Anton Pritchard went through artillery officer candidate school at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, from July to September 1942. The following letters give an idea of the tension and pressure of that experience, but also at the satisfaction of some parts of it. Some the pressure came from the fact that the course for training an artillery officer, which in peacetime took nine months, as shortened to thirteen weeks during WWII.
Envelope postmarked Fort Sill, Oklahoma, August 1942, exact date illegible. From comparison with other letters, probably near the beginning of the month.
Dear Ma + Pa ---
I’ve
been planning all week on writing a very long, lazy letter today, -- but Tony
Lutrario[1] came
over and suggested we go to town for dinner: and here we are. There are many things that I ought to be
doing, but I’ve accepted a week-end off policy whenever it is at all
possible. This, I think, is more
beneficial than poring over books, maps and charts all week-end. As I have said, there are many things that I
could (or should) be doing, but for three week-ends I’ve simply cleared out and
the Hell with it, I’ve said.
Tomorrow
morning we go out for our first “service practice” during which I will be
called upon to fire that first problem that I’ve spoken about (I may be missed
tomorrow, as they will only be able to get thru about half the class --- but I
hope I’m not – if I’m going to flub it, if I’m going to mess it up, I want to
do tomorrow ---- but somehow I don’t think I shall). To the prayers that I’ve requested in the
past you might add one asking God to please not let Tony “jump his bracket”
tomorrow?
You
have mentioned Leon’s trouble with sleep in a letter past. This difficulty is almost the greatest that
one has to overcome. You see, you work
about 15 hours a day, - you have to eat, wash once in a while, etc., which
leaves a maximum of about 7 hours out of the 24 for sleeping, - and in 7 hours
one simply can’t recover from the 15 working hours. It is so chronic that we have a standing rule
(which every new instructor will tell you about) that you may stand up and walk
about a class-room whenever you want.
Many times I have seen 8 or 10 men walking quietly along the sides or
back of a room while a lecturer is talking.
For myself, I have arrived at the point where I can sleep at any time, -
just after breakfast, before lunch, during lunch, after lunch, in the middle of
the afternoon, -- sitting up, standing, lying on board seats – anyway,
anywhere! And believe me, I am not
exaggerating. Weekends should be the
time when one makes up for this, but what do you do? ----- the desire to get
away from the infernal pounding grind is greater than the desire for sleep so
we come into town and walk and walk (generally round and round the same block –
the only block) in a semi-conscious, stupid condition.
The
heat does not help --- such burning, breathing heat I’ve never experienced
--- the only thing that saves one from
crisping immediately is the wind (a crazy, weird wind that doesn’t come from
anywhere, --- it just blows!) and right now even the wind is becoming hot. You can’t get enough liquid into you, - we
drink ‘till ready to burst, and still the thirst continues. Let me tell you --- when salt crystalizes behind
your ears, --- and under your hat brim and on the outside of your fatigue
jacket, -- you’ve really been sweating!
When I
get home, I shall tell you complete details of the marvel of this school –
There is nothing to touch it anywhere in the country--- if the same system were
applied to a school of academics, it would be unapproachable – a sort of super
Sorbonne. Everything is completely and
carefully planned down to a split second, every little detail is planned. Even to instructors – we have two Gunnery
unit instructors, that I call “slow man” and “fast man”, --- and these men are
carefully selected just for the psychology of change of pace! They must have experimented with this and
found that they could get more across by changing pace in lecturing --- so we
have the fast man for 1 hour and 50 minutes, and then the slow man a couple of
hours. The whole thing is the most
remarkably systematized set-up imaginable, -- somewhere there is a bunch of
quiet genius (sic) running the place.
The
last few letters have been great – keep it up?
Anton
Hit the
first Gunnery unit for about 85-90 ---- and am pretty sure I “max-ed” the
second – this can’t continue!!!
Fighting
to retain my sanity,
T.
Envelope postmarked
Lawton, Oklahoma, August 9, 1942. Return
address “Corp. A.A. Pritchard/Officers Candidate School Class #32/Fort Sill,
Oklahoma. Dated “Sunday Morn”, presumably August 9.
Dear Ma+Pa –
Sunday
again , -- and I’m in my usual lackadaisical, sloppy, not-enough sleep mode.
Oddly
enough, I’m full of things to tell, and yet lack the ambition to marshall events
into a logical sequence and put them down.
As I’ve said, there is so very much to tell, and I fear that if I don’t
put most of it on paper, it shall be forgotten, -- Yet when I contemplate the
near past reflectively, there are things that I know I shall never forget.
For
now, I shall satisfy myself by straightening you out on a couple of points --- I
owe letters to Elmer, Tony, Shack and God knows who else.
You
advise me not to take this business too seriously, -- not to worry about it, --
and Leon adds his bit in the same vein.
If my letters have given you the impression that I’m concerning myself
unnecessarily about school here, then it amounts simply to a lack of ability to
express my thoughts. Remember this – for
the moment this is my whole life, -- the schedule is so arranged that it cannot
be otherwise. What can I tell you of in
my letters? Only of the double-timing at
intersections, the sun sapping the vitality out of one, the continual drive,
drive, -- because these are the things that impress me the most ---- There are
still the wonderfully humorous little gems that save it all from becoming
unbearable ---- like Pratt telling about urinating in another fellow’s bottle
(at the induction station) because the the (sic)
poor devil had been to the latrine just previous and simply couldn’t “give” (my
stomach was sore from laughter the night that we were all lying quietly in bed
and he calmly related all the details of this)
----- and Tony Lutrario insisting that the barbers in the PX do not
really cut your hair, they simply turn on that clipper to fool you into
thinking they do! He won’t be shaken
from his conviction that it’s done with that cloth that they use – like a
magician on the stage makes things disappear by waving a cloth in front of them
(I got a haircut last Friday night in exactly two minutes and 35 seconds). But many of these things are forgotten when I
write to you. Last week, for instance,
was a tough week ---- two service practices (I fired both times) and five exams
made up a small part of the program, and when you sit for four hours in the
broiling sun, expecting at any moment to be called on to fire a problem, some
of this is bound to crop up in a letter written a couple of hours later. By “some of This” I mean some of the tension
and nerve-strain that out of necessity goes with exams and firing (Firing
especially --- “a field artilleryman is no good if he can’t shoot” they
say. You can mess up on your exams a
bit, not be too good in the class room, --- but if you can’t shoot, -- well
that’s too bad. You don’t make errors
out there, either, -- because if you do, you’re in a lovely tangle immediately
– and it’s all got to be done at a tremendous pace (Problems are rated 1/3 on
speed alone). This is terrific good
sense of course, -- when the yellow brethren come tearing over a hill is no
time to indulge in a lot of guess work, but a bit of a strain out on South
Arbuckle range nevertheless.
So ----
to come to the point of these meanderings.
I worry very little (don’t have time) and what I do is not
destructive. I’ll be glad to get out of
here, - mainly to get relief from the grind.
But I don’t regret my choice. And
if I don’t know a Helluva lot about Field Artillery, it won’t be the fault of
Fort Sill.
Tony
Lutrario and I saw “Mrs. Miniver”[2] last
night and I was very greatly impressed.
The minister’s speech at the end was pretty lousy --- “They were killed
because they were killed --- or rather,
they died because they were killed” (very original) but outside of that a dandy
job --- see it if you haven’t! And someday both of you should take a look at
the West! Sill is located just at the
beginning of a small range of mountains that runs down into Texas, “The
Wichitas”. Watching the morning shadows
change color and chase across Mt. Scott delights me each morning as we march to
chow.
------------------------------------------
Cannoneers,
Post!
Anton
[1]
A friend from Rhode Island who was going through OCS at Fort Sill in a class
just ahead of Anton’s.
[2]
Winner of Six Oscars for 1942, including Best Picture, Best Director (William
Wyler), and Best Actress (Greer Garson).
An American film, but portrays an upper-class British family in the
early years of WWII. Anton appears to
have forgotten his father’s mention of the film in his letter of July 18.
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