More war stories

[fbhjr]

After my father asked that fateful question when his shoulder healed, his superiors decided he should not spend the war mowing lawns.
Exactly what he should do was not very clear.
As he had been somewhat lost in the Army paperwork system, they seemed to want to keep him on the base rather than ship him out somewhere.

My father wanted to work in the engineering corps. But, he couldn’t convince people he was actually an engineer. (My father’s leaving the boss’ daughter at the altar and running off with his other fiancé had a negative impact on his salary history. The army did not believe an engineer would make as little as my father made.)

They tried making him a guard, but he was abysmally bad at that.
He was watching one prisoner when the man he was watching said he wanted to get a hair cut before his trial the next day.
So, my father let him out to go get a haircut.
This caused some consternation when my father’s officer inquired about the prisoner. And, even more when the man was not found at the barber.
But, he was at the bar. That’s half of barber, right?
Surprisingly my father didn’t get it all that much trouble for it. I think they were embarrassed by it, and the guy was found.

Next they assigned him as a truck driving instructor. But, he was an engineer and most of the folks who wanted to be truck drivers in the Army had already been truck drivers as civilians. So, they didn’t need much instructions.
One day, the captain in charge of my father told him to take a specific truck back to the motor pool. My father saw it had a very large dent in the front side.
The captain told him to take it in and accept responsibility for it.
My father waited until after dark and brought it in just as the they were getting ready to close.
The person checking in the trucks found a totally different dent on the other side of the truck and yelled quite a bit about it to my father.
But, he checked in the truck.
As my father started to walk away he heard an exclamation from the other side of the truck. But, he had his paperwork and kept going.

After that, they made him an instructor for anti-tank weapons. A strange choice as he hated guns and was not good with them. This trend continued with larger guns as well. When his students consistently had the lowest scores, he got moved off that as well.

Finally they decided to send him to the Pacific.