GEORGE SCOTT

As a young man, George Scott hitched-hiked his way west from his home in South Dakota to Portland, Oregon where he got a job in the dairy business in 1937.  He moved to Spokane, Washington to attend Barber School and then worked as a barber in downtown Pullman until 1940 when he got a letter which opened with the familiar "Greetings."  He had been selected for service in the Armed Forces.

He first reported to the draft board in Colfax.  George and seven others were the only ones to make it through the first physical.  Although he wore glasses even then, his vision was not a problem to the draft board.  He was later issued glasses and even little round glass pieces to fit in his army-issue gas mask.  Next he was sent to Spokane where he and many others were lined up in nice even rows, raised their right hands, and were sworn in.  They were given a few days to get their personal matters in order, then reported for rail transport to Fort Lewis, a military staging base just south of Tacoma, Washington, where he was assigned to a Medical Training unit and received Government Issue or G.I. clothing. 

From there George was put on a beat-up old train headed for Texas, in the middle of July, in a wool uniform.  They ran out of water on the way, although the toilets didn't work very well anyway.  They got some relief when they pulled into Lubbock for a stretch stop, then proceeded to Abilene, the closest town to Camp Barkley.  George said, "From the cool Northwest to Texas in July was an experience!   And we got yelled at a lot, but it didn't hurt us."

Once at Camp Barkley the first time they turned out, their Sergeant asked, "Where the hell did you guys come from, Alaska?" as they stood sweating in their wool uniforms. 

He dismissed them to get into summer uniform, then George's three month Basic Training began in earnest.  He remembers red dust and thorns being the Central Texas landscape he had to crawl across on his belly to keep below the constant fire of machine guns.  George recalls machine gun fire both produces a real sharp snap and moves fast, particularly over an obstacle course.  After Basic Training, he was bunched up with others who, like himself, had been assigned to a medical unit and they were shipped to Camp Livingston near Alexandria, Louisiana.

Camp Livingston offered new terrain, according to George.  There were swamps, humidity, and rain, the kind of rain, he recalls, where he could see a cloud coming and all of a sudden the sky would fall in, most frequently it seemed while he was on a forced hike.  He learned quickly to roll his pack so his rain coat was handy. 

George and the other medics in his unit were assigned to an Infantry Unit headed for Wales, then on to Western France.  They shipped out on the Sythia, a refitted English ship converted to carry troops.  From the U.S. to England they slept in hammocks which had been hung over tables at an angle that cramped their legs all during the twenty-one days and nights  they steamed across the Atlantic.  Once they were attacked by German torpedoes, but the only damage done was to a couple of freighters on the outer edge of the convoy.  George Scott, a Sergeant by then, was in charge of a section of men.  As a non-com (non commissioned officer) he was required to keep order on the second level in the hold.  When the German attack was announced his men quickly followed "clear the ship" directions they had been drilled on when first boarding the ship.  Putting on their Mae West life jackets as they moved,  an activity which was a daily occurrence, they ran up gangways to their designated area in just two minutes, which suited their old English Captain who was, as George remembers him, "pretty stern."

When they arrived at the docks in Gurock, Scotland, near Glasgow,  they were barged from the ship to shore where they were greeted by a bagpipe band.  Sergeant Scott, not usually a bagpipe fan, remembers that greeting as "The most beautiful bagpipe music I'd ever heard." 

After the concert they were put on a train to Blackpool Park in the midlands of England.  There they set up a hospital, shelters, and cook tents.  Each man was issued a folding cot, two blankets, and, once again, wool uniforms.  George remembers falling out, or lining up for roll call, in cold, foggy weather.

With a twinkle in his eye, George described meeting some people who lived in Malvern, the town closest to their base.  The girls there liked G.I.s and regularly came to dances.  On holidays he was invited to the  homes of a carpenter and a policeman, parents of some girls who had become friends of his.  Special Services set it up so those going to visit local people could go to the Army kitchen with a pass to get canned goods, like peaches or apricots, to take with them since they were expected to bring something along to help feed both the host and guests.  George recalls fondly having real nice conversations with the people he met, several of whom he corresponded with for a number of years.  "They were good people," he said, "Very good people."

Scott was next sent to North Wales to a resort town on a North Sea beach.  There were many hotels there which had been put to use to house military personnel, and about five hundred English girls who were working for the Food Ministry and sponsoring social activities.  George recalled with a slight frown, "The American Nurses didn't like the G.I.s mixing with the English girls," then he smiled broadly.  "The English girls were a lot more fun!  But we had to learn to live with those Nurses," George then chuckled.

Then in August of 1944 George Scott moved again, this time to Utah Beach which had just been secured.  Balloons, or Blimps, held aloft cables to keep German aircraft from flying over the troops as they walked in single file over the beach.  When they were well ashore the troops were trucked through lots of dust to Le Mans and then sent by details to get materials off the shore to establish a hospital.  Forty-eight hours after landing they were functioning as a hospital, an accomplishment George is rightly proud of.

One assignment stands out in George's mind.  As a barber, he was called upon to prep patients for surgery, particularly head injuries.  A German prisoner of war was brought to the hospital in Le Mans, a badly injured patient.  George had to remove his hair so the Bird Colonel in charge of brain surgery could proceed.  The prisoner's skull appeared to be a pulsating mass of jelly, very difficult to work on.  But George did his job, the Colonel did his, and the man survived, as did the vast majority of their patients.

On a lighter note, George recalls the pretty Nurses who used to date "fly boys."  As the pilots would come in from raids they began to make a practice of buzzing the hospital to let the nurses know they were back.  This made the patients nervous, causing some to leap out of bed and do themselves harm.  The Colonel soon declared, "No more passes."

The Unit then moved and set up another hospital, this one in Nancy in a stable once occupied by the horses of the French Mounted Army in Eastern France.  Clean-up was a problem, but one George Scott did not have to deal with.  He was then transferred from hospital duty to an ambulance unit.  He also set up a barbering unit in an Army tent.  He was assigned an assistant, a German prisoner, who gave him a set of hand clippers that came home with him. 

When George had earned enough points to put him in a status that allowed him a ride home, he shipped out from Western France on a converted freighter, this time with bunks to sleep on for the five hundred and sixty men on board.  Just before he headed for the States he got to visit Paris along with an Italian buddy from Brooklyn.  They toured the town including some Red Cross canteens that served sugared coffee, a rather poor way to end twenty-seven months overseas, according to George's taste.

He landed in New York in November where, for the first time in his military career, he volunteered for duty.  As a non-com he took charge of getting all the appropriate baggage off the wharf, onto a train, and headed for Detroit by way of Canada, then on to Camp McCoy in Wisconsin where he mustered out on December 3, 1945.  He and his men didn't lose a single piece of luggage.  He was given first class railroad fare to Fort Lewis, where he had started out, and speaks of being treated royally on the train.  People picked up his check for meals, twice those people being "little old ladies" who were glad to help a serviceman in uniform. 

George Scott took a train from Fort Lewis to Pullman and went to work the day after he got home at the same barber shop where he was working when he got his letter from the President.  He eventually opened a three chair shop of his own on the WSU campus which he operated for twenty-five years, making many life-long friendships as he cut and styled hair.   Now retired for many years, he and his wife Genevieve continue to live in Pullman.  Some, but not all, of those twenty-seven months of his life have become fading memories for him.  But what he did made a lasting contribution to the lives of the many people he helped.