The Wild Blue: The Men and Boys Who Flew the B-24s Over Germany 1944-1945 Read Online Free PDF Page A

to Annapolis. C.W. delivered circulars for South and did odd jobs.  In school that fall he tried out for the football team, figuring that would improve his chances for an appointment, but as he weighed only 117 pounds that didn’t work. So he joined the track team, without any great success. When he graduated from high school, Congressman South had already given out his Annapolis appointment. At his father’s suggestion, C.W. went to junior college to take a year of engineering. There he was in ROTC and found that the military life was for him. He gained honors for being in the best-drilled squad and platoon and was in the Honorary Corps of Cadets. That summer South gave him his appointment to Annapolis, but by then C.W. was two weeks too old to be accepted.  But his grades were good enough to earn him a scholarship to Texas A&M.  More ROTC, more drilling, lots of studying. Together with four others, Cooper bought a used Model T for $40. After a year or so the partners decided to sell it back, but it died about a block from the dealer. He gave them $25 for it anyway. Cooper smoked Bull Durham, which cost 5 cents a bag, except on Saturdays when he would treat himself to a 20-cent pack of Lucky Strikes. A&M was a military school. When Cooper graduated in 1941, he got his degree in civil engineering one day and his commission as a second lieutenant in the infantry of the U.S. Army the next.
    His first posting was as assistant provost marshal at Camp Bowie. Then it was off to the Fort Benning Infantry School, called Fort Benning’s School for Boys by the young officers. The training in that summer of 1941 was haphazard at best. When the class was completed, Cooper was asked to give his choice of three places to go, Camp Roberts in California, Fort Dix in New Jersey, or Camp Walters in Texas. Camp Walters was only 100 miles from his home. He had been in the Army long enough to know how things worked, so he put down Roberts as his first choice, Dix as his second, and Walters as his third. Sure enough, exactly as he hoped, he was assigned to Camp Walters.
    There he was assigned to train a platoon in a heavy weapons company. The men were mainly hill boys from Kentucky and Tennessee. Some of them, according to Cooper, “were not too sharp.” But in the fall of 1941 he could feel America getting closer to entering the war and he was sure they would be sent into combat, so he got the platoon together and said, “Look fellas, this is going to be hell on you. You’re going to hate me before this is over because I’m going to work you as hard as I can to get you ready for combat because I don’t want your blood on my hands.” On December 1, the thirteen-week training period was over and a couple of days later the platoon was ordered to the Pacific. “I fought back the tears as I shook their hands as they went to the troop train to go.” That fall, Cooper was promoted to first lieutenant. As a reward, he got additional duty as morale officer for the battalion, responsible for court-martial cases as well as morale. In his first month in the job, he had sixteen courts-martial. He thought, Something has to be done about this. I don’t want to spend all my time on these cases, especially as they were mainly fistfights, drunks, and AWOLs. The cause, he decided, was that the enlisted men had nothing to do on their off hours. He decided to use the battalion officers and enlisted men’s fund, with about $3,000 in it, to do something about that.  One of the new privates had been the leader of the Hardin Simmons Cowboy Band.  Cooper called him in and asked if he would organize a band. “Would I?” the private responded. “You bet! This is great!” He started to recruit players. One private had played accordion in a nightclub in California. Cooper spent $8 to get his instrument shipped to him at Camp Walters. There was a carpenter in the battalion; Cooper bought the wood and he put together music stands. Cooper found an artist