大象传媒

The following story appears courtesy of and with thanks to Harold F Plank and James D Plank.

When we finally shipped out of Lion Mountain and headed east, the train consisted of boxcars鈥攖he famous French 鈥�40 and 8鈥檚.鈥� They were made famous during WW I, when it was said they would haul 40 troops or eight horses. We usually travelled with the doors open for ventilation. We didn鈥檛 make very good time. There were times we would go through melon patches; and the train would be going slow enough that some of the guys would jump off, run into the fields, pick up watermelons and other melons, and heave them to guys aboard the train. Then they would run and jump on the train before the caretakers in the field could catch them with their forks and rakes. We thought that was cute, of course.

One morning bright and early, we looked out the boxcar door; and we were traveling along the edge of a very steep cliff with a gorge and river way down below. Then we鈥檇 be in and out of tunnels. We learned later that these were the Atlas Mountains. I also remember going through the outskirts of Algiers on the railroad. We finally ended up in Tunisia at a town called Mateur.

We spent some time in Mateur. It was hot and dry, and most of our water came from lister bags that were hung in the shade. Now these lister bags consisted of canvas bags that were rubberized and held about 20 gallons of water. They sweat quite a bit, and that was supposed to help cool the water. Well, the water was not very cool; and between the rubber taste and the stuff that was put in the water to make it pure, it was horrible. They knew that we needed to drink a lot water in that kind of a situation to prevent dehydration, so they insisted that we take salt tablets. They would hand out the salt tablets in the evening at 鈥渕ess call,鈥� and usually an officer would watch to see that you swallowed your salt tablet. Because they tended to make me sick at my stomach, I became pretty proficient at palming it and making believe that I swallowed it while drinking some water and then getting rid of it later.
Life In the Army
It was while we were here in Mateur, too, that a bunch of us went fishing one day. Some of the fellows had picked up some Italian concussion grenades which were smoother and unlike our fragmentation grenades. We would walk on a pier on the Mediterranean, pull the pin on a grenade, and drop it in the water. The concussion from the explosion would stun any fish that were nearby, and they would float to the surface. We would drag them in with tree boughs or anything that we could reach them with. We would dress them and take them to the cook shack and have fish for supper.

Next, we went into Bizerta and boarded LCI鈥檚 for a trip to Sicily. Of course, the invasion of Sicily had occurred some time before; and by that time, the fighting pretty well had been taken care of. On August 13th, I boarded LCI #13. It was Friday the 13th. We left the next day, and it took a couple of days to get to our destination. We landed in Palermo, Sicily; and when we left the ship, we took all of our gear with us and marched through the city of Palermo to the outskirts, where we set up camp in an olive grove. It was a sandy place with a lot of red ants, as I remember. We ate our C rations that night and early the next morning took our tents down, packed up our gear, marched back through Palermo, and reboarded LCI鈥檚. This time I got on #8 and sailed back down the coast of Sicily to near where the landing had taken place on the invasion. There we got off at a place called Licata and went up on a hillside to an olive grove, where we pitched our tents, and waited further orders.

When the morning came, an awful din arose but we discovered that it was just a donkey. The donkeys made more noise than any rooster ever did to wake you up, and I think it was even earlier in the morning when they started their braying. We discovered that a lot of the carts that the donkeys were pulling were decorated beautifully. They had hand-carving on the spokes and on the sidewalls. The harnesses were decorated with tassels, colored stones, and bits of glass. They were really colorful outfits. These were high-wheel, two-wheeled carts, and they were used for all kinds of transportation, not only to transport people from place to place, but produce as well.

Occasionally in this situation, we would watch movies in the evening. The screen would be set up in a field near the olive grove, and we would all go to watch the movie. On the way, we would pick our helmets full of almonds and fill our canteens with vino. While watching the movie, we would crack the almonds and sip at the vino. Occasionally an alert was sounded, and they had to shut down, because a plane had been heard in the vicinity; and we didn鈥檛 know whether it was ours or the enemy鈥檚. But all in all, it was kind of a relaxing atmosphere.
Driving a Jeep
It was here, too, that I finally got a home. I was assigned to the Company C, 2nd Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division. I no longer was a replacement, for I had joined an outfit. During this time, I was asked if I could drive a Jeep. Sometimes you hesitated to say 鈥測es,鈥� because they might give you a wheelbarrow to wheel around. But, in this case, I decided it was legitimate and said, 鈥淵es, I have experience driving.鈥� So an officer took me out in a Jeep, and we did some driving around the countryside. When we got back, he issued me a government driver鈥檚 license for Jeeps and light trucks. From then on, I drove a Jeep with a 37mm cannon behind it. We would go on practice trips up onto a mountainside, unhook the cannon, swing it around, and prepare to fire. We became proficient at it. We had targets on the side of the hill (old junk tanks from the Italian army) that we would shoot at.

It was around this time of the year that Italy had been invaded. We were glad that we weren鈥檛 involved in that ourselves.

One day we got a notice to move to the airport at Gela and to take up guardpoints and checkpoints. It was rumored that some 鈥渂ig-wigs鈥� from the Italian government were to meet with some of the Allied generals at this airport, and they needed our protection. After about four days, nothing had taken place; and we were relieved and went back to our place at Licata.

We were there until about the 22nd of October, when we were loaded on trucks and trucked by Mt. Etna to the port city of Augusta in Sicily. There we boarded a British transport ship named the H.M.S. Stratheden. After boarding and taking on some Sikh troops and Gurkhas from India that belonged to the British army, we left Sicily; and on the 25th we stopped at Algiers. There we left the British troops and took on some more American troops; and on October 27th, we left Algiers and started back through the Mediterranean through the straits of Gibraltar and out into the Atlantic. There we went westward to avoid detection by German planes from France that might alert bombers or submarines. As it turned out, we made it all the way to Scotland and landed November 5th. Then on the 6th, we boarded a train in Glasgow traveled on through Scotland and through England to the channel coast at a village named Swanage. Some of the houses in Swanage had been evacuated so that American troops could use them while preparing for the invasion of Normandy.

Things went along pretty well there. I remember at Thanksgiving time that the turkey was tainted, so our Thanksgiving dinner was postponed. We had C rations or K rations that day.

'This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by 大象传媒 Radio Merseyside鈥檚 People鈥檚 War team on behalf of the author and has been added to the site with his / her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.'

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