just a few weeks of drill-marching in the snow, chowing down … we got the word that we were to be sent to California as “fillers” for the 40th Infantry Division, which we were told was the Southern California National Guard….
The troop train was composed of several shopworn passenger cars. As it headed west, it became obvious there were a lot of New Yorkers aboard. There was a lot of poker playing and arguing….
By luck of the car assignment and some selection on our part, Sol and I became acquainted with two kindred spirits: Harry Ekblom, a New York lawyer, and Bob Fithian of, I recall vaguely, the rural Midwest. We were set apart by having completed college and started on careers, and [we] had similar attitudes about being in the army, and about life in general. We spent the daylight hours talking or reading [all the way to the destination, Camp Cooke, in Southern California].
That sprawling Army base (now Vandenberg Air Force Base) was located on the Pacific coast nine miles northwest of Lompoc. Doubtless because we were college graduates, we were assigned to a high level headquarters rather than an infantry line outfit, and in a group of 30 or 40 recruits were given basic training: marching in drills, firing rifles[,] etc.
Sol made an inept soldier. He couldn’t remember to start marching by putting his left foot forward, instead of his right foot. Our drill sergeant, a three-striper, once became so annoyed by Sol’s indifference that he halted our unit, picked up a grapefruit-sized rock and put [it] in Sol’s left hand with the advice/warning, “Here, that’s your left. Start with your left.” It seemed to work.
All four of us quickly concluded that the 40th Division, or what we saw of it, was a slipshod organization, not well disciplined or demanding. Taking advantage of the “wait” part of “hurry up and wait,” Sol carried a sketchpad and pencil in the thigh pocket of his fatigues and often sketched away (without showing his drawings). During downtime in the barracks Sol would frequently sketch on larger paper.
(Sol made a pencil sketch of me. Through the years I treasured it, but through many packings and storings the bottom edge became frayed, so I finally trimmed it off, including Sol’s signature. Years later, after Sol became famous, I wrote him jovially to ask if he would re-sign it. He wrote back, in the same tone, “I’d have to see it first. I might not want to.” The drawing is framed and on my study wall, as is, and I occasionally tell a new visitor, “This my LeWitt.”)
After a few weeks we recruits were let out for a weekend and the four of us headed to Hollywood. We got as far as Santa Barbara. We were all so entranced by the Spanish Colonial–style architecture that we got no farther—that weekend or the next two weekends. We all loved drinking in quiet bars, eating in pretty-good restaurants, and lolling on the beach.
[One day] Sol invited me to accompany him on a visit to the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. With Sol leading the way, we cursorily toured the exhibits, then headed to what few Impressionists and Post-Impressionists there were. As we left, Sol said of the museum, “Not much.” Out of the blue he said he greatly admired the paintings of Albert Ryder, for the finesse and feeling of his moody skies.
After perhaps three months, word got around that the 40th was to be shipped to Korea. That came as a scary bit of news for many of our fellow-recruits but not for the four of us, for we believed that we would stay far from combat, assigned to some higher-up headquarters, probably as clerks.
(I was less optimistic and concluded that if I would have to fight in a war I would have to learn how to do it, which our lackadaisical basic training did not teach us, so I volunteered to go to infantry Officers Candidate School at Ft. Benning, Ga.).15
By the time the two recruits from New Britain reached California, the involvement in Korea, though never declared a war by Congress, had intensified. Things had not gone well for the allied South Korean and US troops. Positions were seized, held, and then lost. North Korean troops were well trained and equipped, and they inflicted a great number of casualties. The war that supposedly pitted good against evil was not going as planned. Moreover, Mao Zedong had ordered Chinese troops to the peninsula as a result of what he considered to be armed aggression against Chinese territory.
For the 40th Infantry Division headquartered in California, going to Korea seemed inevitable—even though, as Friedenberg reported, it was not an elite outfit at the time. To be sure, the division had served with valor in World Wars I and II, but its leaders and composition had changed. It would be necessary to train the division’s members not only in California, but also in Japan, before sending it to the Korean Peninsula.
LeWitt’s account of the period, as recorded in letters to his Syracuse pal and fellow draftee Arnold Libner, begins with impressions of the domestic training and advice for his friend:
January 26, 1951
Hi Lib,
Here I am, sprawled out in my barracks, aching all over, and we haven’t even started our basic [training] yet. I got out here last Sunday after a five-day train trip. Before that I was at [Fort] Devens for a week. It’s hot as a crap-shooter making his twelfth straight pass with loaded dice in the middle of July out here…. We’ve been doing KP, digging ditches, shoveling gravel and drilling all the time. We do anything to keep us busy….
I have been assigned to Division Headquarters, which might turn out to be a good deal. Try and do as best you can on your classification tests that they give at the induction center—it might keep you out of the infantry.
I have saluted two officers so far and try to avoid them by pretending not to see them, walking across the street or about 50 yards out of my way.
There are a million rumors as to where this division is going when it goes. I won’t believe anything till I get on a boat….
Let me know when you expect to be inducted. Don’t go!
General Ike16
The next update was sent from Camp Cooke a month later, when Libner was training at Fort Devens, Massachusetts:
Dear General,
The shit has really been flying thick and fast since last Saturday when they announced that we are shipping out for Japan (and points west). I am not going with the division in March but will continue my training until the end of May and then join the division in Japan or wherever they are. I am still in HQ but all my training has been Infantry…. We have been getting different kinds of combat courses such as the infiltration course where you crawl 70 yards through barbed wire, over logs in sand while they fire machine guns over your head and TNT charges explode all over the place. When you’re through your rifle is still supposed to be clean…. We had another dandy, charging down a field and up a steep sandy hill firing from the hip—then double timing about a half mile. After that getting shot by some North Korean would be a pleasure….
As you was, Sol
On June 11, 1951, LeWitt and other late-arriving members of the 40th boarded the General J. C. Breckenridge in San Francisco, bound for Yokahama, Japan. When they came aboard, they were given a copy of the ship’s newsletter, with its welcome message: “May you look back on our 16-day voyage together as an opportunity to have met new friends, seen the vast Pacific, and travel by water to the Orient. We thank you for your cooperation throughout the trip and all of us about the GB wish you: the best of luck, happiness, and success in your new ventures.”17
In anticipation of the “new ventures,” the crew of the Breckinridge tried to provide the troops with a sense of home and comfort. The crew organized an orchestra, featuring Private Edwin J. Costa, of New York City, who had played vibes and piano with the
