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was already on its way. But only six weeks after arriving at Fort Devens, the 32nd was getting ready to move again. Few of the men knew what was in the works. What they did know was that they were no longer headed for Europe.
    Katherine Hobson Bailey, wife of Lieutenant Cladie Bailey, had driven to Fort Devens to see her husband off. Bailey, who had been the executive officer of Jastrzembski, Stenberg, and DiMaggio’s G Company, was now its commander.
    Earning the respect of the men of Company G had not been easy for Bailey when he reported to Camp Livingston in April 1941. The first strike against him was that he was an ROTC officer. National Guard units were insular groups, made up of men whose friendships often dated back to high school, even grade school; national guardsmen were not very accepting of outsiders, especially new officers. The second strike was that Bailey, an Indianan, was an interloper among the tightly knit Muskegon, Michigan, men. But Bailey quickly earned the admiration of the men of Company G with a unique combination of charisma, humor, and toughness. As an ROTC second lieutenant, he had done a two-year stint in the Civilian Conservation Corps, and it was in the CCC that Bailey learned how to motivate men. The key was to be right there with them, struggling under a heavy pack, doing the work that they did. When other officers enjoyed the privilege of riding in jeeps to training areas, Bailey chose to walk with his men. When the occasion called for it, he could be decidedly un-military. One member of G Company recalls, “he ran a light ship, making weekend camp fun…no inspections, no reveille, just fun and card games.”
    It did not take long for everyone to realize that the company’s new lieutenant was a natural. And it did not take them long to give Bailey a nickname. The men of G Company simply called their lieutenant “Gus.”
    Gus Bailey was a man from humble roots who made the most of his considerable abilities. A farm boy, he was no stranger to the kind of backbreaking labor that characterized rural life during the Depression. The house he grew up in had no electricity or indoor plumbing.
    His father, Jim Bailey, was a carpenter who built houses and barns all over the county; his mother, Mamie Bailey, sold eggs and cream, and canned with Cladie’s help, but mostly the farm provided just enough for the family, including a once-a-week Sunday chicken supper.
    A standout athlete by the time he reached high school, Cladie swapped the hardcourt for the baseball diamond and became a star pitcher on the Indiana University baseball team that won the Big Ten Championship in 1934. Bailey was no ordinary jock, though. While at IU, he developed a love of Robert Service’s North Woods ballads.
    Poetry wasn’t something he tried to hide in the army, either. Later, the guys of G Company learned to look forward to his recitations of Service poems, which Bailey performed with flourish. Bailey was a poker player, too. Once he got to G Company, it was Bailey who instigated the all-night games, which invariably meant late nights and tables decorated with empty beer bottles.
    It was during the fall of 1940, while Bailey was still teaching and coaching at Heltonville High School, that he and Katherine Hobson began dating. She was a beautiful redhead and recent graduate of Bedford High School, twelve years Bailey’s junior. Given that she was the age of the senior girls strolling the halls of Heltonville High, there might have been some who considered the budding romance improper. If so, Bailey would not have cared a whit. He was as taken with Katherine as she was with him.
    What had first caught her eye was Cladie Bailey’s (Katherine always called him Clade) looks. Bailey was a handsome, square-jawed man with a field of brownish-blond hair. He was a fashionable dresser who wore white starched shirts and pinstriped suits and liked his shoes well polished. But what Katherine had come to love most about him