Transfer to 31st Station
Hospital
Unfortunately for me, that idyllic existence ended in early
1945. The war was finally going well in
the Pacific Theatre of Operations and the US Armed Forces were closing in on
Japan. The 27th Station Hospital was
"Alerted" to ship out and cleared up their rather foggy personnel problems. They had been a convenient cover for medical
officers and enlisted men needed in other places for years, but once they were
alerted they had to get back to their authorized strength. Only positions (people) in their Table of
Organization could go into combat with them. I don't know how bloated they
were, but when they got down to transferring buck privates, I suspect some
officers lost THEIR cushy spots.
The first I heard of any of it, was
receipt of orders to report to the 31st Station Hospital, to which I had been
transferred, near Tontouta, New Caledonia about halfway between Bourail and
Noumea. The enormity of it hit me
immediately: no more Christmas Eve Midnight Masses and Christmas Dinners with
the Renivier Family; no more picnics, no more deer hunting, no more doing our
own cooking of whatever we wanted; I was back in the Army for the first time
since I left the Replacement Depot and would have to wear a uniform, salute
officers and eat G.I. food in a mess hall.
It was not a happy time.
One of my associates drove me, with all my clothes inherited
from George Sheldon in the back of the pickup, to the 31st Station
Hospital in Tontuta. I had long before
thrown away gas mask, cartridge belt, helmet liner, steel helmet and all other
accouterments of the combat soldier; so, when I reported, I expected a lot of
ass-chewing and possibly a "Statement of Charges" to pay for all the
Army equipment I had discarded. In the
words of Rhett Butler in Gone With The Wind, "I didn't give a damn";
the Army had already done the worst they could do to me.
Much to my surprise, the Hospital Sgt. Major to whom I
reported said "Welcome aboard, Sparks; E. J. Nicholson heard you were
coming and asked that you be assigned to his tent." Nicholson and I had
been through Basic Training together and had also shared Ft. Ord, Camp
Stoneman, the troopship and the Repple Depple.
He was a Cajun from just south of New Orleans, had gone to LSU on a
football scholarship, and was one of the most genuinely nice people I ever
met. Before I could recover from the
shock, Nicholson appeared and helped me load my clothes into the back of a
weapons carrier (a pickup like truck) driven by the
Detachment
1st Sgt, Don Finerty, and I was soon deposited, along with all my gear, in
front of my new home.
It was the standard pyramidal tent over a wooden floor,
sides up to about four feet and 2X4's running from each corner to peak at the
top around a central center pole running vertically from floor to ceiling. I soon met my tent mates: in addition to
Nick, they were Wayne Jackson, Robert Hall, and Charles Montgomery. Hall was
from Pierre, South Dakota, Montgomery from Walla Walla, Washington and Jackson
from somewhere in the Midwest, probably Indiana. Because we were all in our early twenties and
inexperienced in the ways of the world, someone painted a sign THE CHERUBS and nailed it above the
entrance to our tent.
All personnel newly assigned to the 31st Station Hospital
went on what the enlisted men called Shit Detail until they were assigned to a
permanent position. We picked up the
garbage from the Hospital, Officer's Quarters, and Enlisted Men's Area; dug
ditches, pits for new latrines; unloaded supplies and whatever grunt work had
been requested. Although I had made it
known that I would like to be assigned to the Laboratory; Nick, Montgomery and
Jackson worked there and I thought I might learn something useful in case I
ever returned to College.
Instead, they made me a Telephone Operator. It was a Racket. We worked rotating shifts: 8:00 AM to 4:00
PM; 4:00 PM to Midnight the next day; then Midnight to 8:00 AM the next;
followed by a day off, which was really three days off at the end of the
cycle. If, for example, you finished
your "Graveyard Shift" at 8:00 AM on Friday, your next tour of duty
began at 8:00 AM on Monday. This was because all enlisted men, outside of
combat, got one day a week off; we got the extra day because of the hardship of
working nights. That was, indeed, a
hardship; there was a cot beside the switchboard and calls between 8:00 PM and
8:00 AM were rare. You simply set the
buzzer and went to sleep at midnight; if anyone wanted to call out or there was
an incoming call, the buzzer waked you.
You usually got an undisturbed night's sleep and waked refreshed for a
three day holiday. We had four people
for the three shifts to allow for the "day off"; the other operators
had made a strong pitch for a fourth member because they had been overworked
since one of their crew had been sent back to the States for medical reasons.
Instead of fitting into the pattern, I spent a lot of my
“off time” in the Laboratory becoming acquainted with the enlisted men other
than my tent mates and even the two officers.
I was fascinated to learn that they did all the diagnostic tests for the
hospital; the Doctors often did not know what was wrong with a patient until
they received the Lab Reports. It didn't
take long for me to worm my way into an assignment to the Lab. The Head of the Laboratory, Major Evrel A.
Larson, was impressed by my obvious interest and, as a former professor
at
the University of Minnesota Medical School, could probably relate to an
enthusiastic kid wanting to learn about the medical way of doing business. Although the Lab was fully staffed (all their
authorized positions were filled), Major Larson managed to get me assigned to
the Laboratory because they had just been given responsibility for doing a
stool survey of the entire 81st Infantry Division.
The 81st had been evacuated after capturing a small, not
heavily defended island, because of what was believed to be an epidemic of
Amoebic Dysentery during and immediately following the battle. They were
brought to New Caledonia for rest, reinforcement, and training in addition to
being checked for Endameba histolytica, the causative agent for amoebic
dysentery. We thought most of that was a
joke; they reportedly lost only eight men in the invasion because the island
had been largely abandoned prior to their arrival. I doubt the Japanese were clever enough to
seed the island with E.histolytica cysts,
but it did demonstrate how effective biological warfare could be. An entire Infantry Division knocked out of
combat (and we were short of Infantry Divisions at the time) by a microscopic
protozoan that is only transmitted by fecal contamination.
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