College the Army way

Both of these photos show off Jack's corporal stripes.

At the end of basic training, it was standard for the officers to select a new cadre of men to serve as non-commissioned officers for a new outfit to be organized. Jack was promoted to corporal and subsequently transferred to Camp Stewart, GA. He spent five or six weeks there before being selected to attend college under the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP) and transferred to the Citadel in Charleston, SC, for processing. His choice of study was business administration, and he was disappointed to find it full.

He relates, “I was talked into accepting industrial engineering as my choice and was subsequently transferred to Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA. About four or five months later the entire program was disbanded and all students sent to various replacement centers. I ended up in Fort Bragg, NC, and was finally reassigned to the 474^th AAA, which just happened to be on its second phase of maneuvers in the mountains of Tennessee. It was their second phase because they’d received a low efficiency rating on the first phase.”

Prior to this second phase of maneuvers, the 474^th suffered its first casualties when one of the half-tracks of Headquarters Battery was involved in an accident. One man was killed and another seriously injured. When the second phase of maneuvers began in early October 1943, the weather was cold and wintry already. Jack was reassigned to his old battery—A. But no one at battalion headquarters could understand why he was there, since there were no openings. He describes what happened next:

Battery A decided to utilize my ‘skills’ and assigned me to a security guard position located 100 yards away and in deep brush (probably due to my extensive experience playing cops and robbers when I was a kid). For at least three hours I sat in some brush, cross-legged and damn wet from the pouring rain. Suddenly I was approached by an officer with the markings of a major, although by this time I wasn’t about to be impressed by anybody. He asked me my name, and I told him ‘Clark.’ He retorted, ‘Who in the hell are you—Private Clark or General Clark?’ After giving him my complete identification in military manner, he seemed to be very interested about where I’d come from prior to this assignment and why I had been made local security guard. Within a few days I was assigned to a gun crew in A Battery.

Jack’s duty might have been preferable to what the rest of the unit experienced on maneuvers:

The weather continued to be miserable, and the men sat at their gun positions, night and day in the rain. They were bundled up in their raincoats, with their wool knit caps pulled down around their ears. The gun positions quickly became muddy, and the men sloshed around in it, the mud covering their leggings…The blankets were wet, muddy and cold.³