Free The Good Life by Tony Bennett

Special Services, the division of the military that had the task of entertaining the occupying troops. The immediate goal of Special Services was to provide as much distraction as possible, to help the troops keep their minds off the fact that they weren’t going home yet. Of course, this was made even more difficult because there was a regulation that the Gls were not allowed to fraternize with German women. That lasted about a week and a half—who else were we going to fraternize with? Even the officers “fraternized” like crazy, if you know what I mean. Before the actual surrender there had been a general call put out that anyone who could entertain—guys who sang, danced, played instruments, did imitations or comedy, anything—shouldreport to Special Services. The way I found out about it was pretty funny: I was singing in the shower, and a passing officer heard me. He said to me, “You know, you’ve got a great voice. You should get into this band they’re forming.” That was the 255th Regiment band.
    The band had originally been organized about a year and a half earlier, in 1943, back at Camp Van Dorn in Centreville, Mississippi. Marlin Merrill, who had been a music teacher back in civilian life, started it. He was something of a misfit in the army—in fact, we all were, and proud of it—and when they first drafted him, he was assigned to drive jeeps. Eventually, whoever was in charge had the good sense to ask him to put together a drum and bugle corps. He found a few guys who could play saxophone and gradually shaped them into a swing band. He eventually gathered up enough musicians to form two full bands. They played dances, USO shows, and other military social functions throughout Mississippi and Louisiana.
    Most of the guys at Camp Van Dorn were given extensive training in jungle warfare and therefore assumed that they’d be shipped to the South Pacific. So they were surprised when they wound up being sent to Germany to fight the Battle of the Bulge.
    The 255th Regiment had been taken out of combat by the middle of May and stationed in the town of Mosbach. To keep the morale of the troops up, the officers in charge began distributing sports equipment and musical instruments. Marlin was given permission to reassemble his band, and he started by trying to find as many men as he could from the original Camp Van Dorn unit. He managed to round up eight of them.
    I was there on the second day of the band’s reformation. I found out where the band was staying, and I approached one of the musicians and told him that I wanted to try out for thesinging job. It turned out I couldn’t have picked a worse guy to ask, since he happened to be the band’s vocalist, George Duley. Half jokingly he answered, “Nobody gets my job, son.” But he helped me get an audition, and when they liked what they heard, George and Marlin went to the colonel and arranged for me to be transferred to the band. George quickly put together three background singers, and together we formed the band’s vocal quartet.
    Marlin Merrill was a remarkable guy. He was never officially made an officer, even though he was in charge of all of us and even though there was at least one corporal in the band. He couldn’t have been more than thirty years old, but he seemed ancient to the rest of us. We were only eighteen or nineteen, so we affectionately called him Pops. Marlin conducted the band and wrote all the arrangements. He would get what we called hit kits, a collection of lead sheets or piano lines to the latest songs from back home, and he’d score them himself He had such a great ear that he didn’t even need a piano. He’d work out all the difficult transitions and create a chart, which consisted of writing out the individual musical parts for every instrument in the orchestra, in an hour. The band always sounded great.
    We’d go to a different location in Mosbach every day and entertain the soldiers. I remember how glad I was to get