Our first march was thirty-two miles.

I joined as a shoemaker and they knew it too. And they kept me in the shop all the time, fixing. Fixing shoes. Making, making shoes for people that had flat feet and bunions and fallen arches. Make shoes to fit their feet so they can march. Those days we didn’t have any vehicles to go anywhere. It was all transporting, walked quite a distance. Our first march was thirty-two miles carrying seventy-two pounds on my back. We left the camp there with 12,000 men and we came back from the march, there was 600 of them. They all fell out. One big guy told me I wouldn’t last ten miles. I said, “I’ll be here when you’re on your back, mister.” And I proved I was a better man than he was. I went out all the way and went home all the way, too. That was our first real march we had over there. I didn’t get as far as Belgium or France. They kept me in the shop there, fixing shoes, yeah. They taught me how to kill a man but they didn’t let me do any killing.