of them, dampened, muttered that it was Spalding and retreated. I said, “I’m going!” and trotted over to the orderly room, where I was referred to Lieutenant Hutchins, in charge of calisthenics. (Calisthenics, I should mention, are one of the crosses we bear, usually consisting of a long three-mile-an-hour trudge from one end of the field to the other and back.)

“I want to hear the concert, sir,” I said, purposeful and military.

He pondered, “I’m supposed to send some men,” lie said slowly. Pause. “What barracks are you from?”

“487.”

“That will be all right then — but the whole barracks will have to go.”

I visualized some of them. “I’m not sure all of them will want to go.”

“Yes — I see. Well, have Boyle bring the barracks over here at 2.30. All those who want to go will fall out and march to the theater with a noncom, and the rest will go back to calisthenics. I don’t want any men getting off calisthenics by pretending they’re going to the concert and then not going,” he added sternly.

I made myself look as much as possible like a music lover, while he looked at me searchingly. Then he wrote out a note for me to give Boyle. I trotted back to where they were all lined up, and gave Boyle the note. There was a slight holdup while I convinced Boyle it wasn’t a forgery. Then I explained the deal — calisthenics or concert — amid scenes of vociferous approval. The barracks, music lovers at least as much by circumstance as by nature, agreed unanimously that Spalding was the lesser of two evils, and off we went as a single man.

It took me minutes to start breathing properly again after hearing his first note. So easy to forget that a mere sound can be so beautiful.

School has been rearranged so that we have classes six hours straight — a bit of a strain toward the end, but one gets used to it. First meteorology; next, instruments.

We started out with a Mr. X as instructor, a former minister, with a dominant nose and aggressive schoolteacher humor. As senior civilian instructor he was merciless to his colleagues: “Hamm (a thin little man), do what you can to balance this instrument where it can be more readily seen by the students in the back row.” The instrument totters wildly as Hamm braces against it a spindly shoulder. Raising his voice, “Can all of you — except of course the man on the extreme left, who seems to be snoring — see it clearly?” Confused murmurs of “No” from the rear of the room. “I might point out that when in position at the station the instrument will be rigidly supported by a steel tube, for which Hamm, despite his many other admirable qualities (sickly smile from Hamm, now sweating profusely), makes a rather inadequate substitute.”

That gives you the idea. It was not very pleasant, really, but I found something a little ingratiating, almost, in his passionate display of ascendancy. He enjoyed so much parading his academic humor, even before an almost totally unresponsive audience. All went well through the simple mechanical instruments. But electricity got him. He deserved it, of course, but I was sorry for him.

The poor man is as incapable of understanding any machine with an electric circuit in it as I am. He spent ten days on the first one — eight days more than the schedule allowed him. Turning ashen before our eyes, battling it doggedly as if it were an incarnate harpy, hating it, dreading it — a petty nightmare drama, he arguing incoherently with the quadruple register. It was Man destroyed by the Machine, while the class slept torpidly. On the eleventh day an efficient staff sergeant took over. Mr. X carefully avoids the class in instrument period, wandering like a ghost in the background of the classes. Hamm is in triumph, a malicious smile lighting his wizened face every time X’s back is turned.

Much of our time is devoted to plotting and learning codes. It’s slow progress. Then, recently, teletyping. This has a wayward fascination — the damn thing buzzes away so busily, and gives an effect of restrained and terrible power; merely press the wrong combination of buttons and the thing goes clanking on its malevolent way.

A rather unusual incident took place recently. One teletype class had just ended, the other was beginning. The instructor and new class walked in. One man was still typing away doggedly, a relic of the last group. The instructor spoke to him sharply, pointing out that the period was ended. For answer, the man stood up slowly, picked up the teletype machine, a thousand dollars’ worth of it, lifted it high, and dashed it to the ground at the instructor’s feet. “I don’t like teletypes,” he said, quietly but dangerously.

The instructor bustled off nervously to find a sergeant. His appetite whetted, the man seized a distributing machine, which spattered on the floor beside its companion. He was then firmly led away to the weather office, repeating thickly, “I don’t like teletypes.” We believe he has been institutionalized — nothing has been heard from him since. So you can see that weather observing has its subtle dangers.

We graduated today. It was a quiet, unimpressive ceremony in the middle of a hangar, with active airplane schooling going on in one corner. Everybody assembled loosely and a brisk sergeant called us into line — about eight hundred of us — alphabetically. Occasionally the mechanics would disrupt this by wheeling a plane through one of the groups. Eventually they had us straightened out — fourteen lines about sixty deep. Then a captain made a speech — one of those fight talks in a faint, halting monotone — and the sergeant told us to clear out of the hangar fast, as soon as we got our diplomas. Then they right-faced us, and each line filed out past a lieutenant — salute, shake hands, receive diploma; next, Salute, shake hands, receive diploma; next. All this going in fourteen lines — like a scene in a hall with mirrors on each side. My diploma had “with distinction“ on it.

2

To START at the end, we are now in India, our second stop, having already put in at one sizable city. I believe I can say that. This is a wide place, and the same wind that sifts through our mosquito netting once teased Alexander. Having settled down in reasonable comfort with a sigh of relief and a scattering of dysentery, we are rediscovering what land is like, and dust, and the sight of planes, and fresh water and sea.

Smithy (Harvard and Harvard Law), a nice, stocky little guy with a strong pipe and an excellent sense of humor, and I are just back from our first excursion in three weeks. Very venturesome, even if it involved no more than a trip from our area to the center of the post, since it was the first time we have been out of sight of our own barracks. Itinerary: purchases, including long socks, shorts, and a tropical shirt (very British) and a pair of Indian sandals of a deep, rich, satisfying red — that look like magnificent leather unless you get close. Then two hours of waiting, followed by a huge dinner at the post Chinese restaurant, consisting chiefly of an inordinate quantity of fried prawns. Then a movie, Sherlock Holmes in Washington — rather silly but not unpleasant.

We walked back, cutting across country guided by the constellation of Cassiopeia, which I recognized. I carried an apple pie which disintegrated into separate molecules; Smithy, a bundle containing his and my sandals. Finding them a little burdensome, he persuaded another fellow walking along with us to carry my pair. It was too dark to recognize him, but he was walking along in the same direction; it was unfortunate that we lost him a few minutes later in some underbrush. Problem: one of four hundred men in my area, unknown to and by me, now has my slippers.

Health pretty good, except a touch of dysentery. This is inconvenient because of the paper problem. Every book in camp has lost its flyleaves — some are missing the entire last chapter.

Day before yesterday I, for the first time in my life, went hunting. It was rather a farce. We left camp about 1.00 P.M. with three rounds apiece; ammunition is hard to come by around here — the only source is planes, so that mine consisted of two incendiaries and one tracer. My two companions were rather more experienced — one named Loomis, a former part-time guide, the other a Kentuckian of the true Daniel Boone stripe, Sam Worley.

We sauntered off a mile or so to a village where nobody speaks English, past a ruined fort with monkeys clambering all over the walls, — very Jungle Book, — to hire a tonga. A tonga is a rackety two-wheeled vehicle attached to an undersized and emaciated pony. Forty minutes of bargaining is par. This is complicated, since neither we nor the driver can count in the other’s language, so the fingers get a workout. This, of course, doesn’t rule out expostulation — it merely gives it free rein. The trick is to speak with passion but keep smiling.

Occasionally I toss in something extraneous, like “To be or not to be” or “Ode to a Grecian Urn” in clipped, decisive accents. It doesn’t make much difference: they never lose money.

Finally we got a guide. We didn’t want him, but he brushed that aside, hired us a tonga, and led us firmly off to what I imagine is the most game-empty section of country within twenty miles. We split up — Worley on one flank, I on the other, Loomis and the guide in the center. The guide walked too loudly for stealth and too fast for the temperature — a steady five miles an hour through head-high grass and brush.

I did everything I could remember from Ernest Thompson Seton, skirting down wind of every likely spot — but no deer, no rabbits. All I saw was countless doves, a buzzard, and an Indian woman laundering by the river. Toward evening I tried an incendiary on one dove, the tracer on another. No luck. I wasn’t sorry. The others trudged back when it was nearly night. Loomis was almost staggering, the guide unbreathed, the same fixed rapt look in his eye. They had walked on four miles farther than we and ferried across the river. Nobody had hit anything. I felt even better.

We rode back through a village bright with the Festival of Lamps — a white glow through the dust. Then a hundred tiny yellow flames struck across each plaster building front, with white-clad crowds swirling, looking cleaner than in the unkind day; glimpses of a horse, a cow, a goat, through the doorways into half-lit open courtyards (only the livestock live in the houses — the people live, eat, sleep on the street). And then on into the dry, warm night, and stars, and the glow of another village over the horse’s bouncing rump.

I went in town last night alone. Just as well I was, too — so few people share my tastes. This time I did a few errands, then set out with jutting jaw, determined to get some genuine Indian curry. Not as easy as it sounds — there seems to be a conspiracy to keep Americans away from Indian dishes. All the approved places specialize in steaks and ice cream. By dint of persistent questioning I finally got an address and was told to ask for “Burriani.” It was quite fascinating — nothing but Indians there, none of them speaking English, including the waiters and manager. I said “Burriani” repeatedly, using my foreign accent, and eventually the hottest curry I ever tasted was set in front of me.

Two small Hindu boys were waiting for me outside— small for their years (about fourteen) but infinitely worldly-wise. Hindu boys are, first, panders, and second, remarkably skillful and pertinacious beggars. I stood them off on both counts, then weakened and decided to give them some ice cream. I suppose this was mostly nostalgia. In a city of secret alleys, soft and furtive, with a dancing circle of hierophants two streets away howling in quarter notes round a festival Maypole, it seemed a little bit of America to hand out ice cream to a couple of boys. They ate it gratefully enough, then cross-questioned me as to how much I had paid, and named three places where I would pay one-quarter as much.

Then they gave me a quick lowdown on the city, its morals, the taxi drivers, Society, and the soldiers — so scandalous that it will not bear repetition — while leading me back to my bus, and finished by inviting me to go bicycling with them next day, pointing out as a special inducement that since one of them was small I need hire only one bicycle for the two of them. The smaller one claimed to have received that day a 25-rupee tip from a drunken sergeant for a particularly discreditable piece of negotiation, so offered to pay for half the gin on the outing, provided I would supply all the cigarettes. It would have been an interesting trip, but as it turned out, I had to leave next day.

I seem to have a gift for spending Christmases out of the bosom of my family. This Christmas night, after supper, beer was issued — six cans each. Of course there were other unofficial acquisitions, mainly a peculiarly poisonous sort of gin.

There was a present-handing-out ceremony, wellwishing but a little futile, as almost no packages had arrived. This hole was somewhat filled in by liberally exchanging empty toothpaste tubes wrapped in enormous boxes.

But it still had a rather strange flavor. In the first place, we had two Santas — or rather, two beards and pillows. This was because Santa No. 1, who had been doing well by the bottle, was despaired of at the last minute and an understudy was procured. But No. 1 made it. Second, not only the English tea planters but their wives also were invited — cordial, but an error in judgment. After the presents had been given out, the C.O. apparently decided that a more earnest note should be struck.

“ I think we should all,” he began, “ try to remember that — Well, we all know we’re here for a purpose, a serious purpose. These Japs are a lot tougher than —”

“—the Japs,” in a clear, bright, drunken voice from behind him called Santa No. 1.

“I think we should remember there are ladies present,” said the C.O. sternly, and went on. “I was talking to Major — the other day when a plane came in with a coast artillery officer who was at ——. He told me that the Japs —”

“I could lick those— —with one hand behind my back.” It was more a mutter this time, but still clear,

“This is not— There are ladies present, and you — Sergeant, take that man out!”

There was an eager silence.

“Under the circumstances,” continued the C.O., “ I have decided that it — I am not going to say what I was planning to say.” He tried to sound aggrieved, but I think he was really rather pleased and relieved not to make a speech.