2
YOU'RE IN THE ARMY NOW!
Dad gave me three bucks when I left Robinson.
~ James Jones,
(written to his brother Jeff)
After James Jones left home by stepping aboard the Illinois Central railroad train in Robinson, shortly after his enlistment, he wrote to his brother Jeff, describing their parents as "receding before [his] grasp like a mist." Ramon and Ada Jones had escorted their younger son to the local train depot, to offer their farewell.
"Maybe I'll never see them again," Jones added. But having "watched Mother and Dad grow smaller" as the Illinois Central commenced its journey to Chanute Field in Rantoul, Illinois, Jones held his emotions in check and "went back into the train and sat in on a Blackjack game."
If another soldier had a deck of cards as his talisman, Jones had dice. In the first days and weeks of his Army experience, exhibiting his flair for self-reliance as well as for making new acquaintances when he truly had to, Jones used his skills at shooting craps to guarantee he'd not be wholly dependent on the Army for every little thing. This savvy aspect of young Jones's persona is crucial.
Ramon Jones's last offering to his soldier-to-be son was three single dollar bills. If Ramon could have spared more, he would have. In 1939, newspapers cost pennies and an adult ticket to the movies was a dime. Three dollars was not a gross pittance. But it was a pittance.
Nonetheless, Jones resolved two issues simultaneously-one was his reluctance to mingle with others; and the other was his resistance to the idea of being fiscally up against it. Doubtless his economically strained home life for so many years had established in him the conviction that no matter what, he should not allow himself to be without money. He bluntly admitted in a letter to Jeff: "If I didn't have my dice, I don't know what I'd do."
Quickly, Jones got to work. He entered that Blackjack game with the three bucks he'd received from his father as a parting gift. By the time the recruits arrived one hundred miles north of Robinson at Chanute Field in Rantoul, his three bucks had become seven dollars. He broke the ice with his new peers by playing cards or rolling the dice. To Jeff, he wrote: "After four days at Chanute Field, I left for New York with $18, not counting what I'd spent, which was quite a bit. Since then my bankroll has never been less than $6 and as high as $27. With that money I haven't needed to draw any canteen checks, so my pay will be that much higher. Also, I can buy my meals at the Post Restaurant, when the food is too rotten to stomach."
In those first four days at Chanute Field, Jones and the other recruits were put through their paces as each man took the required Oath of Allegiance before receiving physical exams and mental tests; followed by the allocation of basic supplies (spare clothes, in addition to a regulation uniform; a knapsack and a mess kit); and of course the all-important mode of identification and information gruffly referred to as "dog tags": on which each GI's serial number, blood type, name, and religion were stamped. Debarking for Fort Slocum, New York, he was now GI # 6915544.
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When he arrived at Fort Slocum on November 24, 1939, Jones had yet to be assigned to a regiment. Before he finally received such orders, his time was spent in the company of other unassigned recruits performing an endless array of tedious, laborious chores. The men were ordered to do everything from standard kitchen police duties to hauling garbage; they spent hours picking up scraps of debris or other windblown items found on the landscape. Jones mentioned in a letter to Jeff that he was "working in the Post Exchange heaving beer kegs and cases of pop. I get all the stuff I want to eat while I'm working. Also, it ought to make a man of me."
The preoccupation with food was hardly incidental. Jones's domestic background in Robinson may have been a story of upscale comforts reduced to lower-middle-class limitations, but he had still known much comfort and abundance compared to what the Army considered acceptable. On Thanksgiving Day 1939, Jones's breakfast consisted of one tiny box (a manufacturer's sample) of cereal, plus a mere half-pint of milk, along with a butter pat (limited to one per man). The main dish was a piece of toast that was slathered in leftovers from the prior night's dinner. Between the toast (which Jones remembered as "rubbery") and the slop ladled upon it, he noted that "the stomach-churning dish [is] rather aptly described by the soldier's word for it: shit on a shingle."
All the more reason his dice were of paramount importance. Wherever he went in those early Army days, Jones's ability to hustle with his dice allowed him to care for himself when possible. This applied to more than nutritional matters. In terms of his physical well-being, the money he acquired through playing craps or Blackjack made certain outings possible. In a sarcastic update to his brother Jeff, he wrote: "I can engage in the sports at the Y.M.C.A. building where in spite of their undoubted self-sacrifice for the soldier's soul, one has to pay to do anything."
Jones soon spent a week in the base hospital at Fort Slocum. He had already noticed, back at Chanute Field in Rantoul, a burning discharge when he urinated. But he waited until he was long gone from Illinois before reporting such a personal problem to his superiors. Then he spent several days and nights in the company of soldiers being treated for gonorrhea, and his prodigious embarrassment and shame at being in their company lent him some of the essential narrative details that he outlined to his brother Jeff (who also yearned to write) for their projected, never-to-be-written Studs Lonigan-type novel.
Jones admitted to his Army doctors that he had engaged in sexual intercourse approximately five weeks earlier, before leaving Robinson for Rantoul's Chanute Field. It's possible that he had paid a visit to one of the well-known and affordable brothels in Terre Haute, Indiana. Only 40 miles away from Robinson, Terre Haute had a red-light district allowing for saloons and bordellos and small-time gambling in what was commonly referred to as a "wide-open town." It's likely that Jones's trouble derived from a brothel; not from a local Robinson girl.
Much to his own relief, he reported to Jeff: "They took a microscopic test of the discharge and my urine. They couldn't find any gonorrhea germs, but as the symptoms were the same, I was put under observation. While under observation I had a chance to observe the men who had the 'clap' as it is called in the army."
Those days and nights in close quarters with the seemingly amoral, rough-hewn men who "stand around a long sink and treat themselves with solutions" branded Jones's self-esteem with a pulverizing, acidic impact: "I was so humiliated and ashamed at the aspect of being in the ward with those guys." Fortunately, his symptoms cleared up and he was quickly returned to Fort Slocum's routines. The one positive aspect of his quarantine was winning again at Blackjack. Jones had entered the base hospital with twelve dollars, but he left it with twenty-three.
Apprehending the class warfare that percolated throughout the Army's realm, Jones noted that something as random as an afternoon out at the movies was, in effect, a further reminder of the caste system that now placed him at the bottom.
The only time Jones was in the same domain as girls or women while he was at Fort Slocum was when he went to see a movie, and (he explained to Jeff) the rules were rigid: "There the officers' children, who are the only girls on the island, sit in the balcony. We common herd sit in the 'pit' as the rabble did in Shakespeare's day also." Author John Gregory Dunne later noted in his memoir Harp: "Therein lies the subversive brilliance of From Here to Eternity. James Jones clearly understood that an army is predicated on class hatred; patriotism is only a convenient piety."
Those initiatory weeks at Fort Slocum ended after less than a single month. On December 18, 1939, Jones and hundreds of other soldiers shipped out on the Army transport ship U. S. GRANT, slowly destined for active duty at Hickam Field, close to Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.
Two weeks later, after sailing via the Panama Canal and docking briefly in California, an Army band greeted the arriving troops with Sousa marches; and the band was complemented by dancing "hula girls," swaying like Hawaiian goddesses. The new arrivals were presented with traditional Hawaiian "leis" by the dancers.
Whatever pleasure Jones took in the sight of the bronze-skinned, bare-armed, hip swiveling hula girls was short-lived. His time in the ensuing weeks and months was given over to the daily drills, hikes, marches, and the constant tasks with which the Army structured recruits' daily lives. From reveille to taps, Jones and his fellow...
