<Begin Segment 14>

JF: I mean, I was in command status in training for a long time, and it takes a long time and a lot of training to know what the hell to, how to set up a training schedule and what to train for and how to do it and how to get the equipment to do it and getting the leadership to do it. And there just wasn't time for this. All of a sudden they had all of these people. Not only that, but the regular army, the regular army people could see the handwriting on the wall. I mean, you've been in uniform for thirteen years and you're a corporal. This guy's been in uniform for fifteen years and he's still a PFC. And all of a sudden you're surrounded by fifteen thousand people who are all going to be vying for your rank. Not only are they vying for it, but they're better educated, probably in just as good a physical condition as you are, they've got a lot of ambition, they're used to working with people, they've got a whole lot of pluses which you don't have. You can't even, you can't even read more than a fifth grade text. So what are you going to do? You're going to feel awfully, awfully alone and very, very worried about those two stripes you've got.

And that was another problem of getting the, the regular army people to train, to train these guys. We weren't draftees. We were f-u-c-k-i-n-g-d-r-a-f-t-e-e-s. One word. One word. Until one day down at Fort Knox -- Fort Knox was armored cavalry from the old cavalry -- and here this full colonel comes riding by, and he heard this sergeant saying, "Okay, you f -- draftees." And he called the sergeant over, he called all the other regulars over, and he said, "That is the last time I ever want to hear that phrase. Next time, nobody gets any, has any stripes in this whole outfit." And they stopped using it.

But that was it. They were not very happy with us guys because we were a direct threat to them. And you can put yourself in their shoes. I had a, I had a corporal in my tent. He had been in the army twelve years. He'd been a sergeant. He was busted down to private. He had been a corporal. He was busted up and down. And he still couldn't read the manuals. Now, he's got no chance in God's green acre against a guy like myself, even who's got a high school education, and most of the other people who were at least high school educated. And a lot of them, a lot of them were college people who were drafted. He hasn't got a prayer. He's going to be a private for the rest of his born days. So he's not very happy. And he took it out on us. We'd have an inspection, he'd sit on his bed and make us carry his bed outside and platoon, and polish up his area. And it was just, just amazing those little things that went on.

SF: So how did that affect you? Here you have this guy who's giving you a hard time and --

JF: It didn't. One thing for me, I wasn't in the army more than three or four days when I decided I'm going to get rank in this man's army as fast as I can get it. I'm not going to have to take orders from some guy like that. Maybe, maybe in combat he's a hell of a lot better soldier than I am. I don't know. But when it comes to coming in out of the rain at the right time, I got him beat, and I'm not going to have to take, don't want to take orders from him. So I think a lot of people felt as soon as possible they were going to get rank in this man's army.

And that's what had started to happen. We formed, we formed the 5th Armored Division. And we went, this was at Fort Knox, and we went to Camp Cook outside of Lompoc, California. It's Vandenberg Air Force Base now. Okay, we got probably five thousand people right out of basic training. Some of them hadn't even had basic training. And we had to name, pick out sergeants, three-stripers, right out of those raw guys because we didn't have enough guys to, enough people. I'll never forget, I had, there was a guy there who had some leadership. His name was McGarrow. And I picked him for one of my sergeants. I mean, that's it. This guy hasn't -- as we said in the army, "You haven't got your first cleaning back yet." And he hadn't. He had not been in the army that long, but he's a sergeant. And sometimes it worked out and sometimes it didn't. But the whole, the whole thing was that this ball was rolling so fast that the military didn't have time to catch up with it. And if they got, if weapons were manufactured, and they were at an amazing rate, they went to the people who were firing the damn weapons, not to the guys who were training with them. I mean, it makes sense. So we always got what was left over, if, if that. But it was something that we learned the hard way, that you don't, you don't train somebody overnight because the training, the training of the trainers takes so much time and is such a, such a tough task.

SF: So in your personal case you, you went to Fort Meade, is that right? Is that where the induction center was or the...

JF: I went to -- [coughs] -- excuse me. I went to Fort Meade for a couple of days. That was, that was the -- the Baltimore Armory was where we took our final basic, final physicals.

SF: Then, then you went to Fort Knox as the, for, for basic training.

JF: Basic training, yeah.

SF: And that was, was that kind of like everybody takes the same basic, or was it specific to the armored people?

JF: It was specifically armored force, such as it was. As I said, it didn't amount to anything but walking. It was the only thing we could do. Armored force is not, not a walking outfit, it's a vehicle outfit, vehicle-oriented, and, but we didn't have the vehicles.

SF: So when did the, Knox get tanks and armored personnel carriers and all of that stuff?

JF: Well, that came in later. They had, they had some, but we certainly didn't have any, any, as trainees we didn't have anything like that. I mean, we were, after a year in we were in the midst of war with the attack on Pearl Harbor. Things got even scarcer. I thought, I thought, well, we, we'll never get home before Christmas of 1941 because the attack was on December 7th. Well, to our great surprise we got home, got home Christmas Eve. And I thought, well, when we go back, certainly things are going to be different. So we went back to Fort Knox. And what we were doing was sweeping the streets because some big British general was coming over to inspect the troops at Fort Knox. But not, no training.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2000 Densho. All Rights Reserved.