short, whichever you wear); 6 handkerchefs; 6 pair of socks ( no silk ); 1 white shirt (if you have one. It is not necessary, however).” For three weeks they had practiced the manual of arms in the same soup-bowl helmets their fathers had worn at the Meuse-Argonne, with the same Springfield bolt-action rifles. They pitched tents on the town square, grousing about their four-buckle shoes, which they swore the Army had deliberately designed to be an inch shorter than the average depth of mud; then they ate chicken-fried steak in the Presbyterian church basement. The Methodists organized a town banquet honoring the departing warriors with roast turkey served by home economics students in red, white, and blue uniforms. The after-supper program included a solo, “If I’m Not at the Roll Call,” and a reading of “Old Glory” by Miss Eva Arbuckle. A local booster supplied a tune with these encouraging lyrics: “The boys are okay, you need have no fears / For they’ve drilled each week for the last three years.” The splendid evening ended with the townfolk on their feet singing “God Bless America,” followed by the mournful notes of “Taps” from the company bugler.
Then the time had come to leave, and in thirty-two Iowa towns during the first week of March 1941 the troops gathered at their armories while citizens lined the streets leading to the train depots. Aging veterans of the Great War, their shadows stretching long and blue across the snow, stamped their frozen feet and reminisced about their own call to the colors nearly a quarter century before. In Des Moines, a live radio broadcast covered the progress of 600 men of the 168th Infantry from East First Street across the Grand Avenue Bridge to Union Station. When the band launched into Sousa’s “Field Artillery March,” a haunting anthem of World War I, a mother marching with her son had shrieked, “Those bastards! They promised they’d never play that again!” At Clarinda, the high school band played “God Be with You Until We Meet Again” as the antitank company boarded the Burlington special. At Red Oak, where officers from Company M had urged mothers to stay home and “avoid any emotional display as the men leave for their year’s training,” scores of tearful mothers thronged the platform, clinging to their sons in a last embrace.
And in Villisca, on March 2, cars lined the village square and 1,500 people spilled from the little depot into the adjacent streets. “Most cars I ever saw in Villisca on Sunday morning,” said the graybeards, before launching into another account of the departure of ’17. Shortly before eight A.M. , someone spotted the flash of the drum majorette’s baton on Third Avenue. “Here they come!” the crowd murmured. Behind the Company F guidon, Bob Moore led his men across the viaduct in perfect march step. At the station, he commanded them to halt and fall out for final hugs and handshakes and murmured words of reassurance no one quite believed. An airplane circled overhead. “There’s a German bomber!” a prankster shouted. A nervous titter rippled through the crowd. Then the fatal order was given, and the men disentangled themselves to heave their packs into the coaches, blowing kisses through the windows. With a shudder, the train lurched forward, and a great cry formed in the lungs of those standing on the platform, a roar of pride and hope and dread of all that was yet to come.
The boys are okay, you need have no fears. Eighty-seven weeks had passed since that moment, far short of the three years Sylvanus Thayer deemed necessary to make a good army from the best men. Bob Moore knew he was a better officer now, and that his men were better soldiers. But whether the division was worth a damn remained to be seen.
As the convoy neared the Mediterranean in early November, the men finally learned their destination: Algeria. Grumbling subsided. A new sense of mission obtained as the troops realized they were
Then the time had come to leave, and in thirty-two Iowa towns during the first week of March 1941 the troops gathered at their armories while citizens lined the streets leading to the train depots. Aging veterans of the Great War, their shadows stretching long and blue across the snow, stamped their frozen feet and reminisced about their own call to the colors nearly a quarter century before. In Des Moines, a live radio broadcast covered the progress of 600 men of the 168th Infantry from East First Street across the Grand Avenue Bridge to Union Station. When the band launched into Sousa’s “Field Artillery March,” a haunting anthem of World War I, a mother marching with her son had shrieked, “Those bastards! They promised they’d never play that again!” At Clarinda, the high school band played “God Be with You Until We Meet Again” as the antitank company boarded the Burlington special. At Red Oak, where officers from Company M had urged mothers to stay home and “avoid any emotional display as the men leave for their year’s training,” scores of tearful mothers thronged the platform, clinging to their sons in a last embrace.
And in Villisca, on March 2, cars lined the village square and 1,500 people spilled from the little depot into the adjacent streets. “Most cars I ever saw in Villisca on Sunday morning,” said the graybeards, before launching into another account of the departure of ’17. Shortly before eight A.M. , someone spotted the flash of the drum majorette’s baton on Third Avenue. “Here they come!” the crowd murmured. Behind the Company F guidon, Bob Moore led his men across the viaduct in perfect march step. At the station, he commanded them to halt and fall out for final hugs and handshakes and murmured words of reassurance no one quite believed. An airplane circled overhead. “There’s a German bomber!” a prankster shouted. A nervous titter rippled through the crowd. Then the fatal order was given, and the men disentangled themselves to heave their packs into the coaches, blowing kisses through the windows. With a shudder, the train lurched forward, and a great cry formed in the lungs of those standing on the platform, a roar of pride and hope and dread of all that was yet to come.
The boys are okay, you need have no fears. Eighty-seven weeks had passed since that moment, far short of the three years Sylvanus Thayer deemed necessary to make a good army from the best men. Bob Moore knew he was a better officer now, and that his men were better soldiers. But whether the division was worth a damn remained to be seen.
As the convoy neared the Mediterranean in early November, the men finally learned their destination: Algeria. Grumbling subsided. A new sense of mission obtained as the troops realized they were
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