Ed & Ray Hersman in WWII - Robert Marks.org

3.4. ARMY TRAINING Ed & Ray Hersman in WWIIOne Friday night he drank too much and started to tear up his room.With inspection the next day, we knew he would loose his stripes if he wascaught, and three of us went up to stop him. Conley would not listen toreason, so we decided to tie him up and gag him. This was almost a mistakesince he was nearly a match for all three of us. He hit me once and nearlyknocked me out. The other two men didn’t fare much better. We finallydid get him tied up and gagged. We put the door back on, the bunk backtogether and cleaned up. We passed inspection O.K.Conley’s other problem was his inability to read and understand whathe had read. I spent hours reading and explaining the field manuals tohim. Another person I read for was named Stilwell. He was from Louisville,Kentucky and seemed to be a man of some means. At least thats what thethree women writing to him thought. Stilwell was later killed in Normandy.The food in basic training was pure slop. Breakfast for a while consisted ofheavy soggy pan cakes with thin sugar. After a while even dehydrated eggslooked good to us. We hated mutton which we called “goat”, it tasted so badit well might have been the latter. Unfortunately we had this quite often.We ate a lot of PK food, ice cream, candy etc. whenever we could.3.4.2.4 Lieutenant Ziegler and Special TrainingWith basic training over the spring and summer were to be spent perfectingthe units. Some of us were actually beginning to like the tough Army lifeand we showed it by “griping” about everything. Lieutenant Ziegler told methat he had up me in for the rank of buck sergeant and that I was to lead thethird squad. I was horrified. I told him I didn’t want the job and wouldn’tdo it well and that a good leader would be a dead leader in real combat. Hetried to “reason” with me and I told him I had read hundreds of books aboutwars and it was true. He said he would respect my reasons and request whathad said to Captain Sharp. So I didn’t become a squad leader.One day we were on a field problem and lieutenant Ziegler told me that a27