By Erwin (Irv)
Lesser
In the summer of
1948, after my sophomore year of college, the U.S. Congress passed our first
peacetime draft. One of the clauses in that bill was that men who were members
of the National Guard and any of the military reserves at the time that
President Truman signed the bill into law would be exempt from being drafted. I
felt that I would be certain to be drafted, since my age was perfect for that
and my health was good. There were a few days between passage of the bill and
Truman’s signing it into law, so during that time I joined the 235th Field
Artillery Observation Battalion in Philadelphia, where I lived. Since I was
majoring in psychology at Penn State, I was placed in the medical unit of the
battalion.
We had weekly
drills at the armory in West Philadelphia and then a two week summer encampment
at Indiantown Gap, somewhere near Harrisburg. It was kind of fun, something
like playing soldier. When September came, and I had to go back to Penn State,
which is in the center of the state, I was given permission to drill weekly
with the local Air Force National Guard unit in State College. This worked out
fine and the next summer, 1949, I was back in Philly and again went on the two
week summer encampment. In the fall I went back to State College for my senior
year and again drilled with the local Air Force National Guard unit. I toyed
with the idea of requesting a discharge, since there weren’t many people being
drafted, but I decided not to, since once I finished my three year enlistment I
would be draft exempt.
So I continued in State College and graduated on June 12, 1950. The next day I started Graduate School. A couple of weeks later North Korea invaded South Korea. Every day I would run down to the radio station to see on the teletype what National Guard units were being called up. Finally, I saw the 235th FAOB. I filled out a form asking to be deferred because of my studies, but I never heard anything about it. (I later learned there was no record of my having filled it out. I suspect it was filed in the circular file.) I arranged to temporarily withdraw from Graduate School, having accumulated 10 graduate credits.
In Philly, I
attended whatever drills were being called and, being a member of the medics, I
helped administer the various shots we all required. In September, we all went
to Camp McCoy, Wisconsin. We were then composed of four companies and a medical
detachment, with about 200 men. I was then a Private, E-2, with a monthly
salary of $80.
In the medical
detachment, we had very little to do, so I was often placed on KP. Draftees
were gradually bought into the battalion and I was made a temporary platoon
sergeant to teach them drilling. It was kind of fun, since I used games to help
the draftees learn. Wisconsin, especially Camp McCoy, gets pretty cold in the
winter. We had a rule that we didn’t have to stand reveille when the
temperature was below minus 20º. There was one week when we didn’t stand
reveille at all until Friday, when we were called out. We all kept saying,
“They’re making a mistake, they’re making a mistake,” but that didn’t help. We
later learned it was -35º that morning. Camp McCoy was about 110 miles
northwest of Madison, and often on weekends I would hitchhike down there and
stay at the ZBT fraternity house. I was a member of that fraternity and they
treated me really well.
We gradually got
our 1000 men and in January, the very day that basic training started, I was
notified that I was being transferred to Fort Benjamin Harrison,
Indiana. Thus, I went through my military career without ever having basic
training! Fort Ben, as it was called, had been closed since WWII,
and was being cleaned and fixed up preparatory to its becoming the Army’s
financial center. I was assigned to the base hospital, where my
duties consisted primarily of scraping the old peeling paint off the walls. We
had a contingent of about 12 or so, none of whom I was interested in being
friends with. We were just 12 miles from Indianapolis, so on weekends it was
easy to go to town. They had a very good servicemen’s center there and I
enjoyed the city.
But the work was
very dull and boring, so I went to the Master Sergeant and said to him that
people get very anxious when work is too hard or too easy for them, and I was
wondering if there was anything else I could do besides just peeling and
sweeping the paint chips. He made me company clerk and I set up the hospital’s
filing system. There’s an Army manual for everything! During this time I now
dressed in Class A uniform instead of the fatigues and I felt like a real
person.
After about a
month and a half, in March, 1951, I was suddenly transferred to Camp Atterbury,
Indiana, about 30 miles south of Indianapolis, where I was assigned to the base
hospital. This was a rather large hospital with a large psychiatric unit, to
which I was assigned. They had a bunch of psychiatrists, but the psychological
section consisted of just one man, a Master Sergeant. He had been an infantry
Captain during WWII, and when the Army reduced the number of men, he decided to
remain in as a Master Sergeant. He had a Bachelor’s Degree from a small college
in Wisconsin and had learned how to do some of the psychological testing.
The
graduate courses I had taken at Penn State in the summer of 1950
were on psychological testing, so when he checked me out I passed with flying
colors and I was permanently assigned to that unit. The work was quite
interesting. I did psychological testing and wrote reports on the men who were
patients in the psychiatric unit and I attended the case conferences with the
psychiatrists and my Master Sergeant. He and I also attended a class on Fridays
at a hospital in Indianapolis with an excellent psychologist, where I learned
to give the Rorschach (inkblot) test.
I was still a Private, E-2. My Master Sergeant didn’t believe anyone should get a promotion until they completed a four year hitch. When he went away on a leave, the officers had me promoted to Private, First Class (PFC). This happened again a few months later and I became a Corporal. He took it well.
The psychological unit got a few more trained enlisted men, a couple of whom became my very good friends, as well as a Captain with a Ph.D. in psychology, so we were a pretty professional group.
In September,
1951, I was sent to the Far East. I think I was the one in the group who was
sent because I sometimes questioned the Captain. I saw him again about 15-20
years later, and asked him about it. He denied it, saying he had put all of our
names in a hat, but I still have my doubts about that.
Anyway, I learned
that my best friend from the 235th was also being shipped to the Far East and we
were able to go on the same troop ship together. We volunteered to be
carpenter’s helpers on the ship, so we got a few privileges together. Once in
Yokohama, I was given a carbine and sent to the firing range, but as soon as I
got back I was notified that I was being sent to the Osaka, Japan, Army
Hospital (OAH).
When I arrived there, I found it was a large, 5 story building
with a large psychiatric unit that had a decent sized psychological service. We
had one officer, who had a Ph.D., and several enlisted men, one of whom was a
Master Sergeant. He had a Ph.D. from the University of Vienna, and had studied
under Freud. He had been unable to prove it, so he couldn’t be made an officer.
He was finally able to prove it by finding his name in the Vienna newspaper of
the day he graduated, so he was being made a Captain or a Major.
He had been teaching Abnormal Psychology in the evenings at the U.S. Armed forces Institute in Osaka, and he asked me if I would like to take it over for him, since he was being transferred away. I watched him teach one class and I immediately saw that I could never be as good as he. I also saw that they used the same text I had used in my senior year, so it wouldn’t be that hard. Actually, it turned out to be a fun experience.
Just before
Thanksgiving, promotions from Corporal to Sergeant, which had been frozen for
five years, opened up, and all of the corporals were given a time at which to
appear before the Promotion Board. At my appointed time, I appeared in freshly
laundered Class A uniform. I saluted smartly and then had great
difficulty in keeping from bursting out into laughter. It seems that the
Secretary of the Promotion Board was a Major who was a student in the class I
was teaching. I knew I’d be promoted. They first asked me if I planned to stay
in the Army and I said “No, Sir.” They repeated the question and got the same
answer. My roommate, also a corporal and also a college graduate, had discussed
this and he had decided to say he would stay in. At the end of the interview,
they asked it a third time. This time I replied, “No, sir, not as an enlisted
man.” I left with a friend for a 5 day trip to Tokyo and when we returned I saw
that I had been signed out as Sergeant Lesser. I later learned that this was
sort of scandal at the hospital, since there were 50 of us promoted, of whom 49
were Regular Army and one (me)was National Guard. But that was OK with me.
At OAH we were
doing a study of frostbite, giving psychological tests to soldiers who had been
frostbitten (to see if there was any psychological component) and also to
soldiers who had been wounded, but not frostbitten, who were the controls with
whom to compare test results. There was not much fighting going on at the time
so we had few wounded. It was decided to send a couple of us over to Korea to
test soldiers still on the front lines who had not been frostbitten.
This Second
Lieutenant and I were chosen to go over. He had a Bachelor’s degree in
Industrial Psychology and knew nothing of clinical testing. I had to teach him
whatever he was going to do in Korea, but he was still in charge. We went over
and he often let me know he was in charge. It was not a pleasant time. We would
get men off the front lines, give them a battery of tests, and then send them
back to the front lines. We were mainly with the Medical Battalion of the
7th Infantry Division and the 8076 MASH.
After a few
months we were sent back to Osaka, and a month or so later I was sent back to
the U.S. for discharge. In the summer of 1952 I went to summer school at Temple
University and in September I resumed my graduate studies at Penn State,
getting my Ph.D. in 1955. I had been able to convince the graduate faculty that
my military experiences were the equivalent of the required one year
pre-doctoral internship, thus losing only one year, instead of the two that I’d
been away.
So what did I get
out of my service? I think I got a lot. I certainly matured. I learned that I
could handle many adverse circumstances. I learned to stand up straight, so
that my posture is still very good. I became much more sure of myself in many
areas, and this still helps me. It gave me the GI bill which helped me avoid
financial problems during graduate school. Finally, it gave me VA privileges,
which still saves me a lot of money on medicine and hearing aids. While I was
sorry at the time that I had to go in, I think now that it was a very good
thing.
This is being
written at the urging of my neighbor and friend, Craig Hullinger. I hope you
find it interesting.
Word Version
http://militaryhistories.blogspot.com/
Word Version
___________________
http://militaryhistories.blogspot.com/