You wanted to talk about your permanent assignment.
Yeah, but it didn’t happen right away.
How so?
Well, you see, basic training lasted 8 weeks. And within days all the other guys were getting their orders. One was going with the paratroopers. You know why? Because he liked the boots they wear. I guess that’s how great decisions are made.
How about you?
My orders didn’t come. Others had left. The company street was almost deserted.
I hung around an extra two weeks. Keeping busy. Cleaning. Picking up trash. Talking with the officers.
Hey. That’s interesting in itself. The officers who were so strict with us recruits during Basic were just ordinary guys with me later..
And in my 10th week my orders came through.
And what did they say? Report to the Quartermaster Food and Container Institute in Chicago. Report to the what? Food and Container? I thought that, with my background, I’d probably be going to the Signal Corps at Fort Monmouth. Food and Container? So I went to the Company Clerk.
I asked him: Are you sure this is for me? He said yes. Those are my orders. Electrical Engineering Assistant at the Quartermaster Depot.
So that was your permanent assignment?
Yep. They gave me some time off and then paid for my flight to Chicago. The city on the lake. Lake Michigan.
Where was this place? This depot?
On Pershing Road. That’s equivalent to 39th Street.
Some of the GIs roomed at the Depot, but I was able to find a basement apartment on 65th Street. Not bad.
So what was your assignment?
Well, it all began to make sense, once they explained it to me. They wanted someone with a background like mine to help with a testing program. You see, the Quartermaster Corps was involved with the airdropping of supplies to troops in the field.
They wanted it to be a quick drop, with as small a parachute as possible, and with cushioning material under the load to absorb the shock.
Some kind of spongy material?
No. That would just fling the load — canned food, for instance — back up and probably spill it all over. Rupturing the cans. What they wanted was a material to absorb the energy. Something that would crush rather than spring back. They had tried various materials. Even popcorn.
Anything else?
Yes. What they were working on was not as tasty as popcorn, but it worked better. It was a heavy-paper product called honeycomb.
If you can tell from this picture, it consists of parallel tubes or cells of stiff paper. When the load hits the ground the tubes crush accordion-like to absorb the energy of the fall. The task was to find the optimum thickness for a given load.
And that’s what they were doing?
Well, up to then, it had been pretty much trial and error. They wanted me to equip their lab with electronic instrumentation so we could test the material more scientifically.
Sounds interesting.
It was. I had pretty much free rein to order equipment and supplies so we could do the job. Here I am with Anderson M., a civilian lab assistant. We’re about to do a test drop.
And here’s another shot of the new equipment.
I have a Polaroid camera mounted on an oscilloscope. I’m about to open the shutter. Then Anderson will drop the load and a trace of the impact will go across the screen and be photographed by the camera.
Polaroid?
Yeah. That was long before digital, which would have saved us money. And made it easier to report results. But we worked with what we had at the time.
As you can see, that was just a small test setup. To get a higher impact, we had in the building an abandoned elevator shaft.
We tested honeycomb materials at higher-energy impacts by dropping an instrumented load down the elevator shaft.
And that leads me to what was possibly the highlight of my time at the lab.
What was that?
A few months before my time was up, a delegation of civilians and military came to review our operation.
And leading the delegation was non other than the Quartermaster General of the United States Army.: Major General Kester L. Hastings. The top guy in the Quartermaster Corps. And I got to explain to him what we were doing. Here I am showing him one of the Polaroid oscillograms from our testing.
Nice going.
I value that meeting, and I value that photo of me and the top man in the Quartermaster Corps.
Near the end of my assignment I wanted to document what equipment I had assembled to do the testing. So I wrote a 79-page report with descriptions and photographs. It would be a help to management and any technical employee to follow me.
Just as a sidelight, I’ll mention that my experience in the lab kindled my interest in electronics. And I did some experimenting on my own. In my basement apartment.
At the far left is a Heathkit vacuum-tube voltmeter I built. My left hand is on a signal generator I built. And I’m tracing the signal through a radio. Troubleshooting.
All of which helped in my getting a job coming out of the Army. I’ll get to that later.
Okay. By the way, what about the food part of Food and Container.
Oh, right. While we were doing our thing about protecting what would be dropped, others at the Depot were developing the food itself. Stuff that would keep under extreme conditions. Hot temperatures. Cold temps. And still taste good. That kind of thing.
You didn’t work together?
In only one way. Taste testing. They would be working on some new concoction. A meat product. Or a veggie. And they would want to know how it tasted to someone who wasn’t working on it. So the Food people would come to the Container people and ask for volunteers to taste their latest and greatest.
How did they work that?
We would go to their facility and sit in a booth. Then, for example, we would taste sample A of a mac-and-cheese. Then Sample B. Then C. And we would rate them according to some scale they provided. Here’s a photo of me sampling something or other.
I guess it’s an old joke that GIs complain about their rations. But, really, most of what they came up with wasn’t bad. And if there were leftover samples we could take them home. But there was only one that I liked to take home.
What was that?
Chocolate.
It was not your gourmet Hershey bar. It was hard, because it had to survive extreme conditions. But it tasted okay to me.
And the Food people had a sense of humor too. They presented me with a certificate.
I’m an official member of the Guinea Pig Club. I hope you’re suitably impressed.
Oh, I am.
Of course, it wasn’t all fun and games. We had some actual Army duties too.
Like?
Like driving.
There were times I’d be interrupted to, say, pick up a visitor at the airport. Or drive an officer to a doctor appointment, I was qualified to do that. See this pass?
The only thing I remember driving was a sedan like in that photo. If I was tested in a truck, I don’t remember it. But somebody signed off on it.
And then they brought me up to a firing range to check me out with a Carbine. That was smaller and lighter than the M-1 I fired at Fort Dix. And less accurate. Still, I qualified as Sharpshooter again.
Notice that I was tied for 2nd highest score. And tied with a lieutenant. And that none of us made Expert. It was hard to do with that rifle.
There is one other incident that I don’t remember very well. The Depot had a suggestion system. If they like your suggestion, you win an award. And I won. Here was the ceremony.
The commandant of the Depot is handing me a certificate and a check. Impressive, right?
What was the suggestion?
I haven’t the foggiest. Can’t remember.
And how big was the check?
Must have been huge to bring out the top brass and upper management, right? Well, get ready for this. The check was for 10 dollars. Here’s the stub.
Must have been a humdinger of a suggestion. And here’s the certificate.
Still, it must be nice to have.
Yes, it is. And I have a few other things to show you before my Army time was up.
I had one Army buddy in particular, Dave C. He was getting out the same time I was. So we pretended to form a so-called Short-Timers Club. And I drew up this certificate.
.
.Of course, it was all in good fun. We didn’t literally sit around with our feet on our desks. And look. We actually got three officials to sign it. Including Sergeant F., our immediate superior. And a lieutenant and a captain.
Sounds like you had a good time.
I did. In fact, I inquired into possibly staying on after going to Officers Training School. But the answer was that there was no way of knowing where I would be assigned after OTS. Maybe the infantry. So I gave up on that idea.
Instead, I went ahead and served my time at the Depot. Eventually my separation orders came through.
Separation? Not discharge?
No. Technically I was in the Army Reserve for several years. I could have been called back if really needed. But I rode out the time without incident, and eventually my discharge paper came through.
So I’ll end this session showing you two other items. First, the order awarding me the Good Conduct Medal.
But, more important to me, was this award from the Quartermaster Corps.
It’s always nice to be appreciated.
It is.
Well, this recollection of my time in Chicago was quite a journey, but I had a lot to say. Next time I’ll look at my return to civilian life.