Training in Mississippi

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"They changed the program, and we were sent to organize an engineer combat battalion in Mississippi, and that's really how I ended up, you might say, going into the phase that I did. But when I got into this engineer combat battalion, we had a variety of quiet officers.

We had three Jewish officers, and this is when I began to find out that they were subjected to discrimination, pressures, even in our own Army, even though I didn't know it at first. And it was three different types of individuals. Although, all Jews, one was a medical officer, and one was a company commander, one of the line companies, one was an intelligence officer in my section. I was in the S2 section of the company, and there were three different types of individuals. The S2 officer, was a real nice, easygoing, submissive person, and he was treated in a very disrespectful manner by his peers. And we often said that our peers would have to go fly a kite if they treated us the way he was treated. But he accepted it. And the line company officer would not have accepted it, if he didn't have to come into that type of situation, because he was responsible for the activities of the battalion. The other officer was a doctor. So they couldn't give him any fight because he was assertive – in his own position.

So I ran into three different types of persons in the same ethnic classification, and not until that Army experience, did I realize consciously, that I recall, in my life that they were subjected to pressure."