I said, “No, no. That yellow is not a disease. It’s called Camels. When I was in basic training in the Army, I shoved Camel cigarettes in my ears to shut out the noise, and believe it or not, they really worked!”
I was discharged in 1946 and this was in 1966. Twenty years later my ears were still bright yellow from the Camels. Well, I guess that’s a small price to pay for not losing my hearing.
* * *
—
The regular Army was an education. A really rough education. I’d never gone to the toilet before with sixteen other guys sitting next to me. I would go crazy waiting for the latrine to be free of people so I could rush in, do my stuff, and rush out. It took a lot of getting used to.
And then there was chow time. Breakfast in the mess hall was an experience. First of all, you got on line. Everything in the Army is first you get on line. I looked over at the breakfast setup. There were huge grills on top of which was a sight I’ve never seen before in my life—it was amazing and a little scary. On top of one of the huge grills there were about a hundred eggs all cooking sunny-side up. You said give me two, three, four, whatever. You had to be careful about how much you took, because of the huge sign above the cooking area that read TAKE ALL YOU WANT, BUT EAT ALL YOU TAKE. So I never took more than two eggs, because I might want something else like oatmeal, cornflakes, or bacon. Not that anybody really watched how much you took and how much you left.
Sitting with twelve other guys having breakfast was another new experience. Everything was “Pass the butter! Pass the milk! Pass the sugar! Pass the jam!” There was a strict code. When somebody said, “Pass the jam,” you weren’t allowed to stop the jam and put any on your own plate. That was called shortcutting and was not allowed. You had to pass the jam to the person who said, “Pass the jam” even though the jam looked good and you wanted to take a little on the way, you didn’t. It was forbidden. The mess hall was good-natured but incredibly noisy and busy. It took some getting used to.
One morning at breakfast as I went through the chow line they put something strange on my plate. I brought it back to my table and said to one of the GIs, “What is this?”
He said, “It’s called shit on a shingle!”
“Shit on a shingle?” I said.
“Yeah, but actually it’s chipped beef and cream gravy on toast.”
I watched the other guys at my table, they were eating it and they didn’t seem upset. So I tried it. It was weird; I couldn’t make sense out of the taste. But I was eighteen and always crazy hungry. So I ate it. It wasn’t good; it wasn’t bad. It was food and it was filling. Later on, I kind of got used to it and came to like it. It was just good old Army chow. But I’ll never forget the first time I stared down at the confused mess on my plate and heard the expression “shit on a shingle.”
When we were on bivouac （a temporary campsite away from the barracks）， we were on the chow line with our mess kits. Mess kits were two small oval aluminum trays with indentations for food and an aluminum knife, fork, and spoon attached. You waited on line with your mess kit and they’d throw some beef stew in one of the indentations. Then came the mashed potatoes, and even though there were other indentations for the mashed potatoes they always threw it right on top of the stew. Then—you won’t believe this—for dessert there were usually sliced peaches. Which of course, you expected they would put into in one of the remaining empty places in the mess kit. But what did they do? You’ve got it! They hurled it right on top of your mashed potatoes and your beef stew. They simply didn’t care. And we were starving so we gobbled it down.
（And for some reason, to this day I’m vaguely nostalgic for some sliced peaches on top of my beef bourguignon.）
After chow you waited on line once again to clean your mess kit. First you swirled them around in a garbage can bubbling with hot soapy water. Then you moved them to the next garbage can of rinse water, still filled with the remnants of soap. And then the last garbage can with clear hot water. That did the job. It never occurred to me to ask my sergeants and officers: Why do we have to do all this stuff? Isn’t there a better way? Couldn’t we have a little more time for reading a book we liked, or maybe taking a nap once in a while? And then I realized: That’s why the Army likes eighteen-year-olds. No questions asked. You do what you’re told. Maybe that’s why I never thought seriously about reenlisting.
In addition to our military training at Fort Sill we were taught how to drive, which leads to a funny but pretty scary story. （Funny for you, scary for me.） I learned how to drive on a two-and-a-half ton 6x6 big Army truck. As opposed to the automatic cars of today, it was an old-fashioned stick shift. There was a lot of what was called “double-clutching,” meaning that in order to go from one gear to another you couldn’t just use your clutch once, but twice. It was not easy, but finally I learned how to drive it.