RAFINO Report
ISSUE 21 - Fall 1998  - Return to Index

MORE OF HOLT'S MEMOIRS

(Ed:  Holt Blomgren has allowed us to publish some of his personal memoirs -- intended for his grandchildren -- in previous issues.  The following picks up where we left off in the Spring 1998 issue on page 13.  Holt was relating his early days as an EM in 1941 stationed as a FC clerk at Ft. Leonard Wood, MO.)

At this stage in Army history, military payrolls were prepared by the nearest local finance office, with the computations accomplished manually by clerks such as myself, with the aid of basic adding machines.  No computers, of course, existed or were hardly thought of for such purposes.  A pay record was prepared in duplicate for each soldier and officer, one copy to each clerk.  When computations were completed, the two were compared.  If they agreed in toto, the computations were judged correct.  All of this sounds easy enough but, typically, pay calculations involved miscellaneous additions and deductions reflecting supplemental amounts owed or assessed, above and beyond the official pay schedule for a particular military grade or length of service.  Considering that we prepared over twenty thousand of these payrolls each month, plus computing vouchers to reimburse anyone incurring expenses for travel on official business, I wonder, now, how we ever managed such a workload.  On the whole, however, my days passed agreeably in this congenial environment - with a minimum of strictly military "boot camp" type of training to interrupt matters.  Oddly, the portly gentleman whose cot was adjacent to mine, turned out to be the sergeant major of the finance office.  Sergeant Personette was always considerate of my welfare.  Perhaps he was more careful to fall in his own bunk on Saturday nights because he felt that he needed me in the finance office.

As the summer faded into fall and cold weather arrived, the outside air, formerly dust-laden, now became soot-laden, for each of the hundreds of barracks and mess halls were heated with stoves that burned soft coal.  I remember so well, standing in a long line at 'chow time', waiting for the mess hall to open, becoming covered with the flakes of soot that came drifting down from the myriad of smoke stacks that dotted the roof tops.  Then the fateful month of December arrived.  On the evening of December 7th, 1941, having been granted a long awaited week-end pass, I was driving to Evanston, Illinois, to visit my Aunt and Uncle, and their children. In the late afternoon, my car radio brought the news of Pearl Harbor.  The words of the draft official in April then came back to me - that I would be in the service for a brief twelve months'.  At that moment I knew that my tour of duty would be much longer than that. It never occurred to me, though, that it would stretch to thirty years!

Upon my return to Ft. Leonard Wood, I found that military training was now accelerated to a feverish height.  Indeed, on Christmas Eve of that year, one of the dreariest in my memory, I was firing a Springfield rifle on the muddy firing range, in a wet snow storm, until darkness hid the targets.  As we hauled back to the barracks in an open truck, it seemed to me that the year was ending on an ominous, somber note, and leading to an unforeseen, unknown direction so vastly different from the serene banks of the Charles River in Boston, only a few short months earlier.

Usually, a measure of good events tend to balance or at least soften, bad events so although I now found my draft obligation extended indefinitely, a grateful Congress increased my monthly pay as a private to $21.00!  After that my promotions came fairly rapidly - a grade at a time, private first class, corporal, buck sergeant and then staff sergeant.

Meanwhile, the division prepared for war, and engaged in field maneuvers during the spring of 1942, first in the rural areas of Louisiana, and later in the Fall of that year in Tennessee.  My familiarity with 'camping in the wild' and, sleeping in a pup tent made these days easier to accept.  Always a creature of comfort, I surreptitiously procured an inflatable air mattress and sleeping bag, and although certainly not prescribed as proper military equipment, it shielded me from wet or cold ground as I lay, on the coldest or wettest night, snug as a bug in my little pup tent.  As far as I could discover my non-official bedding was never discovered by my superiors - or at least they did not object.  Maybe they had taken similar precautions.  The commissioned officers, of course, did not sleep on the ground.  There were 'Orderlies' to pitch tents ample enough for four cots.  They had their meals served in a mess tent equipped with tables and chairs.  I soon resolved that I needed to improve my standard of living - and soon!

Unfortunately, I experienced another brush with Army medicine during our Louisiana maneuvers.

I should explain that during these so-called 'maneuvers', the combat units acted out a war scenario simulating an actual combat situation opposing other troops posing as the 'enemy'.  Umpires were at hand at crucial moments to evaluate the performance of the units involved.  The non-combatant troops, such as the Division Finance Office to which I was assigned, just tagged along, so that the pay computations and disbursements on 'pay day' could continue as usual, without interruption.  Sometimes, we set up our office in a tent, or when other accommodations were available, such as an empty school room, or an unfinished building, such facilities were used.  In Louisiana, we were assigned a cow barn in the state fair grounds as our sleeping and eating area.  Apparently, there were a few malicious microbes floating around in that barn, for shortly after our unit moved to rural farm land, I contracted a severe case of dysentery that made me deathly ill and resulted in my evacuation to a so-called 'field hospital' - actually a series of tents in which the afflicted reclined on cots until illnesses ran their course.  In other words, in my case, nature was relied upon to 'do her thing' without intrusion by 'Army medicine'.  It was a miserable interlude, but eventually I recovered and rode the inevitable truck back to my unit, a little queasy but officially 'fit for duty'.  During similar activities in Tennessee, later in the year, I remained healthy enough and sharpened my powers to 'adapt' to the unwelcome or unfamiliar.  (Ed: This ends that part of Holt's memoirs furnished me recounting his days as an EM.  We pick up now with Holt stationed in Germany wearing the bars of an AUS Captain along with AG insignia.  He had earlier been commissioned upon graduation from the AG Officer Candidate School.  Notification from Washington advised him of the opportunity to apply for appointment in the Regular Army.)

"It had become apparent to me that a successful military in the Army necessitated a Regular Army Commission.  At this time, my commissioned status fell within the wartime category of the 'Army of The United States', serving at the pleasure of the President and the Congress.  In other words, I was not part of the regular military establishment - a status rather similar to serving on the faculty of a university without tenure.  In this category, I could foresee that the most challenging and professionally rewarding future assignments would not be open to me nor would selection for attendance at the Army's advances schools, the Command and General Staff College and the Army War College.  Graduation from these prestigious schools were recognized as prerequisites for promotions and assignments to higher levels of responsibility.  Thus, I wasted no time in submitting my application for a Regular Army appointment, and with little delay.  I received official notification from Washington that my application had been approved, in the grade of captain, with assignment to the Finance Corps Branch.  My reassignment to the Finance Corps was, no doubt, the result of recognition of my academic background.

Apparently my new status caught the attention of personnel assignment officials in Washington who evidently noted that there was a Regular Army FC captain, wearing AG insignia, serving in the Army Information Command in Germany, on the surface, a case of mal-assignment.  Very quickly I received a summons to appear before a senior officer at the Army Headquarters in Frankfurt.  That 'senior officer', as it turned out, was Colonel William E. Sievers, West Point Graduate, who later became commandant of the Finance School At. Ft. Harrison, Indiana.  I certainly never dreamed at the time of this interview that I would some day be assigned to that same position.  In the course of an interview, I was told that I was being reassigned to the Heidelberg office which served the large Heidelberg military enclave, to include the European Command Headquarters.  I recognized the sensitivity and importance of the mission of this office, and pointed out that I had only the limited experience as an enlisted man in Finance procedures.  'Don't worry', the colonel reassured me, 'you will be working for a highly experienced Finance colonel and the captain who is his deputy will assure that you are provided ample opportunity to learn all you need to know.  That reassuring prediction, however, proved to be far from what actually occurred.  My powers to 'adapt' to the unforeseen were soon to be challenged again.

I reported to the Heidelberg Military Post Finance Office with some trepidation, I confess.  I found the office located in what had been a modern bank on Heidelberg's Hauptstrasse.  Upon my arrival, I found a lanky colonel in charge, assisted by Captain Hanson.  The colonel, perhaps to prove his youth and agility, had the curious habit of occasionally jumping over the four foot high customer counter demonstrating his enthusiasm for having reached the end of his tour of duty for -- within a few weeks -- he departed for the states. That left Captain Hanson in charge - with me, now officially - his 'deputy.  Suddenly, I was no longer just an 'observer' in an 'on-the-job' training program, for a deputy finance officer is empowered to act for the Finance Officer in his absence, and is assigned the major share of the office duties.

Among other things, it was my duty to arrive early each day, descend to the basement and open the huge combination lock door leading to the vault, count the various currencies on hand, and bring up to the two cashiers whatever amounts would be needed in their cages during the day.  Conversely, at the end of each day, I had to count the currencies held by the cashiers.  This amount, when added to the receipts or vouchers on hand representing disbursements, had to equal the amounts given to them at the beginning of the day.  If everything checked out, I would restore all the currencies and vouchers to the vault, secure it, and head for home in Weinheim.  If the totals didn't reconcile, it was a matter of staying in the office until they did, or else conclude that theft was involved. 

As I was just beginning to familiarize myself with the complex procedures of this office, to include those relating to the computation of the pay for all military personnel in the area, including the senior officers of the European Command Headquarters, Captain Hanson became seriously ill.  He was evacuated on an emergency basis to a hospital in the states.  The result confirmed my worst fears.  I was now the only officer in the office.  So much for the promised 'transition period of leisurely on-the-job training'.  A stressful period ensued, challenging once again, one's powers to 'adapt'.

Initially, the conduct of the office progressed smoothly enough until at the end of one particular day - one I shall never forget - an official of the local Post Exchange arrived by jeep, bringing to one of the cashiers a large brown paper sack containing currency their organization had received during the day.  During the few months of my tenure at this office, I had become aware that this was a practice of long standing since the PX did not have a secure vault.  Accordingly, an exchange employee would simply total the cash, stuff the bills into a bag, seal it, and write on the seal that the contents contained the total amount of X-number of dollars received during that day.  A PX employee would then carry the sack by jeep to our office.  Since our Finance Office was always closed for business by the time such funds arrived, the cashier would accept the sealed sack and tender the PX official a hand receipt for a certain dollar figure 'subject to verification' by our office the following morning.  As a newcomer to the office, I regarded this procedure as rather bizarre, unsystematic, and vulnerable to disputes, but my bosses had blessed it, and found it workable.  At any rate, the day in question ended with my taking this sack of bills to the vault, locking the vault and heading home.  The following day was not a good one.  Upon arriving at the office, I followed the usual routine of counting the currencies in the vault, and providing to the cashiers their needed amounts.  Additionally, I gave the PX sealed bag of money to one of the cashiers for verification, and recording into our records.  The bills in these sacks were routinely bound together by denomination.  Shortly after the cashier opened the bag and began his count, he came to my desk and said, 'Sir, there are a number of ten dollar bills missing in these bundles'.  In the banking business, that's the kind of remark one never wants to hear.  After counting, recounting and recounting endless times, I discovered that the actual amount in the bag was several thousand dollars less than the than was noted on the seal before it was opened.  Where were the missing bills?  Had there been a theft in the PX office before the bag was sealed?  Did it occur in transit to my office, or did it occur in my office, perhaps by the cashier who broke the seal?  It seems never to fail that when a makeshift procedure for cash transmission is followed, eventually a problem like this one is destined to arise.  Of, course, I would have much preferred that all this had not happened on my watch!

Well, a long tedious investigation followed with the eventual result that my cashier was charged with embezzling the missing funds.  It didn't help his defense when evidence was introduced indicating that following the day of the discovery of the shortage, he was observed spending a great deal more money than a corporal could normally afford.  He was tried by a court martial and convicted purely on circumstantial evidence, as the missing bills were never found.

So, this was my rough introduction to life in the Heidelberg Finance Office.  The sloppy procedure that resulted in the shortage was terminated, and just about the time I began to feel comfortable in the job, with everything under control, Col. Schubert arrived on the scene, replacing Captain Hanson.  Once again, I became a mere 'deputy' but my breathing was easier!