An Introduction to Fort Leavenworth
On arrival at Fort Leavenworth Edgar Whitehead was given a janitor, the equivalent of a British batman. He was appalled at the treatment they received from many of the Yankee officers, being unused to servants. The Southerns were generally much nicer to them.
Before the course began they were broken into the American Army life, visiting the US Army shop where they could buy extra items of uniform, like lightweight khaki trousers as their battle dress was too hot for the prairies in August.
After signing up at the Officers Club they were interviewed by General Carl Truesdell, Commanding the Staff College, who impressed Edgar tremendously. He began by asking, "What have you come here for?"
Edgar said, "We know how we do things. We have come back to school to learn how you do them."
Truesdell smiled, "We can't teach you guys anything, you know more than we do. What I want you to watch here is the mass production of Staff Officers. It is not entirely efficient, but there is no other way. You have expanded an Army of three hundred thousand to four million in five years. We are expanding an army of two hundred and fifty thousand to ten million in three years. We therefore must mass-produce Staff Officers on a crash program and I want you to watch the course in that context."
After three days settling in, the course began with the issue of many text books on the US army. The main lecture hall seated about seven hundred Officers and was a new building practically hermetically sealed and air conditioned without windows; the lighting was from fluorescent strips which could be instantaneously extinguished for a film showing. At the end of the hall there was a dais for the lecturer who spoke into a microphone with loudspeakers all around the hall. All examinations were conducted here, so each Officer had a desk. Negro staff were present in charge of portable microphones and if an Officer stood up to ask or answer a question they ran to plant a microphone in front of him so all could hear. No advance warning was ever given as to whether the next session was to be a lecture, a film show, or an examination.
The first morning began with a briefing session. Edgar managed to get a seat immediately beneath a loudspeaker so he could hear the lecturer. The rules were outlined, which included anyone being locked out if they were as much as one minute late for a lecture. This was followed by an hour long IQ test, with one hundred and fifty questions to be answered. Speed was of the essence in this exercise. An officer who completed one hundred and ten questions and got them all right had an IQ of one hundred and ten. If he completed all one hundred and fifty with thirty wrong his IQ was one hundred and twenty. One bonus mark was allotted for each year over the thirty-fifth birthday as these poor old men could not possibly compete with those in the prime of life! Edgar therefore started with four bonus marks.
It was considered that any mark above a hundred and thirty indicated suitability for Staff; one hundred and ten to a hundred and thirty Officer material; under one hundred and ten unsuitable for Officer. The Americans seemed surprised when all eight British Officers got over a hundred and thirty even without bonus marks.
The standard lecture lasted forty minutes, there was then a ten minute period for the lecturer to ask questions of his audience. He would look down his nominal role of seven hundred Officers presumed to be attending, stick a pin into the list and call out a name. The Officer named stood up smartly in his place and the Negro attendant would run to place the microphone in front of him. The lecturers varied incredibly in competence. The best were brilliant, some better than Edgar has heard anywhere else, the second best were competent and instructive, the worst were so bad that it was incredible they were permitted to lecture.
One day they got one of the really bad ones lecturing on transport. He read monotonously the numbers of vehicles allotted to each US Army unit. Everyone had a copy of the book from which he was reading anyway. So the Yanks, being pretty much like the British, settled down to a comfortable nap. At length, the forty minutes were up. In went the pin into the nominal role and the lecturer said, Major so-and-so British Army, kindly tell the class how many three ton trucks are allotted to a British Infantry Division?"
All the Yanks woke up as there arose the most magnificent figure of a Guards Officer in scarlet battle dress. He stood rigidly to attention. The Negro ran with the portable microphone, seven hundred pairs of ears waited for the answer. There came over the air in the most Oxford of Oxford accents, "Oh, a frightful number". It brought the house down.
The historical novel Whitewashed Jacarandas and its sequel Full of Possibilities are both available on Amazon as paperbacks and eBooks.
These books are inspired by Diana's family's experiences in small town Southern Rhodesia after WWII.
Dr. Sunny Rubenstein and his Gentile wife, Mavourneen, along with various town characters lay bare the racial arrogance of the times, paternalistic idealism, Zionist fervor and anti-Semitism, the proper place of a wife, modernization versus hard-won ways of doing things, and treatment of endemic disease versus investment in public health. It's a roller coaster read.
References:
- Sir Edgar Whitehead's Unpublished Memoirs, Rhodes House, Bodleian Library, Oxford University, by permission.
- Photo credit:
Hip eCommerce