Ernest Graves
Q:
Just as you'd said.
A:
Just as I'd said. It wasn't too good for a young lieutenant to get up in front of
everybody and say, "Are we going to do it or not?" But the truth of the matter is, when
push came to shove, they didn't do it. Everything was like that. When it came time for
the test at the end of the engineer training, they failed the test. The subject I remember
particularly that they failed was mines and booby traps.
Q:
That's a bad one to fail.
A:
Right. So we had to spend a week retraining on that. We finally left England in April.
Q:
Were you feeling a little nervous leaving with this outfit?
A:
Well, I was worried because I hadn't had command of people too much. I was worried
about whether, if you were given something to do, were you going to get it done? I had
a somewhat difficult relationship with my platoon sergeant, who was crackerjack. But
I was just a kid, and I felt that I couldn't be too familiar with him, so I was very formal
with him. He couldn't figure me out. His morale got very low.
Q:
It's a classic second lieutenant's dilemma, though, isn't it?
A:
It is a typical one. One of the other lieutenants said to me that Frenchy--the sergeant
was of Cajun extraction--that his morale was very low. I thought it over briefly, then
went and met with him. We talked over what he should do and what I should do. After
that, I relaxed a little bit, and we got on fine.
I was very inexperienced, and I wanted to do well. I will give you an example of
something I did, which I don't know that I would do again. When I got there, the
people never got out of bed in the morning. They never ate breakfast because there was
no formation until the first training formation. We would fall out for training at 7:30.
We didn't come out earlier because it was dark. In England in the winter there is not
too much daylight. As I recall, the time for training was 7:30.
The battalion or company had no formation before that. Therefore, there was no time
you set aside to police up the barracks and make sure everybody was shaved for the
day--nothing. When I arrived, I said, "All right, we are going to have reveille at 6:00."
My platoon, the only platoon out of the whole company, perhaps out of the whole
battalion, had reveille.
Q:
And breakfast.
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