Grandfather in World War II: A History For Milo: Part II

 or Grandfather Russell Joseph Robinson, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour changed “everything,” but things didn’t happen right away.

“At first I didn’t realise how hugely everything had changed on December 7,” Grandfather remembered, “but a few months later, the Air Corps—” here he winked conspiratorially—” . . . the Army Air Corps, came around to recruit, and I volunteered.”

He took the exam, and it was then that he found out for the first time in his life that he was colour-blind. “I was 20 years old, and I couldn’t read the Red-Green colour chart.”

He was told that because of this, he was “debarred” from becoming a flight officer, meaning a pilot, a co-pilot, bombardier or a navigator; all those positions were off the table for him. He was a little disappointed, because he had thought it would be “ . . . fun to be a pilot, y’know, but there was no pressure to join up, or anything.”

“Because if you were in college at that time, as I was, at Harvard, you were not ‘drafted’ (forced to join the armed forces). But people that I knew were in the Service, and the more the war went on, the worse I felt.”

Dunster House, Harvard University

He felt that the war was passing him by. “I was going from Dunster House (his house at Harvard) to class, and studying, while these other kids were going overseas and battles were raging, and the Germans almost took Cairo, and they took France, and they took Norway, and the Japanese took all those islands in the Western Pacific . . .” his voice trails off.

“I was conscious of the fact that when I walked down the street, in my suit or jacket—because you didn’t wear ‘sports shirts’ then because of the war—people would look at me and maybe be saying, ‘That young fellow looks healthy enough . . . why isn’t he in the Service?”

In Dunster House, he explained, there were staying a number of people from across the world: from France, England, South America, Columbia, Brazil, Venezuela. They were there attending a fine university, but also escaping the military draft from their various countries. Some of them made no bones about it. “They were saying, ‘We don’t want to be fighting anybody in this war,’” Grandfather says. “But I felt very different.”

He had signed up with what they called the Enlisted Reserve, so he “activated his status,” then being ordered, along with the appropriate papers, to Camp Upton, Long Island. 

One of the first things they did there, he remembers, is that they gave him an IQ test.

 He took the exam, and it was then that he found out for the first time in his life that he was colour-blind

“I took it,” he says, “and I scored 148. 140 was Genius Level, and they were terribly impressed,” he says, with emphasis. “And then you had to give them all your personal details, your background; etc. etc. And so they decided,  with all the work I’d done with the theater—singing, acting and announcing; that sort of thing—that I should be assigned to Special Services, which apparently was the Drama and Entertainment branch at the time.”

So in January, 1943, a a year and a month after Pearl Harbour was attacked, Grandfather Russell was shipped off to Miami, Florida, where he was “assigned” to the Cadillac Hotel, which had been taken over by the U.S. Army Air Corps, and which overlooked the beach amid a row of other luxury hotels.

“I was put in a room with three other guys, whose names I can’t remember, but I met a couple of Hollywood actors, like Edmond O’Brien, who was a big star at the time. We chatted. 

"Clark Gable had been through, in Special Services, a few weeks before me.” (Clark Gable was possibly the biggest film star in the world at the time, and he flew five combat missions, including one to Germany, before MGM, the film company who was his boss, managed to get him removed from any dangerous duties for the rest of the war. Grandfather was not so lucky.)

Cadillac Hotel, Miami Beach

They began to drill (practice marching and running while in formation, which is thought to create discipline and develop automatic behaviours that are supposed to be helpful when under fire in combat) “ . . . up and down Collins Avenue, hup-hup-hup, and drill in the nearby park, I remember. Drill, drill, drill, hup-hup-hup.”

Then, because he was in Special Services, which was already a somewhat unusual branch of the armed forces, he was assigned various tasks: “I was assigned to do some radio dramas, with a bunch of other guys who had been actors . . . I played a German Nazi in one of them. And the director, who was from Broadway (Broadway was a very popular form of entertainment at the time, consisting of elaborate stage (live) performances of large groups of actors, dancers and singers, in the Broadway district of New York) was very impressed with my performance, and he told me so.”

In addition, Grandfather Russell did “ . . . quite a lot of singing. I sang to the troops! There would be thousand of them out there and I’d be there with the microphone and I’d sing Begin the Beguine, or Old Man River or whatever.”

“I also entertained for the chaplains (Catholic priests) and sometimes sang at Mass.”

So the months went by and Grandfather Russell was involved with various projects—but he seemed to be getting nowhere, fast.

"There was some big talk about how the Air Corps (it wasn't known as the Air Force yet) was going to make this big Broadway show—'Winged Victory,' they were going to call it. Edmond O'Brien was going to be in that one. The Army had one on already, called 'This Is The Army.' I don't know if the Navy had one planned or not!"

He used to kill time between his singing and acting by hanging around on the beach, as everyone else did. He got so tanned by being in the sun that one day he got on a bus and the bus driver, who was white, asked Grandfather Russell to lift the strap up off his wristwatch so the bus driver could look underneath.

"If, as he suspected, I was Black, I would have been told to get to the back of the bus. That's how dark I was!"

So as the time wore on and Grandfather Russell seemed to be getting nowhere fast, he finally approached one of his commanding officers. "I asked him, how do I get on Active Duty? He told me, 'You are on Active Duty.' I said, No sir, I mean active duty. Combat duty.'

"So he said, 'Well, It's not a matter of choice. You go where the Army tells you to go and do what the Army tells you to do.'

Amy Air Corps Radio school textbook cover

"So I said I didn't want to spend the rest of the war doing what I was doing, and if they insisted that I keep doing what I was doing then, sure, I'd sing, just not very in tune, and I'd act sure enough—I'd act just like a living room coffee table.

"So, he finally saw the light."

His superiors, confronted by this unwilling showman, pulled his records to see what they could do with him. They reaffirmed that he was not qualified to be in a cockpit because he was colour-blind.

"But then they gave me a test, which was a sound test. They played what sounded to me something like 'Deet-de-deet-deet-de-deet-deet'—that kind of thing, just a series of tones. So I took that test along with a number of other people, and it turned out that it was a test for radio operators; and I got a phenomenal score, because I was a musician, and I had a good ear!"

And forthwith, Grandfather Russell was informed that he was assigned to Radio School. 

"I hopped on a train, with orders, and reported to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, to a camp that was somewhere outside town.

 "And for some peculiar reason—they trained 24 hours a day—I hooked the midnight shift.

"So every night for six, eight, ten weeks—I suppose they gave you a night off, but I don't recall—you'd go in there, and put your headsets on, and they'd teach you Morse Code.

Amy Air Corps Radio school textbook introduction page

"First you'd learn all the letters—painstakingly—from A to Z, and then you'd begin to get . . . the 'I LOVE YOU'-kind of messages, and you'd try to write them down. And then they'd have a sentence, and you'd try to write that down."

"And then they'd increase the speed, until the speed was up to  twenty-five, thirty words a minute.

"So finally, I passed, and I was told that I was to proceed—to Gunnery School."

To be continued