When Books Went to War (4 page)

In September 1940, Congress passed the Selective Training and Service Act. Under this legislation, approximately 16.5 million men between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-five were required to register for military service (later amendments extended this age group to eighteen to fifty). On October 16, 1940, brothers, husbands, sons, boyfriends, uncles, friends, and neighbors turned out in droves to registration centers that had sprouted across the United States. Although there was concern that a contingent of isolationists and pacifists might threaten the process, the day passed surprisingly smoothly. In New York City, where 991,000 men registered for military service, only two arrests were reported; one transpired when two men broke into a fight over who should register first, and the other involved a man who spent several hours preparing himself for registration in a saloon.
Election Day was less than one week away, and some thought the timing of the draft would cost Roosevelt another term, but it did not. Not only did Roosevelt take the unprecedented step of conducting the first peacetime draft in American history, but within a week of doing so he won an unparalleled third term as president.

In order to accommodate the hundreds of thousands of civilians called into service, the U.S. Army planned to construct and furnish forty-six new training facilities. However, because federal funding was not approved until the fall of 1940, the Army was in the unique position of having to conscript men and train them while also acquiring basic supplies and building the very camps needed for the conscripts and the training. The scope of the job was monumental. As one historian noted, “Land had to be cleared, hills leveled, valleys filled, trees uprooted, roads surfaced, and drainage systems installed before the construction of barracks, laundries, officers' quarters, and rifle ranges could begin.” It was estimated that construction of the camps would require 400,000 laborers, 908,000 gallons of paint, 3,500 carloads of nails, and 10 million square feet of wallboard.

The timing of conscription first and camp construction second was disastrous for morale. The first men assigned to the new camp areas could hardly believe the extent of the military's unpreparedness. They were greeted by great stretches of barren land. Although workers feverishly built heated barracks, in many camps there was inadequate shelter, which was especially distressing to those who were drafted into service during the coldest time of year. Winterized squad tents were provided before there were barracks, with six or more enlistees to a tent. Each night, surrounded by strangers, the men were blanketed by numbing cold and lulled to sleep by the howl of the wind. Homesickness ran rampant.

It was not just the new camps that were deficient. Even facilities created during World War I proved unready. One man assigned to Fort McClellan in Alabama (which had been used as an infantry training camp in 1917) described the place as a “hell hole,” and elaborated that it was “dirty, stinking, [and] muddy.” Every aspect of the camp was makeshift and unfinished. All men initially slept in sixteen-by-sixteen-foot tents with six to eight of their fellow soldiers. A single stove was used to heat each group, but sparks frequently burned holes in the tent material, and small fires constantly had to be extinguished. While roads around the camp were generously described as “cleared,” in actuality they were riddled with tree stumps that the soldiers-in-training were ordered to remove. There were many other dirty jobs assigned. “You'll haul coal and ash and ashes. You'll unpack rifles that are buried in heavy grease and you'll clean that grease from them. You'll stoke fires, you'll mop floors, and you'll put a high polish on the windows,” Sergeant Marion Hargrove explained in his famous account of military life. There would be times when “you'll wonder if you've been yanked out of civil life for
this
” and “you will be thoroughly disgusted with your new job,” Hargrove added.

Beyond buildings and facilities, camps lacked even the most basic supplies. Once a man arrived at his training camp, a mountain of gear was supposed to be given to him for his new military life. The Army quartermaster (QM) planned to provide infantrymen with a “field uniform of steel helmet, shirt, trousers, leggings, shoes, underwear, and, depending on the weather, raincoat or coat and overcoat . . . ; a haversack, for his mess kit; cup and canteen; first-aid kit; pack holding blanket, shelter tents, poles, pins, toilet articles, gas mask; intrenching tool, reserve ration; weapon and ammunition.” As one magazine quipped, the men were given “some $85 worth of clothes, but no pajamas.” In reality, the first wave of recruits was missing a lot more than just pajamas. Because the QM had not yet procured their khaki regimentals, men were forced to wear hated wool uniforms from World War I.

Many camps also lacked ammunition, weapons, and equipment for training drills. The men felt foolish as they were forced to pretend a mop handle propped on a sawhorse was an antiaircraft gun. At Fort McClellan, trucks bore signs reading
TANK
, and logs were used as placeholders for artillery. Even General Dwight D. Eisenhower recalled in his memoir,
Crusade in Europe
, that “troops carried wooden models of mortars and machine guns and were able to study some of our new weapons only from blueprints.” The use of these pretend weapons “added little to the new infantryman's
esprit
,” he admitted.

In addition to the demoralizing reality of the training camps' unpreparedness, draftees experienced growing pains in adjusting to the regimentation of military life. Up at 6:00 a.m., the men stumbled out of bed and into the dark to spend hours learning how to march and maneuver in freezing temperatures. When ammunition and weapons were available for drills, the Army strove to simulate battle conditions. The men would crawl under barbed wire while live ammunition whizzed a couple of feet above their heads. The sound of grenades, rifle fire, and TNT bursts penetrated the air as dummy enemy soldiers were dropped from trees. The men spent additional hours in classrooms watching films, reading charts, analyzing mockups, and studying how their equipment functioned and was best utilized. They were frequently tested and ranked, with failing students shifted to other courses or training. There was constant pressure to perform well. Top grades meant promotion, a pay raise, and an elevated social status. Most men would do anything to avoid the disgrace of being held back because of academic failure.
Military training proved both physically and mentally draining.

The transition from civilian to soldier did not come easily to the great majority who found themselves wandering around training camps in the early 1940s. Although newspapers and magazines romanticized the experience, in reality, many men were completely miserable and struggled with loneliness, isolation, and melancholy.

At the end of each day, most men craved solitude and escape. But unless granted a furlough or leave, it was impossible to get away. The only place an enlistee could spend his off-duty hours in an unfinished training camp was his squad tent. There was no opportunity for the men to enjoy a little distance from their military service. They found themselves surrounded by it even in their free time. It was especially difficult for those who were drafted. Former civilians did not anticipate how disoriented they would feel as they lost access to their hobbies and interests while being drilled into patterns of uniformity and sameness. It felt foreign to them to be told when to wake up, how to dress, what to eat (and when to eat it), the beat at which to march, and when to go to sleep. Privacy and individuality were the luxuries of civilians—not soldiers. It was the same in the U.S. Navy. “You learned that your days of privacy were over while you were in the navy and they would not return until you were back in civilian life again,” James J. Fahey recounted in his memoir of Navy life. “When you ate, slept, took a shower, etc., you were always part of the crowd, you were never alone.”

Despite the limited resources available, music (primarily singing) and athletics provided some diversion. But these communal activities were among the least popular at more established camps. According to one study, when given a choice, most men preferred to spend their leisure time engaged in relatively independent activities—writing letters, reading magazines and books, watching a movie, or listening to the radio. Only 16 percent preferred to spend their off-duty hours playing sports, and 5 percent chose to spend their time singing.
For the most part, men craved an escape—from the camps they trained in, the strangers they lived with, and the possibility that they might be shipped off to war.

Army leaders knew that effective training would be impossible if morale and the quality of camp life were not improved. Comparisons between established and new training camps revealed a staggering difference in attitude and zeal for training. This disparity was attributed, at least in part, to the availability of entertainment. At Georgia's Fort Benning, satisfaction with military life was generally high. When off duty, men had access to pool tables, cards and games, musical instruments, a library of books and magazines, and a movie theater that could seat two thousand.
While the training regimen was the same, the men at Fort Benning adjusted to military life with greater ease; they could genuinely relax after each day's training session and experience a temporary escape from their service. The War Department concluded that amusements and entertainment were crucial.

Yet the Army was struggling to secure the most basic supplies. It could not immediately build and furnish movie theaters and sporting venues when men did not even have buildings to live in or guns to shoot. What the Army needed was some form of recreation that was small, popular, and affordable. It needed books.

 

World War II would not be the first time the Army and Navy welcomed books into their ranks. Yet no other war—before or since—has approached the rate at which books were distributed to American forces in World War II.

The first American war where books made an appearance on the frontlines was the Civil War. Volunteer organizations collected used books, and some religious institutions even printed their own, such as
The Soldier's Pocket-Book
, a miniature tome of psalms, hymns, and prayers that the Presbyterian Church hoped would be more satisfying than “light and sinful reading.” Although distribution was hit or miss, and the selection of titles was limited, the books that reached the battlefields were cherished. As one veteran of the Civil War, Homer Sprague, insisted over fifty years after the war had ended, “soldiers in the field hunger and thirst for reading matter.”
Yet with no meaningful support from the War Department in disseminating books, the chief force dictating whether a man received any reading material was luck.

There was a huge improvement in book services for the American forces in World War I. A mélange of civilian organizations—the Red Cross, the YMCA and YWCA, the Knights of Columbus, the Jewish Welfare Board, the Salvation Army, and the ALA, among others—shouldered the task of providing donated books to soldiers in training camps. Millions of volumes were collected. The work performed by these organizations was universally lauded, particularly by those who received the benefits. Thomas Marshall Spaulding, a major in the Army, said that books “made life worth living for our own soldiers and the soldiers of other countries who fought alongside ours,” and inspired “that amazing spirit of American troops.” Even units weary from battle, dispirited and drained, emerged with renewed vitality after convalescing with books. Although they were trained to kill and subjected to indescribable brutalities on the frontlines, the presence of books seemed to verify that “the members of our army [are still] human beings,” Major Spaulding said.

After World War I, the War Department decided to make books a staple in its training camps. In 1921 the department created an Army Library Service, responsible for the maintenance of the 228 libraries at Army posts in the United States then in existence. In the words of Colonel Edward Munson, the chief of the Army's Morale Branch at the time, books were considered not only “a valuable means of recreation and an essential agent in education and instruction,” but also a “channel for the . . . betterment of character and behavior.” War was a “clash of wills even more than one of arms,” he said, and books enabled soldiers to strengthen their minds.

Although it began with the most noble of intentions, the Army Library Service soon fell into a state of neglect. As the nation was no longer at war, funding for the maintenance of each library's collection was cut year after year, and the acquisition of new titles became impossible. As the size of America's armed forces dwindled, state library agencies were permitted to pilfer the most popular titles from Army libraries for use by the broader public.
As a result, when conscription for World War II began in 1940, existing Army libraries lacked almost any desirable titles. Outdated textbooks were practically useless, and modern bestsellers were nonexistent. And new training camps lacked books and libraries altogether. Faced with a morale crisis, a need to educate its charges on why they were in training, and a dearth of modern textbooks to enable the more ambitious to study and improve their rank, the Army prioritized the modernization of its library collections.

 

Starting in late 1940, the Army made plans to purchase tens of thousands of books and to build recreational facilities, including libraries, for all training camps. Initial proposals provided for a limited number of books and tiny libraries (with seating for as few as twenty-four men). But these paltry arrangements never made it past the drawing board, thanks to the vision of one man.

Raymond L. Trautman was a thirty-four-year-old reserve first lieutenant with a professional library degree when he was selected to become the chief of the Library Section of the United States Army. Before earning his degree at Columbia University in 1940, Trautman had managed several bookstores and learned the commercial side of the book business. He also spent five years working with the Civilian Conservation Corps, which was jointly operated by the Army and the Department of the Interior. This rare combination of Army know-how and book-industry expertise made Trautman an ideal candidate to head the Army's Library Section. Whenever obstacles arose that threatened the quantity and quality of books reaching the Army, Trautman fought for his men and took whatever measures necessary to ensure that they received the books they wanted. Thanks to Trautman's guidance and sheer determination, exponentially more books were provided to servicemen during World War II than the Morale Branch had envisioned in 1940.