World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives, American; World War, 1939-1945 -- Prisoners and prisons, German
When this group shipped out, I got an order to see the camp
commander, a colonel. I didn't know what to expect but found out that
I had been listed as AWOL for the prior three months as they couldn't
find me. I was supposed to be at home waiting for them to call me!
This is the way everything went for me in the service. I could have
been home living on that big $21 a month and not doing all the dirty
work. My orders finally came and I went to Nashville, Tenn. by
myself, probably by train to the classification center. At the center
we had three days of intensive tests of all kinds to find out what we
were best qualified for: navigator, bombardier or pilot. Naturally,
everyone was hoping for pilot.
The tests were from morning till night and covered everything from
physicals, eye, hearing and coordination to reaction time. The test
for depth perception was particularly interesting. At the end of a
long tunnel about a foot in diameter and dimly lit were two wooden
pegs. You had to pull them with strings until they were opposite each
other. Another one involved a board in front of you while you sat at
a desk and the board had little red lights with switches below them.
When a light came on, you had to turn the switch off and you had to
move quickly to keep up. Another was a small hole in a board with a
wooden peg that would just go in without touching the sides. While
you held the peg there, the instructor, Wolfgang Loganowiche ( I
remember him well and later read somewhere that he was a famous
German scientist and inventor) would yell and holler at us. He had a
tremendous loud voice and would sometimes sneak up behind you, yell,
wave his arms and stomp his feet. Ht would scare the daylights out of
you and every time you moved the peg would hit the sides and the loud
buzzer would go off.
We also had written tests with a time limit so we had to work fast. I
used to skip all the math problems as I was so bad in math. I didn't
realize until later that it was a good thing I skipped the math as
the men who were good at it probably got sent to bombardier or
navigator training. Of course we really wanted to be pilots instead.
The notices were posted after three days and we were about worn out
from the long days of testing. I was lucky to be chosen for pilot
training. This was where I got used to standing in line and waiting.
We had to wait in line to get our issue of Air Corps uniforms and I
stood in line from 8:00 am until almost 4:OO pm for my clothes. We
couldn't get out of line to get any dinner as we would lose our
place. I now had all my army clothes as well as my Air Corps cloths
and everywhere I went I had to make two trips carrying my barracks
bags. When I got to my next base, I either sent my Army clothing home
or turned them in. I can't recall which.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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