Chapter 7 - Your Beautiful Shanks

About the last day of June we arrived at Camp Shanks, New York, a port of embarkation camp on the Hudson River, in the suburbs of the City of New York. We stayed there and were given indoctrination lectures by Officers and Non-coms who were combat experienced and could tell us what to expect in actual combat conditions.

We were told that beginning now all our mail would be carefully censored, and to try to prevent our letters being cut to pieces, we should be careful what we wrote. Don't try to give away your location, to girlfriends or kinfolks at any time. The Lt. giving the lecture said he understood why a soldier would want his folks to know where he was, but in wartime any little scrap of information might fall into enemy hands and be used against us and might even cost us our lives. He gave an example of what not to do. One soldier, while waiting at Camp Shanks, wrote his girlfriend back home and continually mentioned how he missed seeing her beautiful shanks. He reminded us that all the tricks had already been discovered by the army, and we would be wasting our time trying to outsmart them.

We received another lecture by a medical officer about venereal diseases. Of course it was not the first lecture on this subject. We had been shown films where the genitals were half rotted off with these horrible diseases, and they were the number one medical problem in the peace time army. This officer advised us to practice (KIIYP) which in army lingo meant "keep it in your pants". He told us if that thing got so hot we couldn't stand it to take it out and stick it in a snow bank. Not only would that cool it off, but it was four times safer than sticking it anywhere else, especially after we got to Europe where venereal disease was much more prevalent.

I remember another lecture telling what to do and how to act if we were so unlucky as to get captured. His advice was to be smart, think everything through, and plan carefully, but never give up on the idea of trying to escape. He gave an example of two Americans that were captured and imprisoned in a rather large German PW camp. He said these two old boys began planning immediately to escape. One day they approached the Commandant and volunteered to paint the yellow stripe down the middle of the camp road. It had grown rather dim with wear and the Commandant thought this was a good idea. The two went to the camp supply and were given brushes and two gallons of yellow paint. They began painting the stripe and painted right up to the camp gate. The gate guards saw them coming and when they reached the gate the guards swung the gates open and they painted right on down the road and over the hill out of sight. The officer said, "Now wasn't that smart?" Everyone was agreeing with him. He stopped and said, "No!, that would have been dumb to have taken off and run then. They would have been recaptured very quickly. I told you these two boys were SMART. They came back to the gate with two empty buckets, went to the supply room, checked out two buckets of fresh paint, and proceeded back to the gate. By now the guards were used to opening the gate for them. This time when they got out of sight of the guards they sat those buckets of paint down and vanished into thin air. This gave them the time it took to paint up two gallons of paint as a head start. "

He told us these guys were never caught and got back to England safely. He told us a lot of other so-called tricks of the trade, such as getting into civilian clothes as quickly as possible, but always retaining your dog tags. The Germans had a good excuse to shoot you as a spy if they recaptured you out of uniform with no dog tags. He told us to try to stay in crowds, and try to act as much a native as possible, get yourself a cow and lead it down the road, steal a wheelbarrow and push it along, or put a loaf of bread under your arm. Try to avoid talking, even if you could speak fairly good German, or French, since your accent would surely give you away. especially if you just happened to be from the southern part of the United States, which most of us were. These lectures were Interesting and full of good information which I was very thankful that I never had to use.