George Deem

Richard Grant

Richie Grant was another boy I met in basic training. He had a long neck and looked to be average in height, but as you saw him walk closer he got shorter and shorter and when he got close he was terribly short. Richie wanted to be a brain surgeon and had some schooling in medical training, enough to be shipped away after the first eight weeks. I believe he was eighteen at the time and I was twenty. He had false teeth, both sets and was delicate. He was always fainting during some activity. I could never understand fainting especially when he would faint during a lecture as well as during some five-mile march. He made me feel different than I had felt before because I had never become a friend of a person who was younger than me and it made it so new for me for he acted older than me, partly because he was short and partly because he pushed himself forward so well. He went to the commanding officer one Saturday and demanded that I get a weekend pass. I had failed an inspection because I had not shaved that morning. The commanding officer was a tough-enough well-trained lieutenant who was fair about giving passes, but Richie told him that I was one of the trainees who had been left out in the field of training after everyone had been taken in by truck. It was some situation where I and five others had to clean up the rifle range and we had been left, but an ambulance picked us up an hour later and when I did get back to the barracks there was no hot water. I didn’t really care, it was Saturday and I could sleep and drink milkshakes at the PX on Saturday afternoon and Sunday. Richie wanted to go to Richmond and wanted me to go with him. It was a surprise when the commanding officer gave me the pass and Richie had done it. He and I talked for hours. He told me all about the brain all the time. He told me about a mentality that could be trained until the mind could do things like make a pencil roll on a table just because the mind could concentrate and give off that much power. He also told me about how he studied bel canto, a singing technique until his sides would bulge out because of the amount of air he could breathe into his lower rib cage. I think Richie lied there, he lied a bit to me because he was short and I was older than him and no matter how many wonderful stories he had, I was still older and taller than him. I had some stories, but they were not as good as his. I liked the way I felt when I was with Richie Grant. He was from Spokane, Washington. He’s the one who telephoned here at the loft one day and Lee Guilliatt answered and explained I wasn't here and the voice asked if Lee was Mrs. Deem.

The best part about knowing Richie was the laughing. We began doing variations on anything that came our way and discovered we had the same tickle inside. It’s not funny now, but then it caused hours of continual laughter until the other men around would yell for us to just shut up. We couldn’t and continued our frenzy until we were exhausted. It certainly was hysteria, and my it was enjoyable.

           
During the eight weeks of basic we were to have a bivouac, a week in the field, when we slept in tents and did maneuvers. The company was restricted to the camp from Thursday until Monday. We could go all over the camp but not into any neighboring towns. Richie was furious because Christmas was in one of those days, and he suggested we go to Washington D.C. for Christmas. We could only go without a pass and that meant AWOL. It was very exciting to be a real tough soldier going AWOL; the penalty being sometimes the stockade, but at the least basic training had to be started all over again. We went to Washington D.C. A.W.O.L. I saw the National Gallery there and on the first floor was a collection of drawings which I got so interested in that the museum was closing by the time I got upstairs to the painting collection. It was two more visits before I found Woman in a Red Hat by Vermeer.  We got a hotel and drank pink champagne that Christmas Eve and laughed. It was my first champagne and first visit to Washington D.C. It was like the big military post in the sky. It was such a surprise finding there was no trouble getting back into Camp Pickett that Sunday night. The next morning we were ready for bivouac and no one knew my AWOL experience.

At the foot of my bed there was a bushel of apples from Dad for Christmas. It said, Merry Christmas to Company "A."

           
At first it was tough going on the second eight-week stint of basic training without Richie Grant or John Di Biase. John’s bed was a few down from mine. Richie was in Company "B," and I only saw him when we were free. Ernie Debardeleben slept below me and I disliked him so much and he loathed me. During one of my laughing sessions with Richie Grant, Ernie Debardeleben and his buddies walked over, picked up Richie and carried him out high over their heads and threw him out the door. Ernie had only swear words in his vocabulary and he and his friend Kline would sit on my footlocker and tell dirty jokes and watch my face. It was all very depressing until the schooled men were sent away and the unexperienced ones were left behind for training in Hospital Care and Treatment. Everyone called it H.C. and T. Somehow the frenzy faded and it was not so difficult to get along with Debardeleben and finally we got friendly until he decided to tell me about remarrying the girl he divorced, he was nineteen. I told him I appreciated how we had come to be on speaking terms and how we quit fighting one another, but I’m not going to go so far as to give him advice on his married life.

George Deem, excerpt from “There’s a Cow in Manhattan Part 4,