e spent six weeks at Carlisle Barricks in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He was then assigned, along with scores of other black army officers and G.I.s, to Fort Huachuca, a desert outpost in Arizona.

It was one of two main distribution points—Tuskeegee being the other—for black soldiers. From Fort Huachuca, he was shuttled to Fort Clark, Texas and from there, in March 1944, to a P.O.E. (port of embarkation) at Camp Patrick Henry, near Newport News, Virginia.