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Recollections of Duane Hodges

I joined LAUGHS INC - Special Service Platoon #7 - in April 1945. I was transferred from Replacement Depot #14 Headquarters Special Service unit. At the time I was stationed in Neufchateau performing in a theater building that was also our barracks. I remember that Geczi, Levy, Giraldo, Mott, Schram, Altman, Martin, Scharfinan, Whalen, Bonomo, Muti and Overgard were some of the men that remained with LAUGHS INC. at the time I joined.

Previous to LAUGHS INC., after being drafted in 1943, training in Field Artillery at Camp Roberts California, sent to Ft. Meade Maryland (were I had the interesting experience of being camp bugler for a couple of weeks), sent to Boston Army Base and shipped to Liverpool on a converted ocean liner with a few thousand others in May 1944. I was placed in a Replacement Depot and transported to Utah Beach on June 16 to wait my call as a replacement artilleryman. I was a very concerned, young eighteen year old with hundreds of other "strangers" wondering what was going to happen next.

The call never came. One day during the last week of June Sgt. Vince Canova, from Chicago, came to my pup tent in a hedgerow and asks, "Are you Duane Hodges?" "Yes" I answered. Canova ask, "Your records say that you played trombone in high school, is that right?" I answered, "Yes". Sgt. Canova said, "Come with me."

I will never forget that day. We went to a tent at replacement depot headquarters and I learned that the Commanding Officer had brought, from England in his command car, all the essential instruments and music for a small orchestra. It was the CO's idea that the replacements needed entertainment.  Sgt. Canova pointed to a trombone case and told me to assemble the horn and play for him. I did as I he asked by playing some scales and a couple of tunes that came to mind. Canova took me to a music stand where he had the trombone parts to some standard arrangements that were the common music for swing orchestras of the 1930's and 40's - Goodman, Dorsey, Miller - the popular music that we had played in high school dance bands. Sgt. Canova said, "You'll do!" I was the happiest soldier in the ETO. I will never forget his words.

Hodges in Paris
Hodges in Paris, France, September 1945

An orchestra was formed and singers and entertainers were added. A GI show was organized. I was with the 14th through 1944 and the winter of 1945. I kept a memo book of places we were as well as names and addresses some of the musician and entertainers with whom I worked. In October 1945 Laughs Inc. Platoon #7 was dissolved because men with "points" were becoming eligible for discharge. Some of us were reassigned to Platoon # 6 and a new show was produced - 'This Ain't the Army". The scrapbook that I made in 1946 soon after I was back home has pictures and memories of units #14 and #7 and #6.

This information provided  by Duane Harvey Hodges