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Descending from the Clouds
A Memoir of Combat in the 505 Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82d Airborne Division
By Spencer F. Wurst, Gayle Wurst OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA
Copyright © 2007 Spencer F. Wurst and Gayle Wurst
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5040-2184-5
CHAPTER 1
Enlistment and Premobilization Training, 112th Infantry, Pennsylvania Army National Guard
The first time I thought about joining the Army was in tenth grade chemistry class, when I spied a classmate reading a machine gun manual. I showed interest, we talked, and the outcome was that I went to the Armory and joined up. I don't know if I talked it over with anyone, or if I just went and did it. I'd turned fifteen a few months earlier, on December 19, 1939. The legal age for enlisting was eighteen, so of course I had to lie about my age. I gave my new birthday as April 2, 1922. I figured I could remember 2/22, and hoped I'd remember April, the month of my enlistment.
I enlisted in the Pennsylvania Army National Guard on April 19, 1940, in my hometown of Erie, Pennsylvania. I discovered that eight or ten students from my school, for the most part underage, were already in the Guard. We were in Company H of the 2d Battalion of the 112th Infantry Regiment in the 28th Infantry Division. This was a heavy weapons company consisting of two platoons of water-cooled .30-caliber machine guns: the antitank platoon and the 81mm mortar platoon. The battalion antitank platoon was supposed to have .50-caliber machine guns as their antitank weapon. I mention this only because it's so ridiculous.
I had always been interested in the military, and World War II was starting to heat up. I remember poring over books about the Civil War at my Great-aunt Myra's in Kennedy, New York. Aunt Myra's relatives had fought in that war, and her library was full of first-person accounts. When England and France declared war on Germany in September 1939, I spent study hall and any other free time I had reading Time, Life and Newsweek. Following the course of the war in my high school library, I thought we would soon become involved.
Because my mother and father were divorced, I guess I was seeking something to anchor my life as well as the spirit of adventure. My sister Vangie and her husband Ronnie, with whom I was living, weren't too happy with me for enlisting. My older brother Vern wasn't around at the time. My dad didn't object, because the Guard was paying us a dollar for every drill. That amounted to $12.00 to $14.00 a quarter, a significant amount of money for a fifteen-year-old in 1940, when the average laborer was earning $15.00 to $20.00 a week. When my mother found out, she was very upset. She either visited the Armory or wrote a letter to the battalion commander, Lt Col Momeyer, protesting my enlistment. No one told me about this at the time; I only found out long after the fact.
The distance from my sister's home to the Armory in Erie was at least eight miles, and I walked or hitchhiked to and from drills, which took place on Friday evenings. Guards received all their training from the instructors within their parent company. My first sergeant for my first two years was Sergeant Rohaly, who looked to me like a grandfather. I think he was of Russian origin — at least we called him "the mad Russian" behind his back — and his vocabulary was very limited, except for military terms. He was quite a character, a real hard-nosed first sergeant.
We didn't receive the best training. In addition to drilling two hours a week, we went to the Armory for unpaid range firing. We used .22-caliber rifles for marksmanship training and a sub-caliber firing device that we attached to the .30-caliber water-cooled machine gun to enable it to fire .22-caliber ammunition. This allowed us to fire on a range in the basement of the Armory. We also received instruction in close-order drill in the basement, and attended classes on basic military subjects taught by a sergeant or corporal who had probably been trained a couple of years earlier under the same conditions.
I remember parading in Erie wearing the old Class A uniform. The only part of it I ever liked was the spiffy campaign hat that looked like the hat worn by Smokey the Bear. Running around the brim was a bright blue cord, the color of the infantry, with a couple of doodads hanging from it. I shelled out $14.00 for that hat, a fortune for a kid like me, but our uniforms changed before I had the chance to wear it.
In the very beginning, we had wrapped leggings. They were nothing but ribbons about an inch and a quarter wide that you had to wrap around your legs. Next we were issued leather leggings originally designed for the cavalry, because there weren't enough canvas leggings for the entire infantry. We did eventually get these and OD (olive drab) woolen trousers that we wore with a woolen coat or "blouse," but the uniform was hot and uncomfortable. During parades, we'd march over to State Street, up to the stadium, over 26th to Parade, and then back down to the Armory at 6th Street. It was a matter of fifty-two long blocks, a good six miles, quite a march for part-time civilian soldiers sweating in heavy wool.
Shortly after I enlisted, we were told that the 28th Division would participate in field army maneuvers at a base camp near Ogdensburg, in upstate New York. Annual training time was extended to three weeks from the usual two. We were billeted in six- or eight-man tents laid out in company streets. I was impressed with what I saw: the horse cavalry units, many large artillery guns, observation balloons, and Army planes. As I was only fifteen and had never been away from home for so long, I did feel homesick. The song "Sierra Sue" still sticks in my mind and reminds me of those days: Just like the song, I was full of sadness and loneliness. I went to town once but quickly returned to camp because the soldiers were so thick I could hardly walk on the streets.
I sometimes wonder if the Army maneuvers of 1940 weren't undertaken just to publicize the shortage of weapons and training. When we went on maneuvers in August, our only real weapons were the .45-caliber pistols we carried as individual weapons, and .30-caliber water-cooled machine guns dating from World War I. The antitank platoon built wooden mock-ups of the .50-caliber machine gun, and the 81mm mortar platoon carried lengths of stovepipe or steel pipe with a wooden base plate to simulate actual weapons.
Mobility was also a real problem. The machine gun platoon had a two-wheeled cart for each machine gun squad, with rubber-tired wheels and a draw bar so two men could pull the cart. We mounted the tripod on the cart, mounted the gun on the tripod, and then lugged away. If we were lucky, we got to pull the cart along a road; if we were unlucky, we would have to hand-carry the gun across rough terrain. This meant we had to carry either a 51-pound tripod or a 33-pound water-cooled gun or two 20-pound ammo boxes — quite a load for a kid like me at 5 feet 8 inches and 128 pounds. We also carried heavy-walled steel water cans used to cool the barrel of the .30-caliber machine guns. Once the guns started firing and heating up the barrels, the water moved from the jacket around the barrel into the water can and recirculated.
Thus was our condition when we participated in a parade of division-size or larger, where the honored guests were the President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and the Prime Minister of Canada. We marched a good number of miles to the parade grounds, all the while lugging those damn machine gun carts in the August sun. We were in our old Class A uniforms — wool trousers, khaki shirt, heavy blouse, issue shoes, canvas leggings, and World War I helmets — the round type seen in the British Army up into World War II. We must have looked downright silly marching in review in this get-up with relics and painted sticks for weapons, especially when we tried to perform the order "eyes right" while pulling a machine gun cart.
As for our training, the situation reminds me of a remark by a soldier I later had under my command, who was pretty dull about learning. The major general commanding our division dropped in on our training exercises and asked this soldier exactly what he thought he was doing. He replied, "Well, Sir, I think I'm just following them there fellers." That was about what a lot of us were doing in the Army maneuvers of 1940 — just following them there fellers. Very seldom, if ever, did we understand the tactical situation or the types of maneuvers in which we were involved.
During this time, I was also learning (or not learning) how to handle my full-blown adolescent rebellion. I could not tolerate what I considered to be unfairness or stupidity on the part of my superiors. This regularly earned me the opportunity to reconsider the wisdom of my fifteen years while performing extra work details. One incident had to do with the garbage pit. The Army was leasing the land for maneuvers from private owners, and the leases protected the owners' rights. Each company had a garbage pit five to six feet deep, and one of the stipulations was that no solid matter would be buried in the ground above a certain depth. Once when we were cleaning camp, we threw some excess blocks of ice in the pit and covered them with dirt. That day, the owner came with a long metal rod, checking for buried solid material. He sank the rod into the garbage pit, and of course he had to hit an ice block. He just would not believe it was a chunk of ice. I got on the work detail to dig up the whole damn sloppy mess, while he stood over us and looked on. By the time we'd finished, I felt like burying him in the pit with the ice.
I also vividly remember the huge 30-gallon "piss cans" that were set up in the company street after dark, with an oil lantern marking each location. Every morning, a work detail carried the brimming, sloshing cans to a latrine dug some distance from the end of the company street. It was a bad duty, especially if some of the older men had had a beer party. The carrying detail served as punishment for soldiers who got on some NCO's list. I managed to get that detail a couple of times too.
My life, however, was soon to change in a very big way. When the draft bill was passed in 1940, Congress gave the President the authority to call up the National Guard and bring it into Federal service, and FDR issued mobilization orders. I think all Guardsmen would have been called up sooner, but the Army had no camps or billeting areas for them, and hadn't yet developed the logistical support base to enlarge rapidly. As a result, the Guard divisions and some smaller units were ordered to active duty as the housing became available. Initially, soldiers were to serve one year on active duty, then return home to inactive duty status. In a popular song, a soldier sang farewell to his sweetheart. The lyrics were sad enough, but the idea was that he would be back in a year. I thought of those lyrics many times while soldiering throughout 1942, 1943, 1944, and 1945.
I quit school the day before I was inducted into the Army. My induction took place on a cold, blustery February 17, 1941. We fell into company formation, Sergeant Rohaly called the roll, and we each took one step forward and answered "Here!" At the end of roll call, we all raised our right hand, an officer read the oath of office to us, and we all repeated it. And so we went from being a National Guard unit to a unit of the Army of the United States.
Quitting high school to go into the Army as a sixteen-year-old was completely in keeping with my private circumstances and the larger social context. In those times, one did not plan the future in terms of years — high school, college, career, and so forth — but in terms of days, weeks, and months. We were in a long and hard depression; jobs were scarce, and young men went into Civilian Conservation Corps camps to send money home to feed their families. The percentage of youths completing high school was low because children had to quit school to help support their families. Only the rich could afford to send their children to college. Even families that maintained strong family ties and loyalties had difficulty keeping themselves together.
I had not been part of a family group for years; I had been living with others, more or less as an intruder. I mean no criticism of my sister or others who took me in; the fact is, I felt like a perpetual outsider. My brother Vern, who was three years older, was off in Florida much of the time, searching for our mother. He was having a hard enough time scrounging up jobs to take care of himself alone. He finally joined the Navy just to get something to eat, enlisting for a six-year stint in December 1940.
These were the bleak facts of my family life. Because of them, I might have romanticized the Army. The restlessness of youth and the possibility of being recognized as an individual certainly played a part in my enlistment.
The entire 2d Battalion, 112th Infantry, was stationed at the Armory in Erie, which is still in use at 6th and Parade Street. Everyone had to take a thorough physical examination to make sure he met the standards and didn't hide any defects or history of illnesses. An Army formation call, "short-arm inspection," was also my introduction to sex education. The uniform was raincoats only. A medical officer inspected our private parts for VD, body lice, and crabs. I had never heard of VD or body lice before this.
Once we were in the Army, all the underage soldiers were especially eager to prove how adult we really were by indulging in excessive drinking. In civilian establishments, no one wearing a uniform was ever asked to show an ID. We could buy alcohol at any store that sold it, or step right up to a bar and be served. The surge of assurance this gave us made us think that drinking was one of the main benefits of enlisted life. Starting with our first days at the Armory, for many of us underage soldiers drinking simply became synonymous with fun.
In the beginning, of course, it didn't take much alcohol to make us lose control. I remember one underage friend going to the PX for a drink. The entrance had a landing with six to eight steps. Coming out, he tripped on the first one, rolled head-over-heels to the bottom, got up, dusted himself off, and wobbled back to the barracks. I know he didn't have more than one beer. It is said that God looks after drunks and babies, and we were living proof that this is true.
Not long after we were inducted, we moved to Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania, where the new military reservation was still under construction. I arranged for my father to pick up a girl I'd been dating and bring her to the station so we could say our good-byes. My dad did pick my girlfriend up, but in the turmoil and commotion we couldn't find each other. I was bitterly disappointed as we re-formed ranks and loaded onto the train. We had Pullman sleepers and were riding first-class now that we were in the Army, and I shed a few tears in the loneliness of my bunk that evening as the train made its way toward Indiantown Gap.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Descending from the Clouds by Spencer F. Wurst, Gayle Wurst. Copyright © 2007 Spencer F. Wurst and Gayle Wurst. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
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