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Text originally published in 1945 under the same title.
Pickle Partners Publishing 2016, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.
Publishers Note
Although in most cases we have retained the Authors original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern readers benefit.
We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.
KEEP YOUR HEADS DOWN
BY
WALTER BERNSTEIN
PROLOGUE
IT WAS still dark when he got to the draft board. Three other inductees were already there, standing self-consciously against the wall. He stood by a radiator until he got warm, then sat on the edge of a desk, across from a poster showing a group of laughing air cadets. He wished he had taken time for breakfast.
The room gradually filled up. He didnt know any of the men, although some of them knew others. Finally one of the members of the draft board arrived: a small, round, bald-headed man, who came in smiling and rubbing his hands, and immediately knocked on a table for silence. The room quieted and the little man took out a piece of paper and began reading names. The men answered promptly; one of the names was not there and there was a pause as everyone looked around for the man, wondering who he was, what he had done, what had happened to him.
After the names were called, the board member said, Lets go, men, and led the way outside. They walked down the dark street toward the subway. The street lamps shone yellowly on the sad, dirty remains of the last snowfall. I should have brought my rubbers, someone said. At the subway the bald-headed man stopped and took a pack of government transit tickets from his pocket. He gave these to the lead man, together with a printed list of instructions as to where he should go. Then he beamed at all the men and said in a loud voice, Good luck, fellows. He waved cheerily as the men trooped down the subway stairs. You little bald-headed son of a bitch, one of the men said, but the little man did not seem to hear.
The subway was packed with commuters, who looked curiously at the group of men. He stood near a young girl who was reading Marius the Epicurean. He felt a desperate need to talk to someone and asked the girl suddenly what school she went to. The girl did not answer and he felt himself turning red. He wished he had bought a newspaper.
The ride took a half-hour, and the armory was right in front of the station. They went inside and were directed into a huge, cavernous drill room and placed at the end of a line of other inductees. When his turn came, he gave his name and essential statistics to a bored sergeant at a desk, was given a tag to place around his neck, and directed upstairs.
He remembered little about the physical examination. He was just part of a long assembly line that wound in and out of little cubicles. He remembered being told to sit down, stand up, bend over, cough; but he could not remember a single face. The only place he stopped was at the psychiatrist, who held him five minutes longer because he bit his nails. Then he was back in the drill room, standing with a group of other men, his right hand raised, repeating words after a bored officer. Their voices echoed hollowly in the dank room.
Afterwards he followed the others to the telephone booths in the corner and waited on line to make a call. He heard the phone ringing at the other end and then her voice, still heavy with sleep: Hello.
He said, Its me. Im in the Army.
Oh.
There was silence while he tried to think of something to say.
Ill call you when I get to camp, he said.
How do you feel? she asked.
All right, he said.
He hung up and went back to wait with the others along the side of the room. At the other end, the line of new inductees was still as long as when he had come. There was a running track on a balcony around the top of the drill field and a middle-aged man was running around and around. The man was in shorts and sweat shirt, and he could hear him breathing heavily as the man passed over his head. A sergeant walked down the line, asking in a loud voice if anyone there could work a typewriter. He was going to volunteer, but two others beat him to it.
Those guys are all set, somebody said, but later he saw them sweeping up the room, with the sergeant giving them orders. He made a note to be careful about volunteering in the future.
At last the inductees were all there. A sergeant lined them up and marched them out of the armory to a waiting railroad train. Army men stood by while they piled in. He found a seat next to a window. A crap game had started in the seat ahead of him, and a bottle was already being passed around. He took drink and passed it on; it was raw and hot and he could feel it down to his toes. He looked out of the window as the train started, looking back as long as he could at the spot where they had boarded the train, trying to fix the neat, civilian scene in his mind so that he would never forget it, no matter where he went.
I. ACTION IN GEORGIA
AFTER A bleak day in the Jamaica armory and a three-day stop-over at Camp Upton, I became a member of the Eighth Infantry Regiment. From Upton I was shipped, along with several hundred other selectees, to Fort Benning, Georgia, where the Eighth was stationed in the bosom of the Fourth Division Motorized, the Armys one fully mechanized division. The Eighth Infantry is one of the oldest and most honored regiments in the United States Army. Founded in 1838 at West Troy, New York, it has since served all over the world, participating in the Indian, Mexican, Civil, Spanish-American, and Philippine Wars. It is a matter of some regret to the older enlisted men that the Eighth did not see action in the last world war; two days after the regiment arrived in France, the armistice was hastily signed. The Eighth did, however, become part of the American Army of Occupation, remaining in Germany until 1923. For the past half-century, its personnel has come mainly from the South, but in the last three months the regiment has been brought to wartime strengthabout two thousand menby an influx of Northern selectees, so today Southerners are outnumbered by Northerners two to one. Almost all the selectees in the Eighth are from New York City or its environs, while most of the officers and Regular Army men are Southerners. Though this has resulted in a good deal of sectional chauvinism, actual conflict between the North and the South has been negligible. Each side, nevertheless, is continually amazed at the others inability to speak English.
