Desert Training (3)

Earlier in 1942 the War Department had realized the necessity of training troops under the harsh conditions to which they might be exposed and established the Desert Training Center (DTC) in the Mojave and Sonoran Deserts.  It initially covered 18,000 square miles from Pomona, California to Phoenix, Arizona, south to the border, and north to Boulder City, Nevada.  It was the largest military training area in the world.  Major General George S. Patton Jr. commanded the DTC from March through August until he was dispatched to North Africa (US Department of the Interior Pamphlet: BLM/CA/GI-2009-021+8300: World War II Desert Training Center California-Arizona Maneuver Area).  Just before he was reassigned, the staff of the 7th Surgical Hospital, which was eventually reorganized into the 92nd Evacuation Hospital, arrived.
The night before they left Ford Ord to go by train to the DTC, members of the future 92nd Evac had to sleep in the barracks.  Some of the doctors turned into boys going off to camp for the first time.  Gene was not terribly amused:

Surgical trailers loaded on the flatbeds of the train

     We were to leave Monday 0600 Aug 3, so we had to stay at the Barracks that night.  We tried to sleep.  I had about 1 1/2 hours, until Baker ("Billy B") and others made too much noise.  He'd come in, "Pinky, take your hand off your ___", or "Pinky, I'll pour water on you".  Finally Ireland cussed him enough to quiet him.  (Pinky being "Schwartz", not me).  But by that time it was 1:30 and we had to be up at 0200 anyway.  They took our beds.  We put on our packs about 4 and stood and stood and stood.  Finally we got on the train by 6:30.
     We ate from our mess kits on the train.  Such fun!  Wash your own, too.  "Chicken" it was every meal, as Maj. Michaels said.  "Chicken for breakfast."  I took some pictures of "sleepers".  What a sight!  By night we were darn tired.  Christie showed us how to take the seats apart and make a fair bed.  Such a slow train.  Lordy.  40 hours to go about 500 miles!  We left the main line at Cadiz, about 8 P.M. the next night.  It had been so hot all day.  We were damn tired that night, Aug. 4.

Setting up tents in the desert

     We arrived about 2230 army time!  We fell into a stupor until 12:30 A.M. when they told us to fall out.  What a sorry bunch.  We staggered the few hundred yards through deep dust to the hospital building.  The poor enlisted men flopping on the ground anywhere.  We unrolled our bed rolls on the floor and just died!  The morning was a nightmare - washing under the drip from the air coolers!  Real mess lines to stand in.  Then the heat.  Those first few days were a nightmare!  We drank water (all tepid) and ate salt tablets.  Anyone who could urinate more than 2X daily went around bragging about it.  The heat simply stifled a person.  We'd just lay on the cots and pant.  The poor enlisted men had to work on top of that.  On Friday Aug. 7, the Col. took me to Blythe to see about Indio and we saw our wives and persuaded them it was better to go home.  We are as isolated here as though on a foreign spot.  No store of any kind, no telephone, no telegraph, no private cars, no visitors.
     The high spot of every day was the showers.  They took us the mile to the showers in trucks.  It was wonderful how cool showers refreshed us.  We would hardly need towels.  3 minutes and we were dry without towels!  Of course by now the showers are close at hand and are they ever cold!
     My thermometer, which I later checked with the fellows doing some research on temperature, wt. loss, etc., showed 117°  as the hottest in the shade of my tent.  That meant a sun temperature of 145°  or 150° .  Everybody bought water bags.  Supposedly the dark ones were foreign make, but the U.S. ones certainly didn't leak as much as the "foreign" ones.  They did cool the water a bit.
     After 2 nights in the "cooler" we had our tents up.  It was very nice to hear tattoo and taps thru a fog of sleep, with the gentle desert breezes blowing over you.  Of course they sometimes had sand and weren't gentle.
     Finally we had some lights. We set up as a hospital about Saturday and I drew the first O.D. [officer of the day; the doctors could be assigned professional O.D. or administrative O.D.] assignment. Of course there were 3 accident cases in at once!

This photo of the camp was taken when the temperature was 114 degrees