Little Hawk and the Lone Wolf by Raymond Kaquatosh

Author:Raymond Kaquatosh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wisconsin Historical Society Press
Published: 2014-04-17T04:00:00+00:00

30

Boot Camp

By late 1942, Barney Ross was making headlines in the local and national newspapers. The boxing champion from Chicago was in the Marines and had already seen action on Guadalcanal.

Finally, in March 1943, I received orders to report to the Federal Building in Milwaukee. Outside the Federal Building were a bunch of draftees. A man standing there with a clipboard hollered: “Get back in line!” I asked what for. He looked at me and asked me if I was from the reservation. I told him I was and that I was there to enlist in the Marines. That didn’t go over well. “You’re going into the Army whether you like it or not,” he said. Then a policeman walked up and asked what was going on.

“This man here is trying to dodge the draft,” the man with the clipboard accused.

“Are you with these draftees?” asked the policeman.

“No, I’m here to enlist in the Marines,” I answered.

“Mister, do you have papers on this man?” the policeman asked the man with the clipboard.

“No, but he’s from the reservation, and I have charge of him.”

“Not unless you have his draft papers.”

“Sir,” I piped up, “I signed up for the Marines, and here are my papers.”

“Go join the Marines!” said the policeman.

The man with the clipboard didn’t like that one bit. “I’ll get you for this,” he promised.

Once inside the building, I didn’t know where to go. The place was so big I got lost right from the start. There were so many rooms that I couldn’t locate the one for the Marines. Someone told me to stand in line for a physical. Just then a Marine sergeant came along, and I told him I had already had a physical. He looked at my papers and agreed. “All you need is swearing in,” he said, motioning for me to follow him.

A tall man standing in line with me remarked, “The Marines want men like me.”

“He’s about to become a Marine,” the sergeant told him. The tall man didn’t have anything more to say about that.

After being cleared by the Marine recruiters, a group of us were sent to the Juneau Hotel on East Wisconsin Avenue. The next day, we had breakfast and then boarded the train for San Diego. We had our own sleeping bunks and meal tickets. Who could ask for anything more? On the way to California, we took the northern route, which took us through a mountain pass drifted and blocked with snow. The engineer had to wait to get help from two snowplows, but we made it through. This trip was the most exciting and longest sojourn of my teenage life, but I was not alone. Most of the other men were also in their teens. The oldest was twenty.

Our trip across the country took about four days and nights. As we peered out the windows toward the mountains, rivers, lakes, and forests, the changing scenes seemed endless. At times I thought about my wolf, and I hoped he’d understand why I had to leave.

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