|
Robert
Stephens Memories of his time with the 596th Signal Company (Support)
Arrival
to 596th at Fort Benning, Georgia
"I figured as a garrison
clerk he was just not used to soldiering."
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I had been in Germany for over three years with the 123rd Signal
Battalion of the 3rd Infantry Division. In late April, 1961, I had
departed from that assignment, returning to the United States on the
troopship USNS Patch, the same one which we had gone to Germany on in
1958. We had been due to land at Brooklyn Army Terminal early on 6
May, but the ship had been delayed by fog going around the north end of
the British Isles and we had landed late in the day. We finally
off-loaded, moved into a huge shed where we were given a short
orientation about what was to happen next. The great majority of
the troops were to move to Fort Hamilton where they would be processed
for discharge. For those of us going on to other assignments, we
were to go past tables where our orders would be stamped showing our
arrival date, after which we would be free to find our own ways to
wherever we were going. For those of us who had shipped
automobiles from Germany, we were told the vehicle processing center was
just around the corner. We were also told they would close at 1700 (5
pm), regardless how many people may be waiting to pick cars up, and, it
being Friday, they would than remain closed until Monday morning.
I managed to be one of the first ones out of the shed and hurried to the
vehicle area, not having any intention of staying in New York until
Monday. It took very little time to pick up my little black
Renault from the center. Outside of being a little dirtier, it was
just as I had left it when I turned it in at Bremerhaven about a months
before. There were a good number of other people still trying to
process their cars when I got mine and I hoped they would be able to get
done in time, especially the ones I saw with families along.
However, I could not worry about them, as I loaded my duffel bag into
the Renault and started it up.
Going out the gate of Brooklyn Army Terminal I drove less than a block
before pulling into the first service station I saw. For shipping,
all gasoline was drained from vehicles. The terminal put in only a
gallon or so before the vehicles were claimed. The Renault only
held eight gallons so it took little time to have it filled up, while I
checked the oil and cleaned the windshield. It also allowed me to
ask the attendant for directions to confirm the small strip map which
the terminal had given me, showing various ways out of the New York
area. Leaving the station I had only a short drive to the landing
where I drove directly onto a Staten Island Ferry. I had long
heard of those ferries, especially in books and movies. Now I had
the chance to ride on one. (That, of course, was several years before
they built the bridge across the mouth of New York Harbor). Riding
over to Staten Island I had a good view of the Statue of Liberty, as
well as the New York skyline. Once landed on Staten Island it
seemed a long drive to reach the New Jersey Turnpike and it was dark by
the time I did. The last time (and the only time) I had been on
the turnpike had been on a bus in November, 1957, when another man and I
had gone from Fort Dix, New Jersey, to New York and back, having secured
a weekend pass while at the Dix replacement company waiting for orders
to the 999th Signal Company. |
I left the turnpike, exiting into Delaware, and finally stopped at a
cheap motel for the night. I am no longer even sure what state
that was in, but I was tired enough not to care, and I slept good for my
first night in the United States. I got an early start on Saturday
morning, with the sunroof of the Renault opened, enjoying the air.
I passed through Washington early enough so there was little traffic.
That was in the days before the interstates and I went right pass the
capitol building on US 1. In Virginia I experienced the
Richmond-St Petersburg Turnpike. The New Jersey Turnpike issued a
card when one first drove onto it, and that card was returned at the
exit, allowing one to drive the entire turnpike without slowing
down. The Richmond-St Petersburg Turnpike, by contrast, used
tollbooths every few miles where it was required to stop and pay a small
amount. To this day I can not understand what the purpose is of
having a turnpike if one is constantly having to stop.
Anyway, the driving was pleasant and the traffic was fairly light for
the entire trip. I stopped again for the night at a country motel
in mid-Georgia, before going into Fort Benning on Monday morning.
I was hoping the two boxes of "hold baggage" I had shipped
from Germany might have arrived there, but they had not, the clerk
telling me it would probably be another week or so. After that it
was a long drive westward to my home in Louisiana, where I spent a
fairly pleasant leave. (During that leave I made a round-trip to
Benning to secure the boxes. An old school friend, Billy Shaw,
went with me. At that time he was attending Louisiana Tech.
Later he went on to Tulane University to get his law degree.)
One other item about the trip and leave. I grew up in the sunshine
of Louisiana and never had any trouble with the sun. But for three
years I had been in Germany where the sunshine in any great amount was a
rare thing. I quickly found out my body had changed during those
three years and I could no longer tolerate much sun. I managed to
get my head and left arm badly burned during the first full day of the
trip. Thereafter I closed the car's sunroof and kept my left arm
off the door.
When my leave was about up, I again faced to the east and headed for
Benning and my new assignment. My orders called for the 1st
Infantry Brigade (later the 197th). I had no idea why I was
assigned to them, but I had been told they had a small signal
detachment, including two AN/MRC-69 Radio Terminal Sets. Reporting
into Benning in early June I found the assignment to the brigade was
just an administrative procedure. I processed into the Benning
replacement detachment early one morning. They were located in the
middle of the south side of the middle quartel. I was only there
for an hour or so when I was called up to the counter. The clerk
(a private first class, I believe) handed me a stack of orders and told
me he hated to do it to me. Asking what he was talking about, he
pointed out the back windows to a company sized unit holding a
formation. He said that was the 596th Signal Company to which I
was assigned. I asked him what was wrong with that, and he said
they held formations at least three times a day, in addition to always
marching around. I did not say too much in reply, having come from
a line unit which did all those things. I figured as a garrison
clerk he was just not used to soldiering.
END
Part I Section 1 |
As the 596th was in the same quartel, the southwestern end, I did not
have far to go in order to report. I carried my orders, personnel
records, and finance records to the orderly room and reported to First
Sergeant Harvey Spencer for the first time. I did not even have to
move my car from its parking space.
The 596th Signal Company (Support) was assigned directly to the Third
United States Army. Why they were at Benning I do not know.
Maybe, as the old joke goes, everybody has to be somewhere. They, as a
lone company with no parent organization, were attached to the United
States Army Infantry Center Troop Command (USAICTC). USAICTC
was an "umbrella" outfit which all the "garrison"
troops at Benning came under for control, personnel, finance, etc.
As far as I can remember and knew, the 596th was the only Table of
Organization and Equipment (TO&E) unit there. Everything else
under USAICTC were Table of Distribution and Authorization (TDA) (or
"garrison") units.
The first day or two in the company are blurred in my memory. I was
assigned to the Radio Relay and Carrier Platoon. The platoon sergeant at
the time was a master sergeant (E-7) whose name I cannot remember how to
spell, and having lost all my old orders I cannot look it up.
Everyone in the platoon, when the first sergeant or any officers were
not in ear shot, called him Swede. He, along with several other of
the senior non-commissioned officers had been with the company for
several years, or at least so I was told. The platoon leader, who
I did not meet right away, was Lieutenant Keith Clum.
I was taken to the platoon quarters on the second floor. The old
quartels had been built in the 1930s. The platoon had one huge
"bay" where the lower ranks had their bunks. There was a
medium sized room on the west end of the building where most of the
sergeants had quarters.
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There were also three individual rooms in
between the medium room and platoon bay where three senior sergeants
(E-5s) slept. One was occupied (as I was to find out) by a SGT
Burney, one by SGT Cox, and the third by an acting sergeant. The
acting sergeant was evicted and moved to the medium room and I moved
into his small room. (I felt a little bad about him having to move
out, but that was the system. I was a sergeant with a year and a half in
grade. As I discovered, most of our sergeants were
"acting" sergeants. They wore the stripes and did the
job, but did not get the pay. Only after we moved to Germany would
most of them be promoted to E-5.) My room looked out onto the
sidewall which ran into the first floor door, right where the quartel
bent on the southwest corner. I also had a good view of some of the
large oak trees which had been planted by troop labor in the 1930s. It
was a small room, but very comfortable.
Processing in also involved drawing "field" equipment,
bedding, and other required items from supply. I set to work to get my
wall locker and footlocker straightened out and everything put
away. I had to go to vehicle registration and get my Fort Benning
decal for the Renault. That involved meeting LT Clum in order to
get his signature on the proper form.
One of the first things I was told was the company was preparing to go
to the field for its annual Army Training Test. I would not be
going out for that but most of the company would be leaving early on
Monday morning. That Sunday night I met SGT Cox. I had been
introduced to him before but only in passing. He had the middle of
the three small rooms. Sunday night he knocked on my door and
asked if I had a car. He wanted me to take him to the NCO club to
get a case of beer to take to the field. I drove him over, than
back past the motor pool so he could place the case in his truck.
END Part I Section 2 |
-END PART I-
Settling
in
Very
early Monday morning the company moved out for its annual Army Training
Test. I did not go because I was new to the unit, but outside of a
few other people, the entire company was committed. The company was
spread out a good bit of northwest Georgia for the exercise, with teams
as far away as almost on the Tennessee state line. As for myself,
I had been told by SFC (E-6) Nix to report to him at the orderly room
early that day. Nix was the senior man left behind. We were
to take care of the orderly room during the day, with another E-5 acting
as charge of quarters each night. There was almost nothing to do
except answer the telephone, and there were almost no telephone
calls. We mainly sat around, read the paper, and went to the snack
bar once or twice a day for coffee. As best as I can recall the company
started coming back on Wednesday afternoon. Because they had been
spread out over such a vast area, they dribbled in a few at a
time. Some of the teams which had been in north Georgia did not
make it back until early Thursday morning.
Being new, I was left out of post-exercise meetings, but everyone was
keyed up and sure they had done a good job. I never heard any
official results of the test. I assume they must have been
positive overall as we did not go into any remedial training period as
was usual after an ATT did not go well.
SGT J.T. Cox, my neighbor, knocked on my door again Thursday evening
following the final formation. He wanted to know if I wanted to go
to town. He said, being Thursday, Happy Hour would be on at Gray's
Cafe, with large frosted steins of beer going for a nickel. I said
that was fine with me and I proceeded to change clothes. Cox came
back, bringing Otis Gauntney with him, my first meeting with that
man. Cox asked if it was okay if Gauntney went with us and I had
no objection. I do not remember if Gauntney at the time was a private
first class (PFC E-3) or a specialist-four (SP4 E-4). I will not
go into details about him here, having devoted a section to him in
earlier "Characters" writings. It was the first time the
three of us went to town together, but far from the last.
Gray's Cafe was on Old Lumpkin Road and had Happy Hour from 1800 to 2000
(6 to 8 pm) each Thursday. They had large glass mugs of great
draught beer for 5 cents each. The mugs were wet, frozen, and
taken out just before the beer was added. It was some of the
finest beer, and coldest, I ever had in the states. Gray's also had a
grill which provided some of the best hamburgers around. We
enjoyed Gray's for those two hours and changed to vodka for the rest of
the night. (There were a number of good drive-ins along Victory
Drive which served good food. That was before any of the chain
outfits such as McDonalds ever arrived. There was one older
Krystal's across town).
During that era Columbus allowed beer to be sold across the counter.
Mixed drinks were a no-no. One could purchase a bottle at a local
package store and take the bottle to a bar. At the bar we would
order glasses and ice and mix which we paid for, than mix our own
drinks. All that was legal so long as the bar people had nothing
to do with the alcohol. Alabama was slightly different.
They, the customer, could provide the bottle, the bartender could label
the bottle with the customer's name, keep it behind the bar and serve
only that customer mixed drinks made from the customer's own
bottle. At the time, also, there was no required closing time in
Columbus for drinking establishments. Most of them would close not long
after midnight, depending on customers, but there were at least two on
Victory Drive which closed only for about an hour each morning for
clean-up. |
Cox, Gauntney, and myself soon found places where we could enjoy Happy
Hours almost every night, Monday through Saturday. We also
discovered where the country music was. Sunday "Blue
Laws" still were in effect in Georgia. All bars and package
stores had to close from Midnight Saturday until midnight Sunday. Most
stayed closed until Monday afternoon, except for the two on Victory
Drive which opened again at one minute past midnight on Monday
morning. We did not always go to those bars. We also liked
to stop at an old restaurant on Victory Drive which had great hotcakes,
along with a jukebox which contained many Jimmy Davis records.
(The "blue laws" also kept almost all retail establishments
closed on Sundays.)
All the nightly activity might have worn us out, but we did take nights
off. Sometimes we would go to a movie or to the non-commissioned
officers club before retiring early. I early on found out work
during the day was not too hard. I was assigned to a team.
At the time we did not have separate radio terminal/relay/carrier
teams. Our shelters all had combined equipment. Each had a
AN/TRC-36 radio set, a AN/TCC-7 carrier, and an eight-channel AN/TCC-4
telegraph carrier. That was the setups we used until we arrived in
Germany in October, 1961, and split the equipment between the Radio
Terminal/Relay section and the Carrier Section.
My team, as all the others, had a 2-1/2 ton truck with a shelter mounted
on it. We did not have any of the new type shelters, but the ones
we had worked great. I have described them in other writings and
will not do so again here. We also had a 3/4 ton truck for a team
support vehicle, along with a 3/4 ton trailer. We carried all our
antenna equipment in the 3/4 trailer, keeping the truck free for other
uses. We also had a 1-1/2 ton trailer behind each 2-1/2 ton
truck. Those trailers contained two 5-kilowatt gasoline powered
generator sets. Most of the generators were PU-286(*)/G
types. Many of them were the older unlettered models, with a
six-volt electrical system. They were good sets but the six-volt
system gave a lot of trouble. I was lucky enough to have one A
Model and one B model PU-286. They both had twenty-four volt electrical
systems which provided much better cranking power for the engine.
The only main difference between the A and B models was the cover
provided on the B which covered the control panel and kept it dry and
clean.
Mornings in the 596th started with a 0530 wake-up, the charge of
quarters (CQ) going through the barracks turning on lights and blowing a
whistle. Often the CQ would turn on the light switch in a platoon
bay with no results. The old bays had high ceilings, with open
light fixtures. There were long poles with baskets on the end
which were used to change light bulbs. The troops would use them
to unscrew the light bulbs as they went to bed, allowing other people to
keep lights near their bunks on. Sometimes they would all be unscrewed
and the CQ usually could not find the poles. All one could do was
blow the whistle and yell at them to screw the bulbs back in place.
People living in the barracks had revile formation each morning, Monday
through Saturday. On Mondays we were joined by all the off-post
personnel for company command revile. The off-post personnel did
not like that, having to come in early and having little to do until
work formation. The on-post people did not like it because the
off-post people, following the 0600 (6am) revile formation, crowded the mess hall,
hung around the barracks, and just generally got in the way.
Saturdays were usually inspection days, depending on what the company
commander felt like, and we got off at noon. |
-END PART II-
In
addition to myself there were three operators on my team. The
senior man was a repairman (MOS 294) officially. As with so many
signal units, there were too many maintenance people and a number were
always assigned as operators. Like so many other names, his has
been lost to memory. I believe it may have been Schuler or
something similar, and for convenience I will call him that during this
narrative. Another operator has also had his name disappear
from my mind. He would turn out to have a medical condition which
would disturb me when I found out about it while we were in South
Carolina, and which would return him from Germany for discharge later. The third man was
Bender, who I never had any trouble with and who was an excellent
operator. The only trouble with Bender was that he could not hold
his tongue with other sergeants and officers. Try as I did later
to have him promoted to sergeant, he was still a specialist-four when I
left the 596th, all because he could not resist telling people what he
thought.
I have mentioned MSG "Swede," the
Radio Relay and Carrier platoon sergeant. I wish I had my orders
so I could get the names correct. His was one none of us could
pronounce right. He had been with the company for a long time,
even when they had been in Germany before and possibly before the
company had gone to Germany in the 1950s. We also had several
sergeants first class (SFC) (E-6) who had been around the unit for
awhile. SFC Kibble served as the platoon supply and maintenance coordinator. SFC French was another.
There were others whom
I have forgotten. They would all go to Germany with us but not
stay long. Kibble would be the first to return, for retirement as
far as I knew. Swede would not be far behind him. French
would stay longer, long enough to cosign a loan for SFC Nix, at Captain
Payne's "request" and "urging", and long enough to
find Nix defaulting on the loan, so that France had to pay the
entire thing. I would run into France at Fort Gordon many
years later. He would be retired and working a civilian job there,
but we were both hurrying somewhere and did not have time to talk.
I ran into Swede in 1965 or 1966 at Benning. He came up to be
while I was sitting in the old beer hall which used to be next to the
Main Post gym/swimming pool building. He was working, as a
civilian, for Benning Post Signal. He had a pole line truck and
crew and was in charge of keeping all the telephones on the ranges
working. We had the chance to enjoy a beer together and talk for a
short time. He was sober and seemed to be enjoying himself.
I was glad of that. I do not think there was anyone in the
company who did not like and respect Swede, unless it was the company
commander and first sergeant.
One thing about the company at Benning, we
never had much of a training schedule. Most of the time it merely
said motor pool duties or some such thing. After morning formation
the "sick, lame, and lazy" would drop out of formation and the
first sergeant or the company commander would march the company to the
motor pool. There everyone above platoon sergeant would disappear
until the 1300 (1pm) formation, when we would return to the motor pool
following the noon break. Once in the motor pool Swede and most of
the E-6s would retire to the platoon office, where they would stay most
of the time. The rest of us would go to our trucks and do what
needed to be done. There was never too much to do.
Once we had checked the trucks and generators we had little work left
over. |
Many days I would climb up into the shelter,
open a technical manual onto the heater cover (which made a good table),
pull a chair up close and take a nap. My crew would be out behind
the truck somewhere, talking or playing cards. There would be a
number of card games going on each day. Our motor pool was one of
the old tank parks built early on, before or just after the start of
World War II. We had pull-through sheds which provided shade from
the Georgia sun. If any officers came into the motor park there
would be plenty of warning from the people closer to the gate.
However, our officers tended to stay away from the motor park.
That type duty was all new to me. I had
come from a division signal battalion where we had always had work or
training to do. I did not feel right about goofing off so much but
I also did not feel right about "rocking the boat" when they
had things the way they wanted them.
We did have one day of range firing scheduled
in June for people who had not fired their weapons lately.
Probably twenty-five percent of the company had to go to the range,
including me. I drew a carbine, which I was told later belonged to
someone else. We fired on one of the KD (known distance) ranges on
Main Post, using the standard targets, instead of the pop-up
"Train-fire" targets which was by than standard for
qualification. At least the day on the range broke up the
monotony.
In June, also, we were told there was a possibility
that if the United States sent any units to Viet Nam, the
596th Signal Company would likely be one of them. We were never
told very much about that possibility, only that we had to be ready.
As a result we all went to the old Fort Benning hospital one day, most
of us piling into private cars for the trip. There we lined up at
the immunization clinic while the medics gave each man a yellow fever
shot. Still another day we marched across the street from the
quartel and formed a long line outside the dental clinic. It
took a good while to get the entire company checked, even using two or
three dentists. It was not required to later get dental work done,
just to have on records what sort of shape each person was in if work
needed to be done later. The same thing occurred with physical
examinations for people who had not had such within a certain time.
I had had a reenlistment physical the year before, so I missed that
part.
(It should be noted here that we never heard
too much more about Viet Nam while at Benning. However, when we
went to Germany, Seventh Army was unable to assign the company a job at
first. We were told, on fairly good authority, that the
reason they could not do so was that even in Germany the 596th was still
on possible alert for movement to Viet Nam, and that until Department of
the Army released us from such alert, we could not be put to work in
Germany. In early 1962 we were finally assigned to operate Seventh
Army Rear and we heard nothing else about Viet Nam. [The
39th Signal Battalion went to that country early in 1962, with the 232nd
Signal Company (SPT), the 178th Signal Company (SPT), and the 362nd Signal Company (Troposcatter)).
|
-END PART III-
J.T. Cox, Gauntney, and myself continued our night time activities.
One evening we were downtown at a bar at the lower end of Broad Street.
They had no happy hour but they did have a jukebox with plenty of good
country music records. It was a night when rain fell on and off,
and it was misting heavily when we got ready to leave the bar.
Because of the rain I started to run to the car and twisted my right
ankle. I thought it would be okay later, not bothering me when
driving and giving me little trouble when we returned to the barracks.
However, when I woke up the next morning it was slightly swollen and
hurt some when I tried to walk, so I went on morning sick call. Our
dispensary was just across the street so I did not have far to walk.
The doctor checked the ankle, told me what I already knew, and turned me
over to a medic. The medic gave the ankle a soak, dried it, and
wrapped it with an Ace bandage. I received a "buck slip"
which said I was to do no marching or prolonged standing for three or
four days.
There was not much else going on to break the
day to day routine. Either in late June or early July I received a
note from SGT Andy Burch in which he told me he was back in the United
States, at Fort Stewart, Georgia. He said the fishing was good
anytime I wanted to come down. The end of the week I telephoned
him and made arrangements to go. We must have had a Saturday
morning off for some reason, because I seem to remember going down
Friday night. I had asked Andy if I could bring someone (Gauntney)
with me. We arrived at Andy's house, just outside Hinesville late
that night. The details are not important here as I have written
about the weekend in another narrative. We enjoyed ourselves, had
a great catfish supper Saturday, and returned to Benning Sunday after a
good night's sleep at Andy's.
Gauntney and I also arranged to donate blood
one day when they were having a drive on post. That was the first
time I had ever done so. We were not so much ready to give blood,
but we were ready for a day off, which was what was promised after
donating. By time we had finished with the blood and changed
clothes half the day was gone, but half a day was better than none at
all. We headed for town and enjoyed ourselves once again. |
One day when we were in the motor pool doing
little, SFC Nix came up to me and told me someone had run into my car,
which was parked in the quartel area. I started for the
area, with Nix alongside. I was mad and trying to figure out how
anyone could hit a car parked in an angled parking place. We got
almost to the car and I could see no damage. It was only after we
arrived and I was looking at the car that Nix told me there had been no
collision, but he needed to borrow twenty dollars. That was the
first time he had asked me for money but I was aware many others had
either been asked and refused or had loaned him various amounts. I
gave him the twenty, which he paid back before we went to Germany.
It was later I found out he seldom paid anyone, so I guess I was lucky
for some reason. He also asked me for a ride home that afternoon,
which I did, after taking him past an off post laundry to pick up some
clothes.
Exercise Swift Strike was due to take place in
the Carolinas in July and August and we were scheduled to be part of
that. That was the original Swift Strike. There would be
numbers II and III the following two years. The first one was not
as large as the later two but it was large enough. I do not
believe the actual exercise lasted much over a week, but we would spend
35 to 37 days going, coming, and operating in the exercise area.
We did little preparation for going to South
Carolina. Of course, we had to make sure all equipment was ready,
everything was fueled, and we had our personal gear ready, but the
company provided little guidance for any of it. And for a well
trained unit, with as good as people as we had, there was no need to do
very much. The only thing I remember emphasis being placed on was
being told several times to ensure all drive shaft nuts and bolts were
tight on our vehicles. What that was about I can only assume that
they had had trouble with some drive shafts during the Army Training
Test. (Even with being told over and over about them, we still had
three or four vehicles lose drive shafts between Benning and our first
stop at Fort Gordon,} At any rate, we were overall ready to go at all
times.
A short aside here about STRAC. I hope
that is the right abbreviation. It has been a long time since I have
heard it or read it. It stood for Strategic Army Corps, or
something close to that. It was to my Army what the Central
Command is to today's Army. It was the first attempt to have an
overall organization for emergency use on a large scale, to
have units ready to deploy as needed. There was, as far as I
recall, no separate headquarters for STRAC. Instead the XIII
Airborne Corps was the major headquarters. Operation Swift Strike
was to be a STRAC exercise, with the XIII Corps running it from a field
headquarters in South Carolina. We were to be part of the
communications for exercise control, not part of the opposing forces.
We were due to be in the exercise area early to install and test our
communications.
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-END PART IV-
Swift
Strike
One day
late in July we moved out from Benning in groups of vehicles, heading
for our overnight stop at Fort Gordon. I was driving the 2-1/2 ton
truck, with the man whose name I cannot remember riding with me.
Schuler and Bender were crewing the 3/4-ton. I remember very
little about that first day of our trip. I do recall going through
Macon. I liked Macon but the city was a mess of narrow streets,
traffic, traffic lights, and some of the most crooked ways of
routing traffic I ever saw in any city. It took years for them to
get the route of US 80 halfway straightened out. When the
interstates were being built I would swear they had at least four or
five different routes marked for US 80. In 1961 they only had one
but it was a nerve-wracking drive for convoys.
We stopped for several breaks along the way,
and once for lunch. We had been issued sack lunches before leaving
Benning. There were supposed to be two sandwiches and a piece of
fruit in each sack. When we stopped to eat I found two sandwiches
with nothing on them but bread and one thin slice of lunchmeat, along
with an orange. My operator found bread with nothing between them.
He really raised a howl, not calming down whatever I said, even after I
offered him one of my sandwiches. He moved out looking for someone
to complain to but soon came back with nothing else, as what was in the
sacks was all anyone had.
We pulled into Fort Gordon in the late
afternoon, first going past the fuel pumps to gas up, afterwards going
over to the transient barracks which were just across the railroad
tracks from the warehouse areas. There was a large paved lot there
where we pulled the trucks into lines so we would be in the proper order
to move out again the following morning. The barracks were a half
block away. We held formation at the trucks, once they had all
arrived, and everyone who had vehicle problems left someone with their
truck to wait for the motor pool personnel. At least two or three
trucks had to be towed in due to drive shafts coming loose, even after
all the instructions to check them at Benning.
We took what baggage we needed for the night
and marched down to the barracks. The transient barracks issued us
sheets and pillow cases to use and each platoon was assigned a barracks
area. Such comfort was not expected by us. (At least
two other times in the future I would make stops at Gordon with convoys
and each time we would sleep on air mattresses placed directly on the
ground or on our own cots, but always out of doors.) The barracks
had plenty of hot water, another treat.
We had to place guards on our vehicles
overnight. A few men had been left watching them while we settled
in and had supper in a mess hall which had been set up for us and other
units due to pass heading for Swift Strike. As soon as the
main body had eaten, a sergeant and several men went back to the trucks
as the first guard relief. I was stuck with two hours of guard
supervision in the middle of the night, making a good rest impossible.
We were woken early, probably 0430 or so, but I do not remember the
exact time. We had to clean the barracks, turn in all bedding, and
have breakfast before getting to our trucks and checking them out and
reloading our personal equipment, not to mention cleaning up and
shaving. |
We rolled out of Gordon, taking a long
round-about route into South Carolina instead of going directly up US 1.
I let my operator drive and I took it easy. Somehow we eventually
came back into contact with US 1. It was never explained to us why
we used such a route, which must have added fifty miles or more to the
trip. Somewhere along the highway south of Columbia I allowed my hat to
fly out the window of the truck. I tried to grab it without result
other than banging my head on the door frame. I figured that was
the last time I would ever see that hat again. When we stopped for
the next break I went into the shelter and was digging in my bag looking
for my helmet liner, the only other headgear I had with me.
Before I could find that, SFC Nix came along from the rear of the march
unit calling out for whoever had lost a hat. Bringing up the
rear in a jeep he had seen it on the side of the road and had picked it
up.
We went through the middle of Columbia, South
Carolina, following US 1, right past the state capitol building
and grounds. Columbia was a breeze compared to Macon, with
straight streets and police guiding us through. We exited the city
and kept going to Camden, through that city, and finally to the small
town of Bethune, where we made a left turn off the highway onto a state
road. We drove on out into the country and finally pulled into a
dusty field which had been a cornfield not long before. All the
corn was gone except for the stubble of the stalks and we were left with
dry sand. We pulled on the field, making a wide swing to come up
on the earlier trucks, raising clouds of white dusty powder, before
pulling into a side-by-side line just as if we had been in a motor park.
It did not look like much, the only major tree line being some distance
away. A few scrubs and bushes were near but not much else.
We wandered over to the scrub, where at
least there were enough weeds to hold the dust down. We were
assigned areas, each platoon staking out a section of dust
and weed to be home away from home for awhile. The mess hall was
already putting up their tent and getting gear unpacked. The South
Carolina sun was baking everything in sight, not making a good
omen for the coming weeks.
We started getting the company and platoon
areas set up. Here once again my memory has totally failed me.
Try as I might, I cannot remember if we had tents with us. I know
we must have had General Purpose Medium (GPM) tents, because we did not
use "pup tents" and we were not allowed to sleep in the
trucks, even if there had been room. I do recall the supply room
had a tent set up. It is strange how so many things can be
remembered, while things which would seem to be important are lost.
I do know there was little way to get away from the sun and the dust. |
-END
PART V-
The first few days at the corn field were slow.
The company had nothing for us to do and mainly, except for formations,
police calls, and various details (such as digging latrines), we were
left alone. Sometimes a group would get a softball game up on a
field laid out behind the trucks. Maybe that was what was going on
that day I had to take my shirt off, or it may have been some other
activity. Anyway, we were standing around out at the edge of the
field and for some reason they wanted everyone to be shirtless.
One of the lieutenants told me to take mine off. I tried to
protest, explaining that I did not tan but would burn with little
exposure to the sun. He would not listen to that and I removed my
fatigue shirt, feeling the results almost at once. Not too long
afterwards a different lieutenant passed, stopped, told me I had best
put my shirt on as I looked red! My upper arms, and especially the
back of my neck, were good and sore by the next morning.
One of those early days Otis Gauntney asked me
if I had noticed how many blackberries were around. I said I had
noticed but I did not like blackberries, mainly noticing so I could
avoid the thorns. He said he had a different idea and if I wanted
to help him pick the berries, he thought we could get enough to make
some decent blackberry wine. That was something I could see doing,
even if I did not like wine. At least it would provide something
for us to do for part of the time. We were restricted to the area
right around the corn field. There was a small store about a
quarter mile away which was off limits. The nearest major tree line
was a half mile or so in the other direction. It too was out of
bounds for us.
Still, there were a great number of blackberry
bushes in the shrub near us. Gauntney and I started picking
berries, using our steel helmets as pails. Other people commented
we must really like blackberries and we just answered yes and kept
picking. J. T. Cox told us it was too hot to be picking berries.
Even if he was our drinking partner, we did not tell him what we were up
to at the time. We picked every blackberry we could get to in the
area we were allowed to be in but we still did not have enough according
to Gauntney, who said he would see what he could do that night.
In the meantime we started with what we had.
Gauntney proceeded to use his helmet as a
container to squeeze the blackberries, crushing them with his hand over
and over again. We had found a spot behind his generator trailer
to work. His team was missing the canvas off the trailer, which
Gauntney said was good, as the wine needed plenty of air. He also
said if it was sealed up under canvas the smell might become more
noticeable. Without the canvas the air and wind would carry the
odors, if any, away. He took a five-gallon (we were still using
the metal ones at that time) water can, emptied some of the water and
poured the blackberry mix into the can. To allow the mixture to
"breathe" and to allow the fermenting material to give off
expanding gas, he did not close the lid of the can. Instead he
tied a tee-shirt over the top. |
Why nobody took notice of the strange can with the tee-shirt top
I never knew. Most of the senior non-coms and all of the
officers were doing just about what they did at Benning:
Stay away from us and do no more than required. Maybe none
of them ever walked around the trucks. If other troops
asked about the can, Gauntney just said it was something he was
trying out. Gauntney talked to one of the cooks at the
mess hall and obtained sugar to add to the mix, but the mess
hall had no yeast, something Gauntney said was not
required but which would speed up the action if we could get
some.
We also still needed more blackberries.
Gauntney went roaming at night, armed with a flashlight and his helmet,
down to the tree line where he figured there would be more blackberries.
The next morning he showed me a helmet full, obtained with a lot of
work, holding his flashlight with one hand, the helmet strap around his
wrist, and picking blackberries with the other hand. He said he
thought that would be enough. At any rate, he was not going to
spend more time doing any more picking in the dark. He smashed
those berries and added the results to the mixture. His hand was a
deep purple from working the berries and it took a lot of soap, water,
and time to get the stains off.
He said it would help if we had the yeast.
There was no way to tell how long we would be around the corn field
before they started to put us to work. When they did start sending
us out, we would be split up and would not be able to share the wine.
The only place we could obtain yeast was at a store in a town. The
only way we knew to get to town was to go on sick call. The medics
supporting us were at least fifty miles away and each morning the
company sent a truck over to them with anyone needing medical attention.
I do not know what reason Gauntney gave for going but I said I needed
something for my sunburn. We loaded into the truck and went.
I believe we were the only two going besides the driver. We made
the sick call, I received some cream for my burns, and we started for the
corn field. Going through one of the small towns on the way to sick call, I had taken notice of a bank. That was important because
it was the end of the month and neither of us had any money. I did
have a saving bond which I had thought to take with me to South
Carolina, and we stopped at the bank so I could cash it. Another
stop at a store produced several packets of yeast, after which we
returned to the company.
Gauntney headed for the water can with the
yeast, while I had to report to the first sergeant. He chewed me
out for going on sick call with a sunburn, saying I could be
court-martialed for being burned. (Which was a lot of
"bull" but I was not prepared to argue the point.) All I
said was the sunburn had happened in the line of duty as I had been
ordered to remove my shirt, even after I had protested. He
let me go and I went to help Gauntney. |
-END PART VI-
A
Night In Bethune
While at the
cornfield site we had almost nothing to do except wait for
assignments to establish communications.
The company decided they would allow a truck to go into
Camden, South Carolina, so that any troops who wished to do
so could have a "night on the town." We had
not been allowed to carry civilian clothing with us but we
all had a khaki summer uniform along. (At the time the
summer "Class A uniform was still long sleeve shirt and
tie.) A 2-1/2 ton truck was prepared and all who
wanted to go to town the first night signed up. Otis
Gauntney and I decided to go and enjoy a few beers.
Unknown to
anyone in the company at the time, Camden was a
"dry" town. The people who went to
town discovered that fact upon arrival in Camden.
Gauntney and I did not plan on going to Camden. We had
earlier taken note of the small town of Bethune, the place
where the local roads to the cornfield site left US 1.
The truck would drive to Bethune, turn south there onto US
1, and head for Camden. Gauntney and I had both
noticed, when we had earlier gone through the town, they had
two bars, one on each side of the road. We always
believed a small town offered better chances of cold beer,
good company, as well as women.
We told the
driver to stop in Bethune and let the two of us off.
We invited anyone else who wanted to stop with us to do so
but nobody took us up on our offer. That left twelve
or so men still on the truck heading for Camden. The
driver and sergeant in charge gave us the time they expected
to be coming back on the return trip. They cautioned
us to be on the side of the road waiting or we would be left
behind. They said they did not want to have to wait or
look for us and we promised we would be at the
drop-off point at the correct time. We watched the
truck pull off, turning south onto US 1. Gauntney and
I headed into the nearest bar.
That bar
turned out to not be very much. They had the bar,
stools, a couple of tables, and a pool table. There
were two or three men in the place. We took stools and
had a cold beer, at the same time watching a pool game being
played. After that first beer we went out, crossed the
street to the second bar. There we found a carbon copy
of the first bar, even to them having a pool table with a
game already going on. Once again we nursed cold
bottles of beer, taking our time drinking them. There
was nothing else to do in the small town. There was a
truck-stop about half a mile north on US 1 but for some
reason it never entered our minds to go up there.
I do not recall how many beers we had that night, or how
many times we switched from one bar to the other. We
could not even play a game of pool because the tables in
both bars stayed busy all evening with the same local men
using them. There were no women in sight at either
bar.
On one of our
trips crossing the street we noticed a local policeman
watching us. He followed us into the bar and talked to
the locals, watching us but not saying anything to us.
After following us across the street again and into the
other bar, he finally came up to talk to us. It turned
out he was one-half of the local force (Shades of
Mayberry!), the chief being the other half. He
was concerned that large numbers of soldiers might be coming
into their town in the future.
|
He wanted us to ask the company
commander or first-sergeant to drive into Bethune and talk
to his chief before any problems developed. We
promised to pass his request along. He talked to us
about a few other things before he wandered out of the
building, leaving us to continue doing what little we had
been doing.
I do not know for certain how long
we stayed in the town, probably from about 1800 until 2200
or so. Four hours can seem mighty long doing what we
were doing that night. The beers were good and cold,
the bartenders willing to talk, but that was about all we
had. When the time neared for the truck's return we
finished our last beer, made our final trip to the restroom,
and headed out to the curb where we found a fairly clean
spot to sit and wait. I had obtained an old newspaper
in one of the bars and we read the old local news under the
street lamp. While we waited Gauntney and I discussed
what we would do to keep the other troops from finding
out what a terrible time we had spent in Bethune. (At
that time we assumed they would be telling us what a good
time they had had in Camden.)
We heard
the truck before it rounded the corner and we stood up,
brushing the dirt from our uniforms. As the truck
approached and stopped we were both laughing, talking close
together, slapping each other on the back as if we had been
having a great time. We climbed on board the
truck, finding a couple seats near the rear, continuing to
talk and laugh about what a good time we had had. It
turned out the rest of them had not enjoyed themselves at
all, having discovered they could not even get a beer in
Camden. The city had a couple theaters and a
restaurant or two but not much else to interest soldiers on
pass. Gauntney and I did not feel near as bad once we
heard their tales and what they said made us laugh even
more. Several of them tried to get information from us
about what had been so good in Bethune. All we would
say was that we might go back again and we continued a if we
were sharing a great secret.
The following
day the company again announced there would be a truck going
into Camden and again a dozen or so people signed up for the
trip. About half were men who had gone the night
before. Some asked Gauntney and myself if we were
going back but we told them we needed a rest from the night
before. We watched the truck pull out and we headed
for our tent, where Gauntney took his place in a card game
and I settled down with a book.
Several hours
later the truck returned. Several of the men came by
the tent and said some unpleasant words to us. The
ones who had gone to Camden the night before had all got off
in Bethune to see what had given us such joy. They now
knew we had pulled a hoax on them and were not happy with
us, the whole bunch having been stranded in the town for
hours, with nothing to do except what we had done the night
before. That was the last truck which went to town.
The word got around and nobody signed up for passes anymore
while we were at the cornfield.
122903
|
END
PART VI-A
While we were sitting around doing nothing
little but waiting for the blackberry wine to ferment, Gauntney
decided he was not fond of sleeping on the ground. We had few cots
in the company and most of us were sleeping on air mattresses on the
ground. There had either been a small sawmill in the area at one
time or else someone had hauled pieces in and dumped them, but for
whatever reason there was a scattered pile of slabs cut from the side of
pine logs. There was nothing fancy about the slabs, those rough
pieces cut off to trim the logs into square timbers ready to cut into
lumber, but Gauntney wanted a bed and those slabs were the only things
available. Before we knew it he had constructed a bed which,
if rough looking, provided a firm bedstead upon which he placed
his air mattress and sleeping bag. He had left the legs much too
long, but that was madness of a smart sort. He borrowed a posthole
digger from a cable team and buried the legs deep in the ground.
He explained that way the bunk was going to stay put and nobody was
going to steal it or try to play games with it while he was not looking.
Many people had been laughing and teasing
Gauntney when he was dragging slabs to his tent, and while he was
sawing, hammering, and digging. All the joking stopped when he
went to bed, three feet or so above the chiggers and other insects
which abounded in the vicinity of the cornfield. The following day
several people went looking for slabs with which to build their own
bunks but Gauntney had pretty much cleaned out the ones which were
suitable. The ones left were mainly small, jagged, or
cracked beyond use.
A day or so after we had started the wine to
brewing, we received word several teams would be sent out to various
sites to conduct test systems. That meant we would install
communications where the system engineers thought they would or might
work so we could determine just how well they did work, if at all.
I do not remember whose team Gauntney was with at the time, it may have
been Cox's, but they were slated to go. Along with the wine
brewing in the water can. My own team saddled up and was sent to a
site somewhere southwards, just north of Camden.
Our location turned out to be an old airfield
left over from World War II. The runways had been grass and the
entire field area was still fairly open. Maybe the area had been
farmed over the years or had just been burned off, but there was no
large growth there, just heavy brown grass about three or four feet
tall. We were placed on the old "hardstand" near an old
two story building which had probably been the field headquarters or
operations. The building was in pretty sad shape, slowing rotting
away, and I told my men to stay away from it. There was already a
relay team from some other unit set up near the building, so we picked a
site at the opposite end of the hardstand. The hardstand most
likely had been the only paved portion of the airfield. It was
about the size of a football field and was made of thin (maybe 1-1/2 to
2 inches) of asphalt. We positioned the 2-1/2 ton and I picked out
the locations for the two antenna base plates.
It turned out we had no trouble driving our
antenna stakes directly into and through the asphalt. While the
asphalt was thin, the sub-surface had been properly prepared those many
years ago, with well compacted clay and gravel, which also presented
little trouble getting the stakes in. When we later went to remove
the stakes, we had a time getting them out of the clay. We raised
both antennas, one to go to a terminal somewhere north of us, the other
going to another team somewhere southeast of us. We had positioned
the generator trailer and connected our power along with everything
else. Once we had electricity into the shelter, I started
the radios and tuned them up while my three team members policed up
ropes, antenna sections, and everything else we had used to erect the
antennas but which would not be needed again until we prepared to take
everything down. They loaded all extras back into the 3/4-ton
trailer, drove our ground rods, and made the site like home as much as
possible.
I quickly made contact with the north leg of
the system, with fair communications, except for some strange operating
symptoms. Normally with a system we oriented our antennas for
maximum signal strength at both ends. For some strange (and never
before or afterwards encountered) reason, we could not get the antennas
to agree. |
When my receive signal strength was at maximum, the
other team's antenna was about twenty degrees or so off where it should
have been, resulting in his receiver having very poor reception.
When his receiver strength was at maximum, my antenna ended up off,
giving us poor reception. We finally, after trying various
combinations, gave up and went to midpoints where we figured we could
operate.
I tried to raise the second end of the system
but we had no contact with them. In the two days or so
we were there we never did get in contact with them and we never found
out if they were even in position. That was not an uncommon thing
during field operations, often we did not know what was going on with
other teams and had to depend on trial and error operation. We put
tone on the transmitter for them to tune into, if they were trying to
receive us, and every thirty minutes or so one of us would cut the tone
and identify our location, as well as scanning the receive frequency we
had in case their transmitter was a little off.
While we were waiting for any contact, or for
word from the company about what was going on, we fixed our site
up. We were near the edge of the hardstand where the heavy grass
started. We went a short distance into the grass and dug a latrine
that would last us several days. The grass provided a good shield
from view (We were at least a quarter mile from the road.) but I had
shelter-halves strung around on antenna mast sections to provide
positive privacy. We also dug a trash pit. Both the trash
pit and the latrine were easy to dig. The clay/gravel hardstand
base only extended a few feet beyond the edge of the asphalt, everything
beyond that being plain soft white sand.
I saw no reason to put up pup tents, which
tended to be hot in the sun, not to mention the fact we had used some of
ours for the latrine. We fastened all four of our ponchos together and
made a good sized lean-to shelter coming out from one side of the
truck. We placed our air mattresses and sleeping bags under
that. I hoped if we got rain it would not be hard or blowing.
We had not had a shower since we had left Fort
Gordon and we were all getting a little gamey, considering the heat,
dust, and the liberal use of sticky insect repellent. The man who
had had been my driver/co-driver took our 3/4-ton truck and went
scouting for some place we could get a shower or bath. What we
usually looked for were streams, lakes, ponds, or a national guard
armory to use. He came back in about an hour, saying he had found
a pond with a good flowing spill well which would provide good
showers. However, he thought I should make the decision as the
concrete spill well base was slippery and might be unsafe. He also
brought back several watermelons which he had "liberated" from
a near-by field. It was too late in the day to make another trip
and I said we would check the pond next day, if possible.
Before we could get started doing anything the
next day, the man who lived between the airfield and the highway came
over to see me. I do not know if he owned the entire area or not,
but he was friendly. That was a trait shared by most people
we ran into in South and North Carolina, both during Exercise Swift
Strike and other exercises I went on into those states. He pointed
out the small building between us and his house, which he said was
his well and pump house. He knew we would be most likely be
needing a place to bathe. He stated he had a faucet outside the
pump house and he had attached a short piece of garden hose to it,
hanging the hose in such a way that we could use it for a cold water
shower. I told him that was great and we certainly thanked him for
his trouble. The only condition he attached was that we use the
shower ONLY at night, as he had two teenage daughters, in addition to
his wife, who would be within eyesight of the shower.
I was really looking forward to a shower that
night. My man, saying the pond was no longer needed, still asked
permission to go check on more watermelons. I told him to go ahead
but try to buy a few, not steal them, and gave him a few dollars.
He came back in about an hour with eighteen watermelons in the truck,
and gave me my money back. He said that when he reached the field
the farmer had a crew working picking and loading. He told the
farmer he had come to get a few melons if he could and the farmer had
his crew load all those. He was going to load more but the man
told him that was probably all we could use. Afterwards the farmer
had refused to take any money. Just one more example of the good
people, many of which had been in the service themselves at one time or
other. I always made it a policy to tell my men to play straight
with the "natives" and they would treat us right. |
-END PART VII-
While we were at the airfield site we depended
on our meals being brought to us. Three times each day a truck
would drive from the mess hall at the cornfield, carrying our meals to
us in Marmite Cans. Marmite cans were insulated food containers
used to serve/carry food in the field. A can could hold a lot of
one item, or three items by use of removable inserts. I do not
remember the details. I assume they must have brought trays and utensils
with them each time as we had no way to clean mess kits, and that was
several years before the Army discovered paper plates. Then
again, we may have been using paper plates. The memory has just
been lost.
We received our food at noon one day and I went
to wake up XXX (The man whose name I have forgotten.) who was
sleeping in the cab of the 2-1/2 ton truck. No matter what I did I
found I could not arouse him. I went to talk to Schuler and Bender
about it. It was then they told me about his medical
condition. It seemed he had a medical trouble which caused him to
fall asleep at anytime and anyplace. They said his medical papers
("buck slip" in Army slang) said when he fell asleep he was to
be allowed to wake on his own, that no action should be attempted to try
and wake him. This was the man who had been driving the 2-1/2
truck about half the time since we had departed Benning, with me as a
passenger!
The three of us went ahead and had our meal,
with me thinking about all those miles when he might have fallen asleep
at the wheel. We put XXX's meal aside for him. When he
finally woke up and came around to where we were, I asked him about the
medical problem. He showed me his buck slip. It said just
what I had been told, that he might fall asleep at anytime. I
asked him if, when seeing the doctor or doctors, had anything been said
about him driving. (There was nothing on the buck slip to indicate
he should or should not drive.) He said the doctor had not
said anything, that the subject had never come up. I also asked
him what the military driver's examiner had said about the
condition. Again, he said the subject had never come
up. I told him that when we returned to the company I was
going to check the thing out, but as far as I was concerned he was not
to drive for my team anymore, at least not with passengers.
(I do not recall what happened to XXX about
driving officially. I do remember telling Swede about the
problem. XXX stayed with us and went to Germany with us. He
was finally, I believe, returned to the states for a medical
discharge. What topped his story off in Germany was a day in early
1962 when we were taking part in the first tryout of the Army's new
physical fitness test. XXX was on the mile run when he fell
asleep, while running. He fell face forward onto the cinder
track. He was picked up, carried over to a bench, and allowed to
sleep until he woke up normally. The first thing he wanted to know
was how his hands and face came to be scratched up and dirty.) |
The same day XXX had gone out to the trash pit,
throwing away trash and had prepared to burn the trash, not only to hold
down the volume but also to discourage rats and other pests. The
first thing I knew I heard a scream and turned around to see the tall,
dry, brown grass burning. All of us grabbed tools and ran towards
the pit. We finally got the fire under control after a circle
about twenty-five feet across had been burned. The grass extended
for at least a mile in three directions. If the fire had gotten
started good there was no way we could have stopped it. Most
likely, given the conditions, the field would have burned and the wood line
would have been endangered before any fire crews could have
arrived. I have no idea how I would have explained that to the
Army or to the State of South Carolina.
We were really looking forward to nightfall so
we could take showers at the pump house, as cold as we realized the
water would be. We needed cleaning up even more after we had
fought the grass fire. However, late that evening we experienced a
sudden and unexpected thunderstorm. The rain started pouring down
with almost no warning and the lightning and thunder came along right
behind the first shower. We managed to get our sleeping bags up
and put them into the shelter before they got wet. Than we had to
get our air mattresses secured as the water started flowing across the
asphalt, threatening to wash any light weight items away. The rain
was coming down so good we considered taking showers in it, but I vetoed
the idea. The rain was COLD, the wind was blowing hard, and the
lightning kept occurring. I knew it would be tempting fate for wet
naked bodies to be out in the storm. And as long as the storm was
going on, there was no chance to use the pump house shower. So we
looked forward to staying dirty for another night and day. The
rain went long for a long time and I told everyone not on duty to sleep
in the trucks where they wanted, regardless of company orders. I
was grateful to the rain for one thing: It soaked the field good and did
away with any more danger of fire.
Army payday was normally the last work day of
each month. We were already two days or so past it and had not
been paid. The company officer who had been stuck as payroll
officer for that month had to go all the way back to Fort Benning where
he picked up the payroll early on payday. He then had to pay the
few people we still had at Benning serving as a rear detachment, before
driving all the way back to South Carolina. Once back at the
cornfield he paid everyone there, then had to start traveling around to
all the remote sites to pay us and others. He finally arrived at the
airfield site, paid us, and quickly drove on towards the next
location. (When he finally had everyone paid, he still had to face
another round trip to Benning to turn the payroll back in. |
-END PART VIII-
Another word about the airfield site before I
continue with the narrative. We had been told the 82nd Airborne
Division would be making a mass jump onto that area during Exercise
Swift Strike. I was hoping we would be able to see that. I
had seen small jumps, up to company size, but I had never seen a big
one. The field should have been large enough. We were set up
in the middle on one side. The open grassy area must have gone a
mile at least to our right, as well as to our left. And it must
have been at least a mile across the field at any point. I never
was able to find out what type training had taken place there during
World War II. Maybe it was basic or primary flight training, where
grass runways would have been okay for trainer aircraft. Later I
was to wonder if perhaps the field had been used for glider
training. Fort Bragg was the center for airborne and glider
operations and a large grass field in the area would have been required
for glider pilot training, as well as training glider troops. Not that
it had anything to do with our operations in 1961, but it would
have been interesting to have known.
The pay officer left and we got on with what we
needed to do. Our clothes were getting about as dirty as our
bodies. Schuler and Bender took the 3/4-ton and headed into Camden
with sacks of their dirty clothes. They found a laundry mat and
did their laundry, afterwards going to a store to get whatever they
needed. As soon as they came back XXX and I took the truck and
made a run into the city. We went to the laundry mat first to
clean our clothes. I knew the fatigue uniforms would not look all
that good being washed and not pressed, but at least they would be
clean. And we sure needed clean underwear and other items.
The laundry mat had front loading machines,
something I had not used before, so I made certain I read the directions
carefully. One of the things the directions stated was to use no
more than one-half a box of soap for each load of wash. A
machine in the laundry mat had boxes of soap and bleach for sale.
Top loading machines would take a whole box, front loading machines
needed only half that. I loaded my fatigues in one machine,
everything else into a second machine, split a box of soap between them,
and started both up. I watched XXX put his clothes in. I
started to say something when he poured an entire small box of soap into
each machine but held my voice. Once the machines started it was
plain to see why the instructions called for limited soap. XXX's
machines started spitting soap out around the door to the extent he
finally had to stop them, clean as much suds out as possible, and
restart the machines. He managed to get everything washed finally,
with soap all over the front of the machines, as well as having suds on
the floor.
While the clothes were washing I made a trip to
a grocery store in the same shopping center, trying to find something to
read. They did not even have a magazine stand. They did have
a good rack of comic books and for lack of anything else I picked out
half dozen of them. Other than the comics, I did not even find a
newspaper rack in the shopping center. (I read the comics while
the laundry was working. Later, when we returned to the
cornfield sometime in the future I passed them on to others who
also were a little desperate for reading material.)
Once our laundry was done we headed back for
the airfield site. Neither of us needed anything else in town,
except for reading material, but I did not feel like spending time
looking for a place which had some. While still some distance from
the airfield site I could see that something did not look right.
When we left we had had two antennas up, but coming down the highway I
could only see one. I speeded up and pulled into the driveway onto
the asphalt hardstand. As we rounded the old building I could see
one antenna still standing. Schuler and Bender had the second one
on the ground and was taking it apart.
|
Once out of the truck Schuler said they had
received word from Swede (via the radio system order wire) to take the
site apart, pack up, and meet him at the crossroads going towards the
cornfield. He said he would be at that place by 2000 (8 pm) or
so. He had given them no idea what was going on except to say we
were being moved.
We lowered the other antenna, took everything
apart and packed up. That was more of a job with our set up than
it would be in the future when the new shelters came onto the
scene. When the new shelters came along, all the antenna systems
and parts had places in the shelter from where they could be taken and
returned to fairly quickly. In 1961 we still had to place all
items into shipping cases and close them before stacking them in the 3/4
trailer. Still, I had a well trained team and everybody worked
well together and we made pretty fast work of packing. We did have
some trouble getting the antenna stakes out of the clay/gravel
foundation of the hardstand and trouble cleaning the clay off them
before we could put them away. After the trucks were loaded we
still had to close and fill in the latrine and trash pit and check for
anything we had overlooked. That was easy on the open asphalt,
unlike normal field operations where small items could be overlooked in
weeds or brush.
Once loaded we moved out, me driving the 2-1/2
ton in the lead. It must have been six or eight miles to the
crossroads, about half the distance back to the cornfield. It was
growing dark before we left the airfield site, totally so by the time we
reached the crossroads and parked on the shoulder with our parking
lights on. There was little traffic on the country roads at
anytime, even less after dark. All we could do was wait for Swede
and his instructions. I got out of the truck and walked around
some. The truck engines were off and there was no sound at all in
the area. I started hearing a cat meow and looked around. I
retrieved the flashlight from the truck and flashed the beam on the
shoulder where I thought the sound was coming from. A tiny yellow
kitten was coming through the high grass, making low sounds of
what sounded like distress. I neither heard nor saw any other
cats. There were no houses anywhere near, so I could only conclude
some heartless person had dumped him.
I went over and picked the little creature
up. He was wet from the grass and shaking. I got a clean
tee-shirt from my laundry, dried him off and wrapped him. About
that time Swede drove up in a jeep and I turned the kitten over to XXX
to watch. I went over to Swede as he got out of the jeep and
started explaining where we were going. I made some notes of
directions and names, looked at Swede's map by flashlight and checked my
map against his. I made sure Schuler was listening in
case we got separated somewhere along the way. Once we were clear
on everything, Swede asked if we needed anything, and I said no.
He told us good-by and he and his driver turned the jeep around and
headed back towards the cornfield.
I climbed into my truck. The kitten was
sound asleep. I had no idea what I planned to do with him. I
only knew I could not leave him out there to starve. I cranked the
truck, watching my mirror for the 3/4's headlights to come on indicating
they had cranked okay, and pulled out onto the road. A hundred
feet up we made a right turn onto the crossroad which would take us to
Bethune and the junction with US Highway 1. |
-END PART IX-
Before
continuing I have to add one more small item about the meeting with
Swede at the crossroads. We had eighteen watermelons in the
3/4-ton. We gave Swede about half of them and told him to take
them to the platoon/company people still at the cornfield. The
rest of them we took with us, eating some, giving others away as we
went.
Right here I have to apologize to the reader
for my memory failure once again. Once I had finished writing
about the crossroads meetings and the kitten, I realized my chronology
was wrong. I had previously indicated that prior to the move to
the Airfield Site we had not left the cornfield. I knew something
was wrong and after some hard thinking, and even some doodling on paper,
I realized that statement had to be wrong. All I wrote before
about the Airfield Site was correct. The only thing wrong was that
we had moved out once before that. I must now backtrack in my
thoughts and writings to add what happened before we moved to the
Airfield Site. The only excuse I can give is that forty-plus years
play tricks on memory.
After Gauntney and I had started the blackberry
wine to working, we again had little to do. That was changed a day
or two after we had started the wine. We received word we would be
moving out the next day. Almost all our teams scattered to distant
areas. For my team, and maybe one or two more, we were given
directions to a location not too far from Southern Pines, North
Carolina. We were told there was a game preserve or some sort
there which other signal units were already using for communication
sites. We were to report there for possible deployment.
When we arrived at the game preserve we could
see a good fence around its boundary. The gate was open and we
drove in. (I do not remember if the preserve was North Carolina or
federal property.) The area inside the gate was fairly open, with grassy
expanses making up most of what we could see. Inside, to the left
of the gate, a signal company (probably from Fort Gordon) had a AB-216
tower (162 feet worth) erected, with AN/TRC-29 microwave radio
antennas on it. Their trucks were grouped in that section, along
with a Jamesway shelter which they were using for their equipment.
A few other trucks were parked nearby. We were met near the gate
and told where to park, and given orders where not to drive.
I had already noticed areas where signs were
posted saying to keep out and off. It turned out that the preserve
people were a little angry at the United States Army. The story,
as we got it later, was that the microwave people were supposed to meet
a preserve ranger at the gate and that ranger would have shown them
where they could set up. |
They had waited at the gate for a good
while, no ranger had shown up, and they had entered the preserve, the
gate not being locked. They had selected their own site, the
ground being level and open, with just short grass growing there.
They had their tower well started before the ranger finally showed
up. It turned out what the microwave people (and later us) took to
be grass was some sort of plant being grown for quail food. The
preserve people estimated at least $7,500 worth of the plant had been
destroyed. The microwave people had offered to move but the
rangers said it was too late, moving would only destroy more
plants.
It turned out there was no work for us there,
at what I will call the Quail Food Site. We spent two or three
days taking it easy again. One advantage we had at that site was
we could get showers. The earlier people had made arrangement at
the national guard armory nearby to use their showers. The only
condition was the showers had to be kept clean, which was reasonable
enough for all the hot water we wanted. A couple times a day a
truck would go to the armory for anyone off duty who cared to go.
Other than going for showers, there was nothing
to do but hang around. There were enough people at the Quail Food
Site to have a mess hall, so we ate good. It was hot in the area,
with no trees nearby. We spent most of the time setting in the
shade of the trucks, or in the cabs. There was one major problem
at that area: There were flies everywhere! It was almost
impossible to relax because of the swarms always around. I have no
idea why there were so many flies there. There seemed to be
nothing around that would attract them or provide breeding space.
On the first shower run I discovered the national guard armory had a
good number of wire-type fly swatters hanging in their kitchen. I
took one, later bought a couple more at a neighborhood store, and when
we returned to the Quail Food Site I was prepared to give battle.
I always carried a small pocket notebook.
I started killing flies and keeping track of the ones I killed. In
the two days remaining there I killed over five-hundred and there was no
indication of any let-up. When we received word to return to the
cornfield I knew I was going to miss the hot showers but I was also
going to be happy to get away from the flies. We moved out from there
heading south again. The trip back, like the one going up, was
uneventful until we had gotten within a few miles of the
cornfield. I was driving the 2-1/2 ton truck and its engine
started missing and finally stalled, giving me just enough time to pull
off the road. The 3/4-ton was behind me. I waved them
forward, told Schuler and Bender to go on to the cornfield and tell the
motor pool personnel I needed mechanics or a wrecker. I told XXX
to go on with the other two.
I did not have to wait more than thirty minutes
or so before the company wrecker showed up and backed up in front of
me. The mechanics hooked up the tow-bars and we headed for the
cornfield. |
-END PART X-
Strictly speaking, the mechanics did not come after me with a wrecker.
Few company sized units had wreckers. They were normally
authorized only at battalion level. What we had was a 2-1/2 ton
with a modified "A-frame" boom on the back which had a hand
operated hoist. Being as darkness was approaching and we were not
far from the cornfield, they said they would just tow me on to the
cornfield instead of working on the truck by the roadside. They
hooked up their tow bar, made sure my front wheels were straight, made
sure I had the brakes off and the transmission in neutral, and told me
to enjoy the ride. I stayed in the driver's seat as we moved
down the road and back to the cornfield.
Once there they disconnected the tow bar and
the mechanics started checking for the source of trouble. They
wanted to get the truck operating again before dark if possible to
comply with company orders to maintain maximum availability in case we
had to deploy again on short notice. It took them little time to
determine the carburetor was at fault and to change that item.
Once it was done I started the truck and pulled it over into an empty
spot with the rest of the platoon's vehicles.
After shutting down I went and found my men,
checking that they had found places to sleep. I also touched bases
with Schuler to make sure the 3/4-ton was running okay and was ready to
go again. After that I reported to Swede. He told me we had
been the last team to report back and just to take it easy again until
we received new orders. I found a spot to throw my air mattress and
sleeping bag, after which I went looking for Gauntney.
The blackberry wine had been brewing for over a
week by that time. Gauntney thought that with the aid of the yeast
it was probably about ready to drink. More time might improve it
but as we might have to leave again on quick orders, we had best use
what we had while we were all together. We took our flashlights
down to the trailer, it having gone totally dark by that time. We
took the water can down and removed the tee-shirt cover. The shirt
was getting pretty dirty by that time but it had done the job of keeping
dirt and trash out of the can, while allowing vapors from the mixture to
escape. Gauntney said we needed something to put the wine in.
I went over to my truck and brought back a plastic one-gallon Clorox
Bleach bottle I had been using to carry water. We poured the
mixture out of the water can into Gauntney's steel helmet, and from
there we filtered the wine through a (somewhat) clean portion of the
tee-shirt into the bleach bottle. We obtained a full gallon, plus
enough to fill about half a canteen cup. Gauntney poured the dregs
back into the water can, saying he would get rid of the remains the next
day. Plus he would have to clean out the water can. |
Then came the moment of testing. Gauntney took a drink from the
canteen cup, pronounced it not half bad and passed the cup to
me. It certainly tasted like wine. However, I never liked
the taste of wine and I told him he could have all of it. I had
gone along with the business just to have a project to break up
the do-nothing period. We wandered back up to one of the tents
where a card game was in progress. Gauntney passed the cup to allow the
card players to try the wine. Then they all procured their own
cups and Gauntney and the players proceeded to drink the entire gallon.
As for me, I went to clean up and go to bed.
The following morning after breakfast and a
morning company formation, we gassed our trucks up as well as replacing
what little generator gas we had used. I had my men check both
trucks and make sure they were ready to go again. That done it was
back to killing time as before. I had my flyswatter out,
mentioning to someone how few flies there were at the cornfield and how
we had been pestered by them at the Quail Food Site. The person
said I should go down and check with the lieutenant who was our supply
officer. (That lieutenant was our only West Pointer and was wasted
being a company supply officer. I wish I could remember his name).
I wandered down to the GP medium tent serving as supply room. The
sides were rolled up, as with all our tents, providing maximum
ventilation, so I just walked in from one side. The lieutenant was
at his field desk and I said someone had mentioned he had been killing
flies. He showed me a lined tablet covered with "tic"
marks and told me three pages of those marks represented the flies he
had killed so far. I did not ask for the total. All at once
my five-hundred flies no longer seemed like many.
We only stayed at the cornfield for two or
three days at the most before we were given new assignments. I
took my team from there to the Airfield Site which I have already
written about. That narrative would have been properly
placed at this point but due to my faulty memory is out of order, but at
least has been told.
The narrative about the Airfield Site ended
with us leaving the crossroads meeting with Swede. From there we
drove to Highway 1 and turned north again, heading back to the Quail
Food Site. We arrived there in the middle of the night and slept
there while we waited for daylight and a move to our final site of
Exercise Swift Strike |
-END PART XI-
After we left the crossroads we drove to
Bethune and turned north on US 1. Those were the days before very
much of the interstate system had been started, much less built, and US
1 was still the major north-south highway for that area. We drove
back to the Quail Food Site that night. I cannot recall if we just
stayed the night or waited longer. At any rate, it was not long
before we moved to our next and last operational site which we
would occupy during Operation Swift Strike.
We went to the town of Raeford, North
Carolina, and turned from there to drive onto a dirt road which entered
Fort Bragg. There was a location there called Finalayson Mountain,
or some such name. It was not much of a mountain, more of a hill,
covered with pine trees with one fair sized open area. There was
another AB-216 tower already installed there, with a microwave team
operating another AN/TRC-29 relay. The microwave company, as we
found out, had a system operating from XVIII Airborne Corps headquarters
at Fort Bragg, through two relays (the Mountain Site being the first) to
the Corps field headquarters in South Carolina. We were told the
system had had some troubles and to back it up. Three AN/TRC-24
systems were being installed in parallel with the microwave
system. |
Some other signal company (unit forgotten) had
already put in two of the AN/TRC-24 systems. The 596th was
installing the third. The other company had two trucks parked next
to the base of the tower and their teams had already installed four
antennas on the side of the AB-216, two antennas going towards Bragg and
two going towards the next relay site. Putting the antennas on the
side of the tower saved room and trouble as we did not have to raise our
own masts. We backed our truck up so that it was between the
other two, our tailgate being almost up against the tower base. It
took very little work to assemble the two antennas and pull them up the
sides of the tower, tying them on with field wire and putting mast guy
wires on as safety lines.
Communications went in with no
trouble. We cleaned up our unused equipment and supplies and
prepared to settle down again. We did not even have to run our
generators. The microwave people had large generators with plenty
of spare capacity, so we just connected to their system. We parked
our generator trailer out of the way and prepared it for operation in
case the main ones had trouble. |
-END PART XII-
I tried to take care of the kitten which had adopted us at the crossroads.
We had no cat food of course but we gave him the best we had, along with
a little milk. It did not matter, he got sick. Maybe he had
been exposed to the elements too much after he had been dumped, maybe he
just not have much of a chance to start with. He started shaking
and could not eat at all. One of the people suggested he might
have distemper. There was nothing I could do. I had no idea
where any vets were in the area. Besides, the Army probably would
not have looked favorably on me using an Army vehicle and Army time to
try finding a doctor. Plus I did not have very much money.
Finally, after much soul searching, I came to the only decision I could
see. There were 55 gallon drums around the site, filled with water
for fire purposes. The kitten looked and acted as if he was about
to die and I did not know what else to do. But doing it was one of
the hardest, if not the hardest, thing I had ever done before or since.
I started to lower him into a fire barrel and
when he saw the water he showed more life than I thought he had in him,
but he was still shaking and crying and I went ahead. I knew he
was not going to get any better. As weak as he was I was able to
hold him in the water with one hand. I was crying while I did it,
holding him until all movement had ceased. I dug a hole and put
his wet limp body gently into it, covering it carefully. It was
deep enough so I hoped no wild animals would disturb him. I did
not feel much like doing anything after that but I went around and
checked the site, trying to keep busy.
We used pup tents at the Mountain Site and they
were okay at night, just a little hot in the daylight hours. I
worked out a shift schedule for my three men, not pulling a shift myself
but stayed around most of the time to make relief's as needed. Not
having to run generators saved a lot of trouble and meant the operators
had little to do except monitor the radios every so often and listen for
any alarms or calls at all times. We had one transmitter amplifier
(What we usually called a tuning head) go bad while we were there.
I had to call and ask the company what we were doing for maintenance
support, with our own maintenance back at the cornfield. We were
told there was a direct support maintenance site set up at Fort Bragg.
Schuler and I drove in and found it. It turned out they had
"equipment floats" and they just traded us a good amplifier
for our defective one so we did not have to hang around while they
checked ours. We took a short while to go past the Fort
Bragg post exchange and do a little shopping, including finally finding
some reading material.
We had good food while at the Mountain Site.
The Fort Bragg "fixed station" receiver site was about a mile
down the road. They had a small mess hall and we were set up to
eat there. I guess all such sites are gone now, with the advent of
satellites and all but in those years every major post had high
frequency radio sites to provide secure teletype communications around
the world. To minimize interference the transmitter and receiver
sites were usually in different locations. I do not recall
what they did for "kitchen police" (KP) personnel, but the
food was always good and hot. I do not remember having
anyone from our site being tasked as KPs. |
One day XXX asked me if he could drive into
Raeford and use the small Laundromat we had seen while driving through
town. I was hesitant to let him drive but none of the rest of us
wanted to go so I decided to let him go alone, hoping he would stay
awake for such a short trip. Besides, since the time I had tried
to wake him at the Airfield Site he had had no sleep spells as far as I
knew. It was only a few miles round-trip to Raeford and I figured
it should not take him more than an hour or so to do his laundry and
return. I asked him to pick me up a newspaper and a pint of vodka
while he was in the town.
XXX left and we went about our business.
He did not return after an hour, nor after two hours. After three
hours I really started to worry about him, thinking he might have fallen
asleep and had an accident, or been arrested for some reason.
After four hours I was about ready to try and borrow a driver and truck
from one of the other units so I could go look for him. Finally,
after over four hours and fifteen minutes he returned. I asked him
where he had been so long. He said he had done his laundry
and tried to find my vodka but the county Raeford was in was dry and he
had been required to go elsewhere to find a bottle. It was
probably no more than eight miles round-trip from Mountain Site to
Raeford and back. I checked the odometer on the 3/4-ton. He
had driven over one-hundred-twenty miles! Almost anyone else would
have come back after finding Raeford was dry, but not him. I asked
him for the newspaper and vodka. He had forgotten about the
newspaper! And the store had had no pints of vodka, or any vodka
at all. He presented me with a half-pint of "Crab
Orchard" whiskey. I tried one drink of it and put it away.
(When we returned to the cornfield later I gave the Crab Orchard
Whiskey to Gauntney and he drank the rest. Until I obtained
a drink of "Old Cotton Picker" whiskey a few years later I
thought Crab Orchard had been the worse possible taste.)
I do not know how long we stayed on the
Mountain Site, maybe as long as two weeks, maybe less. LT Clum
stopped by on one visit, about the only time we saw him during the
entire exercise. We finally received word that we (my team and the
other unit) would be taking our systems down. Yet another company
(I believe it may have been the 208th Signal Company.) was sending a
team up to set up a relay with regular masts. In the meantime the
other teams closed their systems and took their antennas down, packed up
and left. We were to maintain communications with our system until
the new team had their equipment ready to take over from us. Once
they had both directions in with their equipment we could close down and
return to the cornfield. Once their entire system was in, the
microwave teams would close their system and tear down. Once the
microwave people were packed up all along the system, the new AN/TRC-24
system would close their system and pack up the last multi-channel
communications of Exercise Swift Strike.
The new people showed up and laid out a site in
the field a hundred feet of so in front of us. They parked their
generator trailer and spotted their truck where they wanted it.
(They would have to supply their own electricity so the microwave
generators could be shut off and packed up.) My team stood in
front of our truck, leaning against the front bumper mainly, watching as
that team prepared to take over from us. We were in no great
hurry to return to the cornfield but we did not want to be late getting
there either. Besides, it was nice to be able just to relax and
watch how someone else did the job instead of having to erect antennas
of our own. |
-END PART XIII-
When we had started watching the new team arrive and get their vehicle
spotted in preparation to get their site operational, I had expected to
see a trained team. It was always a pleasure to watch antennas
being raised properly, to see three or four people doing what they had
trained to do. We figured within an hour or less we would be
taking our own antennas off the AB-216 tower and packing up to return to
the company at the cornfield. I never expected to see a team as
untrained as the one we saw that day at the mountain site.
To start with they began to unload their
equipment. There seemed to be little order in what they were doing
or how they went about doing it. The team chief (a sergeant E-5)
had gotten the first antenna mast base plate and was putting it in the
location he wanted. While he was working on that he had to keep
calling out to the other two (or three?) men to tell them what to do and
they kept calling out to him questions about one thing or the other.
The team chief and one man got the four antenna stakes out and started
walking around positioning them, pacing off the distances and eyeing the
angles to make sure they would be right. The sergeant seemed to
know pretty much what he was doing but the entire thing appeared as if
the team members were new and that the team had not trained too much as
a team.
My operators and I stood and watched, not
wanting to get in the way. Raising antennas could be dangerous if
not done properly and I told my people to stay away and not interfere or
try to help which might cause them to get confused with strange people
around doing things. They continued to lay out the antenna mast
and antenna head. I also noticed that when they started putting
out the mast guy lines (thin steel cables with adjusters) they had to
run the adjusters down the lines a long way. When we used ours
they were already always nearly correct from past erections and we never
had to do anything but minor changes. Guy lines needing a lot of
adjustment indicated they had not been used much or had been used
improperly.
They finally had the first mast and antenna
ready to start up. They raised the gin pole and tied it off on
both side states with ropes. The gin pole stood almost upright at
first. The guy wires which would go to the "front stake"
were fastened to the top of the gin pole. A block and tackle
extended from that top to the front stake. When the block and
tackle was shortened by applying brute force to pull on it, the
gin pole would come over towards the front stake, bringing the mast up
from the ground until, if it was done right, the top of the gin pole
would be at the stake and the antenna mast would be almost vertical.
At that time the guy lines (three of them) would be removed from
the gin pole cap and fastened to the stake. After that it was just
a matter of adjusting the three sets of guy lines at all four stakes to
get the mast completely straight.
Their mast was up about twenty degrees from the
ground when I asked my men if they noticed anything wrong. It only
took a few seconds for one of them to notice they had not put the back
guy lines on. We discussed if we should tell them. Without
the back guy lines the mast would go vertical but there would be nothing
to stop it from going right on over. I told Bender to go point out
the omission to them. If the mast dropped it was a very real
possibility that someone could get injured or even killed.
Besides, if they dropped an antenna they might have to wait for
replacement parts. which meant we could be a long time getting off the
mountain. Bender went over and told the team chief.
He stopped pulling on the block and tackle, looked, shouted at his men
and they started lowering the mast back to the ground. While they
had been raising it they had also been having trouble with the side guy
lines because they had not been adjusted correctly. They had been
required to keep loosening the adjusters as the mast went up to prevent
too much pressure on the side guys, which could have caused the mast to
buckle.
They positioned the mast back on the ground,
positioned the "A-frame" support to hold the antenna off the
ground, got out the other set of guy lines and hooked them between the
mast and the back stake. However, they did not bother to make any
measurements so the guys would be at about the correct length.
They got back on the block and tackle and started hauling away again.
When the mast was only a few feet off the ground one of the men had to
run to the back stake and start feeding the guy lines through the
adjusters because the lines were adjusted so short they could not raise
the mast. He had to keep doing that until the mast was vertical.
That was something I would never have allowed due to the danger to that
man if the mast had fallen. They finally got it up, transferred the front
guy lines and made some adjustments to get the mast straight.
About the time they were moving the block and tackle and gin pole over
to where they would be needed for the second mast, Schuler said
something still was not right. We all looked but Schuler finally
had to tell us they had not put the coaxial cables on the mast.
Sure enough, there were the antennas on top of the mast, ready to
transmit and receive, but there were no coaxial cables to connect them
to the radio! There was no danger involved in that so we waited.
The team chief, while his men had started on the second mast, had
started his generators and applied power to his shelter in order
to get the first radio operational. |
It did not take him long to
come out and try to connect the coaxial cables. We could not see
his facial expression very clearly from where we were but their was
little mistaking his arm gestures. His men looked back at
the first mast and started moving everything back so they could lower it
and hook on the cables.
They shut the generator down to reduce the
noise and started lowering the mast. All the way down, hook up the
cables, raise the mast again. Again they started moving everything
needed to the second mast site while the team chief restarted the
generator and worked on the first radio. That radio was going to
be the leg going to Fort Bragg. The Bragg site put tone on their
transmitter so the new team could tune their receiver. As
soon as the new people declared their radio ready I was to cut the high
power on my transmitter and the new team would establish communications
with Fort Bragg in our place. One of my men had positioned himself
at the tailgate of the new team's truck. As soon as the team chief
said he was ready, my man waved to another man by our tailgate,
who told me. I told Bragg I was cutting my transmitter power and
he could tune in on the new transmitter. At least that is what was
supposed to happen.
My receiver stayed tuned to Bragg's transmitter
and I had the headset up to my ear. After a minute or two Bragg
started ringing the buzzer and telling me to turn my transmitter back
on, which I did. Bragg said they had not picked up any signal from
the new team. I walked over and asked the new team chief.
He said he had not received Bragg's signal. I told him to
check all his equipment and make sure his equipment was okay. I
also confirmed what channels he was transmitting and receiving on.
Five minutes or so later I received the signal to try again and I cut
power. This happened three or four times. Bragg told me just
to stay on until the new team figured out what they were doing. I
sent a man over to tell them they should be having no trouble as we were
communicating very well with Bragg. While that man was walking
over to the new team, I was looking up at their antenna. It
finally dawned on me they had made another mistake. The AN/TRC-24
antenna could be positioned so that the dipoles were either horizontal
or vertical. Ours were horizontal. The new team had put
theirs up vertical. With cross-polarization communications would
never be established. I slowly walked over and told the team
chief. Once again my men and I stood and watched as they one more
time lowered the mast and changed the antennas.
We were beginning to wonder if we were going to
leave the Mountain Site before dark. It took time for them to
lower the mast and change the antennas. They did it and put it
back up. In the time the team chief had been working on the radio
the crew members had gotten the second mast almost ready but had not
raised it. Later before we departed I noticed they were taking
careful pains to make sure it was correct before they raised it.
After they had changed the dipoles on the Bragg antennas and raised it
back up, the team chief reported he was ready again, and once again I
cut my transmitter. Finally he made contact with the Bragg site.
I was still listening on my receiver and I heard the Bragg people tell
the new team chief to pass on to me that we could close down and
pack up. I had cut all switches before the message reached me in
person.
It did not take long before we were on the
tower taking our own antennas apart and lowering them to the ground to
be packed. Our personal gear had already been loaded, along with
everything that was not required to be used. The new team was
raising their second antenna mast when we started our engines, hooked up
our trailers and started off the hill on the long drive back to the
cornfield.
(The following had nothing to do with the
596th, but is about another time and place where I ran into a team which
lacked proper training. Many of the units which were sent to
Vietnam were done so, apparently, without the proper training. In
1967 I was with Company D, 41st Signal Battalion. D Company was
part of the 39th Signal Battalion, one of the weird things which
happened there. We operated a major radio terminal and carrier site at
what was called VC Hill, near Vung Tau. The 9th Signal
Battalion of the 9th Infantry Division put a terminal on the hill to
connect with their division headquarters at Dong Tam. I was
a sergeant E-5 at the time, in charge of the site maintenance section.
One day one of the 9th's operators came over to see me. He said
they were having trouble with high "reflected power" on their
AN/TRC-24 transmitter and asked if I would take a look at the problem,
that they had not been able to figure out the cause. I went over
and checked and at first could see no reason for the high reading.
Once I went outside the shelter and looked at their antennas I saw at
once what was wrong. The dipoles on the antennas could be adjusted
in length, in distance they stuck out from the reflectors, and in
spacing between the dipoles, all depending on the channels (frequencies)
being used. Their dipoles were all set incorrectly. I had
him get the manual out and showed him what should have been basic radio
training. His team chief came up about that time and he did not
seem to be aware of what had been causing his trouble either.) |
-END PART XIV-
We headed back to the cornfield. Due to the distance and thanks to
the replacement people being so slow in getting their equipment in
place, we were again about the last team to return. We parked our
trucks and I reported to the platoon while my men again got
settled. We were told we would be soon be returning to Benning.
While we had been in the Carolinas the East Germans and the Soviets had
started building the Berlin Wall. We had managed to get parts of
the information from occasional newspapers we obtained and from radio
newscasts. However, we had received little solid information as to
what the United States response to the wall was going to be. None
of us believed the US would risk a war over the wall. At the same
time it seemed as if President Kennedy could not just ignore the action.
Within two days or so we closed everything down at the cornfield and
packed up. Early one morning we moved out in groups of vehicles
which we had lined up the night before. We were going to make the
return trip in one trip, with no overnight stop. We did not even
go near the Fort Gordon area. Our route home took us towards the
west and south, over various highways. I do not remember where we
crossed the Savannah River. It might have been at the Clark Hill
dam. The route was a little crooked as we changed from one highway
to another. I believe we even bypassed Macon, something which was
okay with me. It was a long drive but we made it without the loss
of any vehicles that I can remember. In fact, I remember very
little about that return trip except for one incident which happened
when we stopped for a break somewhere in Georgia. We had pulled
onto the shoulder of the highway. There was a house on the other side
where two children, probably in their early teens, came out to look at
us. They had a beautiful collie who was excited at seeing so many
people. The dog was running around and started darting across the
road, around the trucks, and back again to the children. The few
cars passing in either direction slowed down but still one happened to
come along at just the wrong time, as the collie darted between two
trucks and started back across the road. The children had been
calling him, trying to get him to stay in the yard. He headed back
and the car hit him. The man driving the car was shook up but no
fault could be put on him. The dog was seriously hurt. I
never saw an adult around the house, maybe none was home. One of
our people asked the boy if they had a gun and the boy brought a
22-caliber rifle out. Someone used a ground rod to pull the dog
off the pavement onto the grass and the man shot the dog to end his
suffering. He unloaded the rifle and handed it back to the
boy. We returned to our trucks and moved out again.
We pulled back into Fort Benning finally without any other trouble. We
fueled our trucks so they would be ready to go again if needed, turned
in all defective equipment to the platoon office, and unloaded our
personal equipment. We carried everything up to the
barracks. We had a final formation to account for all personnel
and get instructions as to what was coming up the next day and were then
turned loose. I checked my Renault, which had a dead battery after
setting idle for over a month. I should have disconnected the
cables to avoid any leakage but never thought of it. One thing
about the little Renault was that the jack handle doubled as a hand crank.
I got it out and tried turning the engine over, with little success
starting it. Several of our people came over and offered to give
me a push. We only went about fifty feet and the engine started
right up as soon as I popped the clutch.
I do not recall what else I did that day. Cox, Gauntney and I
probably went to town. There were rumors about Berlin but if the
company knew anything they were not telling us. I also do not
recall what day of the week we returned, but the first weekend we were
given off. That was a rare treat as we almost always worked
Saturday mornings or had inspections on that day. Gauntney was
from the panhandle of Florida. He suggested we go to Panama City
for the weekend. He said the city was always loaded with women and
plenty of beer. So we set out Friday afternoon and drove to
Florida, the first time I had ever been to the state. Panama City
turned out to be a disappointment. There were few women
around. As a matter of fact, there were not too many people there
at all. And what drinking establishments the beach area had were
the types which college kids would like, not the "hillbilly"
jukes we were used to.
We found us a cheap motel and got some sleep. Saturday morning we
drove back through Panama City and Panama City Beach, heading westwards
towards what Gauntney said were his old "stomping
grounds." We stopped at a small cafe at the far west end of
the beach and prepared to have breakfast. While we were doing that a
pickup truck backed into the Renault, its tailgate (which was on the
chains) putting a good sized dent in the front hood. The driver,
who was hauling a pinball machine, gave me his company card and said to
get three estimates as to cost of repairs and his insurance company
would be contacting me. I never did get the estimates, that
seeming to be a lot of trouble for the dent, most of which I knocked out
myself.
|
We drove on into "redneck" country. I do not know what
we did most of that day but by evening we were at some roadhouse out in
the country south of Samson, Alabama. That was more our type
place: cold beer and nothing but country music on the jukebox. I
do remember that I, who had never danced a step in my life, was being
taught to clog by some country lady, providing much entertainment to
Gauntney and the locals. Sometime that night we left the bar and
looked for a place to sleep. There were no motels or much else
around that part of the country and we finally pulled into what we
thought was a small isolated lane, to sleep in the Renault. I took
the front seat and Gauntney took the back.
We had a sound sleep, waking with bright sunlight heating up the car. I
leaned over the seat and shook Gauntney awake before I looked
around. When I did look I found we had not parked in an isolated
lane but in the driveway of a country house. Half a dozen kids
were in the yard or on the unpainted pouch staring at us. I
quickly started the car and we left there. Neither of us had a
watch but we figured we had slept late, thinking it must have been noon
or later. We headed towards Benning, wanting to get home and
cleaned up. We stopped at Dothan, Alabama, for gasoline and
discovered it was only then coming up to 1000 (10am). We drove on
back to Benning and prepared for Monday morning.
Monday we finally received word that we were going to Germany, and very
soon. We were told we would have a lot of work to do to
prepare. It had already been announced in the papers and on the TV
news that forces in Germany would be beefed up. The reports said
most of the units to be sent would be support type units, the "rear
echelon" of Seventh Army having been pared back over the years and
needing to be restored. None of the reports gave any indications
which units would be going. Still, even after the newspaper and
news reports, we were told not to discuss anything about the move with
outsiders.
Work on preparing to go started almost at once. Teams from post
signal and some from somewhere else came along and started checking all
our equipment. Much of it was taken to be repaired so everything
would be as perfect as possible. Post maintenance and our own
motor pool section started checking trucks, changing parts as
needed. Many of our trucks received new tires, something that
normally would not have happened unless they had fallen completely
apart. We had to empty all gasoline cans. I do do recall how
we did that, maybe we poured them into a tanker truck. They all
had to be drained, aired out, and certified free of all fumes. We
received a number of large "CONEX" containers. Gas cans
were packed into them, as were other company equipment which had no
place directly on the trucks or in the shelters. It was a busy
time for all of us. We started early and worked late. We had to
dismount all our radio and carrier equipment which was bolted to the
walls of the shelters, place the covers on everything, and stack the
equipment in the shelters so the cases would not move around. All
canvas had to be taken off the vehicles, including cab covers. The
canvas, vehicle tools, and dismounted mirrors all were crated and placed
inside the shelters. By Labor day weekend we had everything done
that needed to be done. We were told we would get the three day
weekend off but Tuesday morning we would be back at work. On that
day we would start loading our vehicles on flatcars so they could be
shipped to Savannah and loaded on ships for movement to Germany.
One last word about when we first received official word we were going
to Germany. When we had returned from Swift Strike, Bender went on
leave, something which he had requested before the exercise. When
we received the Germany word all leaves were canceled and all people
already on leave were sent telegrams telling them to return right
away. Bender's mother telephoned the company commander from their
home in Pennsylvania, saying Bender was somewhere in the mountains, on a
hunting trip with his father and there was no way to contact them.
The company started talking about Bender being courts-marshaled for not
being where he could be contacted, that is, at the address which he had
listed on his leave request form. I was angry and ready to do
whatever I could about it, which probably would not have been
much. Bender returned and the company was going on about it.
The Fort Benning inspector general finally stopped the business when he
told the company the address on the leave form was not where the person
had to be at all times, merely a general address.
|
-END PART XV-
We had a three day weekend for Labor Day, with the promise of plenty
more work starting again Tuesday morning. I wanted to go home to
Louisiana for the weekend. Gauntney wanted to go back to Florida,
promising me some good fishing. I had the car so my wishes carried
a little more weight. We set out Friday evening, headed westwards
along US 80. Somewhere in Mississippi Gauntney, who was driving,
woke me up to say there was something wrong with the windshield
wipers. I found them jammed and the motor extremely hot. I
crawled under the dash, with Gauntney holding a flashlight for me.
A small screw had fallen out of place, allowing a connecting arm to drop
and jam. Looking around we were lucky enough to find the tiny
screw on the floorboard and after much trying I was able to get it back
in place. (The second lucky break was that I had an angled
screwdriver in my toolbox which allowed me to get at the screw which
fitted into a tight place.) However, down the road the wipers
stopped again and we found the screw had come out again. Once
again I returned it to its place, this time making sure I tightened it
as much as possible without taking a chance of breaking it. It
held that time, never giving me anymore trouble for the short time
remaining of my ownership.
There was almost no interstate on the route between Columbus, Georgia,
and Ruston, Louisiana, at the time. US 80 was a major highway but
with only a few stretches of four-lane pavement. Most of it was
two lanes, much of it across lonely countryside. At night traffic
dropped off. Still, the highway went through a number of small
towns. Most of them were locked up tight, not even having service
stations open. We were getting pretty tired across Mississippi,
stopping once at a roadside park to try and take a nap, only to find
that after stopping we could not sleep. We drove on to find
ourselves at the town of (Newton?) which had one traffic light and one
cafe which happened to be open twenty-four hours a day. Coffee
never tasted so good.
I mentioned the interstate highway system. One thing I had found
when I had come home a few months earlier was that Mississippi had made
a start on I 20 between Jackson and Vicksburg. They had put in the
overpasses, four laneing the interstate sections where it went under
those overpasses, with maybe a half-mile in each direction. A
really weird way of driving: Two lane, four lane, two lane, etc. When we
arrived within about twelve miles of Ruston we hit the first really
completed section of I 20, a stretch which ran to Ruston only.
We arrived at my parent's house in Ruston, cleaned up some, and after a
little talk set off to fish. We backtracked eastwards and spent
some pleasant time fishing, returning home with enough to have a good
fish dinner, followed by one of mama's great coconut pies. We
stayed the night and on Sunday morning started back for Benning.
Where we went and what we did Monday I just do not remember. I was
glad to have had that visit home because Tuesday morning before we
started work on the trucks we were told about leaves. Most of the
company personnel would get a week's leave before we left for
Germany. I, having had a thirty day leave after returning from
Germany, would not be allowed to take more.
As soon as the morning formation was over that Tuesday, we set to work,
most heading for the motor pool, a lot of us heading for the railroad
siding in the Benning warehouse area. When I stopped by Benning a
few years back I found that railroad siding gone. In fact, the
spur-line which used to go into Main Post was gone totally. I have
to wonder how many thousands of men had gone and come over that
railroad, how many tanks and vehicles had been shipped over it,
including our seventy-plus? |
The main tracks passing Sand Hill are
still there but the sidings there may or may not be gone. In 1962
that siding had been packed with flatcars, loaded with 2nd Division
tanks and equipment, ready to be shipped to port for use in an invasion
of Cuba. The spur-line going into Main Post had crossed the old
bridge near Outpost One, a bridge which had markings on it indicating it
had been built by the Quartermaster Corps, not the Engineers. Not
until sometime after that bridge had been built would the Corps of
Engineers take over construction projects. So much history in such
simple things.
Many of us moved down to those sidings where we found a large number of
flatcars, backed in on several tracks. At the end of each track
there was a concrete ramp so vehicles could be driven onto and off the
cars. We knew nothing about loading flatcars but post
transportation had a civilian there who knew all the rules the Army had
for how to do it. There also soon appeared a civilian from the
railroad company, who also knew all his company's rules. Some of
the rules agreed, some they had to argue about. There were plenty
of supplies, wooden blocks, 2 by 4 board sections, metal strapping, huge
nails, hammers, and everything else transportation had calculated we
would need. Not long after we arrived our first vehicles drove
up. Someone with a clipboard holding paperwork directed each truck
to the proper ramp. At the ramp someone else stopped the trucks
until things were ready. We had wooden pieces, fitted so they
would cover the gaps between the flatcars so that the trucks would drive
onto the first car and keep driving until they arrived at the last empty
spot. We put those pieces into place and the civilians checked
them before calling for the first trucks. Guides led the trucks up
the ramps and onto the flatcars. A close watch had to be kept, a 2-1/2
ton truck's wheels being right near the edge of the cars.
A truck would be guided to the end, the civilian carefully working out
where each one should be positioned, stopping them just right so no
backing would be required. Once the first trucks were in place a
team assigned to that track would go work. Heavy metal straps had
to go over each axle, the ends of the straps being wrapped onto metal
plates which were then nailed to the flatcar bed. Heavy wooden
chocks had to be positioned in front and behind each truck wheel and
nailed down. A double layer of 2 X 4 lumber pieces had to be
positioned on both sides of the tires and nailed. Somewhere after we had
been doing all this for some time the two civilians disagreed. The
metal straps were being wrapped around the metal plates in the manner
prescribed by the Army transportation manual. The railroad man
said that was wrong, his company would not let the cars move while they
were secured in such manner. Arguments also arose about the wood
blocking. The two had to work out their differences, after which
we had to remove many heavy nails and reposition different things.
To top all that off, later another civilian arrived. It seemed the cars,
in order to reach the docks at Savannah, would have to transient two
different railroads. The new civilian came from the second
railroad, whose rules for blocking etc., differed from both the Army and
the first railroad, at least in some ways. All work came to a
complete halt while the three civilians and officers conferred and
worked out details and compromises on how we were to secure the
vehicles.
The enforced break would have been easier to take if there had been a snack bar
close by. All we could do where we were was to try and find some
shade while the discussions went on. Some of the men spent their
time in contests, seeing who could drive a heavy nail the fastest
without bending it. Finally the arguments were ironed out and we started
work once more. |
-END PART XVI-
When the civilians and officers finished discussing and arguing about
how we were going to secure the vehicles on the flatcars and had come to
an agreement, more or less, we were allowed to get back to work.
The crews driving the vehicles onto the cars had gone ahead at first but
even they had stopped, just in case agreement required taking trucks off
again. Before we could get back to work completely the civilians
and officers had to get our work crews together and instruct us in what
they had decided, than keep a close eye on us as we resumed work, making
certain we were doing things by the settled rules. Altogether we
had lost almost half a day of work while we waited for the word.
We started again and kept the work up the rest of the day. We did
not have to go past the regular workday, the schedule calling for eight
hours of work being enough to get the vehicles all loaded. As best
as I can remember we spent most of three days getting all our vehicles
onto the rail cars and properly fastening them down. We had around
seventy-two vehicles and each of them, with a few exceptions, had
trailers. I think we were all happy when the last ones were loaded
and had been inspected by Army transportation people, as well as by
civilians from both railroads concerned. We left the rail yard, taking a
last backwards look at our trucks. We did not see the locomotives
pull the train out.
Now we had little else to do to prepare to leave. That would have
been a good time to give all our drivers classes on driving in Germany,
including international road signs. But, as with so much the 596th
command did, there seemed to be little thought of such things. We
had time for such classes. We spent hours hanging around with little to
do. Once the trucks had been taken care of we never worked more
than eight hours a day. We were given boxes to put our excess
personal equipment in, things such as extra civilian clothes or extra
uniforms, or just anything we had. We were told to make sure
everything we were keeping would fit in one duffel bag and one small
handbag.
About that time we were told no personal automobiles would be
shipped. Normally most higher ranking personnel were authorized to
ship one privately owned vehicle (POV) to and from Germany. I had
brought my Renault back from Germany and had been planning on shipping
it back again. Now I had to plan on what I was going to do with
the car. We had been told early on that no dependents (family
members) would be authorized to go, either as concurrent travel or in
the foreseeable future. We were told family housing was already in short
supply in Germany. In addition we were going over to bring Seventh
Army more up to a wartime status and there was no reason for families to
go in that case.
Leave had been authorized for almost everyone who wanted one. A
few people, such as myself were told we would not have any because we
had already had plenty within a short period before. That did not
really bother me, except I wanted to take the Renault to Ruston. A
few others did not want leave for one reason or other. For ones
who did want leave and were authorized it, they would have a week, all
starting and ending at the same time. SFC (E-6) Nix was not taking
any. He informed me that he and I would be in charge while the
main group was on leave. We would take care of the orderly room in
the day, with another sergeant on duty at night as charge of
quarters. Our mess hall had already closed, with all their
equipment packed up and shipped. All the boxes of personal gear we
had packed were labeled and packed into CONEX containers and they
disappeared from us.
The first weekend everyone was gone on leave I
asked SFC Nix for the time off so I could take my car home and get
rid of it. I left Friday evening, drove hard for the
five-hundred miles and arrived in Ruston early Saturday. I
had made arrangements to turn the car over to my father. The
vehicle registration was closed on Saturday but I went to see a
real estate agent who had been our landlord for several years and
who was a notary. He signed over my paperwork so my father
could sell the car for me. After parking the car back at our
house I had someone drive me to the bus station and I soon caught
a Trailways bus headed east. |
There
were express buses which went through Ruston, going both
directions, and getting one of them going east would have allowed
me to go all the way to Columbus without changing. To catch
an eastbound express I would have had to wait around Ruston
several hours. I got on a regular bus and rode it to
Jackson, Mississippi, where I would have to change buses, with a
two hour wait between them. I fell asleep in the bus station
at Jackson and missed my connection, giving me several more hours
to wait for the express bus which I had not wanted to wait for at
Ruston.
I finally arrived back at Columbus where I had to walk from the
Trailways station to the Fort Benning bus station to catch the bus going
to Main Post. When I got to Main Post it was only a short walk
back to the company where I reported I was back, after which I took a
much needed shower.
That week went fairly fast. All company business had been closed
out on post so that we received few telephone calls or visits.
Mostly Nix and I read, enjoyed coffee, and waited. The company was due
to return from leave soon and until than the barracks was empty and
quiet. One of us made walking trips around the building ever so
often to check things. The next weekend the sergeant who had been
taking care of nights needed time off and I moved to replace him.
One of those nights, just after dark, two lieutenants walked into the
orderly room. They were both wearing flight suits and carrying
"B-4" bags, in addition to bags holding flight helmets.
They were both a little "ticked off" that nobody had been at
Lawson Army Airfield to meet them. They had just flown two L-19
aircraft (single engine fixed wing) up from Fort Rucker, Alabama.
They showed me a copy of orders assigning them to the 596th. They
said they had hitched a ride from the airfield to the company but nobody
around seemed to know anything, even having trouble finding people who
knew where the company was. They had had trouble getting spots to
put their aircraft and getting people to help them tie them down.
I said I was sorry for the trouble but we had had no idea they were
coming. Even if we had known, we had no vehicles to send after
them. (I never did find out if the company commander knew we were
getting airplanes and pilots.) They were both tired, wanting a
place to eat and sleep. That threw me for an answer. I
called the USAICTC (US Army Infantry Center Troop Command) duty officer,
explained the problem to him and he said to send them over to his office
and he would sign them in and take care of them. The USAICTC
building was on the western side of the quartel. I told my charge of
quarters runner to give them a hand with their luggage and escort them
over to the duty office. That took them off my hands.
(A signal support company was authorized two such aircraft with pilots
for liaison and messenger purposes but few companies ever had
them. We got ours without notice, and with little notice to the
pilots who said they were given only a few days notice they were
going. I have tried to remember if the two pilots went to Germany
with our group of drivers. I believe they may have. I believe
the aircraft may have gone over on the same ship with the trucks.
I have a vague memory of them being checked out and flying off from
Bremerhaven while we were getting our trucks unloaded and readied.
I do know we never saw them again. As with all such aircraft and
pilots they were sent to the battalion aviation section and consolidated
with them where they would have maintenance support and could be
properly used.)
The company personnel came back from leave and we started getting ready
to leave Fort Benning in earnest. Seventy-plus of us had been
picked to fly over and pick our trucks up at Bremerhaven and drive them
to where we would be stationed. At the time we had not received
word where we would be at in Germany. At one time we had even
received word we would be stationed in France. The main body of
the company would be leaving via troopship. When the company
returned from leave we were also given word the information on cars had
changed and that now we would be authorized to ship such. That did
me little good. Mine was gone. Even if I had still had it, I
did not have time to get it to Charleston, South Carolina, where it
could be shipped. |
-END PART XVII-
Flight
to Germany
The day to depart soon arrived for the truck driving detail. We
were to fly out of the Columbus Airport on a chartered airplane.
Much of the time from the time we were ready until we arrived at
Bremerhaven is hazy in my memory. For example, we were to leave
Benning late in the day by bus but try as I have, I cannot recall if the
buses were chartered civilian buses or Army buses. I remember
nothing about the drive to the airport. There was no expressway
around Columbus at the time so we had to drive out on regular streets
but the trip is a blank in my mind. I do remember being at the
airport. We had a good while to wait there and we started wanting
coffee. I recall they had no snack bar, just vending machines
which did not work very well. I can also remember looking at an
insurance vending machine. I had only flown once before, on
another Army charter flight, and such things were new to me.
I should be able to remember something about the aircraft but that too
is a blank area. I do not remember what type airplane we had, what
company it was, or what the crew complement was. I always was able
to sleep very well on planes and buses so I assume I spent much of the
time between Columbus and McGuire Air Force Base, New Jersey,
sleeping. We landed at McGuire early in the morning, when it was
just getting light. It was early October and it was cold as far as
I was concerned. Here is another blank to me, whether we landed and
unloaded at the passenger terminal or somewhere else and then rode buses
to the terminal. (The only other time I had flown was an Army
chartered DC-3 which went from Augusta, Georgia, to McGuire and which
had landed and unloaded us onto a paved hardstand in the middle of
almost nowhere, where we had stood and watched the aircraft depart, and
had continued to stand there in a late November New Jersey wind until
buses had come for us finally.)
We did get to the passenger terminal one way or the other, only to be
greeted with amazement by the Air Force. Before we left Benning we
had all been given copies of our orders. Those orders said only
that "the following personnel" were to report to McGuire AFB
for air transportation to Germany. There were about two or three
lines on the orders telling us that and listing a lot of numbers,
followed by the list of our names. I never saw such simple orders
and never would again. However, the Air Force accepted them and
said they would do what they could to take care of us. Again,
however, they had had NO word that we were coming and therefore no
planes had been scheduled. For the time being we would have to
wait. We stood around and watched other military people get on and
off airplanes, including at least two flights which left for Germany
while we were there. I remember watching one Air Force aircraft
load and take off, only to return thirty or so minutes later. The
ground crew pushed the ramp back to the aircraft door, followed by two
military policemen who went up that ramp and brought back a soldier who
had to be drunk. How he had got on the plane to start with was a
mystery to us. The MPs carried him away, the door closed, and the
airplane took off for a second time.
Most Army personnel traveling to and from Germany during that era
traveled by troopship between Brooklyn Army Terminal and the Army
Staging Area at Bremerhaven. We figured we were lucky to be going
by air, even by one of the propeller driven aircraft of the day.
Most of the people who did fly at the time flew by Air Force MATS
(Military Air Transport Service) aircraft. The era of chartered
civilian airplanes was in the future, especially jets. Not too
long after we had arrived we were all called together by a PA system
announcement. Our lieutenant informed us that he was taking part
of our group to Idyllwild Airport (later to become JFK) in New York to
fly on a civilian flight to Germany. The Air Force had managed to get a
certain number of seats on that plane. (The number? It may have
been twenty-five or thirty of our people.) I believe their flight
was to leave about noon. The Air Force provided a bus to take them
to Idyllwild and they soon departed, leaving the rest of us in charge of
our sergeant first class (SFC E-6) who had not impressed us too much so
far. We went back to standing or sitting around. |
We had had no breakfast that I can remember, and I do not recall any
noon meal. If there was any dining facility at the terminal it had
to be more vending machines. If there was an Air Force mess hall
anywhere around I do not remember anyone being invited to visit
it. We must have had something, but I sure do not remember what.
Late in the day we finally received word we would be bused to Idyllwild
to fly out on yet another civilian aircraft. The Air Force did not
have a plane available but they reserved seats for all of us on a
regular civilian flight going to Frankfurt. That flight was to
leave late that night, around 2200 (10 pm) I believe. We envied the
first group. By the time we were to leave New York they would have
at least ten hours head start on us. We figured they would be
waiting on us in Frankfurt, wondering what had happened to us. We
did not find out until later how lucky we were being delayed all those
hours.
The Air Force again provided one of their buses and a driver to take us
into the city. Here once again I should have memories of such an
experience but there is nothing but a blank there. Anyway,
remember it or not, the trip happened and we arrived at Idyllwild.
We were kept together at first, until the SFC had checked us in with the
airline. He came back and told us what time to form up
again. Until that time we could wander around, just stay out of
trouble. SGT J.W.W. Lewis (of Fort Smith, Arkansas) and I decided
we would try and find something to eat. The terminal had a nice
looking restaurant, and we assumed nice prices. We finally found a
hot dog stand. In Columbus we could have had a hot dog and a full
bottle Coke for fifteen cents, and the hot dog would be provided with
ketchup, mustard, relish, and maybe onions at no extra charge. At Idyllwild
we paid forty-five cents for a hot dog, and mustard (the only condiment
they had) cost us an extra nickel. A small paper cup of Coke cost
us an extra quarter. Still we were hungry enough to get two hot
dogs each. We skipped having a second drink.
About 2000 (8 pm) the SFC came around looking for us, telling us the
Army had made arrangements for us to have a full meal at the
restaurant. We did not have to be told twice. We hurried
there and were seated with all the rest of the group. We had no
choice of menu. The Army was only paying for a hamburger steak
dinner but that sounded great. We received (for the $1.50 cents
the Army spent for each of us) a hamburger steak about the size of a
present day McDonald's hamburger patty, five or six small French Fries,
and a small cup of coffee. We were not allowed refills on the
coffee nor ketchup for the French Fries. That small expensive meal
tasted great and we felt ready for another long spell without food.
About 2100 (9 pm) we came back together at the announced place to get
ready to board our aircraft. We found out we were to fly with Pan
American. Not only with Pan Am, but on one of their new 707
jets. All at once we felt like VIPs. We boarded and took our
seats in the tourist section, which was crowded but comfortable. I
had only flown twice in my life and now I was flying what, to me, was
first class. I was in an aisle seat. Serban, who would join
my team later, was next to the window. (I have already written
about Serban and will not repeat myself here.) The man in the
middle, whose name I partly remember but cannot spell, was from Chicago
and had worked at O'Hare Airport and was used to jets. He was the
one who told me, after I had started wondering aloud, that the wings of
a 707 were supposed to flex. I had been looking out the window as
we taxied and had wondered about the wing tips bouncing. |
-END PART XVIII-
Once the 707 was in the air and started to
level out, the in-flight crew came down the aisle pushing a cart
loaded with drinks of all sorts, hard and soft. That was
something we never would have had if we had flown via MATS.
(And as we later found out, something the first group never had.)
All I wanted to do was sleep but for a long period I was kept busy
passing drinks and empties between the two women handling the cart and
Serban in the window seat.
Serban was a Hungarian who had escaped from
the Soviet repression following the 1956 revolt. He had made it
to the United States and had become a stevedore on the Philadelphia
docks. Then he had been drafted. He was a good worker and
a good driver. However, I was to find out he had one fault when
driving: He was forever getting lost. More about this
later.
Finally he was sated and I was
able to get to sleep and stay that way. It was only a six or seven
hour non-stop flight from New York to Frankfurt's Rhine-Main
International Airport. We landed early in the morning and deplaned
at the civilian side of the airfield, being a regularly scheduled
civilian flight. We did not have to go through customs, just turn
in customs forms we had filled out before landing.
We claimed our luggage. We had last seen
it at McGuire before we had gone to New York. It had all been
taken care of, more great service. We soon found out we had once more
arrived at a point where we were not expected. Somehow the Army
was contacted and told we were at the airport. The
Replacement Battalion sent a senior sergeant and a bus for us and
we rode into Frankfurt. At that time time the Army's replacement
battalion was a block or so from "WAC Circle" where the
Frankfurt main post exchange and commissary was located. We
unloaded at the battalion and several people came out and tried to
figure out who we were and what we were doing in Frankfurt. Our
SFC went back inside the building with them and we once more
waited. One of the battalion's junior sergeants talked to us and
we asked about the other part of our group, who had left New York at
least ten hours before us. That man said they had come and already
gone. I do not know if he was an idiot or just trying to impress
someone but it turned out he did not know anything.
The SFC finally came back out with a
replacement battalion sergeant. That sergeant gave us a short
talk. What he mainly said was that they had not seen our other
group, that they had not known we were coming, they knew nothing about
what they were supposed to do with us, and finally, with the orders
Benning had given us we should not have been able to get to McGuire,
much less all the way to Germany. They were trying to
find out about us, one of their number being even then on the telephone
to Seventh Army asking for information and instructions. In
the meantime, it was noon and dinner was being served at the local mess hall.
He told us where that mess hall was (about two blocks away) and how to
get there. He would post someone to watch our bags while we went
to eat.
The SFC formed us up and we marched the two
blocks up a civilian sidewalk along side one of Frankfurt's busy
streets. The mess hall had a good meal prepared. It tasted
especially good as it was the first full meal we had had since leaving
Fort Benning. After eating we drifted back to the replacement
battalion area by ones, twos, and small groups, to wait some more. |
After some time the sergeant who had talked to us before returned and
informed us we would be going to Bremerhaven soon. Seventh Army
had cleared us for movement and the Air Force or somebody else had
determined our missing group was still flying (!) and was due to land at
Rhine-Main later in the day, hopefully in time to go to Bremerhaven with
us.
Before long we loaded back onto a bus and were
driven downtown to a railroad siding near the main railroad
station. There we found the daily troop train parked waiting for
us. The train made a daily trip from southern Germany, picking up
troops and others at various points and finally going to Bremerhaven
where most of the people on board would catch a troopship for the United
States. (There were also a few cars going to Berlin.
Somewhere along the way those were detached and hooked on to a
train going to that city.) The troop train had a mess hall car
where food was prepared and served but the troops had to eat in their
compartments. The compartments held six (I believe) people
and the seats made up into comfortable beds for the overnight
journey. We loaded onto the train and were assigned
compartments. We were told the train was being held pending
arrival of our missing personnel who were expected shortly, if
their plane came in on time and if they could get through traffic in
their bus. The train was a military train, with a civilian engine
and crew, but the German railroads ran on time and they could only hold
the train for so long. In addition the train had to be in
Bremerhaven so the troops going home could connect with their ship, and
had to be on time so the Berlin cars could connect with their train.
Many of us were standing at train windows
watching when a bus at last pulled up and our people
unloaded, grabbed their bags and were hurried onto the train
by people from the replacement battalion. The last man was
barely onto the train when the door was shut and the train started
moving. We were on our way to Bremerhaven where we would
again be mated up with our vehicles and drive them to the company's new
home in Germany. And the entire group of was together
again.
I have noted that my part of the group
had been displeased that the first part were sent to New York ahead of
us. As noted, they left about ten hours before us, and arrived in
Frankfurt about eight or nine hours after us! What made the
difference was that we had been put on board that Pan Am 707. They
had been put on board a propeller driven aircraft (airline
forgotten). We had flown non-stop from Idyllwild to
Frankfurt. They had flown from Idyllwild to Gander,
Newfoundland. From there to Shannon, Ireland. From there to
London. From there to Paris. And FINALLY to Frankfurt.
At each stop they had long delays. So we were lucky after all in
being left behind at McGuire. (And they had been served no drinks
at anytime during their flight.) |
-END PART IXX-
This also ends my entire narrative of The 596th
Signal Company At Fort Benning.
Continue
with experiences in Germany
To Page 2 Germany
|
