She grumbled about being assigned an upper bunk. Then at daybreak she woke up, greeted the person to her left, the person to her right, in a southern drawl and looked down, I imagine, intending to greet me. When she saw me I got everything distasteful, rude, disrespectful that any person shouldn't have gotten. The N-word was used three or four times, "Get out of here," was used five or six times. "Damn" used before the N-word. The whole barracks on the first floor was listening to it. Nobody said anything, just listening to it. And the CQ came out, gave the order, "At ease." "At ease" in the Army -- you say nothing, get quiet. Well she got quiet.
She got down off her bunk and gave me a mean look. If the look she gave me could kill me I would have been dead. And she went on into the shower -- took a shower. I waited until she got out and I went in, and came out, and lined up for mess, went to march to mess -- we happened to be in the same platoon because we're in the same barracks. It was alphabetically integrated. Her name, incidentally, was --last name was S -- started with S, and my last name started with S, so we were -- okay? I couldn't eat. I knew I had to go through the line, so I went through the line, came on back, walked around the huge parade ground. The parade ground was the circumference on which Officer's Rowand OCS like this -- Officer's Row on this side; OCS on that side. I finally decided I had to get back to get ready for my first day.
I went back in, the other people in the first floor of the barracks came up to me and said how sorry they were -- not every one of them was sorry. I knew there were southern among those in the barracks, but they didn't even come out and tell her anything. They didn't tell her to shut up or stop; they didn't do anything. Her harangue was maybe 8 minutes before that CQ came out there because we were asleep, you know. I guess it was about 4 o'clock in the morning that she woke up.
[...]
I knew if I had said anything I would have been the one. I knew that, so I said nothing, absolutely nothing. She -- same thing happened when noon mess -- she still gave me nasty looks. When we got finished mess in the evening I felt like I didn't want to go back in that barracks until she was out of the way. I don't know how she was going to be out of the way -- I felt like that. But it was a whole different atmosphere, that they had talked to her, and they had told her she goes -- she straightens up or she goes. And told her to apologize to me, and do it in public since she yelled at me in public. So here she was sitting on her bunk -- sitting on her footlocker, waiting to make an apology. That's what she was doing. And used the word, "You kids," because she found out there were other blacks in there. "I didn't know they let you kids in here with us." This is an apology. And then she ended with the phrase something like this: "If my mother knew that I was sleeping with you people," that's what she said, "She'd want me to come home." All of this was supposed to be an apology. [laughs] So I looked at her. Incidentally, other people in the barracks were hearing her make this apology, and they didn't think it was an apology either. So I looked at her, and told -- in a voice that only she could hear, "I suggest that you do what your mother would want you to do to feel comfortable." She looked at me, said nothing, got out of bed.
The next morning I went to mess; she went to mess too, and I indicated, I wasn't in a hurry to get back to my bunk. I got back just in time to get ready. So I came back in, my bed was made, my shoes were in line, my pajamas were hung, everything was straight. I assumed she was doing it, but I didn't know. The same thing happened the next morning, and when Saturday morning came, I came back in, she's coming down the hall with a bucket and a mop, and I stood aside and let her mop the whole area, clean it, and I said to her, "Your mother should see you now!" [laughs] That's the first time she smiled. That's the first time she smiled, when I told her -- see her working for me, you see. [laughter] That's right. That's what I told her.
[...]
Commissioning Day, she left on my bunk two sets of bars, and a note. And I got the thing -- got the notation at home now,
"To a fine gal," gal, "From a reconstructed southerner." I never met her again, but some of the people in the barracks said that she really has changed because she gave me -- she threw everything at me she could throw at me except for fists, but she learned that she couldn't do it, and that one incident gave me to understand that the Army could have done a lot if it just wanted to. Because those officers told her she goes if she didn't apologize -- didn't straighten up. But we know, we should know, at that time, I don't know about now, the Army was bred to southern traditions, and it wasn't about to change during that period, but it could have done a lot and lived up to the reasons why we were fighting that war. We were supposed to be the arsenal of democracy; we put out those four freedoms, and they were supposed to be our goals, and it could have lived up to that if it wanted to, if it broke with the southern traditions. And no one is asking anyone to love us, you know, just accept us as fellow human beings.
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