The training was interesting and our lieutenant was an excellent instructor. We were trained in the use of field phones, laying wire, using codes and code devices, and message center operation. The second half of basic was in communications. Possibly this was because of my athletic background or maybe because, to them, I appeared eager to learn how to be a soldier. At first I didn’t know a corporal from a sergeant, and officers seemed like gods to me because everybody, including the sergeants, jumped to rigid attention when they appeared.įor reasons quite unknown to me, I was picked immediately as an acting squad leader over twelve men. I had never been away from home for more than a week and was totally ignorant of the Army.

Everything was very strange and new to me. At this point the Army really had very little knowledge of our abilities, except for whatever the IQ test was worth.įor the next seven weeks we struggled through a basic infantry course, with the usual KP and guard duties, with lectures on fundamentals such as military courtesy, some weapons training and actual firing on the rifle range, bayonet drill, and hand-to-hand combat.

The sergeant informed me my basic training would be with a special battalion of men who were considered to have officer potential. I requested the Army Air Force but was denied. We were immediately screened for assignment by sergeants who seemed to know all about us. The camp was a few miles outside Macon and, by a long coincidence, happened to be only about 135 miles from my birthplace in the hills of northern Georgia. After two days, the train finally stopped, and some of us sneaked a peek through the blinds to discover we were in Macon, Georgia.Ĭamp Wheeler was to be my home for the next five months. Rumors as to our destination quickly began, but no one guessed correctly.

Two days later we boarded a train with blinds drawn and were on our way to parts unknown. However, the Army was not the least bit disturbed by my slight visual impairment and on September 19, 1942, drafted me as a raw recruit-just a week before classes opened at Michigan State, where I had been awarded a football scholarship.Ī group of us were inducted at Fort Custer, Michigan, where we were issued uniforms and long-needled shots, sat through films on venereal disease, and took a lengthy IQ test. They were still being very selective, and anyone who wore glasses was an automatic reject. Even though America was heavily engaged in World War II in the fall of 1942, I felt safe in enrolling in college because the Marines and the Navy had turned me down.

If You Survive by George Wilson