The Model “A” almost drove itself on the familiar road to the old farm that fall day. Pat, my one-eyed, bob-tailed dog sat beside me as we headed for an afternoon of hunting squirrel and dove along the old creek bed one more time. He had been with me since I was eight, older now but I sensed he still recognized and enjoyed the farm where he was raised.
 
     The old car would be at home also. The farm was the first place it was garaged after My Granddad bought it, new and shiny, from the dealership in Abilene in 1928. It had pulled many a trailer of cotton, corn and maize from the old farm to market to town. I too was more at home there than the new house on Sycamore St where I had only lived during my last year in high school.
 
     The walk down the old dry creek bed was peaceful and serene as always. The squirrels raced across dry leaves leaving an audible trail Pat chasing them before I had a chance to take a shot.  I would have to wait until they scurried up the tree toward their nest before taking aim.
 
     I had forgotten how quiet it was out here in the country where I was born and brought up. You could hear a bird sing or a crow squawk for long distances. Occasionally you might hear a car in the distance as it climbed up the hill in second gear out of the valley.
    
     Pat and I had enjoyed these creek beds since I was old enough to leave the yard at the farmhouse. There were snakes and other critters that might harm a young man but my parents trusted Pat to keep me informed of impending danger. Pat could hear a rattlesnake from forty paces, thought nothing about rushing in and grabbing it just under the head and slinging it back and forth until the head was off. Luckily, we didn’t run across any this day and I had time to just reminisce.
 
     Feeling patriotic after graduation I an others had decided to join the services like some of our predecessors. We were not yet eighteen and parents signed with guarded, patriotic emotions. It was now August of 1944 and it looked as though the war with Germany might be over soon.  Knowing I would be going to the Navy I didn’t bother to get a job this spring. I’m not sure but possibly something urged me to just pass the time looking at what had surrounded me all those seventeen years.

Perhaps there is something special about a kid that was born, lived on the same land since 1926 through a depression that almost took the country down. The farm was a haven from all that went on in the big cities during that time. So many were unemployed before the war and there were men asking for work daily but we could not afford to hire them for there was little money coming out of the crops being sold at the market.

The work on the farm was distributed among the family. My father was able to buy a tractor before the worst hit while many of the farmers still used teams of horses. When not in use on our farm Dad leased out the tractor including an operator. The operator was me. I would catch a ride on the school bus that went by the farm where it had been leased and plow the fields until dark when Mom or Dad would pick me up. That helped pay for the tractor and a little money for me on the side. I did little of that this spring however, for I just wanted some time off.
 
     The months after enlisting passed more rapidly than I had hoped. I passed my eighteenth birthday on October 11th.  On November 11, 1944, Armistice day my buddy and I together, climbed on a Greyhound bus, later an Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe troop train bound for the Navy in San Diego which would prove to overshadow any wild experience out on the farm and the creek beds.
 
      Neither of us considered how far away from home that was.  It wasn’t until the light of dawn on the second day I looked out the window of the train and saw several feet of snow on both sides of the train that I realized we were already a long way from Texas. We were crossing the Rocky Mountains, mountains I had only read about in school.
 
   Two days later the Navy personnel on the train dumped us off in downtown Los Angeles, California in the hands of another Navy group. There were buildings and houses as far as I could see. I could never have imagined how huge this city was, how different it looked from the West Texas town of Abilene from where I came.
 
   I looked at my buddy he looked at me. I could see the slight, trepid look of isolation in his eyes. I’m sure I looked the same. We had been big men until this day. What on earth had we brought upon ourselves. It had been fun up until this time. How had we managed to make a decision to leave all of that? We sat close together on the hard seats of the terminal and if one got up the other followed as if afraid the other might disappear.
 
   New Navy personnel herded us on a Pacific and Electric train for the trip to San Diego. The two of us hardly talked during the trip. We ate and drank hungrily from the free sandwiches and coffee handed out by the attendants on the train. The coffee and sandwiches sort of revived me and I looked around the train car. It resembled the school bus I last rode to school except there were no girls. It was filled with guys our own age; the same constrained look on their faces as ours. The excitement of being a heroic man going off to fight for your country wasn’t supposed to be like this? There weren’t any men on this train - these were all boys.
 
     The next day proved to be more emotional.  First, we watched horrified, as six at a time were called to sit in barber chairs, barbers running clippers through each head; clippings falling to the floor like wool sheared from sheep the floor covered with hair, brown, black, blonde and red all mixed together and only when the barber couldn’t move around it – is it swept clean. Next it is my time and I scoot into the chair hesitantly for I had worked hard to groom my hair in almost a duck-tail fashion and the touch of the cold blade of the clippers make me duck slightly forward but a hand on my shoulder pulls me back again. I feel the hair falling down over my forehead and ears as the barber hums his favorite tune to obviously push back the boredom of his job. My head is cold now unaccustomed to the long locks that covered my head down around my ears and I shiver slightly. 
 
     Next we were herded into a huge, barn like building, perhaps two hundred of us, stripped of our clothing, standing naked with only a small cloth bag tied around our waist holding our money and identification. They had stripped what pride we had left like peeling the skin from an orange.  Looking forward there was a line of naked bodies and almost baldheads as far as I could see. It was an unemotional sight to one who had never stood in front of another grown male naked much less his best friend.
    
     The building was dank, like the smell of the old cellar we used to keep canned goods and shelter from tornados back on the farm. In this dimly lit barn I could hear the chant of the Doctors doing the examinations. “Take a deep breath, don’t breath or move”, or “Turn you head and cough”, I would find later intimidating as a cold hand felt the most intimate parts of my body. The room was deathly quiet except for that, no one talked, and the invasion of our naked bodies erased any thought of conversation.
 
     At the end of two hours we reentered the room where we started and handed the attendant the sheet of paper given us by the doctors. Some who had not passed examination were given their clothes back for the trip back home. I prayed silently to God that I would be one of those. That didn’t happen to my buddy or me. We were herded into another room where we were issued Navy clothes, asked for an address where our civilian clothes could be shipped back home, like the belongings of someone who had perhaps died.
  
     We were assigned a barracks and I was separated from my only close friend, only to see him again perhaps four or five times until after the war was over. I settled in with strangers, some appeared and talked a little strange to me others seemingly more like me.  We were fed the first Navy meal and told to return to our barracks for the rest of the day and night.
  
     I struggled to get acquainted; to shed the pangs of homesickness that I felt and knew all were feeling. My mind stirred, how could I be in a room with this many people and still feel alone? At first it was the guys nearest to your bunk, later, it was someone you found that was from your own State, which made it, feel more homelike. The friend list grew quickly as I got bolder sharing my own views and found the others eager to share also. This compensated in a small way for the loneliness I felt and I knew I was not alone anymore.
  
     It was not at all like the movies or the stories I read. The nights were long and in the dead of night you could hear an occasional subdued sigh from a bunk nearby and I drew my legs up close in an effort not to join in.  I already missed the sweet smell of the honeysuckle bush near my bedroom window at night, the smell of Mom’s perking coffee in the morning when I awoke. The night would finally turn into day and the activity kept my mind from home. Friendships grew and finally the homesickness and isolation slowly left as my aching body finally adapted to all the marching and exercising. Up at six in the morning, calisthenics, showers, then to class and short arm inspection another intimate embarrassment.
   
      December of 1944 was the first time I would be away from home on Christmas. Early rumors had it that we would get to go home for Christmas after boot camp but that didn’t materialize. I looked forward to a lonely Christmas but it really wasn’t that bad.   Of course I missed the home cooking and the presents that we shared and especially the Christmas dinner always held at my Grandmother’s house. However, the Navy and the Red Cross went out of their way to see that all those that were unable to go home had the best Christmas one could have in these war years I was living in.
  
      It is January of 1945, now and I’m still not that far away from seventeen.  I heard another one of those famous rumors you hear in the Navy at times that we still would get to go on leave for two weeks. Taking that to heart I wrote my Mom and told her not to take the Christmas tree down that I wanted to see it.
    
     Time seemed to go quickly now and soon I would find myself in other strange surroundings. Loneliness at the door of my mind again,  being separated from the friends I had made back at boot camp. They were fresh and impressive and a part of my life now and I somehow knew I would remember them forever. James from Indiana whom I watched closely from the day that he mentioned injuring himself in attempt to get out of the Navy but later became a very competent sailor and excelled in duties. Billy from Sudan, TX that could always find something funny about any activity we faced. It was almost like leaving family behind.

     The Navy seemed to enjoy breaking up friendships. First, loosing track of my buddy who joined with me then after boot camp we were assigned to different schools breaking even newer friendships. Back home when in high school I had taken two years of typing classes. I caught hell for my buddies and they gave me a name of Miss Typist. I was glad I had taken advantage of that however, for the Navy picked up on that and other tests that I had taken and assigned me to radio school. I attended sixty days of radio/communication School where I was taught the Morse code along with proper training to repair and operate all the Navy communications equipment. I excelled in class. It seemed to be right down my alley.
  
     An Uncle that was a local radio station engineer had exposed me to radio. I had gone with him at times to the local radio station and observed as he worked on and tested the radio equipment. This was different, however, huge transmitters capable of transmitting signals around the world, test equipment I had never seen, repair shops outfitted with the latest in repair equipment. Hungry for the knowledge, I immersed myself in the sea of technology around me, sometimes day and night. At the end I was awarded a diploma for the highest-grade average and a title of Radioman, one of six who made it.
    
     The rumor proved true about leave. I was given two-week leave and told to be back at the end of that promptly for further assignment. Another surprise was the sudden appearance of my buddy that had joined with me. He too had been given a two-week leave. We promptly made reservations on the Southern Pacific railroad for the trip back to our hometown of Abilene, Texas.
    
     We boarded the train the next day found two seats together and settled in for the long trip. It would take three days there and three days back so that narrowed our time at home to about seven days using a day for arriving and leaving the train.
    
     We slept in the seats we sat in during the day. During the first night the stillness of the train woke me. We had stopped. I asked a fellow passenger who was awake what had happened. Some problem with the engine they had to repair was all he knew. It was two hours before we resumed travel.
   
      We arrived at Sierra Blanca, Texas where we would meet the Texas and Pacific for the final trip to Abilene. However, being two hours late that train had already departed and the next one was twenty-four hours away. Faced with losing a whole day of our short visit we headed to the Greyhound bus station, our duffle bags on our shoulder, the only other transportation out of this small town.
     
     At the bus station the agent told us that there were no seats on the bus that was about to leave the terminal. We told him our story. He looked at the two of us, the obvious disappointment in our faces and said, “Come with me.”
    
     We followed him to the passenger filled bus waiting in its stall. He pushed us onto the bus and followed. He asked for the passenger’s attention and continued to tell them our story. “Would anyone be willing to give up their seat to allow these young men to get home to see their families,” he asked? To my surprise about half of the passengers held up their hand.  Two older men got up from their seats and came forward. They shook our hands and wished us well, we thanked them and they left the bus and we took their seats. That was America then.
    
     Arriving in Abilene on time I surprised my parents by knocking on the door about eight o’clock the next night. I walked into the familiar living room. I smelled that pine tree odor that went with Christmas. There was the Christmas tree still standing, devoid of all it’s pine needles, now spread all over the floor underneath the dried out tree. Mom had kept the Christmas tree as I had asked her to do. A brush against my leg and I knew Pat, my one-eyed, bob-tailed dog was there to great me also. This still would be a good Christmas even if were February.    

My buddy and I returned via the Texas and Pacific/Southern Pacific without and mishap. Again we were separated, I moving to a Marine base called Camp Pendleton, which was near what is now known as Carlsbad, California. At that time, however, it was in the desert surrounded by what looked like sagebrush. A bunch of wooden barracks surrounded by a high fence.

I was now qualified Naval personnel and could come and go from this base at any hour, day or night – freedom at last. I made new friends and together spent thirty days exploring the beautiful city of San Diego that I had seen at a distance only four months before. The people were friendly, at times inviting us into their homes. The beaches were beautiful some seemed untouched. The parks, the zoo, the rides on the street cars that took you everywhere seemed like another world to a eighteen year old West Texas farm boy.

Those thirty days ended with a note on my bunk restricting me to base for the next week and a call to assemble at a specified area for briefing. Again I had to leave new friends and move to a restricted area for the remainder of the month. I learned that the group I was in was to be shipped overseas for assignment but not told where that would be. I began to make new friends and we spent the week betting among ourselves as to where we might be shipped. I would only learn this after two days out on the sea I had only gazed at from the shoreline.

I was herded with others, almost like we did cows back on the farm, onto a converted French passenger ship. The staterooms had been removed and metal bunks installed five high. The bunks were so close you were hardly able to turn over without your shoulder rubbing the bottom of the bunk above you. There were fifteen hundred of us on the ship. The ship was headed to Guam, an island I had only heard of from newspaper accounts of the retaking from the Japanese on July 21, 1944 just a couple of months before I was inducted.

The war was in its final stages. Of course, I didn’t know that since the Navy Only told you what they felt you should know. The ship used a zigzag course to avoid Japanese submarines that were still abundant in the Pacific. Three small escort vessels crossed our bow every so many minutes to guard us. The twenty one day trip time was passed by playing card games and in turns, when the weather was good, lying on the deck of the ship watching the ocean. I traded places with two of the New York guys who couldn’t stand the wide-open space of the ocean. They kidded me about that and wanted to know why I enjoyed it. I simply told them that it just looked like back home. They could not imagine looking out of a porthole and seeing nothing but space.

About fifteen days out the three escort vessels scooted off in the distance like dogs chasing a rabbit. I never saw them again leaving us to the sharks and the Japanese submarines. To make matters worse about two days after that the ship had trouble with an engine and we floated around for a day and a half bobbing like a cork on a fishing line while it was repaired. The crew of the ship stayed on alert watching for subs.

For the first time scuttlebutt around the ship was about why we were going to Guam. An invasion of Japan looked inevitable and the last minute training in “Walkie Talkie” (as they called it then - radios strapped to your back) were meant to land with the Marines to establish radio communications for the Navy.

I had seen movies like “Guadalcanal”, “Iwo Jima” back at the base. At the time they seemed “gung ho”, patriotic, exciting making you wish you could have been a part of it. Now, however, faced with actually being a part of it, things were different, scary at the least. When they told us that some of us wouldn’t make it, you looked around as if trying to ascertain which one’s of those it might be, you, the guy next to you, the one across the room. How can that be? It wasn’t supposed to be that way?

The compartment fell into almost deadly silence except for the occasional flick of a cigarette lighter, the hand holding it nervously close to the end of a cigarette. My thoughts jumped back a couple of years, remembering one of the older guys at the school who had joined the Army perhaps a year and a half before I graduated. I had been saddened by his death, but, time had passed and I guess I just accepted it. Suddenly his face was clear in my mind, remembering perhaps the last time I had seen him or perhaps the last time I had spoken to him.

The new friends I made seemed closer now. Perhaps bonding as close as a Mother or Father, Brother or Sister relationship. It was ironic how someone you had never known could become so close to you in such a short time. We were considerate of each other’s feelings, went out of our way to make the other feel as though we had been friends forever. Even with atmosphere there were fights over trivial things - the loneliness and isolation from being away from home sometimes overtaking even the strongest of feelings.

The last 10 days on the ship for Guam was uneventful. I caught sight of Guam late in the evening of the twenty-first day on the ship. I watched as the sun set in the West behind the island. Some time during the night the ship weighed anchor and pulled around to the West side of the island and entered the harbor. The next morning I saw the sun rise in the West and that afternoon set in the East. My sense of direction had been toyed with. As long as I was on Guam I was unable to correct that feeling.

Late in the day we de-boarded the ship. We climbed aboard trucks on the dock and headed for the area where we would be camped. It turned out to be a small area where the Seabees were clearing off an area of the jungle. There were about fifty or so tents that had been hastily rigged. We settled in about six to a tent, tied our sea bags to the foot of the two tier metal bunks and flopped down on the uncovered mattress tired and hungry.

The tents were our home for the next thirty days as the Seabees built a new camp for us. Again boredom set in for we had no job. We played cards most of the day while occasionally watching the Seabees do their construction work. It seemed to rain incessantly, especially to one that came from a dry West Texas farm; the water ran under the tents folding and it was necessary to mop the fabricated floor often.  There was nothing for us to do and again, cards were the labor of the day.
    THIS STORY IS BEING RE-WRITTEN - KEEP IN TOUCH AS I FINISH IT PLEASE.

hdeshazo 2009