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 Name:
Harold 'Hal' G. Behl
College: N.Y.U. -
Engineering
SED Assignments: Design Engineer; K-25 Oak Ridge
OAK RIDGE RECOLLECTIONS - HAL BEHL
In wartime, you could not enlist, you had to volunteer to your local
draft
board, and they'd send you out with the next monthly quota that had
room. I
volunteered, but we had about a month before I went, during which I had
a short
temporary job making Engineering drawings for a machine manufacturer in
NYC.
You couldn't get a permanent job in wartime with the draft hanging over
your
head.
As soon as I knew when and where I was to be inducted, I notified the
National Roster of Scientific and Specialized Personnel, who had
assigned me an
identification number when I graduated, and who were supposed to see
that I ended
up doing the thing that I was trained for, in the war effort. I went
into the
Army on August 18, 1944, and was sent to Camp Upton out on Long Island
for
induction processing - shots, tests, uniforms, waiting. When I was
interviewed for
assignment, I told the interviewer that I wanted to get into the Army
Air
Corps, and produced a copy of my Aeronautical Engineering diploma and a
letter
from the Convair Chief Engineer saying that I knew everything there was
to know
about the bombers that they were currently building (B-24s, B-32s,
PB4Y-2s,
PBYs) (I didn't really). He assured me that I would be in the Air Corps,
BUT,
"by the way, have you had any military experience"? I told him that I'd
had 4
years of Army Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) in College, and had
fooled
around a little helping the San Diego company of the California State
Guard
when I was working for Convair. He then wormed out of me that the State
Guard
was an INFANTRY unit, and that in ROTC, when we weren't in class, we
marched
around with RIFLES. Needless to say, several days later I was on my way
to Camp
Croft in Spartenburg SC for 13 weeks of INFANTRY Replacement Training!
Having no great desire to be a Combat Infantry Private in a ground war,
as
soon as I arrived at Croft, I started to volunteer for anything that
might have
a higher priority than the Infantry, such as Paratroopers, Commandos,
Mountain
Troops, but nothing came of it. Because of my previous military
training, I
was assigned as "Company Guide", which meant that when we were hiking, I
walked
out front with the Company Commander, a Captain about my age - we got to
be
pretty good friends, and ended up running every morning before the
troops got
up.
One morning, while the Captain and I were out running, he said that he
thought that I really should be an officer, and if I'd apply for Officer
Candidate
School, he'd endorse the application and send it on. I did, filling out
the top
choices as AirCorps and Ordnance. I took all the physicals, and a couple
of
weeks later, he told me that I had been accepted, and would be leaving
for the
Infantry School in a few days - I hadn't applied for Infantry, because
the
only thing I wanted less than being a Private in the Infantry was to be
a Second
Lieutenant! It turned out that someone had crossed out my "AirCorps",
and
replaced it with "Infantry" -I had a long series of discussions with the
higher
ups, explaining that the reason that I didn't have a commission in the
Corps of
Engineers from my college ROTC was that the Army had decided that I was
a
little color-blind in the red/green range, and thus could not be
commissioned in a
combat branch of the Army. They finally gave up, and I went back to
training,
where my San Diego Judo came in a little handy because I ended up
instructing
hand-to-hand combat after I threw a big clumsy Sergeant across the
demonstration pit in front of the whole company. I also ended up
instructing on the
machine gun range, which left me with a permanent high pitched whistle
in my left
ear (Tinnitus), and an equivalent loss of hearing in that same frequency
range. The Army, at that time, didn't believe in ear protection.
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