Word: 43rd
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Inside the gate at Camp Pickett, deep in the dusty Virginia pine barrens, a soldier stood methodically thrusting copies of a neat, mimeographed pamphlet into the hands of arriving draftees. The cover bore the grape-leaf emblem of the 43rd ("Winged Victory") Division, and the first page carried a message from its commander: "You have just joined the best outfit in the Army ... I expect to see you doing your jobs as soldiers in the best division in the best Army in the world. (Signed) Kenneth F. Cramer, Major General, Commanding...
...43rd, a National Guard outfit from Connecticut, Vermont and Rhode Island, had left New England last September filled with high patriotism and thoughts of past glory (four Presidential Unit Citations, 987 Silver Stars, 75 D.S.C.s and two Congressional Medals of Honor in the Pacific area in World War II). On paper, it figured to be a good division. More than 70% of its officers had combat experience, 74% of the men were high-school graduates, 18.4% had attended college, 90% of the division was under...
...last week, after nine months of training, the 43rd Division was far from being one of the Army's best. The Pentagon had set April 1 as the target date at which the 43rd would be fully trained and ready for combat. But two months more had passed and the division, even by its own reckoning, was still only about 40% combat-ready. And its morale was scraping rockbottom...
Coal Smoke & Mud. Everything had gone wrong from the minute the 43rd arrived at Pickett, 8,000 strong. Buildings, roofless and rickety, abandoned since World War II, dotted the landscape. Dirty green camouflage paint hung in peeling festoons from the barracks. Windows were smashed, hot-air heating ducts rusted and broken, the ancient latrines filthy, the mess halls flooded with water from leaky pipes...
...Hugh Herbert's The Moon is Blue graces the Henry Miller on 43rd with the presence of Barbara Bel Goddes, Barry Nelson, and Donald Cook, while Welcott Gibbs' Fire Island comedy, Season in the Sun, continues at the Cort on 48th. Eddie Dowling and Joan McCracken close after the weekend at the Booth in Angel in the Pawnshop...