What I Learned At Bastogne (eBook)

Chapter 1

The Call-up—January 1940
University of Texas at Austin

Dallas Crabtree never got used to the weather in Texas, but this morning was different. The coolness of the air in his part of Texas was a pleasant mixture of the arid west and slight humidity of the east. As he was lying in bed, he reflected on the past four years at the University of Texas. Now in the third semester of his senior year, majoring in German and minoring in business, Dallas had completed all his core subjects; this semester, he would be taking only electives and attending every Chi Omega and Tri-Delta formal, which he felt he deserved. He had even bought a new tux from his friend David Greenhill’s father’s haberdashery in Yazoo City, Mississippi.

The ray of sunlight from the eastern window walked across the floor to Dallas’s bed, where he knew it would be in his face in just a few moments. Dallas was barely twenty-one years old. His baritone southern drawl and wispy sandy hair covered his lack of an emotional anchor that many young men his age had already acquired.

The late night before and lack of 0800 classes allowed the luxury of sleeping just a bit longer. As soon as he fell back into the light sleep realm, a knock on his door from a pledge awakened and told him he had a call from his father on the fraternity house phone at the other end of the hallway.

Dallas answered the phone, “Daddy, this is Dallas. Is everyone okay?”

John Crabtree, Dallas’s father, assured him that “everyone is fine” but explained that a letter to Dallas from the draft board requires him to report this coming Friday.

Dallas let out a series of rants, “No, that has to be wrong. I haven’t graduated yet from college; can’t you take care of this?”

John replied, “I have never heard of a draft notice like this. They are asking for you specifically. You are attending an Officer Basic Course and some intelligence school at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey.”

As Dallas heard that, he angrily kicked the side of the wall with his foot and then whimpered at the pain.

John asked what was wrong. Dallas admitted that he thought he had broken his toe.

“Boy, why are you barefooted? Do you know what time it is?” asked John

“Yes, sir, I know what time it is. I just missed breakfast.”

Mississippi A&M, Starkville, Mississippi

The same morning, Curtis Martin had been up for several hours because his scholarship required him to milk cows at the University Dairy Farm. One of the freshmen from his dorm came to the barn and told him he had a phone call on the public phone in the dorm lobby from his father back in Benton, Mississippi.

He was the first generation of his family to attend college. Curtis’s family had been German Jews who emigrated to Mississippi in the 1840s. His grandfather had been an officer for the Confederacy who had defended Vicksburg during the Civil War. Curtis, a fourth-semester cadet in ROTC, would receive a commission in the army at the end of the semester, along with his degree in German and mathematics.

Curtis made it to the payphone and answered, “Dad, this is Curtis; what’s wrong? Is everyone all right?”

Curtis’s father, Abraham Martin, began to explain that he had received a draft notice, that the draft board asked for him by name, and that he was to report to the Yazoo City Draft Board this Friday.

Trying to comprehend what his father was saying to him, Curtis asked, “What does the army want me to do?”

Abraham continued to explain that he was to report to Officer Basic Course and Intelligence School at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. “Son, also, we are having a special service for you at Anshe Chesed Synagogue; all your aunts and uncles will be there.”

The following day, when Curtis turned in his military equipment at the Middleton ROTC Building on the Mississippi A&M campus, little did he know that it would be six years before he returned to finish his degree.

Richmond, Virginia

Mark Singleton was in his second senior year at the University of Richmond. When Mark did not graduate on time, his father gave him a choice, either join the National Guard or go to work. Mark joined the Richmond Light Infantry Blues, one of the oldest militia units in the Virginia National Guard. The unit had just returned from Fort A.P. Hill, completing its two weeks of annual training. The Blues were as much a social club as they were a military unit. Guardsmen spent the so-called training playing baseball, playing cards, and getting chewed out by a World War I First Sergeant. On the downside, Mark had lost most of his pay playing cards, but on the upside, he had been promoted to corporal.

This morning, he sat at his parents’ kitchen table in the Church Hill section of Richmond. Mark had attended an elite boarding school in London, England, where his father had been in the Diplomatic Corps at the American Embassy.

While drinking coffee and waiting on his father’s daily complaints, Mark read the Richmond Times Dispatch. Aside from the usual news about crime in Richmond, he read full stories about the war in Europe. Many classmates with whom he had attended boarding school had been called up and served in various regiments in the king’s service.

He also wondered about a particular young lady he had relations with before being unceremoniously asked to leave school. He had no idea she was a cousin’s daughter of the Queen Mother, and his father never let him forget it. “You wasted your privilege.”

Continuing to flip through the newspaper, he noticed an all-caps headline in the announcement section: “ALL MEMBERS OF THE RICHMOND LIGHT INFANTRY BLUES ARE ORDERED TO ASSEMBLE AT THE ARMORY TOMORROW MORNING AT 0800 HOURS.” He wondered what that was all about.

The following day when Mark arrived at the armory, the first sergeant handed him a set of orders and instructed him to see the company commander after the morning formation.

Once the formation was called, the company commander announced that the unit was being called up for active duty for the “Louisiana Maneuvers,” which would be the largest exercise ever conducted, involving over 400,000 soldiers from all over the United States.

A Private Lumley raised his hand and asked, “Where will this exercise be held?” resulting in a laugh throughout the formation.

That question earned him one week on KP duty from the first sergeant.

Following the formation, Mark reported to the captain, who gave him his orders to report to an Officer Basic Course and an intelligence school at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey.

Puzzled by the term “Officer Basic Course,” Mark said, “Sir, I still have one more semester of ROTC.”

The captain replied, “Apparently, that is enough for the army, but out of curiosity, what are you majoring in at the University of Richmond?”

“German.”

While staring out the train window into the endless cotton fields of the Mississippi Delta, Dallas could not help but reflect on his childhood, family, and especially his sisters. Mi Mi, his green-eyed twin who was capable of all types of exaggerated drama, was born fifteen minutes after Dallas. Her skin was pale and had a strange reflective quality, which quickly changed to a mosaic of crimson the moment she started playing Mozart. Her father often described her ability to play the piano as “a gift from God,” which infuriated his oldest sister, Corrine. When their mother died giving birth to the twins, Corrine had to come home from the Mississippi State College for Women—the W—to raise her younger siblings.

To get back at her father, Corrine married a man twenty-five years older than herself—two years older than her father. Unfortunately (some say otherwise), her husband died one year into the marriage, leaving her the quite profitable Yazoo City Motel. This motel was the center of risqué liaisons and many of the goings-on in Yazoo City, which Corrine recorded in her “brown book” ledger for future reference.

Dallas’s next sister, following Corrine, was Barbara, who liked to cook and drive convertibles. Barbara had learned to cook from their New Orleans grandmother; so, she was in charge of the kitchens in Yazoo City and at Glenmar, their family farm. Barbara was the definition of love, and following the death of their mother, she and Corrine held the family together.

Dallas’s next sister, whose real name she shared with their New Orleans grandmother, Adrien Mignon, was called Sister because pronouncing Grandmother’s name was difficult for the other children. She was tall for a woman, had green eyes, and her complexion was a beautiful tone of olive. Sister worked with their father on the farm, for she considered it her semi-fortress of solitude. She did not feel trapped in the body fate had given her while on the farm. There, she felt protected from things she had not yet grown to understand.

Dallas had not been home for nearly a year. About 9 p.m., the...