Indiantown Gap, PA.  As mentioned above, I wish I still had Mrs. Conrath’s little diary to prompt my memory of details of the war years. I can remember anything worth relating I guess, but can’t always get the venue of a particularly incident straight. The sequence of locales and the names of places are often very, very hazy. But of course the first stop was the induction center at Indiantown Gap. The train ride there was not long.

I can remember the first night. We, the Edinboro group, were still pretty much together and were settled on our bunks in the barracks after a day of shots, short arm inspection, and the issuing of uniforms, shoes and other gear. Thoughts of "we’re in the army now" were on our minds. It was in the night sometime but we’d not gone to bed yet. The loud speaker in the barracks blared out, " Dove, Hills, Thomas--report to the orderly room on the double!" Not too concerned since we hadn’t been there long enough to get into trouble, we did tumble out promptly. It seems some Edinboro chaps who had entered service earlier were part of the permanent cadre at the Gap and were on duty that night. They spotted some familiar names on the list of that day’s arrivals and, being lonely anyway, summoned us in for a gab fest. Among them and probably their ring leader was Frank Halowach.

At this meeting or maybe later Frank pointed out he had some discretion as to where the inductees went within the quotas currently existing. Still hoping to get in some college courses in math and science I had meteorology on my mind. Frank said the best he could do was have me assigned to the Air Corps, the Army Air Corps, it was at that time of course. And that’s where I ended up.  Return to top

St. Petersburg.  So, one cold morning (this was in Pennsylvania in February) a group of Air Corps men were loaded onto a troop train headed south. The coaches I’m sure were some taken out of the junk yard and pressed into service for the emergency. The trip took over a week because we were a low priority cargo and spent a lot of time on sidings to clear the track for more important war goods. We slept sitting up. The latrines were minimal. Mess was set up in a box car and we weaved through many cars to get there and back. And it started to get very hot. We had left wearing our O. D’s. (olive drab, woolen uniforms) and long winter underwear. Most of us shed our underwear but didn’t replace them nor change our uniforms. Maybe the two barracks bags we had with all our issue weren’t with us in the coach. When we disembarked, however, we had our barracks bags.

In St. Petersburg after lining up for another of the ubiquitous ‘short arm’ inspections, we were told to throw our bags into a truck and to climb aboard another truck. However, the baggage truck filled up and some non-com ordered, "The rest of you throw your bags into that other truck." There were sixteen of us, we learned later, whose bags were in the second truck. I never saw my barracks bags again for months, long after basic training was over.

We were quartered in a large hotel in downtown St. Petersburg. Not at all uncomfortable except that we each (the sixteen that is) had only the one o.d. uniform--no jackets for the cold dawn reveilles on the bay and no khakis for the hot afternoons in the Florida sun. We soon became known as the "stinking sixteen." Have you ever tried to wash a wool shirt in the bathtub? The results aren’t the greatest. We refused to take P. T. until we got a reissue of uniform. Each day we’d flip coins to see which one of us would approach the base commander and request some gear. Always the answer was, "Oh, we’ve located your barracks bags; they’ll be here tomorrow." It seems that at the railroad station they’d gotten loaded onto a train and shipped out. We were ready to ship out ourselves before we were issued some clothing. Weeks later while at clerical school in Colorado I was called to the orderly room and there sat my barracks bags that were brand new when they arrived in St. Petersburg now looking as though they’d been through at least a couple of wars. Tags on them showed they’d traveled over a good share of the United States. I had to get rid of some things; I then had double issue of many things. I was glad to get some of my own stuff, however–my nail brush, the diary from Mrs. Conrath.  Return to top.

Fort Logan, Colorado.  As happened at Talon, the army also thought I should be a clerk and I was sent to clerical school at Fort Logan on the edge of Denver. Typing, army forms, simple cryptography were included. The typewriters were Signal Corps ones, all caps, no lower case and some other peculiarities. The keyboards were the familiar asdf jkl; sort, but even so, using them ruined for life whatever speed I’d acquired as a typist. I think it was here that I was introduced to the M209 converter, a coding/decoding machine for garbling and degarbling messages. The conversion depended on some settings within the machine and these settings we changed each day according to orders for that day.

In St. Petersburg as soldiers in uniform we experienced fairly chilly treatment from the citizens. We were convinced prices went up for anyone in uniform. But Denver was a great service town. The bulletin board always had requests for the names of soldiers to come and have dinner with a Denver family. And downtown you couldn’t stand on a corner waiting for a bus or a taxi but what some citizen would pull over to the curb with, "Where do you want to go, soldier?" This in spite of the gas rationing civilians faced. And there were a lot of G.I.s in Denver with several bases there besides Ft. Logan. That’s the Colorado Capitol in the background in the photo above. Return to top.

The 311th Fighter Squadron. I don’t remember how long the course at Ft. Logan was, maybe six weeks. After my first promotion, Pfc. (That’s ‘private first class’, a notch above ’private’) Thomas was assigned as clerk/typist to the 311th Fighter Squadron at some base in the East. (It must have been Grenier Field in New Hampshire. I received a ticket and traveled by civilian train. The 311th was one of the three squadrons in the 58th Fighter Group, a P47 outfit. Except for a couple months after V-J Day, I spent the rest of the war in the 311th.

The 58th was an ‘old’ outfit. It’s second cadre of pilots were just starting their in-group training at the time I was assigned. The 58th had trained one group of pilots and were scheduled to ship overseas. Something happened and the move was aborted. I was told that the Group’s destination had been ‘leaked.’ The pilots had been assigned to other outfits and the 58th started with a new batch of pilots but the old set of ground troops. As a result the T. O. was pretty full and future promotions destined to be slow.

I was assigned to the communications section of the squadron. This section operated the message center and also serviced the radios in the planes. A ground officer commanded the section and during most of my tenure this was a Lt. Fischer. The Lieutenant got assigned as advocate in some court martial. Having nothing to do anyway, I stayed up most of one night and typed up (and edited) his brief. Lt. Fischer thought this was ‘duty beyond the call’ or some such and was able to get me promoted to corporal. My last promotion for the duration.

Because I didn’t have enough to do as a clerk I volunteered for stints ‘on the line’ helping to service the aircraft radios, transceivers they were. Think they were VHF 1522's with crystal controlled frequencies. I recall they had to have the right set of crystals installed. Periodic orders specified the operating frequencies. On one base, maybe it was Westover Field in Massachusetts, I had a tour operating the IFF (that’s ‘identification friend or foe’) radio. It had a directional antenna and when pilots called in we were to ask them for a ‘long count,’ take a fix and give them a heading. I remember one time I got the antenna lined up okay but gave the pilot a heading exactly 180E off. Fortunately he was in sight of the base and didn’t head out to sea. I suppose I got a reprimand but I don’t recall..

Sometime while still in the States I was assigned on temporary duty to a Signal Corps unit. I came out certified, among other things, as a teletype mechanic. This meant I could unpack a field teletype and assemble the various parts. I did the same thing with field switchboards.

While I was on some base in Massachusetts, Hanover runs in my mind, Bette was able to set up a visit. She had taken a summer job as swimming instructor at a camp in Maine and on her way back to Pennsylvania was able to interrupt the trip. In fact, I got some leave and we went home on the same train.

Getting the leave was not easy. There was a bit of a feud going on between Jack Gladden, the 311^th First Sergeant and Lt. Fischer. In any such feud Jack had the upper hand because he had the backing of the Squadron Commander, a flying officer. The flyers held the ground officers such as Lt. Fischer, in rather low esteem on general principles. Since the message center crew manned the center on shifts for all 24 hours, Lt. Fischer got us excused from KP duty. But Sgt Selzer, our section chief, moved a cot to the message shack out on the air strip and slept there when he pulled night duty. When Jack learned this he slapped all the message center staff with immediate KP. This was not a punishment thing, KP was routine for all of us through, I think, the rank of buck sergeant. Although I was due the leave, Jack wouldn’t switch my KP assignment. It wasn’t easy to get anyone to trade my tour for their later one since we were due to ship overseas and the later one might never come up. I finally had to pay a chap to switch with me. Bette and I stayed in Concord, Mass., before taking a train to Pennsylvania.   Return to top  

Some Names.  In the military one forms friends fast and often shares things with them that one wouldn’t even with close friends or family. I think being in uniform gives one a certain anonymity or something. Jack Gladden was mentioned above, our First Sergeant. Jack was a lawyer from Detroit and a great First Sergeant particularly when we got overseas. Milton Hope was a Tech Sergeant and was, is I suppose, Bob Hope’s nephew. Milt applied for OCS and I typed up his application. As with most things I typed I did quite a bit of editing and remember thinking at the time I could take some credit for Milt’s successful application. He visited the outfit later wearing his Second Lieutenant’s bars. A couple officers suggested at different times that I apply for OCS. I never considered it; what I wanted most from the army was out.

There was a Sgt. Somethingbachy from Kentucky or Tennessee. Somethingbachy made good use of his civilian skills during the war. On most bases we were on overseas, he set up a still and turned out what was reported to be very good quality whiskey. Getting high prices for his booze, Somethingbachy was able to involve a lot of helpers. I remember seeing amphibious ‘ducks’ with cargo from some local port swing by his tent to drop off a few 100 pound bags of sugar or whatever he used for his mash. Word was MP officers were among his customers and when it was necessary to stage a raid for appearance’s sake, Somethingbachy would be tipped off and would leave out some old coils for the MP’s to smash. When I went from some base to McKay in Australia for R & R, Somethingbachy was among the group. While most of us stayed at the Red Cross hostel, Somethingbachy rented a whole house which became filled with his hanger-ons and a gaggle of Australian girls. (Surely I wasn’t envious!!) Through the two years the outfit was overseas he sent weekly thousand-dollar mail orders home. I often wondered if he ever had any problems with the Internal Revenue Service. In fact each payday a goodly share of the squadron payroll was mail-ordered to the States by a few big winners in the blackjack games that ran until most players had lost all they were willing to lose.

Nieuw Amsterdam.  Most of the 58^th Fighter Group traveled to the West Coast for overseas shipment by civilian train. Our embarkation point was Pittsburg, California, a port nestled in one of the bays surrounding San Francisco. We traveled aboard the converted Dutch luxury liner, Nieuw Amsterdam. Our accommodations were not very luxurious however. I was housed in the swimming pool where rows of canvas bunks, five high, had been strung. I remember mine was opposite the latrine so I peeked out onto legs of GI’s in the continual line in the aisle.

We didn’t cross the Pacific in convoy; the Nieuw Amsterdam was considered swift enough to be an unlikely submarine target. Our destination was the Pacific Theater. Life aboard was pleasant for the most part. I’m not sure of the date of our crossing but since I had 24 months of overseas duty it must have been in October or November. As we moved south the sun was the only threat and there were many cases of severe sunburn among the troops. At least one chap had to be flown back to a hospital in the States.

Much time during the crossing was spent standing in a chow line. We had no duties as I recall. The crew was civilian. Some of the rest of the time we spent on deck learning to play contract bridge. One of our friends knew the game; can picture him, think his name was Smith. He may have been from Boston. Anyway, he, Jerry, Bob and I played many rubbers of bridge. There was often quite a wind blowing and we’d use Australian coins or other small objects to hold the dummy’s cards in place. We followed the right bridge scoring and playing rules I guess but made up our own bidding strategies. My bridge playing still suffers from this self-taught introduction to the game. My childhood exposure to five hundred may have helped me but not much. Bridge did help pass the time. The photo is from later after we arrived in New Guinea, but that’s Cpl Smith in the center with some ‘fuzzy wuzzies.’

The V-mail was my first from overseas and was written aboard the Nieuw Amsterdam. Probably it was the first word the Folks got from me in several weeks. V-mail was great, by the way. One wrote on a special form. These were photographed and thousands could be shipped to the States on a single reel of film. Remember, then there was no such thing as digitizing and putting on a floppy.

Our first landfall was Wellington, New Zealand, where we stopped to take on water or fuel or whatever. The troops were taken ashore for a bit of exercise and I can remember marching up and down the hilly streets of the town. The citizenry turned out in force and signs and cries of ‘Welcome Yanks,’ were rampant. We realized these folks were a lot closer to the war than those back home, a distinction that was even more evident when we got to Australia.   Return to top. 

Camp Doomben.  The troops from the Nieuw Amsterdam disembarked near Brisbane, Australia. Parts of the Fighter Group that had flown across the Pacific were already camped in the center of a racetrack outside Brisbane--the Doomben Track. It was a most miserable camp. I remember thinking, "Good grief, if living is this bad here in a civilized country what is it going to be like in the wilds of wherever we’re going and closer to the war?" We slept in leaky tents in the mud. Latrines were buckets that the ‘honey dippers’ didn’t get around to emptying until they were overflowing down the sides. The situation wasn’t helped by the fact that every GI suffered from severe diarrhea. And chow was mostly Australian can goods that had the most peculiar tastes. If anyone had told me that one day Australia would become my very favorite vacation spot I would have laughed (or spit) in his face.

We did get some time off base and the Aussies were most friendly. The Doomben Track was not functioning, of course, but I did get to some horse races. An Aussie spotted the uniform and asked if I’d like to place a winning bet. He left and shortly returned with what, sure enough, turned out to be the winner. It seems they sort of took turns winning and each race was pretty much decided beforehand.  Return to top. 

The S. S. Stirling.  I’d like to title this section with the name of the Liberty type ship on which we started up the east coast of Australia, but I can’t remember it. Stirling is the one we ended up aboard. We were in a convoy of five or six similar ships. Whatever the name of ours, accommodations aboard were simple but not unpleasant. Each GI was issued a sheet of plywood, 4x8 feet I think and reasonably clean. This, laid down in the hold, became our home for the, presumably, few days we would be aboard. All our gear we stacked thereon and we slept there. In the daytime we’d turn the plywood over to keep the side we slept on clean. The only thing I remember about this move was what occurred not many days out of Brisbane. It was evening and most of us were down in the hold in our ‘quarters.’ There was loud crunch and we jolted to a stop with the deck on a marked slope. I remember thinking, "Is this what it feels like to be torpedoed?" There was no panic as I recall but we did scurry up the ladder out of the hold. As I came on deck a large mass could be seen moving by a few feet off the rail and coming to a stop beside us. What had happened soon became apparent. We’d gone aground on one of that coast’s treacherous reefs. Whether or not it was the result of poor seamanship I never heard. I think four or five of the convoy went aground. We were probably the first and the others may have had some warning. Fortunately, the ship that moved by so close did that and didn’t ram us. I assume we were running without lights showing.

All of the Liberty ships except ours had gotten off the reef by daybreak. There was no real damage and no casualties that I heard of. But our ship had to be evacuated and we were all taken off on PT boats and ferried to the S. S. Stirling--which took us to our destination in New Guinea. At least that’s my recollection. We might have been ferried back to our original ship after it got off the reef but I don’t remember it that way.  Return to top.  

The Garden of Eden.  After Camp Doomben our camp at Dobadura, New Guinea, was indeed a Garden of Eden. During my 24 months overseas, the 311^th was located on over 24 bases, most of them on different islands. The pattern of each move was similar. There’d be an ‘advanced echelon’ which usually included the planes and pilots and key personnel. And this group went by air. Then the main body would make a surface move. A ‘rear echelon’ would stay to tidy up camp, pack less important gear, and often join the main body by air. I was with the main group in the move from Doomben to Dobadura.

I learned later that Jack Gladden drove the members of the advanced echelon very hard until there was a comfortable camp. No one rested or slept very much. But after camp was set up life would be pleasant, no undo pressure, plenty of sack time. Jack worked harder than anyone else. We’d often see him on garbage detail emptying cans of garbage into a truck for transport to a dump where, sometimes, we’d use high octane aircraft fuel to burn it. The quarters of the other squadrons were never as comfortable as the 311th’s.

And so, when we arrived at Dobadura it was, to repeat, indeed a Garden of Eden. Squad tents--four to eight men--were neatly in rows, on wooden floors, electric lights in each tent. We’d rig a frame over our cots to support mosquito netting often with a platform above for storage. The mess hall was set up and screened. So was the latrine. Everything neat and clean.

But the Dobadura camp had something no later camp did. It was located on a good size stream and just in back of the camp there was an honest-to-goodness swimming hole. Really a pleasant camp.  Return to top. 

San Roque, Leyte.  I don’t know where the outfit moved from Dobadura, maybe Saidor but the move I do remember was the one to the Phillippines. I was rear echelon for this move. With operations and the planes gone there was no need for a message center so I looked for other things to do. I remember overhauling one of the generators that supplied our electricity. It was something we did periodically and I had helped once before. This time I did it on my own.

We made the move by air and I flew in a C47--the military designation for DC-3's, those two-engine transports of which there are, I think, a few still in service. I remember Monroe County in Florida was using them for mosquito control decades after the war. I’m sure they saw service during the Korean War. Four or five GI’s were aboard sitting in bucket seats. And lashed, more or less, forward was a jeep. The thing shifted every time we banked and we wondered if it would come down on us and on out the end of the airplane.

We landed outside of Tacloban, the main city on Leyte and for a time the Capitol of the Phillippines while the Japanese were still in possession of Manila. By the time we got there, though, the Battle of Leyte Gulf had taken place and the Allies were in control in Manila. Our pilots, by the way, had taken part in that battle. Unfortunately I was the last to deplane and someone, there were no officers with us, yelled, "Thomas bring the jeep." I recall driving the thing down the narrow pieces of channel track that were hooked to the hatch on the side of the plane. To make matters worse, I was stuck with driving the jeep. All the other guys jumped into a truck and threw their barracks bags into my jeep so they piled up behind me--and kept falling down on my head. None of us had any idea where our outfit was but I was told to, "Follow that truck." It seemed to me that the colored truck driver drove like a bat out of you-know-where--down a narrow dirt road filled with caribou drawing little carts and bicycles and pedestrians and chickens. But if I lost the truck I knew it be a long time before I could find anyone who knew where the 311^th was. So, I kept up, driving much faster than I was comfortable with.

The camp at San Roque was a pleasant one. It was right on the beach and we spent a lot of time in the ocean. There was an offshore reef where the water was shallow. Several times we--probably Jerry, Bob, Larry and I--would check out a jeep and go exploring. We drove on the reef right out in the water. Ordnance personnel would give us the devil for exposing the jeep to all that salt water but it was a lot of fun. With the jeep, left to right, it’s Corporals Thomas, Osborne, Stein and Shapiro.

We made some Filipino friends. Jerry was great with the kids; he usually had a gang of them trailing after him. I remember his lining a dozen or so up and taking them through short-order drill on the beach. They loved him. (Several years later I met Jerry in Ann Arbor. I think he became a teacher and I'll bet he was a great one.)

The Japanese occupation had been very hard on the Filipinos. Even those educated and formerly well-off were destitute. There were always some locals around our mess hall and going through the garbage. There were a couple of girls, sisters, who did laundry and sewing for our tent. I wish I could remember their names. When they were in camp at meal time a couple of us would take our mess kits through the chow line a second time and bring them back to our tent. The girls or whatever Filipinos were visiting would eat the very mediocre chow as though it was the best they’d had in a long time. Probably it was.

One time several of us, following directions given by our laundress, hiked to her family home. It was a large, lovely place. Up in the air with livestock living underneath. They had a couple sewing machines and some bamboo, very well made, furniture. The family I’m sure was once well-to-do but were now on the verge of starvation. There were a few scrawny chickens about and we were sure the eggs were an important part of sustenance. But before we could protest the mother had beheaded one of them and proceeded to prepare our supper. None of the family would eat with us. The food was good but we didn’t really enjoy the meal. Camp was far enough away that we stayed overnight and hiked back the next day. One of the sisters came with us I think. It was during this time I tried to learn some Tagalog but never made any real progress. Most Filipinos seemed to speak at least some English.

Lucille, Aunt Bess and Annie Bell, each pose in turn in the grass skirt I sent home from, I   think, the Philippines. Except possibly for Lucille, they probably had little enthusiasm for the monkeyshines, but it was done I’m sure to give me a laugh when then sent the snaps.

It was while we were camped near San Roque that I decided I knew why we were winning the war in the Pacific. Heroic acts by pilots and other Gi’s and brilliant strategy by General MacArthur and his staff may have had something to do with it but the truth is, the Allies simply flooded the theater with materiel and trained personnel to the point they were unbeatable. We had an abundance of everything--from cigarettes to socks to spare airplane engines. I’d see a tent-mate open letters from home with a couple squashed cigarettes therein, sent by a loved one and garnished from an off-brand pack available during rationing. Then he’d glance under his bunk to see the several cartons of main brands, secured at a very low price at the Squadron PX. It was not uncommon for a GI, too lazy to do his laundry, to put a tear in a sock and turn it in for salvage, getting a new, and clean, pair.

I think our ordinance and mechanics sections had enough spare parts to build a complete Jeep or P-47 from the ground up. And they just about had the skill and the equipment and tools to do it. Filipino acquaintances helped me realize how different things were in the Japanese air force. There had been a fighter squadron at the same strip during the Japanese occupation. The village Filipinos were amazed at the stream of American trucks that passed almost continuously and reported that they very rarely saw a vehicle when the Japanese were there. They said there was only one trained mechanic in the whole Japanese squadron. We had a trained ground crew for each plane--Crew Chief, Ordinance man, Radio Tech, etc.--all highly trained. The Japanese squadron was lucky to get one of the squadron’s planes in the air to fly a mission. If each of our squadron’s planes wasn’t ready to fly each and every day. the Crew Chief needed to have a good explanation.   Return to top. 

An 'Easy War'.  I’ m sure my war experience was not a typical one. Outside of a few Kamikaze pilots I was never shot at and never had to kill anyone. In fact, once we got overseas our carbines were taken away from us–a wise move I suspect since with limited training in the Air Corps we’d have ended up shooting each other in any kind of an action. Security was lax. While operating message centers in the States we had regulations which included having an axe on hand to smash the M209 code converter and a can of gasoline to burn the code sheets. In a message center on an isolated strip overseas none of these precautions were taken. I’d be alone all night and have no weapon nor axe nor gasoline. There were isolated Japs about but they’d be more interested in stealing food than secrets. We lost pilots from the squadron but most if not all were the result of bad weather or pilot error, not direct enemy action.

On several of our bases we were subject to visits by lone Japanese aircraft, "Washing Machine Charlie" we called them from the sound they made. We were instructed to have a personal fox-hole prepared but I don’t think many of us had adequate ones. I recall being aboard some craft making a move to another base when the convoy would be subjected to a kamikaze attack. Once I was assigned as back-up in a gun emplacement on board. Fortunately, my services weren’t really needed but one of our guns found the target and the lone plane crashed into the sea not far away.

Boredom was a major hardship. On a few bases movies were available and once or twice live shows were available. One such I remember well. I can’t name the base; maybe it was back in New Guinea. Bob Hope and his troupe was scheduled to do a show. Particularly since his nephew, Milton, was in the Squadron, a group of us opted to drive to the ‘theatre.’ We each took a wooden box because the facilities would consist of a stage, a public address system and an open field. We no sooner got to the place when it started to rain. So, an acre of GIs sat on their boxes huddled under ponchos and waited. We sat in the drizzle for what seemed like hours. No information. None of us had anything better to do and we were already as wet as we could get so we waited. Finally we were told the show was still on, the troupe was on its way. It seems Hope’s jeep driver had gotten lost. Finally Bob Hope arrived. His audience was not in a very good mood and the good man struggled for some time to get the first laugh out of them. But he got us warmed up and, as he always did, he put on a great and much appreciated show. I don’t remember who was in the troupe with Bob this time. In one of Bob Hope’s show Frances Langford was with him but I think this a later time when we were in the Philippines. Return to Home page.

There was one terrible day and night. I can’t name the date or the base. The landing strip was a metal one I recall. Our planes and other fighter outfits had provided cover for bombers as far as they could on a big strike on Hollandia. As they returned to their home bases in the islands the weather closed in and many of the strips became unusable. Our strip was one of the few still available. The tower lost control of the incoming flights, many arriving with their fuel tanks on ‘empty.’ I saw many crashes that day. The operations radio was in the same shack as the message center and I remember hearing one pilot who’d been ordered to circle several times shouting that he had no fuel and was coming in regardless and would shoot down any aircraft in front of him. There were burning wrecks all over the strip. Much of the 5^th Air Force was listed as missing that night although many planes turned up on little strips scattered throughout the theater.

We lost two pilots in a freak accident while they were on leave. They were flying back from Australia, from MacKay probably, in a B-24 I think. I’ve never been aboard this bomber but I understand some passengers were sitting on planks across the bomb bay doors. Someone in the cockpit opened the bomb doors by mistake and the pilots fell out.   Return to top. 

Okinawa.  I can’t name most of islands the 311^th was on in the theater but the last one was Okinawa. This is where the outfit broke up. We were scheduled to move to Japan after V-J Day but our personnel were all ‘high-point’ and destined to be among the first to be discharged so such a move didn’t make much sense. The troops were to be separated on a ‘first in, first out,’ basis. Thus the 311^th didn’t ship home as a unit but rather troops were scheduled for shipment on the basis of their ‘points.’

I recall when news of the ‘Bomb’ on Hiroshima and Nagasaki arrived but I’m not sure it was before or after we landed on Okinawa. I tried, on the basis of my limited coursework in physics, to explain to my tent mates atomic fission. Actually, much of my information came from the little condensed versions of Time Magazine that we got regularly.

Okinawa seemed a very barren, mostly rock island. My most vivid memory of it was the typhoon that devastated us in the fall of 1945. We spent a most miserable 36 or so hours. I took shelter for most of one day and a night in a ‘duck,’ the amphibious vehicle used to unload ships. I had nothing overhead but the sides were some eighteen inches high and gave a little protection from the wind and flying debris. I watched huge pieces of Quonset huts sail by. After it was over nothing was standing but some native thatched huts. Our mess hall was gone but someone found some tins of beans. When we opened them they were full of maggots. Hard to believe but I remember clearly flicking aside maggots when I saw them and gobbling down handfuls of beans. We heard afterwards that some troops took refuge in caves along the shoreline and that was where the tidal wave trapped them. I have a bit of phobia for high wind and I trace it to that experience on Okinawa.   Return to top. 

From Ie Shima to the Columbia River.  While awaiting transport to the States I spent time on the little atoll of Ie Shima (not to be confused with Iwo Jima). The photo at the right is the Ernie Pyle monument on Ie Shima because that was where he was killed. It was an awkward time because I was not really part of an outfit. It wasn’t always clear where to mess and to whom to report. But transport was finally arranged and we embarked for home. I recall little of the crossing except that it seemed to take forever. We had some briefings aboard aimed, I suppose, at preparing us for civilian life. Topics included National Service Life Insurance and the so called "GI Bill" for post-war college or other training.

One of Dad’s peeves was the ‘industrial insurance’ which companies such as Prudential were big on. This was ‘term insurance’--low premiums but no cash value and hence no savings feature. Dad always preached against it and I so advised some of my ship mates. Fortunately I realized the error of this advice in time and that GI insurance wasn’t just cheap but almost free. I still have a full $10,000 of GI insurance protection. I wonder how many I did a serious disservice to by panning term insurance.

I had already decided to use the GI Bill to transfer to the University of Michigan. I had 36 months of entitlement, four full academic years if I could put together a program to use it. Months ago I had corresponded with a number of universities about programs and housing and employment opportunities. Of them all, the University of Michigan responded with the most complete information--undergraduate and graduate catalogues, brochures on housing and on-campus jobs, complete descriptions of the curricula I might be interested in. And they had a strong physics department which was to be my major.

We docked in the Columbia River somewhere between Vancouver, Washington, and Portland, Oregon. We had not been paid since the outfit broke up and it was days before discharges, pay rolls, transport, etc. were sorted out. I was broke so I called Frank to wire funds which he promptly did. My own savings were in a bank account which was in Bette’s and my names. When I had my train ticket I think it was Lucille I called to relay my travel plans. In any case it was Lucille who rousted Mom and Dad out one morning and brought them to meet my train when it rolled into Union City.   Return to top.  

Home to the Ranch. It was sure good to be home, see the Folks. It had been a long war for them. Dad had taken a ‘war job’ in a machine shop in Titusville. The wages helped their financial picture and the mortgage on the Ranch was paid off, but Dad’s real motivation was to make a contribution to the war effort. He told how much some of the antics in the shop, ‘blueing’ the handles on lathes and the like, irritated him because it slowed up the work. With his machine skills and education they had wanted to make Dad a foreman in the shop but his attitude there was similar to mine in the army. We wanted to get the war won and get on with our lives.

My first priority was to get myself to Erie. Lucille took me but couldn’t wait to bring me home. These photos might have been taken around the time of our wedding. At some point while overseas I had sent Bette a proposal of marriage. She sent a clipping of the announcement the Millers put in the paper with her picture. Earlier Jim and Mary Miller had not been keen on Bette’s choice, but after the war they were always very good to me. To say Bette and I were glad to see each other is putting it mildly. I had to call Aunt Bess and Uncle Clarence to get a ride back to the Ranch.

The Millers arranged a very nice church wedding. The honeymoon was short because the semester was due to start in Ann Arbor. I think Jim Miller expected Bette to stay at home for much if not all the rest of my college time but Bette and I had other ideas. I think it was the day after arriving in Ann Arbor that I found quarters, such as they were, and sent for Bette.

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