Chapter IV

Army: CCNY

I made up my mind that I would consent to the assignment offered by the first board to meet and accept me. That turned out to be the ASTP board. However, instead of being assigned to some university to study medicine while living in a dorm, I was shipped to the City College of New York (CCNY) on Amsterdam Street in New York City to study German Language and Culture. And, instead of living in a nice dorm, I and my fellow-students were issued cots and footlockers which were arranged densely in one vast area in the basement of an old abandoned Jewish orphanage.

Our 'so-called dorm' was located directly across the street from CCNY. It was the same orphanage where writer/humorist Art Buchwald and his sister were fostered when they were young. Art and I attended USC after the war, both graduating in the class of 1947 with over 2000 other classmates. Graduation exercise were held on the football field of the Los Angeles Coliseum adjacent to USC. To my knowledge, Art and I never met. This was during the heyday of former service personnel completing their college training thanks to the GI Bill of Rights. It was also a shot-in-the-arm for colleges and universities that had suffered from relatively low attendance during the war years.

Upon arriving in New York City, I immediately submitted a request for reassignment to another institution as a premedical student. It was rejected by the Major in charge of the Army academic program at CCNY. He was one of the many regular Army noncommissioned officers who had been given a temporary commission after we entered the war. His regular Army assignment was that of cook for the Officers' Mess. He turned down my request with words that impacted my future and which I shall never forget: "Corporal Vogel, you can best serve your country by studying the German Language, History and Culture at the City College of New York."

After attending CCNY for just two quarters, another student, an Air Corps Sergeant, and I decided to leave CCNY by signing up for the Army Air Corps instead of beginning the third quarter at CCNY. He and I rode the subway to the Air Corps recruiting center in downtown New York City where we were tested to see to determine our qualifications to become cadets in the Army Air Corps. In those days today's Air Force was part of the Army. Recalling that I had been rejected by the Air Corps once before because of one bad eye, I carefully memorized the eye chart and passed the test. My buddy, the Sergeant, was also accepted. When the third quarter of study was about to begin, we informed the Major that the two of us were expecting orders for assignment to the Air Corps, and that it would be waste of time for us to continue with our coursework.

While he could have forced us to start the third quarter, he knew he lacked the authority to override orders to ship us to the Air Corps. He accepted our request, particularly since the two of us had served him well and had been important to him as high-ranking non-commissioned officers in the class. I was the only one with an Infantry background; so my knowledge of and adherence to proper Army discipline and training had been a great asset to the Major and his aide, a First Lieutenant, who was best known for his non-military demeanor and sloppy uniform. The Jewish students in the class called the Lieutenant 'the knisch' behind his back. This is a lumpy Jewish meat dish something like a Mexican burrito; which was sold wrapped in wax paper by vendors pushing carts on the streets of New York City.

All things considered, administration by the Army at CCNY was in a rather pathetic state of affairs; as a result of my Infantry training and rank, I managed to turn a bad situation to my advantage to the full. My wife had joined me in New York City and taken a job at Norden as a tool designer on the Norden Bombsight Project at a salary of $100.00 a week - a very high salary in those days. By comparison, stenos were making $15.00 per week; I, as a Corporal, received $66.00 per month; Second Lieutenants earned $180.00 per month. So, instead of sleeping in the basement with the other students, I went home at night to a cozy apartment on 144th Street and Riverside Drive a couple of blocks away. If I was needed, my buddies knew where I could be reached. Bobbie and I had just bought a used 1941 Pontiac sedan. 1941 was the last year new cars were produced for civilian consumption during the war. All things considered, it was not too shabby an existence. Gas was rationed, but coupons could be come by easily on the black market.

Military orders did come through for both the Sergeant and me not too long into the third quarter, but not to the Air Corps. Out of a class numbering a little over 100, 15 of us, apparently as the result of seemingly endless batteries of testing, had been selected to attend the Military Intelligence Training Center (MITC.) It was located at Camp Ritchie, (formerly Fort Ritchie) Maryland not far from Hagerstown, Pennsylvania. Somehow, the Sergeant was able to resist compliance with those orders and waited for his Air Corps assignment to come through. I, on the other hand, had learned early on that in the Army one should never 'fight the problem.' I was shipped to Camp Ritchie.

Interestingly, I ran into this Sergeant after the war on the campus of USC. He told me that he had been sent to flight school as a cadet, was well into the program and on the verge of graduating as a 2nd Lt. in the Air Corps when the Germans launched their counter-offensive at Bastogne - the Battle of the Bulge in 1944. He was one of approximately 100,000 Air Corps cadets taken out of flight school, given some basic Infantry training and then thrown into the front lines in France to replace the casualties we had suffered as a result of Germany's last-ditch attempt to turn the tide of war in their favor. Although he ended up physically unscathed, at the end of the war he held the same rank he had at CCNY. Whereas, I ended the war as a commissioned officer. Moral: Never fight the problem! Except for following that maxim, I might have suffered his fate or worse.