On the internet, and elsewhere, one encounters the claim that at Ft. Slocum, NY  in May 1944, Pvt. Willie Lee Duckworth Sr. (1924-2004) invented “Sound Off,” aka “the Duckworth chant,” origin of the modern “Jody Call” jogging & marching cadence used even today in the U.S. Army and other services;  and that this was taken up and enthusiastically promoted by then post C.O., Col. Bernard  Lentz (1881-1961), already known since 1918 (and in various editions through the 1950’s) for his book The Cadence System of Teaching Close Order Drill.  

            This claim, if true, would be interesting, in that it would link this historic former post in Long Island Sound just off New Rochelle  with an enduring Army tradition.

One also encounters counterclaims that the origin of the Jody in Duckworth’s chant at Fort Slocum is but a modern urban legend:  that call-and-response work songs or chanteys were long used by sailors and agricultural laborers (particularly in the Black community), that the phrase “Sound Off” predates 1944 (as the title of a collection of songs edited by Edward Arthur Dolph in 1924, reissued in 1942; and even appears as the legend on a WWI-era postcard  from Fort Slocum itself), that there is a long history of drill in the U.S. Army and before that, that “count off your numbers loud and strong” appears in Maj. Edmund L. Gruber’s 1907 “Caisson Song,”  that it resembles popular songs like “Hey Ladee Ladee Lo,” even that Duckworth was a Tin Pan Alley singer who ripped off Col. Lentz.  (The weirdest one is, "In WWII, black troops were, apparently, given more freedom of self-expression than were white troops. Fancy drill teams, particularly from Fort Duckworth, Alabama, toured and popularized jazzier cadence counts" [http://sniff.numachi.com/~rickheit/dtrad/pages/tiSOUNDOFF;ttSOUNDOFF.html].   Surely this tale “loses something in the original;”  though perhaps mythical "Fort Duckworth, AL" as a sort of WWII Grambling would be poetic justice . . . ?)

            Wherein lies the truth?

            The evidence is complex;  but I have read most of the primary sources, as well as background material;  and here is my interpretation. 

There were only about 8 Black soldiers at Slocum, segregated;  one officer claimed it was impossible to drill them, and the responsibility was handed to recent draftee Pvt. Duckworth.  So already he had some experience as a drillmaster.   As the story has it, marching back with about 200 soldiers (incidentally, they must all have been white) from Slocum's remote bivouac site at Ardsley, 13 miles away from post, Duckworth made up the chant.  It boosted spirits, and was taken up.  Back on post, it caught on.  Col. Lentz heard it, summoned Duckworth, who by one account explained that it came from calling hogs in his Washington Co., GA, home; in another, that he just made it up in his head.  Lentz, a minor songwriter in his own right (whose compositions include “Don’t Bother Father When He’s at the Bar”), either commanded, or approved, its use on post.  Slocum had an active band during WWII, and its musicians worked the Duckworth chant into Sound Off  -- indeed, if anyone was exploited in the process, it may have been the musicians of this anonymous band!  -- the music and lyrics of which were then copyrighted jointly in 1950 by Lentz and Duckworth with Lentz’ NYC publisher Shapiro, Bernstein & Co.  (ASCAP considers that royalties are due to the writers of “Sound Off”  from Jodies used in such  films as  Dead Poets Society, Private Benjamin, An Officer and a Gentleman, and Full Metal Jacket;  to the end of his days Willie Duckworth continued receiving royalties, and his widow Edna Duckworth does to this day.)   According to one version, Duckworth and Lentz between them wrote 23 verses.    “Sound Off”  was recorded on an unnumbered 1945 V-Disc at Slocum by a Rehabilitation Class under the direction of Sgt. Henry Felice; and notably (see below) in two other versions, including a distinctive WAC version.  Its first cinematic appearance was in the 1949 Academy Award winner, Battleground.   Versions were recorded by bandleader Vaughn Monroe in 1951, and featured in the 1952 Blake Edwards film “Sound Off” starring Mickey Rooney.  Col. Lentz incorporated it into later editions of his book.

            What then is the relationship among Duckworth, Lentz, and the modern Jody?   First, the published 1950 “Sound Off” has a definite link to the Jody, in that there is a verse about a civilian stealing a soldier’s girlfriend;  except as it develops the civilian is named “Alvin” not “Jody.”   The earliest recorded version, 1945, has either “Shorty” or “Jody” back home when the soldier left, though neither Shorty nor Jody has yet got your girl much less your Cadillac.  But the improvisation that continues in the later developed Jody is just the point of the Duckworth chant:  make it up as you go along.  Eskimos, GI grits, My Recruiter, Viet Cong, C-130s, whatever.   There is also in both 1945 & 1950 versions the call-and-response [Sound Off (one-two) Sound Off (three-four)] that continues in later decades, though as we shall see this too is subject to a process of development.

Second, the Duckworth chant is not simply an elaboration of Lentz’ cadence system. They are not one and the same thing.  But there is a relationship.  Lentz’ cadence system (first published in 1918)  required the troops actively to voice the drill commands, not just passively to obey the drillmaster.  But in no sense are these commands improvised;  they are always the stock commands of the official Infantry Drill Regulations (IDR).  The drillmaster would announce the command;  the troops would vocalize it together as they executed.  Lentz was a virtual (Durkheimian) military psychologist: in the first chapter of his book he makes clear that he wanted troops to internalize the commands in order simultaneously to increase their sense of personal responsibility but at the same time also their coordination in a single purpose.  “Each man becomes his own drillmaster,” with the overall result that he “develops the foundation of assurance, ‘pep,’ and confidence in his voice which must of necessity underlie true eligibility for the noncommissioned grades.”  (In a sense, Col. Lentz originated “an Army of One” as early as WWI.)  He would of course have been delighted to discover a Duckworth, a lowly private who motivated the troops bottom-up rather than top-down. 

Apart from Lentz’ own predisposition, correspondence between him and his wartime superior, Maj/Gen. Charles C. Gross, Chief of Transportation, shows that they were concerned morale was slack among the rear-echelon, support troops of the Army Service Forces (such as served at Ft. Slocum) and actively attempted to promote soldierly pride in these troops;  so that the appearance of the spontaneous and spontaneously-embraced Duckworth chant would have seemed a timely shot-in-the-arm from a command point of view.  And the War Department generally spread its use during the war. (Actually the Jody is not more but less elaborate than the Lentz Cadence System, since in the former there is less self-reliance, certainly no improvisation, and more simply following the lead of the drillmaster.)  However Lentz’ cadence system without Duckworth’s chant would never have produced the institution of the Jody.

So it seems the safe thing to say that Duckworth did not just conjure the Jody out of thin air.  The Duckworth chant and Sound Off however were a genuine innovation, one that led directly to the contemporary Jody;  Lentz and the command facilitated it such that without command support, Sound Off would not have caught on at Slocum, nor would the Jody have spread throughout the Army.  Likewise without bottom-up enthusiasm from troops,  Jody Calls would not be heard today except on a 1945 V-disc.   It is therefore appropriate to credit Pvt. Willie Lee Duckworth, Sr., of Sandersville, Washington Co., GA, with introducing at Ft. Slocum in 1944, bottom-up, the marching cadence “Sound Off” that evolved also bottom-up into the modern Jody Call.

I don’t know, but I’ve been told . . .

Exactly what did the first Duckworth chant sound like?   Alas Alan Lomax did not lug a tape recorder on that cold March bivouac.  I would like to ask Pvt. Duckworth himself but alas this too is now impossible.  The original oral tradition clearly underwent later musical shaping as well as  literary redaction.   So the fixed forms are at some remove from the original, and even from subsequent troop improvisation.  Still an examination of the earliest fixed oral, literary and cinematic forms reveals an interesting evolution.

The first fixed version of Sound Off must have been produced about mid-1945 on the aforementioned V-disc.   S/Sgt. Henry C. "Jack" Felice  had been a drillmaster with the Provisional Training Center Detachment at Fort Slocum during WWII.   Before WWII, the post had been a staging area for troops being sent overseas to the Philippines and the Canal Zone.   As the war began it continued this role for troops being shipped over to the European Theater of Operations through the New York Port of Embarkation.   It also served to provide basic training for troops who had somehow missed this, and from Oct. 1942 to Oct. 1944 under the auspices of the Atlantic Coast Transportation Corps Officers’ Training School (ACTCOTS), did the same for transportation specialists, such as railroad men, quickly commissioned as company-grade officers but lacking basic military training and orientation.

As the war wound down, and as ACTCOTS was unable to provide needed technical training in addition to basic military orientation, the transportation school was phased out, and Slocum floundered about seeking a new role.   Slocum was placed under the Second Area Service Command, and (despite opposition by local interests) was chosen late in 1944 as a center for the rehabilitation of American soldiers convicted by court-martial.  Rehabilitation classes began in 1945, and continued through 1946, at which time they too wound down and Fort Slocum was considered for closure.  (Some wanted it to become veterans’ housing.  General Leslie Groves, head of the Manhattan Project, briefly considered it for the site of a nuclear research facility in conjunction with Columbia University, but chose instead the former Camp Upton at Yaphank on Long Island, which was given the more felicitous name  “Brookhaven.”  Nonetheless Fort Slocum was not closed; the Army Air Corps took it over.  HQ 1^st AF moved over from Mitchel Field on Long Island, and from 1946-1949 served as Slocum AFB  --  the only USAFB in history reachable routinely not by air but only by boat.  Then the Army got it back.    But that is another story.)

So this first fixed version of the Duckworth Chant likely comes from one of the court-martial rehabilitation classes mentioned above, and was led by one of the post drillmasters from the time of  Duckworth’s bivouac.  (There are two other versions on the V-Disc, both different from the Felice version:  one of them, led by S/Sgt Gladys "Woodie" Woodard, has distinctive WAC lyrics;  the other, by Pvt. James Tyus, is a Black version  --  quite unlike the other two and the subsequent Jodies.)

These are the lyrics of that first fixed version of the Duckworth Chant.  (Here as afterward the call is simply written; the response, enclosed in parentheses.)

“Horeward:   harch!

Hup-hoop-hip-horp

The heads are up, the chests are out

The arms are swingin’;  in cadence,  count:

      [Refrain]

Sound off (one, two!)

      Sound off (three, four!)

      Cadence count (one, two, three, four, one, two   --  threefour!)

Eeny meeny miney moe

Let’s go back and count some mo’

      [Refrain]

We will march to beat the band

      And we’ll never bite The Hand,

            [Refrain]

I had a good home but I left (you’re right!)

I had a good home but I left (you’re right!)

Jody/Shorty was there when you left (you’re right!)

Jody/Shorty was there when you left (you’re right!)

      [Refrain]

It won’t get by if it ain’t GI

It won’t get by if it ain’t GI

      [Refrain]

We will march with a broken leg

So we can get that Golden Egg

      [Refrain]

The Second Platoon is just like Krauts (Kraut?  see below)

They’re all afflicted with the gout

      [Refrain]

The Third Platoon can’t stand the [gaffe?]

Tryin’ to get ol’ [on? Blennett’s staff?] [these lines are obscure in more than one sense]

      [Refrain]

If I get shot in a combat zone

Just box me up and send me home,

      [Refrain]

I had a good home but I left (you’re right!)

You had a good home but you left (you’re right!)

Jody/Shorty was there when you left (you’re right!)

Jody/Shorty was there when you left (you’re right!)

      [Refrain]

I don’t mind to take a hike

If I could take along a bike

      [Refrain]

I don’t mind a bivouac

If I could take along a WAC

      [Refrain]

I don’t mind if I get dirty

As long as the Brow gets Gravel Gertie

      [Refrain]

The WACs and WAVEs will win the war

So tell us what we’re fighting for

[Refrain]

I had a good home but I left (you’re right!)

I had a good home but I left (you’re right!)

Jody/Shorty was there when you left (you’re right!)

Jody/Shorty was there when you left (you’re right!)

      [Refrain]

Gump’knee, HALT!”

First, notice the structure of this first fixed version.  It begins, and closes, with a standard set of commands:   Forward, MARCH;  Company, HALT.  After the initial command Forward, MARCH, the drillmaster sets the pace:  hup, two, three, four.  Then begins the Duckworth chant, proper. 

In the chant itself, there is call and response, but the response is proportionately minimal.   The drillmaster calls two verses by himself, without response.  Then the refrain consists of three verses of call (and response), in which the response consists simply of numbers, in the following pattern:

A

B

[Refrain:]

C (D)

C (F)

G (D, F, D – F!).

            In the recording of this first fixed version, this pattern is repeated 3 times, then 5 times, then 4 times.  (This 3-5-4 sequence may well be arbitrary.  Indeed, one could punctuate the pattern in any number of ways without affecting the sense of the cadence.)   In between, it is punctuated by a different pattern:   two verses of call (and response: you’re right!) followed by two different verses of call (and response; the same response as before) with no refrain between each pair, in the following pattern:

            A (B!)

            A (B!)

            C (B!)

            C (B!).

Second, notice the relation of this version both  to Col. Lentz’ cadence system and to Duckworth’s improvisation.  This one is both much more and much less structured.  It is more structured than Duckworth’s (presumably) pure improvisation on the road back to Slocum from Ardsley;  it is less structured than Lentz’ system (whereby the soldier cooperates with  and presumably internalizes, stock commands from the Infantry Drill Regulations, but does not improvise).  This version has the troops merely repeating the  stereotyped cadence that otherwise only the drillmaster alone would voice. 

Third, notice the relation between this earliest version and  the later Jodies.   This version actually, perhaps, introduces the word “Jody;”  though, as noted, the word may only be “Shorty.”  (Listen for yourself; I find it hard to tell.  But to my knowledge this is the first time the question has been raised in print, whether Jody was originally Shorty.)   In any case the character Jody is not yet fully developed:   sure, Jody was there back home when you left for war.  (And, why?)    But he wasn’t yet sitting under the apple tree with your girl, he didn’t yet have your Cadillac, nor your mama, nor your telephone nor your girl  & gone.  That would come later.  By the second fixed version in the 1949 film Battleground, Jody is living in the shack, and keeping your baby company until you get back.  So at this point both the name and the character tally with the later Jody.   To complicate matters, the third fixed version is the one copyrighted by Pvt. Duckworth & Col. Lentz in 1950, and it changes over time.   (In a 1961 revision of this,  there is neither Jody nor Shorty but Alvin  -- who has got both your girlfriend and your sister.)   There were various pop versions recorded, including one by Mickey Katz in Yiddish.  A soul/R&B version (muted wailing sax, with a combination of the early published lyrics and a nod to the 1945 Tyus version) released in 1961 was the biggest lifetime hit for Titus Turner (1933-84).   (Turner incidentally, was stationed at Slocum in 1954.)

Fourth, this earliest version differs from all known later versions in that the drillmaster delivers the call entirely in monotone;  the initial responses are also monotone;  and only the last response (D, F, D – F!)  has any melody.  In subsequent versions all of the responses as well as the call are melodic.

Consider by contrast a later version, one of the less scatological that resounded at Ft. Gordon (just north of Duckworth’s hometown) during the Vietnam war.   (I have no soundclip, but many of us can fill in from memory.)

Heidi, Heidi, Heidi:   Ho’!  (Heidi, Heidi, Heidi:   Ho’!)

Will he?  Will he?  Will he?  Whoa!  (Will he?  Will he?  Will he?  Whoa!),

Am I right or wrong? (You’re right!)

Am I weak or strong? (You’re right!)

[Refrain]

Sound off (one, two)

Hit it again (three, four)

Bring/Break it on down (one, two, three, four, one, two  --  threefour!)

            Every line, both call and response, is melodic not monotone.  Further, the metric structure is much more elaborate:

A (A)

B (B)

C (D)

E (D)

[Refrain:]

F (G)

H (I)

J (G, I, G – I!)

A note on the content of the lyrics.  Some of them are entirely obscure even today.    But even if we didn’t already know the Duckworth Chant came from Fort Slocum in 1944, internal evidence would make this clear enough.  Col. Lentz’ pet story:  quoting Samuel Goldwyn’s characteristic malapropism, “Oh dem directors!  They’re always biting the hand that lays the golden egg,” Lentz would warn his listeners:  “Gentlemen . . . I am the hand that lays the golden egg.  And my advice to you is don’t bite the hand that lays the golden egg.”    This became proverbial on post;  The Hand became  Lentz’ most common nickname.  The post newspaper, the Casual News,  offered [IV(1), 15 Feb. 1944, p. 7], believe it or not, “Slocum’s Haircut Slogan:”  If it isn’t G.I./It won’t get by.    The one verse may refer to Krauts (Germans) but there was a drillmaster with the Provisional Training Center  named S/Sgt Francis H. Kraut (aka Krout).    The Brow and Gravel Gertie refer to characters in the syndicated comic strip Dick Tracy.  The Brow, a Nazi naval spy, had a meteoric rise and fall lasting only four months, from 22 May to 26 Sept. 1944.  Gravel Gertie first appears 3 Sept.   The Brow is temporarily blinded; Gertie (a hag, smitten by once again having a man in her life) shelters him &  nurses him back to health; he may be on the verge of reciprocating her love but is killed when Tracy causes him to fall through a window and die, impaled on an American flag.  Therefore, this verse still in suspense about The Brow getting Gravel Gertie cannot be original with Duckworth’s Mar. 1944 bivouac;  but it must also be one of the older ones, its form fixed sometime in Sept. 1944.

Clearly, some of the early lyrics were not meant for the Ages.  The lines about The Hand and the Golden Egg don’t travel well;  the Brow was universally known but didn’t survive Hitler; the lines about Second & Third platoons are, well, just lame.  No doubt the same is true about many other lines improvised through they years and now forgotten.  The enduring core running from this early fixed version of the Duckworth Chant is threefold:  left-right (naturally);  the counting;  and, of course. Shorty/Jody  --  the name if not the fully-developed character.   So it is clear both that there has been some subsequent development, but also that the later evolutions of the Jody owe a lot to Shorty, Alvin, Duckworth, and Lentz  --  in whatever measure.

     Available on line are two classic descriptions of life at Fort Slocum.  From 1870-72, 2/Lt. John Wyer Summerhayes served on Davids’ Island Military Reservation (as it was then known), with the 8^th Infantry.  One battalion of the regiment left in 1871 to give assistance after the Chicago Fire;  then were joined out West by the other battalion (including Summerhayes), eventually ending up in Arizona.  In 1874 John married Martha Dunham.  John returned, as Capt. of Engineers in 1892, this time with Martha, and stayed until 1896.   (John’s renumbering of post buildings lasted until 1941;  John and Martha also played host to Frederic Remington, who sketched on the island.)     Martha Summerhayes’  memoir of her Army life, published in 1908, is called Vanished Arizona.  The last chapter of the first edition, Ch. 32,  entitled “Texas,” actually includes some material on Davids’ Island.  The second edition included Ch. 33, “Davids’ Island.”   To read these chapters (or the entire book  --  and apart from the Slocum material it is a fascinating read about a VERY different US Army than any of us remember!) go to 

http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/hst/biography/VanishedArizona/chap32.html;  then go on to click on the link on the same page for Ch. 33.  The book was an unexpected succes fou among Army people, at least, and for some time;  when in 1939 Gen. George C. Marshall was given a reprint as a Christmas gift, he noted that he had read it decades before, and that while a young shavetail  at Slocum in 1902 had actually met Mrs. Summerhayes.   (The second edition also remains in print in an inexpensive paperback, ISBN 0-8032-9105-1.) 

            Frederick Albert Pottle, later Sterling Professor of English at Yale, was a young enlistee at Slocum for Christmas week during the bitter winter of 1917-18.  He positively hated the place, and was heartily glad (as he puts it at the end of the first chapter of his 1929 WWI memoir, Stretchers) to leave “the accumulated and unalleviated horror of Fort Slocum.”  This can be read online at http://www.lib.byu.edu/~rdh/wwi/memoir/Stretchers/Pottle1.htm.

And a Few Books Not Online

            And there are a few relevant works available only in the old-fashioned way.   The earliest one written on Davids’ Island was also published from there:   Maj. Thomas Wilhelm, History of the Eighth U.S. Infantry, from Its Organization in 1838 (2 vols., Davids’ Island NYH 1871, 1872).   A number of officers stationed on the island in the 19^th c. (including Abner Doubleday, William Lawrence Haskin,  and Henry Martyn Lazelle)  published books, though none of these are  about the island itself. 

Even Army memoirs pass over  Davids’ Island pretty much in silence.  These include Gen.  Doubleday’s My Life in the Old Army (TCU Press, 1998),  Gen. Zenas Randall Bliss’  memoirs (unpublished, in typescript at Carlisle Barracks), and Chap. Maj/Gen. Francis Sampson’s Look Out Below! (Sweetwater, TN:  101^st ABN, 1989 reprint;  orig. Catholic U. of America, 1958).   Perhaps this should be no surprise;   Doubleday and Bliss, who fought in the Civil War (Bliss earning the Medal of Honor)  and Sampson (the “paratrooper padre” who was twice a German POW --  the first time almost facing a Waffen SS execution squad) did not spend their most exciting days on our little 80-acre rock!  (Brevet Gen. Doubleday was CO in 1866;  Lt/Col. Bliss was CO 1878-1880;  Maj. Sampson was on the Chaplain School faculty 1952-54.) 

Father Sampson, who later became Chief of Chaplains (1967-1971) was also an Army regional senior tennis champion (14 times, over 7 championships, 1955-1963) and must have trained for these on our officers’ tennis court at Slocum.   Incidentally, he is the real-life model for the British chaplain in The Longest Day who lost his communion kit jumping into the marshes;  and he is also the one who found Sgt. Fritz Niland, apparently the sole survivor of four brothers, and started the paperwork which forced him stateside  --  the story which Steven Spielberg embellished into Saving Private Ryan.  Sampson (in Look Out Below!) and Stephen Ambrose (in D-Day) tell the basic story of Sgt. Niland; though (according to Niland’s daughter, http://www.homestead.com/sprfanfic/fritzniland.html;  and cf. Mark Bando’s very interesting 101^st ABN site http://www.101airborneww2.com/bandofbrothers2.html) both Sampson and Ambrose missed key details.   There is also an interesting article (in, believe it or not, the Saving Private Ryan Online Encyclopedia!) at http://www.sproe.com/n/fritz-niland.html.  The Chaplain School website has an article on Monsignor Sampson’s interesting life and his Army career at http://www.usachcs.army.mil/TACarchive/ACTNG/Sampson.htm.

            I was recently discussing with Joel Messing (retired Col., son of Chap. Joseph Berglass Messing) the interesting fact that almost none of our fellow Chaplain School brats, at least not those in the Fort Slocum Alumni & Friends network, went into the clergy.  (As Bob Sisk reminded me more recently, John & Bill, sons of Chap. DeVeaux, were both chaplains in the Army.)   However, in a different way many of the brats went into the “family business.”  

It’s scary, but lots of the kids who used to ride the Slocum Navy to school every day seem now to be (or, are married to) retired E-8 & O-5 & O-6 . . .  including one of the Chaplain brats who switched teams and went over to the real Navy.  And became a writer:  hands down, the most prolific writer ever to have lived on Davids’ Island.   

Peter Huchthausen (son of Chap. Walther Huchthausen) graduated from Annapolis in 1962, and his first assignment as an ensign  landed him on the destroyer USS Blandy, smack in the middle of the Cuban missile crisis blockade.   He tells the tale in October Fury (Wiley, 2002)  --  revealing that at the pay grade of submarine captains, Soviet commanders had authorization for nuclear retaliation if fired upon by a US warship.  (And they came VERY close.)  

Oddly, Peter started on surface ships and graduated to swift boats (never submarines!  he was very reluctant), but before retiring at the end of the Cold War as Capt., became Senior U.S. Naval Attache in Moscow and along the way developed special expertise on the Soviet nuclear submarine fleet.  

On that subject he has written K19:  The Widowmaker (National Geographic, 2002) (later a movie starring Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson) and, with Igor Kurdin and R. Alan White, Hostile Waters (St. Martins, 1977) (later an HBO Original Movie).   Tom Clancy is a fan, and probably any Clancy fans will be likewise.  Clancy is not my own cup of tea, but I learned a lot about the technical working of submarines and sonar detection, the bravery of an enemy, and very many hushed-up Soviet nuclear disasters. 

Just recently I was re-watching K-19 on HBO.  It is comparable to Wolfgang Petersen's film Das Boot.     Just as American cinema audiences typically cheer when the Nazi submarine survives against the odds, anyone can appreciate the devotion to duty, honor, and country by which the doomed sailors of the Soviet fleet lived their lives.  The story is a contribution to the received sociological wisdom that, regardless of how we judge the cause they may serve (for better or for worse), all troops share a common bond and lifestyle.  All regimes, honorable or despicable, rely on stand-up guys whose primary motivation is to support their shipmates and comrades;  and often they are sacrificed, fairly or unfairly.

The Court-Martial of Pfc Garbus

            Martin Garbus is a civil liberties lawyer.   He long has been associated with the ACLU and the Baldwin Foundation.   The son of a Holocaust survivor, he defended the free speech rights of the Nazis to march in Skokie.   He was instrumental in helping Ellsberg bring the Pentagon Papers to light.    He defended Lenny Bruce and Cesar Chavez, and was asked by Vaclav Havel to help write the Czech constitution.   

            But he got his start at Ft. Slocum.   His memoir, Tough Talk:  How I Fought for Writers, Comics, Bigots and the American Way (New York:  Three Rivers, 1998) opens with the following:   “The notice from the United States Army read: ‘You are to appear for Court-Martial Proceedings in Room 114 at Fort Slocum, New York, at 0900 hours on the 17^th day of January, 1956.”  

     At 21 a recent graduate from Hunter College, Garbus was assigned to the Army Information School to teach current events.    According to him, he talked in class about reasons why the U.S. should recognize Red China, and about why those who insisted on standing on their Fifth Amendment rights before HUAC should not be fired or jailed.    Junior officers complained to the post CO, who warned Garbus to desist from controversial topics.  The next session, he discussed Sacco and Vanzetti, and the prosecution of Eugene Debs during WWI.   This triggered his court-martial.  

            Nominally the charges were AWOL and disobedience.  (Unofficially, he learned, some members of the court wished to try him for treason.)    On the charges actually filed,   Garbus faced stockade time and a dishonorable discharge.    He was spared this only because an unlikely figure, a senior and much-decorated NCO, stood up in his defense.   One M/Sgt James Hatch asked to speak on the record, told the court what they were doing was wrong, and if they persisted he would take the matter to Washington and go public.

            The Army dropped the charges.   Quietly, Garbus was transferred and lost his security clearance, but was allowed to finish his two years at a Nike facility on Long Island.    (And in fact the story never did go public, until recent years.  It is one of those several events at Ft. Slocum about which we will never find a whisper in the press.)

            His daughter Liz is a documentary filmmaker, and has recently produced “Shouting Fire:  Stories from the Edge of Free Speech.”   It is airing on HBO in July 2009.    We have been in touch with the producers;  while they did not use our material, there is a brief photo at the outset of Garbus revisiting Ft Slocum just before its destruction (bldg. 26 & the water tower in the background). 

            On the subject of those who got their start at Ft Slocum, those in the LA area who listen to KCRW-FM will be familiar with the voice of Warren Olney, who has hosted a number of public-affairs programs over the years.    His introduction to broadcasting was  at the Army Information School.