Even in a war zone
There's time for learning and humor
One replacement to my squad drew this cartoon after the close of the European war, some time between May and December 1945. The wall map showing China and Tokyo reflects what was on all our minds as we waited to be re-outfitted and shipped to Asia.

While we were stationed near Salzburg, Austria, I was appointed battalion Information & Education Sergeant, an assignment that included visiting groups gathered by company commanders and giving them updates on current affairs. I don't remember whether my office (the "I&E Room" of the cartoon) was in a hotel or in an office on the second floor of a commercial building, but it was there I kept everything from maps of the local area to whatever collection of newspapers, magazines, and books I could get my hands on -- written in English, French, or German.

The local bürgermeister was a regular visitor. He and I set up a course in conversational German which drew an ever-changing handful of guys from all ranks.

The cartoon's caption reflects two facts:

(1) Off-duty personnel stopped in to pick up printed material, schmooze, ask questions, play board games.

 (2) The office served as sort of a lost-and-found resource for locating those officers and noncoms who thought to inform me where they could be reached each day.

One fun task was that I showed movies, lugging around a beat-up projector, two or three cans of film from which each audience could choose, and a very unreliable less-than-portable generator -- all in a battered Jeep which had seen combat.

As I have written in a more serious tone, Kerry/Vietnam affair, a clerk's misunderstanding of "I&E" resulted in my discharge document mistakenly labeling me an "Intelligence NCO." Not quite.