My grandfather and WW II
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As promised, following is the account that my grandfather wrote me of his participation in World War II. There were some things that were difficult to read or the places had weird spellings... I tried to look up some of the places as best I could and there are only two or so words or places that I wasn't sure of. This entry is quite lengthy, close to 4,000 words and is over 8 typed pages long (17 hand-written). It reads:
April, 2004
Dear Lauren,
At one time you were quite interested in WWII. I'm not sure if you still are, so here goes. This is pretty much a copy of an account of my personal involvement, which I had sent to someone else.
I was not too surprised when one of the Axis Powers attacked us on Dec. 7, 1941. Our Navy was already escorting British merchant ships in the Atlantic Ocean, dropping depth charges on German subs, and gave the British 50 destroyers. We also prevented Japan from buying any oil from any source, strangling its economy.
When I was 19, I enlisted (volunteered) in the Army Air Force for the duration of the war plus six months. I was sworn in on December 10, 1942 and promptly sent to Camp Meade, my reception center. There we were marched between 2 rows of Medics and injected with smallpox, typhus, tetanus, and other goody vaccines.
I was sent to Miami Beach for Basic Training. Sounds like a good deal, right? Quartered in a hotel in Florida and January. The rooms were bare except for 6 Army bunks - in 2 stacks of 3, and a bathroom. We were on the 8th floor and were forbidden to use the elevators (officers only). We had to run up and down the stairs to get into formation before roll call, on an empty lot across the street. The city was blacked out at night because German subs had been lurking off the coast and were picking off ships which were silhouetted against the lighted cities. We couldn't use the beaches because of all the oil and wreckage from the sunken ships.
While there, I was told that my I.Q. and other tests were very high and I could apply for Officers Candidate School, but by now I had developed negative feelings toward many officers and instead chose to go to photo school at Lowry Field near Denver.
I was shipped to Lowry in early February. What a difference in weather - from sunshine and 80? to snow every other day and 15? below zero in the morning. Also, there was the change in altitude, from sea level to 5,300'. It was hard breathing in the thin air, and tougher yet when the drill instructors insisted we put on our gas masks and run for a mile at a time.
After learning the Army way of developing still, movie, and aerial photographs and camera installation and repairs, we finally graduated and were sent to our units. I was sent to Fort Dix Army Air Base. This was a pretty good deal for me because I could get home for a while on weekends.
We were alerted for overseas duty in early December, 1943. For some reason my girlfriend (in Baltimore) and I decided to get married before I left. We decided to get married the night of December 21. I caught the train from Trenton to Baltimore, where my girlfriend was waiting for me, and informed me that we couldn't marry that night because she'd forgotten to get a marriage license, and we'd have to try again the next night. So again I hopped the train to Baltimore, but this time there was a train wreck ahead, and we were delayed for 3 hours. I didn't get to the church until 11, instead of 8 pm. By then, the priest had gone to bed and we had to get him up and round up the witnesses. We finally married at 12:15 in the morning. When we got back to Trenton, I had to take a cab to Fort Dix to get back before roll call (I was technically A.W.O.L.), and sneaked into camp through a drainage ditch under the security fence. My first sergeant was a grizzled, tough transferee from the infantry, and I figured he would give me a hard time when I told him. He was tough but he was fair, and told me he wasn't sure whether he should congratulate me or chew my butt out. I told him I deserved a little of both.
A couple of weeks later we were sent down to Camp Patrick Henry, in preparation to shipping out overseas. While I was on guard duty there, a race riot broke out and a number of soldiers were killed. While I was running toward the PX (Post Exchange) a bullet was fired from inside where there was fighting and passed through the door just as I was opening it. There was an immediate curfew, and those of us on guard duty were ordered to shoot anyone outside the barracks.
By mid-January we were herded on board the French cargo-passenger ship Athos II. Athos I had been sunk. We boarded the ship at Newport-News. The mouth of the Chesapeake Bay at Norfolk had an anti-submarine net across it so we had to wait for it to be opened up for us to get into the Atlantic Ocean. My bunk was the top one in a stack of 4, with a hot steam pipe a couple of inches from my nose. We were at the very bottom of the ship, just above the bilge, way below the water-line. We knew there was no way we could survive a torpedo attack. I had another disadvantage. Our life jackets consisted of 2 small inflatable inner tubes fastened together, which could be inflated by 2 CO2 cartridges by pulling a string. My inner tubes were both punctured, so were worthless. When I notified the sergeant-in-charge, he said, "Too bad, we don't have any more." Navy blimps kept an eye on us the first day out, and then we picked up 2 destroyers for escorts. We steamed south and entered the Panama Canal for transit to the Pacific Ocean. However, we damaged our rudder in the canal and the ship had to go into drydock for repairs while we stayed at Fort Clayton in the Canal Zone.
It took about a week for repairs and then we were on our way again, without and escort. When we were about 1,000 miles west of the Galapagos Islands, we had another mishap. The 2 engines on the ship apparently had been sabotaged by some of the French crew. Actually, France had surrendered to Germany, and many of the crew felt that the war was over for them, and they shouldn't be in a war zone. We bobbed around, helplessly for about a day. Luckily, we weren't attacked by a sub. Finally, a small auxiliary engine was put into service and we hobbled back to the Canal for repairs again. We disembarked, and we back to Fort Clayton. Some of the French crew were arrested.
Departing from the Canal Zone once again, we headed into the Pacific Ocean, escorted by a Dutch cruiser. We often think of the French for good food, but of course we were on a troops ship, so all bets were off. The food was horrible. One hundred per cent of us came down with diarrhea or other problems. One time my mess kit was adorned with only the severed head of a chicken, with all of its feathers and eyes and beak. I couldn't eat it.
On another occasion we very nearly hit a mine. The ship suddenly rolled over on its starboard side, and narrowly missed hitting a floating mine (probably a magnetic mine).
We steamed on to Ulithi, where an Australian plane captured by the Japanese flew over the anchorage, dropping bombs which sank a ship.
From there we steamed on to the Society Island group, where we anchored in the lagoon of the island of Bora-Bora. This was the most beautiful island I had ever seen. It had everything - a beautiful lagoon, a high, rugged, cloud-covered mountain, sandy beaches, palm trees, natives in out-rig canoes coming out to sell us fresh tropical fruit (which we craved!!), and diving for coins tossed overboard.
From there we steamed to the west coast of Australia, to Freemantle and Perth. The Australians were wonderful. They were very hart hit by the war. They had very little food, and very little oil. The first thing we noticed while docking was the absence of young and even middle-aged people. Old people were loading and unloading the ships. All the others were fighting in the war. As I said, the Australians were terrific to me. They shut down many businesses so the gals could escort us around to see the sights and sounds of the area. It was interesting to note that all the buses, trucks, and cars were powered by small trailers carrying charcoal burners. They had no "petrol".
Also, people insisted on providing us with a meal. They had so little, but they insisted on sharing what they had with us. Their food consisted mostly of jack rabbits shot on the prairie, and cabbage. And they insisted on no payment for anything.
Western Australia was very much like our old west. The streets were unpaved. They had wooden boardwalks for sidewalks, with false fronts in front of their businesses. They drove cattle through the middle of the dusty streets.
But the war was on. We were in the Bay of Bengal, and smelled smoke, burning flesh, and other nauseas fumes a day before we saw any land.
We were appalled by what we saw when we entered Bombay Harbor. It was a disaster area. The entire harbor was devastated. Huge ships were upside-down, hulls up, end up, sunken, partially on land, partially sunk, and many square blocks of the harbor engulfed in flames. Nobody was fighting the fires, because the fire department and all of its personnel had been destroyed. Welcome to war.
We boarded a train, and crept through about a mile, with burning buildings on both sides of the train, heading east toward the eastern Indian front. The train was horrible, 3rd class for us. There weren't enough benches for all of us to sit down at one time, so we took turns - 12 hours standing, 12 hours sitting. The so-called bathroom facility consisted of a six-inch hole in the floor. We had no water for washing or shaving, or teeth cleaning for 4 days. We did not smell great. Even the insects avoided us.
We finally arrived at our destination in eastern India in late April of 1944. Our families finally heard from us after 3 months.
India was a very, very different place from where any of us had been to. The first night I was in India I was put on guard duty with a Gurkha. Gurkhas are short people, very warlike, from Nepal. Like most people in that area, they hated the British. When I was on guard with him, he drew his Gurkha knife, threw a small piece of bamboo into the air and split in two. He said, "British corrupt." I tried to explain to him, "Not British - American!" However, a Gurkha never draws his knife without drawing blood. In this instance, his own, since I convinced him I was not British.
So how was the war in India? I was there nearly a year. I was in the provinces of Bihar (sp?) and Bengal, in eastern India. I was assigned to the 20th Air Force, mostly involved with photography. We had Indian Units fighting for us and against us, which was understandable, since the British were an occupying force, and the Japanese claimed they would liberate India. Many Indians were against us. We would find our soldiers with their throats slit, or otherwise dispatched. Occasionally, we would be bombed, but not much. The real problem was heat and disease. Nearly everyone came down with malaria and or dengue fever. My main problem was dysentery. We had a tough time with malaria because the Japanese had captured the sources of quinine.
India was a depressing place in which to be. The people were unbelievably poor. At first we Americans tried to help by giving to the poor, but it was too overwhelming. More than 1 million Indians starved to death during that famine of 1944. The death rate from smallpox was probably close to that also. During the year in India, morale went down to a low point. I was working nearly 100 hours a week in the photo lab, mostly at night because it was too hot (120 degrees) during the day. The emulsion would come off the film base and resulted in blank film. Also, the B-29's metal would be too hot to service during the day. We had to try to get a little bit of shut-eye during the day. However, during this time period, our B-29's were attempting to hit military targets. In the States, we had been told that the Norton (?) bomb-sighting device was so accurate that we could put a bomb in the center of a barrel from an altitude of 15,000 feet. I was really disappointed when I saw the results. Our bombs often landed ? (1/2) mile from the targets - shipbuilding facilities, barracks, airfields, and other military targets. They often landed on mud hut villages and rice paddies.
I was put on alert to fly the "HUMP" (Himalayas) into China to "A-1" the code name for Chungking (?) with a load of bombs. I really looked forward to it because I hated our chow (mostly very tough, gristly water buffalo and powdered eggs). In China, they had real eggs and fresh poultry. I was packed up and ready to go (along with a load of bombs) for a week, but every night there was a problem - very poor weather, or too many Japanese fighter activity, or bombings of the airfields.
In India, we were bombed only occasionally. An anti-aircraft cannon would fire one shell into the air for a one-ball alert when the enemy planes were 100 miles from us, 2 shells for a 2 ball alert when they were 50 miles away, and 3 shells when they were overhead. However, it was a tough decision whether to jump into the slit trenches - usually full of water, snakes, scorpions, etc. Every single day we saw cobras in our tent area, and sometimes pythons and other large snakes. Scorpions often crawled into our shoes at night, so we shook our shoes out in the morning. In fact, I did this ritual for 5 years every morning even after returning from India, it was so habit forming. Sometimes herds of rogue elephants would come tearing through the area. We never experienced any damage from them, however. Some of the native villages were destroyed by them. One night, alone in my tent, I saw these two yellow eyes glaring at me. In the morning I found the footprints of a large cat - probably a leopard.
So many of us started to die off that the Army decided to send us to rest camps in Northern India. I was sent to Renakatt (?) in the Himalayas, in a convoy of buses. There were no guardrails on these extremely dangerous narrow mountain roads and one of our buses went off the road and we suffered 50 casualties. A few buddies and I decided to climb a nearby mountain, which we climbed from 5 in the morning until 5 in the evening, fighting baboons who threw rocks at us for invading their area. When we finally reached the top (way above the clouds) we found an inscription on a rock - "KILROY WAS HERE," so we weren't the first G.I.'s to reach that height.
I was sent to newly invaded Marianas Islands, to Tinian, and assigned to the 462nd bomb group. There were quite a few Japanese soldiers still holding out on the island, hiding in caves and bunkers and sugarcane fields. We were sniped at at times. The B-29 tactics had changed. No longer were military targets the prime targets. Cities were targeted. There were very heavily firebombed. Even some of the bomber crews were uneasy - they could smell the burning flesh even inside their high altitude planes.
If I may digress - back to India. I have very vivid memories or being on burial details. I remember seeing one of our planes come down - straight down into a flaming, smoking mess, and then put in his burial detail within an hour. There was so much metal mixed in with his body 6 of us could barely lift the box with him in it. Even more disturbing was his blood still running out of the bottom of the box, which was loosening.
Back to Tinian. Stand on any spot on Tinian, and you can pick up bomb or shell fragments, such was the carnage on the island. As I noted, Jap soldiers were still on the island. I was assigned to the 10th Photo Lab, 462 Bomb Group. Atrocious acts were committed by both sides. I was witness to some.
There is nothing glorious about war. I was, of course involved with the 10th Photo Lab. We developed and printed the pictures of the Atomic Bombs' devastations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. How do I feel about their use?
I'm still in a state of limbo on this. I have mixed feelings, even now. On one hand - I feel terrible about the loss of many innocent lives which were snuffed out and even more for the ones who suffered so much and later died while in agony. On the other hand, maybe the atomic bombings gave the Japanese Government an excuse to quit the war. Probably a million or more soldiers would have been killed, and even more civilians had the war continued.
Life on Tinian was a mixed bag. It was dangerous, because of the Japanese holdouts. But the food was better, because some vegetables could be raised on the island, even though the majority of it was covered by sugarcane fields. And oddly enough, some goats have survived the bombings and shellings, so we milked them for a rarity we hadn't tasted in 1 ? years - fresh milk!!
The weather was better than we had in India. It got hot, but there was nearly always a breeze, because it was an island only about 4 miles wide, and about 11 miles long. One time 2 other guys and I decided to go swimming and ran into trouble. A riptide suddenly came up and none of us could make it back to shore. I tried and tried, and finally was so exhausted, I gave up and thought this was the end. The tide carried me out, then suddenly into a calm cove, where I was able to get in to shore. One of the others was carried all the way to the island of Saipan, about 5 miles away. The other was never found. The strange tides were caused by an approaching typhoon, which nobody told us about. That's one thing we enlisted men resented. We always felt we were "mushrooms" - fed a lot of fertilizer and kept in the dark. The sky became darker and threatening, and we saw the Navy ships pull up anchor and steam away, and the flyable planes all left, and the VIP's all left, and only the "expendable" were left on the island. I saw 4 tornadoes and waterspouts at the same time, forerunners of the typhoon which was approaching. It hit us dead on - destroying most of our structures and remaining planes. It was impossible to stand up. Chunks of coral were like cannonballs. Suddenly the tempest stopped and the sun appeared. We thought it was over. But actually the "eye" of the typhoon passed over us, and in a short time we were hit by the other half of the storm. All the pieces of buildings, sheets of sheet metal, coral, etc. came at us from the other direction. The whole island shook from the pounding seas. For several days we had no electricity or food. The first food we got, oddly enough was ice cream made from powder.
There were more than 8,000 Japanese troops on Tinian when we invaded it. Most of them considered surrendering a disgrace, even though they were totally overwhelmed. I talked with a few of the prisoners-of-war. They said they were given hand grenades to blow themselves up in order to avoid capture. These few threw away their grenades and surrendered anyway. On Tinian, where I was, there was a Marine Colonel who valued human life and tried to get Japanese holdouts to surrender rather than continue fighting or blow themselves up. He was known as the "Pied Piper of Tinian". He, and Japanese POW's would go into the remote areas where we knew the holdouts were, and try to get the others to give up their impossible situation.
One night on Tinian I was thee C.Q. (Charge of Quarters) in the lab and a number of Japanese soldiers were trying to break in and cut the phone lines. They probably thought some food was available. I couldn't call for help because of the cut phone lines. I ran around locking the doors just as they were trying to come in.
In another incident, I was taking a shortcut through a sugar cane field at twilight, when a Japanese soldier and I ran into each other on a narrow path. We were only about 2 feet from each other. He was armed with his rifle, I with only a bamboo walking stick. We were eyeball to eyeball. I thought this was it. We both spun around and ran off in opposite directions. I still don't know why he didn't dispatch me with his rifle butt. I hope he made it through the war and made it back to his family.
There was a small island only 3 miles from us named Aguigan, which was still held by the Japanese. It apparently was supplied occasionally by Japanese subs, because an anti aircraft gun their occasionally fired phosphorous shells at our aircraft (and us).
After we used Atomic weapons against Hiroshima, we expected the Japanese would use gas against us to retaliate. We were under order to keep our gas masks with us 24 hours a day. Instead, they surrendered.
A point system was used for the demobilization of the armed forces. Months of service, overseas duty, combat, etc. were taken into consideration for release. I had 3-4 times the number of points for release as far as decorations I had the "Good Conduct Medal", "American Campaign Medal" (Anti-Sub at Tate Lin?), "Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal", "World War II Victory Medal", and battles and campaigns - "Air Offensive Japan, China, India, Burma, and Air Combat Palembang Sumatra."
It was over. I flew back to the States on a battle damaged B-29 from Guam. I had survived the war, but was so afraid something would happen. We were hit by lightning during a storm. We almost hit a parked plane a Hicham Field in Hawaii, because we were communicating with one field while landing at another, and our number 4 engine caught on fire 400 miles off of California, and of course lost altitude. But we eventually made it to Sacremento.
I was honorably discharged on November 16, 1945 and went back to my wife Margaret in Baltimore.
I went back to work at the Baltimore Gas & Electric Company as an apprentice Draftsman and worked my way up to Engineering Designer and Senior Engineer responsible for Concrete and Structural Steel Design for Power Plants, General Plant, Substation and Transmission Construction.
Anyway, I hope you found at least some of this informative and interesting. Forgive my terrible penmanship (and grammar). My penmanship has deteriorated since my surgery for Dupuytren's contractures.
Love,
Grandpop
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