Rider of the Pale Horse by McAllister Hull

Author:McAllister Hull
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
Published: 2005-03-03T16:00:00+00:00

Still in the Army

Those of us who were in the armed forces were not free to leave when the war ended. The demobilization of the Army of the United States could only happen gradually, as troops were still needed for occupation duty, and the economy could not absorb millions of new job seekers all at once. I would not accumulate enough points for discharge before the spring of 1946.

With the war over, the facts of enlisted life were more evident. Inspections had never been called during the war, but now I suppose the captain in charge of the SEDs thought to remind us of our status as GIs. He called a barracks inspection for the next Saturday morning. Unlike some of my colleagues, who had simply put on a uniform when they were inducted, I had actually been through basic and advanced training in army units preparing for deployment, so I had had a little experience with inspections. I planned the “GI party” for our barracks. I knew water was scarce on the Hill, and that we were lower than the civilian residences—particularly “Bath Tub Row,” the houses that had been the quarters of the boys’ schoolmasters and were now occupied by the leaders of the Lab, including Oppie. So we did a real cleanup, even scrubbing the floor with mops I moonlight requisitioned from the janitors. We got most of the footlockers packed according to the handbook and then set every shower, toilet, and washbasin to running all night. Come the inspection, we turned off all the water, got a compliment for the condition of our barracks—and never had another inspection! The civilians complained of no water that morning, and it was soon decided that the heroic efforts at cleanup had depleted the water supply too drastically.

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