When postponement became the norm.

Global fear that another global war was imminent was realized on September 1 1939 when Germany invaded Poland. Some ten months later, on September 15 1940, the Burke-Wadsworth Act (aka The Selective Training and Service Act of 1940) cleared the House (232 – 124) and the Senate (47 – 25) and on September 16 1940 FDR signed it into law. The Act was the first peace-time draft in the history of the United States and required all men between the ages of 21 and 35 to register with local draft boards and set the maximum term of service at 12 months.

Nobody wanted to walk in the shadow of the horror of World War l and many, if not all, hoped to find a respectable way out. Section 5(g) of the Act sheltered conscientious objectors by providing the options of noncombatant service or assignment to work of national importance under civilian direction. For everyone else, there was initially only one other way out – They’d have to make it from induction to discharge in one year.

On October 29 1940, a blindfolded Secretary of War Henry Stimson reached into a large fishbowl and pulled out a capsule containing a piece of paper on which a number was printed and handed it to FDR, who then announced the number drawn. It was 158 and by that simple act the clock started to wind down for more than 6,000 young men.

Those whose number was up had to present themselves for  evaluation. At first, any non-black man between five and six feet tall, weighing at least 105 pounds, having vision correctable with glasses and at least half his teeth, who could read and write and passed the physical, mental, and moral examinations was inducted, provided he had not committed a crime and was not involved in work deemed essential to the war effort.

At 5′ 7″, 126 ½ lbs. a graduate of Paschal High School who was earning $8.00 a week as a trunk maker in Ft. Worth, my father – Leo Carter – fit the bill and he was inducted into the U. S. Army on January 16, 1941 in Dallas. Three days later, he reported to Camp Bowie, near Brownwood where he was assigned to Radio School so that he might become a forward observer in the U.S. Army’s ill-fated 2nd Battalion, 131st Field Artillery. But, in the second half of 1941, things got very much better and very much worse at the same time.

First, the Fates deemed it meet that he be plucked from Radio School at Camp Bowie and sent to Flight School at Jefferson Barracks near Lemay, Mississippi on August 4, 1941, which was a very good thing. Second, and not such a good thing, on August 18, 1941 – the day Leo Carter turned 21 – FDR signed a Bill which extended the Burke-Wadsworth Act’s term of service to eighteen months. Last and worst of all, after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the term of service for everyone in any branch of the military was extended to the duration plus six months.

Thing is.  Already in a deepening relationship with Fay Ann which began in 1939 when he was 19 and she was 14 and which was to last for 47 years, Leo Carter didn’t want to study War. He wanted to study Art.  And at age 14, Fay Ann had on first sight decided to be wherever he was and to support him in whatever he did.

But the world would have to sort itself out first.

4/26/14