University of Virginia Library

2. Part 2

On the Battle Fronts

[ILLUSTRATION]

XII
Introduction

Let us suppose, for an instant, that such things as radios, motion
pictures, and newspapers had not yet been invented when the Second
World War was raging on its hundreds of distant battlefronts. Had
this been so, the people of the United States would have known
nothing about the greatest conflict in all history save what their sons,
brothers, or husbands were able to tell them.

How complete would be a chronicle in which the experiences of
each Charlottesville and Albemarle serviceman were recorded? It is
certain that most of the campaigns and battles would be included,
for more than five thousand men and women from this community
went into the armed forces and were scattered over the entire earth.
High school boys and university students, farm hands and mill workers,
doctors and professors, merchants and bankers, white and colored,
rich and poor, all served their country. Such a story as they
together could tell would provide the community with a panorama
of the great common action, each scene of which would depict the
vital part played by a soldier, a sailor, or a flyer from this section of
Virginia.

Unfortunately a complete history of Charlottesville and Albemarle
servicemen can never be written. All knowledge of the deeds
of many brave men died with them on the field of battle, and most
veterans are reluctant to discuss their experiences. In the following
pages are told fragments of their story. The limitations of space and
the lack of accurate and complete information have made it necessary
to exclude accounts of many brave deeds and important accomplishments
from this book, but the experiences of a representative few are
set down, as being typical of many others. They are permitted, so
far as has been found practicable, to tell their story in their own
words. Thus one is enabled to view in miniature the melodrama of
life at the battlefronts as it appeared to those who knew its hazards,
drudgery, and achievements.

XIII
Liberating Mediterranean Shores

Long before Pearl Harbor some Americans were involved in the
fighting. Besides those who joined the armed services of the Allied
nations, there were American merchant seamen who carried war supplies
to England and her allies. Larry D. Holland of Charlottesville
was a member of the crew of the Charles Pratt. When the neutrality
law forbade United States ships to carry war supplies, this Americanowned
tanker, flying the Panamanian flag, cruised in submarine infested
waters. On the afternoon of December 21, 1940, off the
coast of West Africa, it was struck by two torpedoes and went down
in flames. Four members of the crew were lost, but Holland and
thirty-seven others escaped in lifeboats. For six days before arriving
at Freetown, South Africa, they were without food and water.[1]

On March 20, 1941, the Egyptian steamer Zamzam left New
York bound for Alexandria. Among her passengers was Thomas
Olney Greenough of Proffit, one of a group of twenty-four ambulance
drivers recruited by the British-American Ambulance Corps
and bound for service with the “Free French” in North Africa. On
April 9 the vessel left Recife, Brazil, expecting to call at Capetown,
Union of South Africa, two weeks later. About 6:00 A. M. on
April 17 the German raider Tamesis overtook the Zamzam and
shelled her for about ten minutes, though the defenseless victim had
raised the signal of surrender. The members of the ambulance corps
with self-sacrificing devotion cared for the wounded while the ship,
which had been hit eight or nine times, was in imminent danger of
sinking. At first taken aboard the raider, the survivors were later
transferred to a freighter, the Dresden. While aboard ship the prisoners
were, to use a German term, treated “correctly” but without
humanity. After a long zigzag voyage through the British blockade
the Dresden on May 20 discharged Greenough and the other prisoners
at St. Jean-de-Luz on the German-occupied west coast of France.
Two days before, the Alexandria Navigation Company had reported
the long overdue Zamzam as sunk.

Greenough, with the other Americans, was confined by the Germans
at the Hotel Beau Sejour at Biarritz. On May 31 all Americans

except twenty-one ambulance drivers were released, but the
Germans seemed unable to make up their minds as to whether
Greenough and the other drivers were military personnel or not.

Put aboard a prison train bound for an undisclosed destination
on June 28 and warned that the guards had orders to shoot to kill
if any attempted to escape, the ambulance drivers suspected they were
headed for a German concentration camp. In a conversation with
the guards Greenough learned that the group was on its way to Mulhouse
and then on to the Black Forest. Piqued when the German
guards ridiculed the possibility of escape, and wanting another opportunity
for active service, Greenough and his friend James Stewart
leaped through the window at about one-thirty in the morning while
the train was stopped at Poitiers. After a chase they eluded their
guards.

“They almost caught us in the railroad yards when I caught my
foot in a switch,” Greenough said, “but we managed to jerk it free
before the guards could reach us.”

For three and a half days they hid during the day and traveled
at night. Their supplies included three loaves of German sour bread,
two cans of sardines, a can of bully beef, and water, but lack of a
can opener forced them to subsist on bread. On the fourth day,
worn out by their trek which had taken them about forty miles
southeast as the crow flies, but much farther than that when detours
were included, they concluded they had reached unoccupied France.

“The first person we met was an old peasant woman,” Greenough
recalled, “and when we asked if we were in Free France, she replied
sadly, 'None of France is free.' ”

In unoccupied France the police gave them passage to Marseille.
There the American consul arranged for them to travel across Spain
to Portugal, where passage home was secured. Meanwhile, the Germans
had announced the release of the remaining American ambulance
drivers. When he arrived in New York on July 28, Greenough
at once volunteered for a new ambulance unit which was forming.
So well did he serve as a member of the American Field Service that
he was twice awarded the Croix de Guerre by the French Government.[2]

After the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941,
the United States was officially in the shooting war. American ships
put out to sea and ran the gauntlet of enemy submarines. Gordon
Witt Black of Crozet was a member of the forward damage control
party of the USS Laramie, which was torpedoed off the coast of
Newfoundland by the Germans on August 28, 1942. A torpedo
cut a hole in one of the big oil tanks of the Laramie, which caused
the ship to list, but within nine minutes Black had the pumps going
and the ship soon righted itself.[3]

In November, 1942, an American army landed in North Africa
and began the march which was to end in the heart of Germany.
Rugged Major General Lucian King Truscott, Jr., who had adopted
Charlottesville—the girlhood home of his wife—as his residence,
commanded a special task force of the 9th Division which had the
difficult mission of capturing Port Lyautey in French Morocco.[4]

With Truscott as commanding officer of the air section of the task
force was Colonel Demas Thurlow Craw, a native of Traverse City,
Michigan, who had made Charlottesville his home. One of the very
young enlisted men who volunteered during the First World War, he
later attended West Point and was commissioned in 1924. Four
years later he transferred from the Infantry to the Air Corps. During
the early days of the war in Europe he was an Army air observer
with the British Middle East Command and served as military attaché
first in Athens and then in Ankara. Lieutenant General Delos Emmons
called him “our most valuable foreign observer.”

Craw, who was one of the first Americans to take a definite stand
as an enemy of Nazi Germany, did not wait for Pearl Harbor to get
into the fight. With the British he took part in twenty-one bombing
raids over Axis-held territory and was under fire a total of 136 times.
All this before the United States declared war!

In many ways Craw fought a personal war with the Axis. While
he was in Greece before the United States entered the war, his car
accidently sideswiped an Italian major's car. During the ensuing
altercation, the Itailan ordered the two armed privates accompanying
him to hold Craw, who was in civilian clothes, and then slapped his
face. Breaking away, Craw knocked the major down, while the
Greek crowd cheered. A German colonel pushed through the crowd,
intervened in the unequal battle, and inquired what the trouble was.
Craw told him and added that he would be happy to give the Italian
satisfaction at any time, any place: but the major had had enough.
Then Craw asked the German colonel to say for him. “I consider
you, major, an insult to the profession of an officer, an insult to the
soldiery as a whole and even an insult to the Italian Army, which I
believe to be the worst on earth.” The Italian winced. The next
day the Italian major, wearing a black eye, made a formal diplomatic
apology. After that Craw was the toast of the Greeks during the
rest of his stay in Athens.[5]

“Nick,” as Craw was known to his friends, was a favorite with
the English soldiers, and it befell his lot to interpret them to the
people of the United States. Because he lived with the British in
the field, he could deny with authority the Axis-inspired reports
that American-made tanks and other material were being abused or
wasted by the English. He saw the excellent care which was actually
taken of weapons and raised his voice to combat Axis propaganda.

After the United States entered the war he was able to say of English
cooperation with the Americans:

“I once had part of the responsibility for setting up an airdrome
near Cairo for one of the first contingents of American planes to get
into action in the Middle East. The British had picked what they
considered a choice spot and had turned it into a surprisingly competent
airport. Concrete aprons had been laid out where the planes
could warm up without drawing sand into their innards, and sandbag
protection for planes had been provided at dispersal points around
the field. Comfortable quarters were erected for the men. Efforts
were made to permit both officers and men to join the common English
social activities, and perhaps most important of all, American
officers were given honest access to all background information the
British possessed.

“Then, for strategic reasons, I had to reject the airdrome. I
picked another site, and hundreds of workmen were turned loose to
make it as good a field as the first. Then I discovered I could move
into still a third location I had thought was closed to me, so I
shifted again and once more the British pitched in with every facility
they could muster to make it a workable base. During three switches,
I did not get one complaint from the British; only cooperation which
could scarcely have been more complete.”[6]

In 1942 Craw returned to the United States, where he shared his
first-hand knowledge of modern warfare with troops in training and
with the officers who were planning the invasion of North Africa.
Twice for a few golden days he was at home with his wife and
young son, Nicholas, at “Dunlora” on the outskirts of Charlottesville.
Some hours were spent in the Colonnade Club at the University
sitting for his portrait, which was painted by F. Graham
Cootes. Then in October he said his final goodbye and sailed from
Norfolk for North Africa. Craw's part in the invasion is best told in
the words of Major General Truscott.

“I had known Nick for years. In fact, I had something to do
with his courtship. I was delighted when he was placed in command
of the air section of our task force. All the way over the
ocean, while I worked on a plan for the delivery of a letter to the
French commandant here, outlining in President Roosevelt's words
our reasons for landing and hoping to avoid bloodshed, Nick begged
to be allowed to deliver the letter.

“I refused. I told him it was a highly risky proposition and he
was too valuable a man to take a chance with, as he was in charge
of all my air support. But he pleaded so hard, I finally relented.
I had already decided to send Major (now Colonel) Pierpont Morgan
Hamilton, who knew the French people and language well. But

I figured Craw was such a knowledgable and likable fellow that together
they would make a perfect team. Craw told his two subordinates
the order to succeeding in command should he not come back.

“At dawn of November 8 they embarked on a landing craft bearing
a jeep. Guns were already flashing from ship and shore. The
last time I heard Nick was over the radio, swearing: 'Damn it, we're
being shelled by both you fellows and the French.' Then they
started up the beach.

“Despite all the shells, they made their way as far as a French
outpost in a jeep bearing both French and American flags. They
asked a French N. C. O. for an escort to deliver the letter. The
N. C. O. said he had no man to spare, so they started up the road
again. Just at the edge of Port Lyautey there was a burst of machinegun
fire. Craw slumped, dead. Hamilton, who was sitting right
behind him, ordered the driver to halt and they were surrounded by
French soldiers and officers.

“Well, that's about all. Hamilton was taken to headquarters and
allowed to deliver the message. There was no reply. I refused to
negotiate surrender terms at the end of a three-day battle until I had
heard from Hamilton by radio. Things came through fairly well,
although the French had strong forces. Craw's fighters did the job
beautifully along the plans he had conceived and under the command
he had arranged.

“Nick knew he was taking a big chance, but he wanted to. He
liked sticking out his neck. I guess he figured he was pretty nearly
indestructible. I rather think we all who knew him thought so.
The French were very apologetic. They said he was a gallant gentleman.”[7]

On March 19, 1943, in his study at the White House President
Roosevelt presented the Medal of Honor posthumously awarded Colonel
Craw to his widow, Mrs. Mary Wesson Craw, while his son
Nicholas watched. The citation signed by the President read:

The great air base at Port Lyautey was fittingly named Craw Field
in his honor, and not far away, near twin poles bearing French and
American flags, he rests in the military cemetery. Atop his grave the
numeral “1” reminds all who pass by that he was the first American
to fall in the liberation of North Africa. To Craw and those who
followed him the local inhabitants paid tribute with a wreath bearing
the simple words, “A nos camarades, les Americans.”[8]

While General Truscott was pushing his army ashore, another
task force was taking Casablanca and nearby Fedhala, fifty miles to
the southwest of Port Lyautey. Shipfitter First Class Brown Lewis
Craig of Charlottesville, a veteran of four years in the Navy and
four years in the Merchant Marine, was in the Fedhala Roads aboard
the USS Edward Rutledge, a transport which had formerly been the
liner Exeter. On Thursday, November 12, 1942, the German submarine
U-130 slipped into Fedhala Roads and at six o'clock in the
evening made a highly successful torpedo attack. The transports,
USS Edward Rutledge, USS Tasker H. Bliss, and USS Hugh L.
Scott, each struck twice, burst into flames. Among the transports
anchored nearby the USS Thomas Jefferson, the former President
Garfield, was not attacked. The U-boat escaped to the north.

The Edward Rutledge, which had already discharged its troops,
had aboard, beside the crew, thirty-one sick patients and some survivors
from the USS Joseph Hewes, which had been torpedoed the
night before. The Rutledge was abandoned in perfect order and only
fifteen men were lost. However, some of the crew had to swim,
among them Craig, who was counted among the missing until the
next morning. Because the sea was calm, he was able to cover the
three and a half miles to the beach in about three hours. For two
days and nights he lived in a Catholic church where survivors were
cared for by the French people.

“The following Saturday, we were moved by French railroad in
the old 40-and-8 box cars to the town of Casablanca,” Craig recalled.
“Since our clothes were all on board ship and we'd stripped
in the water, we were forced to wear blankets for two weeks.”

His dress resembled that of the Arabs, many of whom were operating
as enemy snipers in the early days, Craig said. “But you don't
blame them—they don't really know who they're fighting for,” he
added. “You give them a pack of cigarettes, and they kill for you.
Your enemy gives them a pack, they kill for him. Why, I even had
one Arab who dug a fox hole for me on the beach, and when enemy

planes flew over, he'd shove me down in the fox hole and stand up
and watch the planes fly over himself!”[9]

The 8th Evacuation Hospital arrived at Casablanca on November
19, 1942, aboard the former Grace liner Santa Paula in the first support
convoy. “We sighted land this morning about 8:30,” wrote
an officer, “but it wasn't until about 10:30 that we were really sure
it was land. It has been an essentially uneventful trip, no real
trouble. Byrd [Stuart Leavell] slept in his clothes all the way over
and we felt that as long as he did that, our luck would hold, and so
it has. As we came in toward shore the destroyers, subchasers and
planes herded us along. It reminded me of a bunch of collies driving
sheep through a gate.”

“I never realized before how thoroughly the Germans had looted
Africa,” an officer wrote a few days later. “No gasoline is available
for civilians and all the cars have been fixed to burn charcoal. There
is no butter, no coffee, no cream, no potatoes, no real bread (all of
it is made from soya beans), no sugar, nothing to eat except eggs,
eggs and eggs. The Boche have taken everything that the natives
raise, either for use in France or Germany, probably the latter. Already
more food is becoming available to the natives since the German
robbery has stopped. The natives claim that in two or three months
things really would have been bad, but I don't see how they could
have become much worse than at present. With all the money in
the world you can't get a real meal in the best local restaurant. I got
a piece of 'beefsteak' yesterday that was so tough I couldn't make
any headway with it whatever. I don't think it belonged to the cow
family. I am sticking to my 'C' and 'K' field rations for the time
being.”[10]

Under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Lincoln F. Putnam
the hospital was set up in the Italian Consulate and School on the
rue Mangin and rue Jacques Bainville in Casablanca. It was the
first American hospital to function in French Morocco, and from
November 26, 1942, to March 10, 1943, operated as a Provisional
General Hospital. During this period 4,192 patients were received;
however, only sixty-one of these were battle casualties.[11]

The fifty-three nurses assigned to the unit had been left at Camp
Kilmer, New Jersey, and later sent to Halloran General Hospital in
New York. Enlisted men were substituted for them. The Army
was unwilling to risk women in the landing and refused to consider
the earnest pleading of the nurses to be allowed to accompany the
men. As soon as the 8th Evacuation Hospital was ashore a request
to have the nurses join the group was sent through channels, but it
took considerable work on the part of Lieutenant Ruth Beery, the
chief nurse, to get the necessary orders issued. Not until March did
the nurses reach Casablanca. Although the men had done a fine job,

everyone was delighted when the nurses arrived and began to render
those services which only a trained nurse knows how to give. The
feminine touch was responsible for many improvements.

In March, shortly before the arrival of the nurses, the “8th Evac”
was moved into tents on Anfa Hill outside Casablanca and became
a Convalescent Hospital. On May 2 Lieutenant Colonel Staige Davis
Blackford wrote: “I would guess that we have handled as many
patients as any similar outfit in the Army in the same time, and I
am proud to say that I think we have handled them well, although
you might get different reports from the military authorities, because
patients to us are still more important than having all the cots in a
nice little row.”[12]

In July the unit went by train to Algiers, the trip taking four
days. Six weeks were spent at Cap Matifou near Algiers, where
volleyball and swimming in the Mediterranean occupied most of the
time. Then the 8th Evac was ordered into a staging area near Oran
to await the imminent attack on Italy.[13]

Captain Robert B. Ritchie of Charlottesville landed on the Mediterranean
coast of North Africa east of Oran at Arzeu. A member
of the 32nd Field Artillery Battalion of the First Division, he went
ashore at 1:00 A. M. on November 8, 1942.

“We fought the French for three days and finally took Oran,” he
wrote. “The French put up a very good fight and the experience
we gained proved to be invaluable in the battles we later fought.”

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day he fought a battle in the vicinity
of Medjez-el-Bab, Tunisia, and then continued defensive warfare
in the area for the next seven weeks. “The Germans sent several
strong patrols into our positions which were twice driven off with
heavy losses,” he recalled. “There were a few dive-bombing attacks
by the German Stukas, but the main activity was artillery which
dominated the front.”

Later he took part in the campaign which drove the Germans from
North Africa with great losses. “On Good Friday, we were in very
heavy battle,” he remembered, “and I was slightly wounded in the
right side by a small shell fragment from a German artillery shell.
The wound, however, was slight, and I was able to continue the
battle, and it soon healed completely.”[14]

A member of the crew of a 30-ton tank, Private Raymond Lee
Davis of Charlottesville was in the thick of the fighting in North
Africa. “On the desert we would cook in the daytime and freeze
at night,” he recalled. “The Italians gave up. They didn't want to
fight. The only way the enemy could hold ground was when they
would back up onto a hill, and we were out in the open. Otherwise,
when we were both in the open, well. ...”

On April 23, 1943, a few days before German resistance in North

Africa collapsed, his tank was hit by an 88-mm. shell and set on
fire. Davis was severely burned on the hands and arms. Seven hours
later he was in a North African hospital, and on May 21 he landed
in the United States for further treatment.[15]

The bitterness felt by the men on North African battlefields
against striking coal miners back in the United States found expression
in letters written by Lieutenant Philip G. Walker of Charlottesville.
They also reflected the confident, determined spirit of
American soldiers.

“The fighting is bloody, constant, and bitter ...,” he wrote. “We
are driving them back, hill by hill, and even field by field. At every
advance we pass more German dead. Heaven help them. The fewer
prisoners we take the better I like it. I am not asking for any compromises
and the Jerrys sure won't get any. ...”[16]

On May 9, 1943, the German commanders in North Africa surrendered.

Two months later, on July 10, the invasion of Sicily began.
Lieutenant Benjamin F. D. Runk of the Coast Guard, who in civilian
life taught biology at the University of Virginia, enjoyed a ringside
seat and described the landing.

“As far as you could see there were ships—battleships and cruisers,
large transports, destroyers, freighters, tankers, patrol boats, tank
barges, troop barges, sub-chasers and submarines—all in perfect order,
formation and units. It was a sight never to be forgotten. The
greatest single fighting unit of all times. ...

“The time passed quickly and about midnight on Friday, [July 9,]
the planes were heard going overhead with paratroopers, soon to
come over again on their way back to their bases after dropping their
troops. It was then that things began to happen. Flares began
dropping to light up the land, ten miles or so off, and big flares were
back of the shore, which had been started by the paratroopers. They
lit up the sky and gave us a good silhouette of the shore. Searchlights
began to go on and off on the shore and we expected all hell
to break loose.

“I stood on the sun deck and watched it all. You could make out
in the darkness the other ships and all were heading in to their assigned
places. About 1:30 A. M. we lowered our boats for the first wave
ashore and they were off. As they got close in ... shore, batteries
began to fire, with machine guns and rifles popping. The searchlights
kept going off and on, but when one stayed on too long, one of our
destroyers or cruisers would open up, and you could watch the ball
of fire from the gun to the target. This would mean one less light
to bother us.

“It was a wonderful picture of unity and cooperation. Our troops
got off in good shape, plus their mobile equipment, and by noon I

think all those who were to go ashore from our ship had been landed.
All this time, we were also unloading ammunition, guns, trucks, food,
and everything you can think of. On the return trips to our ship
the boats would come to their assigned places to take on a jeep, truck,
or load of ammunition.

“With daylight came our fighter planes to protect us and all the
day was peaceful, considering all, except for the shooting ashore and
the constant shelling of the enemy by our battleships. They did a
marvelous job and helped no end in establishing our beachhead. They
shelled the roads and approaches and were marvelous in their accuracy.

“When darkness came Saturday you could watch the shells travel
right to their targets. Saturday night was quiet except for the constant
shelling, but at dawn on Sunday I was at my post when I
heard the scream of the bombs as they came down and missed us—
thank God!—by a matter of a few feet. The concussion and shock
were severe and made all quite jumpy for a spell. The work of
unloading continued as soon as the flight of planes had passed, and
soon we were back to normalcy, only to be again bombed by a flight
of 25 or 30 Focke-Wulfs in the afternoon. Their bombs came much
too close for comfort and being the biggest ship at the end of a unit,
we got more than our share.”[17]

At Point Calava on Sicily the coastal highway passes through a
great rock ridge. The Americans expected the enemy to blow up the
tunnel, sealing the entrance, but the Germans had a better idea. Just
beyond the tunnel they blew a hole 150 feet long in the road, where
it ran along a rock shelf a couple of hundred feet above the sea. The
gap had to be bridged in a hurry by the engineers, who at once set
about the difficult job. The beloved Ernie Pyle tells the dramatic
story.

“Around 10:30 [P. M.] Major General Lucian Truscott, commanding
the Third Division, came up to see how the work was
coming along. Bridging that hole was his main interest in life right
then. He couldn't help any, of course, but somehow he couldn't
bear to leave. He stood around and talked to officers, and after a
while he went off a few feet to one side and sat down on the ground
and lit a cigarette.

“A moment later, a passing soldier saw the glow and leaned over
and said, 'Hey, gimme a light, will you?' The general did and the
soldier never knew he had been ordering the general around.

“General Truscott, like many men of great action, had the ability
to refresh himself by tiny catnaps of five or ten minutes. So
instead of going back to his command post and going to bed, he
stretched out there against some rocks and dozed off. One of the
working engineers came past, dragging some air hose. It got tangled
up in the general's feet. The tired soldier was annoyed, and he said

crossly to the dark, anonymous figure on the ground, 'If you're not
working, get the hell out of the way.'

“The general got up and moved farther back without saying a
word. ...

“Around 11 A. M. jeeps had begun to line up at the far end
of the tunnel. They carried reconnaissance platoons, machine gunners
and boxes of ammunition. They'd been given No. 1 priority
to cross the bridge. Major General Truscott arrived again and sat
on a log talking with the engineering officers, waiting patiently.
Around dusk of the day before, the engineers had told me they'd
have jeeps across the crater by noon of the next day. It didn't seem
possible at the time, but they knew whereof they spoke. But even
they would have to admit it was pure coincidence that the first jeep
rolled cautiously across the bridge at high noon, to the very second.

“In that first jeep were General Truscott and his driver, facing a
200-foot tumble into the sea if the bridge gave way. The engineers
had insisted they send a test jeep across. But when he saw it was
ready, the general just got in and went. It wasn't done dramatically
but it was a dramatic thing. It showed that the Old Man had complete
faith in his engineers. I heard soldiers speak of it appreciatively
for an hour.”[18]

Sicily was taken in thirty-nine days, and the Allies pushed on into
Italy. By October 1, 1943, the islands of Sardinia and Corsica had
been occupied. Air bases were set up from which Germany was
bombed. Miss Lucy Shields, a teacher at St. Anne's School, and
her friend, Miss Marion Hamilton, were assigned to an airfield on
Sardinia as American Red Cross workers. Early in 1944 Miss
Shields wrote:

“I never knew what it was to be busy until I came to Sardinia.
Marion and I manage fairly easily to meet all the missions and to
distribute doughnuts all over the island, but it's the parties and other
things which keep us running. We are expected to and like to go to
officers' parties, and in addition try to put on one or two a week for
enlisted men. We are very lucky if we get one night off a week to
rest or just have a date. I've been having fun recently trying to furnish
the various squadron clubs. It's a terrific job to find any kind
of furniture and we come out with very odd mixtures. ...

“Recently I took the day off and went boar hunting. It was certainly
an experience I wouldn't have missed. We went way back in the
mountains and then got on horses to climb up to the lodge. It was
strictly a native affair. We had about ten dogs, about thirty beaters,
four Italian officers, five American officers, me, and all the rest local
Sardinians. The meals were only meat roasted over a fire in the middle
of the room, no knives, forks or anything. Along with the meat
they passed around a jug of wine which everyone drank out of.

Afterward we walked for about an hour and took our stands while
the dogs and beaters drove the boar in. We did kill one, at least
somebody did, and the next night had a delicious boar dinner.”[19]

As the 34th Division pushed north in Italy it suffered the usual
casualties of combat. On November 6, 1943, Private Charles T.
Norcross of Charlottesville was wounded and then taken prisoner.
The Germans gave him no medical care but shipped him off to East
Prussia, where he was confined with other Americans. During the
summer Norcross worked sixteen hours a day on a farm, driving
horses. He was paid seventy pfennigs or about eight cents a day,
but as there was no post exchange, he had little use for the money.
The daily food allowance consisted of black bread and a soup made
of one pound of horse meat per thirty-five men. It was the Red
Cross which kept the American prisoners of war alive with packages
of food, clothes, games, and musical instruments.

When the Russians advanced into East Prussia, the Germans
marched Norcross and the other American prisoners, underfed and
poorly clothed, 450 miles in fifty-one days to Cella in the heart of
Germany. When he was at last liberated in April, 1945, he wrote
to his parents, “I feel like the happiest boy in the world.”[20]

With the 36th Division, which had landed at Salerno, was Private
First Class Robert E. Watson of Charlottesville. On December 8,
1943, his infantry company attacked the Germans east of the small
town of San Pietro on the southern slope of Mount Sammucro.
When Watson was fifty yards from the enemy position, he stepped
on a German S-mine. His right foot was blown off, his left leg
broken, and his hands burned. First aid men rushed to him, put
tourniquets on both his legs, and bandaged both his hands. They
could not evacuate him until later because of the very heavy enemy fire
falling in the area. Watson carried the company's portable radio,
which was smashed when he was wounded. Realizing that this
radio was his company commander's only means of communication,
Watson, in spite of great pain, shock, and loss of blood, endeavored
to repair it, working diligently for a long time. He was unable to
make it work, but his fortitude and devotion to duty won for him
the first Distinguished Service Cross awarded to a soldier from Charlottesville
in the Second World War.[21]

The 8th Evacuation Hospital landed at Salerno, Italy, on September
21, 1943, twelve days after D-Day. The nurses were among
the first American women to set foot on the liberated soil of Europe.
After a most unpleasant crossing in a British boat, on which practically
all were made ill by food prepared in a dirty galley, they went
ashore to live in an open field without tents.

On the morning following debarkation, news came that the Liberty
ship on which all the hospital's equipment was loaded had been

sunk just outside Salerno harbor. Then followed some anxious days
during which it was feared the unit might be broken up and its personnel
scattered, but the group was kept together and for a while
assisted other hospitals. Meanwhile a tornado swept through the
Salerno area, blowing down everyone's tent and casting all remaining
possessions into the mud.

The 8th Evacuation Hospital was completely re-equipped, and
on December 19 began to function independently at Teano on the
highway from Naples to Cassino. The work here was hard. The
mud was often ankle deep in the wards, making it difficult to stay
upright. Nevertheless there was some of the joy of living also. A
nurse, Lieutenant Mamie E. Kidd, who formerly lived in Scottsville,
wrote:

“I had the nicest Christmas I can imagine away from home. Three
of our friends came in about 4 A. M. Christmas morning. Mary
Ellen [Gibson] and I are on night duty, so we stayed up all day
to see them. They brought up a tree, oranges, apples, nuts, a trailer
of wood, five gallons of kerosene and a wooden platform for the
front of our beds (so nice not to have to put our feet down on wet
earth). We decorated the tree with strings of Life-Savers, tinfoil and
shiny red paper. We had it on a table covered with a white sheet
and red tissue paper. Our candles and packages filled it up. Our
cards we strung and hung around the sides of our tent. Quite a
Christmasy affair!

“I filled some socks for my patients. The Red Cross had gifts for
them all. You should have seen their faces. One boy of 19 years,
who looked about 15, was a joy to behold, he looked so thrilled.”[22]

New Year's Eve brought another tornado which blew down the
tents of other hospitals in the area, but much back-breaking work
by the enlisted men held the 8th Evac's tents in place throughout
the storm. Therefore, patients from other hospitals as well as fresh
battle casualties were sent to the 8th Evac for care.

Between March 23 and 27 the hospital moved a few miles to the
west and set up at Carinola. During May, while the drive on Rome
was in progress, George Tucker, a war correspondent who was recovering
from a jeep accident, wrote of the 8th Evac:

“For days I have been lying here watching the passionless routine
of a hospital getting ready for a battle—the clearing of wards, evacuation
of patients who could be transferred safely to the rear, bringing
the blood bank to a maximum, and countless other steps that
always precede an attack.

“When it came, I stood under the stars in the front ward tent and
watched the whole perimeter of the horizon leap into light as hundreds
of guns all the way from Cassino to the sea simultaneously
went into action.

“ 'We will begin to get our first casualties in a couple of hours,'
said the officers in the receiving tent. But it was almost 3 A. M.
when the first ambulance turned into the drive. ...

“I spent almost all the rest of the night in the operating room
where four surgical teams worked simultaneously, and in the shock
wards where the incoming casualties were prepared for operation.”[23]

“All through the day and night litter bearers have come in from
the environs around Santa Maria Infante which our infantry retook
yesterday after the Germans had kicked us out,” he wrote later. “The
litter bearers place the wounded on saw horses, like carpenters use,
and when every inch of space is crowded they spill over into adjoining
wards.

“When a man is hit he goes 'in shock.' His blood pressure falls
and his pulse-beat increases. Unless he can be brought out of the
shock he can't survive an operation, and that is where plasma comes
in. You walk down the lengthening rows of white faces and wonder
how they can pull through. Plasma does it. I saw a man from
Ohio take ten units of plasma and come back from the fluttery edges
of death. Color flooded back into his face and his pulse fell almost
to normal. Recovery now is almost certain.

“It is startling the way infantrymen can bear in silence almost
anything the battlefield can throw at them. It humbles you to stand
amid hundreds of men whose bodies have been shattered and not
hear one single word of complaint. They just lie there, waiting their
turn to be taken into the operating room. ...

“Sometimes a heart-breaking choice must be made between a man
who has no chance and another whom surgery might save. A lieutenant
seemed perfectly calm and looked up with wide, clear eyes,
but his spinal cord had been severed and nothing human hands could
do would make him whole again. Next to him was a man who
had been hit hard through the chest. But he still had a chance, and
so they took him.”[24]

A day or two later the routine of the hospital was broken when
a rather unusual casualty was brought in. “My God, it's a girl!”,
the ward attendant cried. Indeed it was a girl, a French WAC who
had been shot as she drove into the battle zone. “I guess I got on
the wrong road,” she explained to the nurses in French.[25]

When the great drive through Rome carried the fighting rapidly to
the north, the hospital was set up for brief periods at Cellole, Le
Ferriere, and Grosseto as it followed the Army up the west coast of
Italy. During 1944 the 8th Evacuation Hospital made seven moves
aggregating 425 miles, but lost only eleven days of operation, a record
of which to be proud.[26]

From July 3 to August 29 the hospital was at Cecina, just south
of Leghorn. It then moved inland to Galluzzo, a suburb of Florence,

where it remained until October 12. Two days later it was set up
at Pietramala, 3,400 feet above sea level. During the short, cold
days the fog hung low, shutting out the sun. Rain turned the area
into one great mud hole, which swallowed 1,600 truck loads of rock
before passable roads were obtained. In December, when it was
evident that the American offensive was stalled, efforts were made
to “winterize” the hospital. Work had hardly begun when a storm
wrecked the tents. Lumber was blown about like match sticks. By
Christmas there was a foot of snow, but meanwhile the tents had
been floored and walled and some prefabricated buildings set up.
The completion of the winterizing was celebrated by a Christmas
party at which egg nog, a compound of powdered eggs and cognac,
was served. The pièce de resistance at Christmas dinner was potatoes,
real potatoes, not dehydrated potatoes. These had been peeled by
the nurses because the enlisted men were too busy completing the
construction to undertake the necessary K. P.

During the next two months the ground was covered with six to
eighteen inches of snow. The weather was clear but cold. Adequate
heating was impossible. Wood for the stoves was scarce, but even
scarcer were hatchets for splitting kindling. A nurse commented that
someone should make friends with the quartermasters and get a
hatchet.

“What's wrong with the Engineers?”, demanded Brigadier General
Frank O. Bowman of Charlottesville, who was a patient. “We
have fine hatchets.” Making good on a promise, he shortly afterward
delivered a hatchet for each nurses' tent.

With the return of spring, the Americans resumed their advance.
On April 30, 1945, the hospital began operation at Buttapietra, six
miles south of Verona. With the capitulation of the Germans a few
days later, battle casualties suddenly dropped off.

The 8th Evacuation Hospital was at Rivoltella, on the south shore
of Lake Garda, when it was officially dissolved on September 29,
1945, and most of the personnel were started back to the United
States. Lieutenant Colonel Everett Cato Drash of Charlottesville
was the last commanding officer.

Many individuals with the 8th Evac were decorated for the outstanding
services they had rendered. Recognition came to the group
as a whole with the award of the Fifth Army Plaque for meritorious
service during the month of January, 1944, and the award of
the Meritorious Service Unit Plaque on September 10, 1945.[27]

While overseas the 8th Evacuation Hospital admitted 46,585 patients,
of whom 10,419 were suffering from battle wounds. A total
of 11,398 patients were operated upon, but there were only 129
post-operative deaths. Only nine of its patients died from disease.
Beside those admitted, 24,483 persons were treated as outpatients.

Of the 650,000 battle wounded of the United States Army and Navy
from Pearl Harbor to V-J Day, 1.6 per cent were attended by the
8th Evacuation Hospital, an outstanding accomplishment.[28]

In order to disrupt communications in the German rear and perhaps
turn their flank, an American and British force was landed at
Anzio, twenty-five miles south of Rome, on January 22, 1944. The
Germans quickly met the threat and bitter fighting ensued. Among
the troops holding the beachhead were the joint American-Canadian
First Special Service Force, which had first seen service at Kiska,
Alaska. Around Cassino, Italy, where they had become known to
the Germans as the “Black Devils” because of the disguising grease
which they smeared on their faces when they went on night
patrols, they had borne the brunt of much of the fighting. Lieutenant
Graham McElhenny Heilman of Charlottesville, whom his
friends called “Gus,” led the company which on February 2 took a
pretty little Italian village near Anzio. Soon the town was known
as “Gusville” in honor of its liberator. The force fought for ninety-nine
days on the German side of the Mussolini Canal without relief.[29]

Also with the “Black Devils” at Anzio was Sergeant Nelson B.
Fox of Proffit. He kept six hens in his fox hole to provide eggs.
When enemy shelling began, the hens, like their owner would make
a dive for the protection of the fox hole.

The “Devils” specialized in sending out small groups to clean out
houses of Jerries at night. Every gun they knocked out or enemy
they killed was marked by a red arrow sticker, the force's emblem,
on which was “USA-Canada” and the colloquial German expression
“Das dicke ende kommt noch,” meaning “Your number's coming
up next.”[30]

With a 45th Division tank destroyer crew at Anzio, Private
Luther D. Bunch of Route 1, Charlottesville, was in the thick of
the fighting.

“We saw a tank column heading along a nearby ravine,” he said.
“They stopped advancing as soon as we opened fire. Then, as our
shells dropped closer, they swung around and quickly retreated. They
were scooting along pretty fast and we didn't score any direct hits
on that tank column.”

Of another occasion, however, he said, “We sighted the Tiger
tank clattering toward us during a German attack on our outpost.
We opened fire and disabled the Tiger tank with three rounds of
armor-piercing ammunition. A few minutes later we shelled German
troops and knocked out a German troop-carrying truck along
a beachhead road.”

During periods of relaxation Bunch played poker with the other
crew men inside the tank destroyer. Much time was spent keeping

it shipshape. As Bunch expressed it, “It's my home for the duration.”[31]

While the Infantry struggled to move north in Italy, the Army
Air Forces were pounding the German lines of communication. On
April 1, 1944, Second Lieutenant Richard G. Miller, Jr., of Charlottesville,
one of a flight of A-26 Invaders, destroyed a railroad
bridge near Attaliane on the Rome-Florence railroad. The pilots had
begun their dives on the bridge when an ammunition train was
observed moving onto the bridge. The locomotive and several cars
received direct bomb hits. Violent explosions followed. Coming
out of their dives the flyers had to dodge the flying debris.[32]

On August 6, 1944, while flying an escort mission for a group
of bombers bound for Budapest, Second Lieutenant Carl E. Johnson
of Charlottesville shot down a Messerschmitt 109 interceptor. Describing
the flight in a letter to his mother, Lieutenant Johnson said
he shot the enemy plane down and immediately dived at about 450
miles per hour and got back to his base before the other planes could
catch up. Subsequently he raised his record to two enemy aircraft
and one probable. Johnson, who had been the top honor man of
his cadet class, was a member of the famous 99th Fighter Group,
the first all-Negro flying unit in the Army. The group by its sterling
performance won the respect of all who flew under its protection.[33]

Describing bombing raids over Axis territory, Lieutenant Francis
Bradley Peyton, III, of Charlottesville said, “We take off on practically
a split second, after having been given minute directions as
to the route we are to take both ways, and the opposition we are
likely to encounter. An escort accompanies us on part of the mission.
On our mission we are instructed as to the proper procedure
we are to follow in getting back to our base. We are provided with
escape kits, with a map of the territory over which we go, first aid
kits, and about $40 in money. ...

“Our daylight missions are always in formation. Each of us follows
a squadron leader. If one bomber encounters trouble and drops
out, another takes his place.”

A B-24 bomber pilot, Lieutenant Peyton participated in fifty-one
missions over the Balkans, Italy, France, and Germany.[34]

When escorting heavy bombers in an assault on the oil installations
at Brux, Germany, on October 16, 1944, Second Lieutenant Royal
S. Swing of Charlottesville, a Mustang pilot with the 15th Air
Force, sighted a large group of enemy fighters.

“I saw one start after my flight leader, so I gave chase,” said Lieutenant
Swing later. “My leader turned after three other ME 109's
and the Jerry and I became separated from them. I kept on his tail
until, after a few bursts, I hit his fuselage on the right and he

rolled over and down a couple of hundred feet where he bailed out.
After that I looked for my formation but only saw ME 109's, plenty
of them all around me, so I got out of there fast!”[35]

Near Futu Pass, Italy, on September 23, 1944, a platoon of the 91st
Division was advancing through heavy fire when the platoon leader
and two non-commissioned officers were cut down, leaving the group
leaderless. Staff Sergeant Andrew J. Dawson of Schuyler, realizing
that the force was in a serious position, immediately took command.
Under intense mortar and machinegun fire he moved about, reorganizing
the platoon. He made his way to each of his squads and
gave them instructions and encouragement. To each he assigned its
proper mission and indicated a route of advance. Sergeant Dawson
then led the platoon through the enemy's fierce fire in an assault
which captured a strongly fortified hill. The Silver Star was
awarded to him.[36]

On March 14, 1945, First Lieutenant Joseph G. Pace of Charlottesville,
a P-51 Mustang fighter pilot with the 325th Fighter Group,
while escorting a group of heavy bombers attacking the Nove Zamke
railroad yards in Hungary, won his first aerial victory. On the return
trip his oxygen pressure failed, and he was forced to drop out of the
high altitude escort and come down to about 10,000 feet. Here he
ran into a group of four German Focke-Wulf 190 fighters with
five others nearby.

“As I radioed to the rest of the squadron I made a pass at the
four-plane formation,” Lieutenant Pace recounted on returning to
his base. “When my burst hit the fuselage of a FW-190 the
plane made a lazy-S dive and crashed in flames.”

The squadron found approximately thirty-four German fighters
in the area. The largest air battle of the year for the 15th Air
Force ensued, during which seventeen German planes were shot
down and the remainder driven off.[37]

On May 11, 1944, the 85th Division was making an all out
advance on Rome, and the southwestern end of the Gustav line
north of Naples had to be breached. Sergeant George William
Davis with Company G, 339th Infantry, took part in the attack on
Hill 79. He was wounded at Trimonsuoli as the drive started, but
he entered Rome with his outfit. Subsequently he was commissioned
a second lieutenant but was later killed in an automobile
accident at Pistoria, Italy. On August 9, 1944, Sergeant Davis
sent his parents a poem he had written which, like an unpolished
folk ballad, told simply the story of the battle for “Hill 79.”

XIV
Assaulting Fortress Europe

While the United States was gathering men, supplies, and boats
in England for the attack on Normandy in June of 1944, the
Army Air Forces waged from England a continuous and aggressive
warfare, which slowly but surely crippled Germany. Between
August 17, 1942, when the Eighth Air Force made its first heavy
bomber attack, and V-E Day more than 1,550,000 tons of bombs
were dropped on western European targets.

Stationed in Great Britain, American airmen learned to know
and admire the people. From “a pretty spot in England,” Major
Wilmer H. Paine of Charlottesville, who was flight surgeon for a
group of thirty-six B-24's, wrote to his wife in September, 1942,
praising the British. “My hat goes off to them. In spite of the
war they continue to live their daily lives as though the Germans
were 5,000 miles away. They say little or nothing about the
war. ... Except for searchlights and anti-aircraft guns and distant
sound of motors at night I wouldn't believe that we were here to
fight a war.”

As a means of keeping physically fit, Major Paine spent an
afternoon working with a threshing crew, harvesting the barley.
“All England is either a grain field at the height of its greatest
harvest or a lovely green pasture filled with fat cattle,” he wrote.
“I've flown over quite a slice of it and I've never seen so much
grain, sugar beets, cabbage, Irish potatoes, and beef cattle in my
life.”[1]

“You will notice a clipping of the Liberator raid on St. Nazaire,”
he wrote Mrs. Paine in December. “Your spouse was on that raid
with the boys. It was great fun, but not as exciting as I had expected.
I have been on two raids with the boys and I tell you this,
not to cause you any alarm, but merely to give you my word that
I will not be going on any more unless it is strictly my duty to
do so. I felt, however, that it was my duty to go on a couple to
prove to myself and the men who depend on me that I had the
guts to go. It is easy for someone to tell a man he hasn't the
guts to fly into enemy territory and face the fighters and the flak

(anti-aircraft shells) when he is seated safely behind a desk two
hundred miles away.

“On the other hand, one wonders if he isn't a little cracked to
go barging off on a bombing mission across France with a good
chance of getting a few hunks of steel through his lungs when
he doesn't have to. Oh well, it was a wonderful experience and
I wouldn't take something pretty for it. When you are flying
four miles high you make rather difficult duck shooting even for
those crack Hun gunmen. In addition to the altitude we were
squirming like a worm and going over 200 miles an hour. After
we opened the bomb bay doors and dropped six tons of exploding
eggs we did a little job called getting the hell out of there.
This involved peeling off toward the sea and going down to the
top of the waves quicker than it takes to tell it.”[2]

Daily bombers went out to attack German installations. Staff
Sergeant Mason E. Houchens of Charlottesville, who was qualified
both as a radio operator and rear gunner of a B-17 Flying Fortress,
was shot down over Europe on June 13, 1943. On July 28 his
family was informed that he was a prisoner of war. For nearly
two years he was in a German prison camp until he was liberated
in the spring of 1945.[3]

On the return of the Flying Fortress, “Standby,” from its target
in occupied France, the bombardier, Lieutenant James Elmer Harlow,
one of the three flying Harlows of Charlottesville, was really mad.
A German 20-millimeter cannon shell had obliterated the name
“Dorothy” which he had painted on the nose. Slowly he explained,
“I don't like being crossed up. I meant my wife's name
to remain on the ship. When that fighter got Dorothy's name,
naturally I got him.”

Harlow took part on October 14, 1943, in the famous raid on
the Schweinfurt ball bearing manufacturing plant, a foray from
which sixty American bombers did not return. His roughest mission,
however, was one to Kassel, Germany, during which his
plane had one engine and all but four guns knocked out. Once
he successfully bombed a German destroyer from 17,000 feet over
the North Sea without a bombsight. On another occasion, returning
from Stuttgart, his plane ran out of gasoline and was forced
to ditch in the English Channel. Harlow was picked up by two
Englishmen in a rowboat after being in the water an hour, clinging
to a partially inflated rubber dinghy.[4]

The American Red Cross played an important part in the life
of a soldier in Europe. “The Red Cross really helps a guy over
here,” wrote Corporal Warren T. Birckhead of Charlottesville after
a visit to London. “We got a bed (with two clean sheets) for
a shilling and sixpence (30¢) a night and our meals only cost

one shilling (20¢) each. If it wasn't for them we wouldn't be
able to spend a single night away from camp.”[5]

Katherine Lea Marshall of Charlottesville, who landed in England
in late November, 1943, was a member of a crew of three
Red Cross workers who operated a clubmobile. They travelled
from camp to camp dispensing doughnuts and coffee. After the
soldiers were filled the girls promoted games and other recreation.[6]

The Red Cross also ministered to the needs of those soldiers
who became prisoners of war. “The Red Cross was our salvation—
I can't say enough for them,” Sergeant Harvey Hamilton Fleming
declared. The sergeant had been forced to bail out of his B-17
over Brunswick, Germany, on February 10, 1944. At first he
was imprisoned at Stalag Luft 6, in East Prussia, but later was held
at Stalag Luft 4 in Pomerania after the Russians advanced to Memel.
Fleming charged that the Germans had been “eating Red Cross
boxes for years” but added that the Red Cross “sent such a volume
of supplies that some just had to get through.” At first American
prisoners got a box a week, but later when transportation broke
down they got only a half a box a week. When the Russians
overran eastern Germany in 1945, Fleming and other prisoners were
marched westward. They found many German civilians were moving
in the direction of the American front to get away from the
Russians. A German woman, whose husband was receiving good
treatment as a prisoner of war in Arizona, told Fleming, “I will
greet the Americans with arms of flowers.” Hearing that the
Russians were near, Fleming escaped and hid until they arrived.
He then accompanied the Russian soldiers, and was present at the
historic meeting of the Russians and the Americans April 27, 1945,
on the Elbe River near Torgau. Fleming described the meeting as
highly hilarious. “Everybody was drunk, running around, firing
into the air.”[7]

For every plane which winged its way over occupied Europe
there was a ground crew which kept the plane fit to fly. A crew
chief of a B-26 Marauder, Technical Sergeant Lewis Mahanes of
Cismont, won a Bronze Star, which was awarded in recognition of
his “technical proficiency and tireless energy” in the performance
of his vital but not glamorous duty. Wrote a friend of Mahanes,
“Lewis” ship has been in the newspapers a time or two, and his
pilot thinks he is the best crew chief in the group. He is probably
the best mechanic in the whole group, and has done a splendid job
working long hours. Even working on his day off when he thought
it necessary.”[8]

Over the great enemy airfield at St. Omer, France, First Lieutenant
C. Forman Dirickson, the pilot of a B-26 Marauder, had a rough

time. “The flak that day,” he recalled, “was by far the worst I
have ever seen.” It burst all around the bomber, fragments pounded
against the fuselage like hail, and the smell of cordite filled the
air. A shell burst immediately above the pilot's compartment, filling
the area with flying glass. Then a piece of flak struck Dirickson's
helmet, knocking him out momentarily. The co-pilot pushed him
away from the controls and took over. As Dirickson recovered consciousness,
his one thought was to gain control of the plane. For
several confused seconds he fought with the co-pilot before his mind
cleared. One of the two engines had been damaged and after spitting
and sputtering a few minutes died. Nevertheless the plane limped
back to Britain on the single engine.[9]

Lieutenant Colonel George L. Wertenbaker, Jr., of Charlottesville,
a deputy-commander of a P-47 Fighter Group with the Ninth
Air Force in England, made twenty-two bomber escort missions
in his Thunderbolt, “Betty L.” He was a pre-Pearl Harbor airman,
his determination to fly having been reached while he was
still a boy. He first soloed on January 1, 1935, and in August,
1939, he won his wings and commission at Kelly Field.[10]

Lieutenant Colonel Beirne Lay, Jr., whose parents live in Charlottesville,
was a four-engine bomber pilot who commanded the
487th Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force in England and took
part in a number of missions over Germany.

On May 11, 1944, he had to abandon his mortally wounded
B-24 over German-occupied France. “It was a month before D-day,”
he recalled. “My time had come. I pressed the microphone button
on the wheel. The words stalled for a moment, where the throat
mike resting snug against my Adam's apple would carry the message
over the interphone to the ten other members of the crew.

“'Abandon ship,' I called. But the interphone was dead. I
turned to the navigator, who was standing between the pilot's seat
and mine. He had come up a few minutes before to tell me that
a hunk of flak had broken the bombardier's thigh bone.

“'Bail out,' I said to him. 'Pass the word to the rest of the
crew.'

“It was what he'd been waiting to hear. Lieutenant Frank
Vratny, the pilot, pressed the alarm button—a long ring and a
series of short rings. In a matter of seconds, escape-hatch doors
were sailing out into the slip stream behind us and bodies were
dropping out of the mortally wounded Liberator. From the copilot's
seat, where I had been sitting as leader of the wing of seventy-two
Liberators with which we had taken off from England,
I watched Vratny struggle with the wheel, rudder pedals and throttles
to maintain level flight until the boys were out. He had his
hands full of airplane. ...

“I shed my flak vest, reached behind my seat for my chest chute
and buckled it on. Vratny watched me apprehensively out of the
corner of his eye. I think he must have wondered whether I'd
forgotten that the commander is the last man out. I turned to
him and give him a jerk of my thumb, then grabbed the wheel
and throttles. He reached for his chute pack and was out of the
cockpit like a shot. Then for a few seconds the B-24 flew fairly
straight and level above enemy-occupied France.

“Maybe the co-pilot is still back in the tail turret, I thought. I'll
stay with it until she goes out of control. There's plenty of altitude.
I can bail out of the bomb bay in four seconds. A half minute
passed. Abruptly the nose came up in a climb. We stood on a
wing tip. I found myself looking sideways through the window
at the neat French fields barely visible through the noon haze.

“The plane's nose came down with a whoosh. There was no
response from the elevator controls. I pulled back the remaining
two good throttles. It was time to leave.

“I grabbed the emergency bomb bay door and bomb-salvo release
handle, installed in the floor. It came up a few inches and jammed.
Looking back, I saw that the bomb bay doors were still closed.
I was out of the seat now, with both feet planted on the floor
and with both hands on the emergency release, but I couldn't budge
it farther. Flak had shot up the system. The B-24 was already
in a steep spiraling dive and the wind was tearing past the top-turret
dome in a rising scream.

“The only means of quick exit was gone. You can't get out
the windows of a B-24. In a flash, the terrible tension in me dissolved,
giving way to a feeling of helplessness. This was too much.
The sand had run out.

“By the time I got back to the bomb bay and turned to crawl
forward underneath the floor of the cockpit toward the nose hatch,
the B-24 seemed to be heading straight down. It felt like crawling
from the ceiling to the floor of an elevator that is falling faster
than you can drop. I struggled forward through my gloomy tunnel
toward the nose wheel, but in the cramped space I didn't seem to
be making very good time toward that beckoning gap of light up
ahead where the nose hatch was. The hum of the slip stream over
the ship's metal skin indicated a hell of a dive, and I judged we
were making close to 400 miles an hour. As I squeezed past the
nose wheel, my parachute harness caught. I fought clumsily to
free myself, fearful of releasing the rip cord, and all hope went out
of me. I was trapped. It seemed as though I had been crawling
for five minutes and that we should have hit the ground long ago.
I would never get to that patch of light in time now.

“I broke free, but a further sense of relief had already come. It

was out of my hands now. The next fraction of a second would
bring instant oblivion without my even feeling it—final release from
panic and fear and striving. Clearly I saw the white board front
and green shutters of my house in Washington, and my wife's face.
I'm sorry, Luddy.

“Panting hard, I wormed closer to the daylight showing through
the hatch. And then a giant suction whisked me through the opening
like a cigarette out the window slit of a speeding car, and I
yanked the rip cord hard as I went. The ground looked as close
as the floor to a man rolling off a bed. The chute opened with a
jerk that brought the chest buckle up against my chin like a left
hook. Abruptly I was anchored in the air and I saw that I had
a 1000-foot margin. ...”[11]

For almost three months Lieutenant Colonel Lay and the co-pilot
lived in occupied France, hidden and helped by the French at the
risk of their lives. Meanwhile the Americans landed in Normandy.
At last General Patton's troops fought their way into the area,
and Lieutenant Colonel Lay was able to begin his journey home.[12]
The story of his adventures, “Down in Flames, Out By Underground,”
which he wrote for The Saturday Evening Post, is one
of the most interesting narratives to come out of the war.

After a year and a half of training in the United States, Company
K, 116th Infantry (the Monticello Guard) sailed from New York,
September 26, 1942, on the Queen Mary. There had been many
changes in personnel since the company left Charlottesville, but it
still enrolled many of its original members. John P. Davis of
Charlottesville, who had left to go to O.C.S., had been succeeded
as first sergeant by Clay S. Purvis of Charlottesville, and Captain
John A. Martin of Charlottesville had been succeeded as company
commander by Captain Asbury H. Jackson of Winchester, Virginia.
As the Queen Mary neared the coast of Ireland on October 2, she
was picked up by the British light cruiser, Curaçoa, which began
to act most strangely, appearing to put on a show for the American
soldiers. Actually she was engaged in a skirmish with a submarine.
Finally the Curaçoa crossed the Queen Mary's path. There was a
crash as the giant liner sheared the Curaçoa in two, amidships. The
Queen Mary continued on her way but that afternoon slowed down
to repair her damaged bow. The next day she docked safely at
Greenock, Scotland.[13]

Company K was stationed at Tidworth Barracks in southern
England for the next ten months. Shortly before Christmas First
Sergeant Purvis wrote of life there:

“Every once in a while a German plane takes a shot at one or
another town right close by and we grab our rifles and take off.
The R.A.F. and our boys are doing a fine job. I think Hitler's

gang is slowly losing out all around. ... We are all well and getting
along fine, and there is nothing to worry about. The men
are getting trips to London once in a while. We have gotten
used to the weather, money, and ways of the British in general.”[14]

The regulation ten-minute halt in an all-day training march
through drenching winter rain and intermittent drizzle found Company
K near an ivy-covered brick wall enclosing an English country
churchyard. Thomas R. Henry, Staff Correspondent for the
Washington Star, described the scene:

“These men were gathered in the mossy gateway of a lovely
manor house to which the church at one time had been an adjunct.
The house was set in a lovely park of oaks and yews. It reminded
them a lot, they said, of some of the fine country places around
Charlottesville. They adjusted themselves to the atmosphere of the
British countryside more easily than most American troops because
of this similarity.

“'It came pretty easy to me,' remarked Corporal H. L. Baptist
of Ivy, Virginia, a former University of Virginia student, 'because,
you see, Ivy is a typical British settlement. There must be 50
English families around there, some of whom have kept up the
ways of life of the old country, and I was brought up among them.'

“With Corporal Baptist was Sergeant William T. Chewning,
who used to be a member of the university football squad. The
whole group, in fact, is imbued with the football tradition of
Charlottesville. They have just walked away with the championship
of the regiment to which they are attached. ...

“Since they have been here they have taken up English football
and, Sergeant Chewning said, they have found it a tougher game
than the American brand.

“ 'I had thought it was tame,' he added, 'but there's a lot more
chance to get your neck broken. At home, you see, you run with
the ball, or kick it, or pass it, but you don't try to do all three
things at once and a fellow is tackled only when he is running.
Here the idea is to get the ball ahead any way and everybody
can pile on you once you are down.' ”[15]

In May of 1943 Sergeant Purvis wrote requesting some cigarettes.
“We can't buy American cigarettes here, and these aren't worth
smoking.”[16]

Lady Astor, the former Nancy Langhorne of “Mirador,” Albemarle
County, took an active interest in the 116th Infantry from
her native state. Sickness in her family caused a delay in her
plans to do something for “those dear Virginia boys,” but in time
she was entertaining her Virginia cousins. There was a pre-Fourth
of July reception and dance on Saturday as the Fourth fell on Sunday
in 1943.

The following December Lady Astor attended a special performance
of the 29th Division's musical show “Get Crackin'.”
Major General Leonard T. Gerow of Petersburg, Virginia, the
division commander, introduced Lady Astor to the audience, remarking
that she had a special talent for telling Cornish dialect
stories and that she had often expressed a desire to obtain some
real Virginia ham. “Lady Astor,” said the general, “I once made
a wager. If you will tell three stories for my outfit here tonight,
you can have your pig.” Thereupon a squirming, be-ribboned
porker was dragged to the platform. Never to be outdone, Lady
Astor gamely marched to the microphone and in her inimitable
manner won the pig.

A general favorite with the division, Lady Astor at first was
made an honorary private first class but later received a “battlefield
promotion” to second lieutenant.[17]

By July, 1943, Company K was attracting the attention of
the “brass.” For the past fifteen months the company had had
no men AWOL and no cases of venereal disease. The Medical
Corps in the European Theatre of Operations, which was working
hard to keep down the rise of venereal cases, wanted to know how
Company K was able to make such an outstanding record. It was
universally concluded that the company had men of higher caliber
than the average unit. In the history of the company, with its
highly selective peacetime recruiting policy and its strong esprit de
corps built up over a long period, were to be found the reasons for the
high standards of conduct.[18]

Recognized as an outstanding unit, Company K was ordered
to Liverpool for two months of guard duty. While it was there
the 116th Infantry moved. When the Company rejoined the regiment,
it was stationed at Crown Hill Barracks near Plymouth.
While there the men spent long hours in rigorous amphibious training
preparing for the coming invasion. During the maneuvers in
the Channel they often saw the mysterious shores of France which
awaited the day of liberation. Many of the men also went to Scotland
for extensive ranger training. As the second winter in England
passed and the days lengthened, everyone became increasingly anxious
to begin the real fighting.

After two years of planning and preparation, the invasion of
France was launched on June 6, 1944. For the landing two strips
of the Normandy coast on either side of the Vire Estuary were
selected. The beach to the northwest was designated Utah Beach
and that to the east Omaha Beach. On the latter the 29th Division
landed. On its left to the east was the First Division. Still farther
to the east the British forces landed. In his book Invasion!, Charles
Christian Wertenbaker of Charlottesville, a newspaper correspondent

who accompanied the troops, told vividly the story of the landings
and of the struggle for a firm beachhead. The transport USS Thomas
Jefferson, which carried the early waves of the 116th Infantry
assault troops, was able to unload all its landing craft in sixty-six
minutes. The craft left the rendezvous area at 4:30 A. M. and
headed for the beach. A storm, which had occasioned a twenty-four
hour delay in launching the invasion, made the sea very rough,
and many men became seasick in the small craft.[19]

In a letter to his mother Captain Charles C. Cole of Charlottesville,
commander of Battery B, 110th Field Artillery with the 29th
Division, described the action on Omaha Beach.

“I hit the beach D-Day and as long as I live I shall never forget the
infantry that day or the days since. They are still the backbone of any
army and deserve all the medals and praise that man can give them.
We couldn't have done without the Air Corps and Navy shelling,
but Jerry was dug in the cliffs in huge tunnels which the Air Corps
and Navy couldn't and didn't dent. We didn't know this, though,
until we hit the beach and then all hell broke loose.

“Some of these tunnels ran for miles inland and even three or
four days afterwards the beach was being sniped upon, and at the
other end we were digging them out of houses and chateaus. They
had lived in these tunnels for years and were well stocked with every
human need. But the doughboys—and how your heart bleeds for
them—kept going forward.

“That first week was a little ticklish. As much of everything was
trying to get ashore that could, and we in front were being shoved
forward whether we wanted to or not—and I must say I didn't
always want to. At one time there we came close to putting bayonets
on our guns, so close were we to Jerry and with no infantry in
front of us.

“For three days we were doing two things—trying to fight and
trying to collect everybody together again. Between trying to land
on a place about as big as a bath tub and being shelled by the
Jerry 88's, we were pretty well disorganized and separated. But
gradually things have settled down, so that now we are using some
of the stuff we have been taught all these past months.”[20]

A veteran of the Mediterranean campaigns, Major William R.
Washington of Crozet landed with the First Division on Omaha
Beach. Out of thirty-eight officers and enlisted men in an assault
boat, he was one of twelve who lived to reach the beach. When
intense enemy fire pinned down the leading waves of the 16th
Infantry, Major Washington fearlessly exposed himself to the raking
fire along the shore in order to get the halted men to move
inland. Through barbed wire entanglements and uncharted mine
fields, the men led by Major Washington scrambled up the heavily
fortified cliffs and destroyed several enemy strong points. After the

troops were established on the high ground, Major Washington,
though badly wounded by sniper fire, moved forward to a vital
crossroad near Colleville-sur-Mer and set up an observation post
which he manned for twenty-four hours, giving valuable directions
to the advancing troops. In recognition of Major Washington's
incomparable fighting spirit and magnificent valor, the Distinguished
Service Cross was awarded to him. While recovering from his
wounds Major Washington remarked: “How I got through I'll
never know unless it was by the grace of God and the fact that my
wife was praying for me.”[21]

Company K, 116th Infantry, landed shortly after 7:00 A. M. on
the beach to the east of les Moulins, which was about a mile east
of where they were supposed to land. The craft of Company K
came in well bunched on the right flank of the 3rd Battalion.
Enemy small arms fire was light, and no losses were sustained in
crossing the tidal flat to the shingle. Nevertheless the men tended
to become immobilized as they reached cover, and reorganization
was made difficult because a number of other units had also landed
in the area. Once started, the men had trouble getting to the top of
the cliffs. Sporadic machinegun fire hit a few men on the beach,
and mines caused difficulty on the slope of the bluff. Guides had
to be placed to mark routes of ascent. Company K lost fifteen or
twenty men before the top was reached shortly after nine o'clock.
The men then moved a couple of hundred yards inland before they
were pinned down in open fields by scattered machinegun fire and
some shelling. One boat team under the leadership of Technical
Sergeant Carl D. Proffitt, Jr., of Charlottesville was able to push
inland to Vierville-sur-Mer. After they were forced by the Germans
to withdraw, Proffitt twice led the men back. That night they
were used for headquarters security. During the night efforts were
made to reorganize the company.[22]

On D+1 the 270th Port Company was landed at Omaha Beach.
It began to bring order to the handling of supplies there, an absolutely
essential function if the drive into Northern France was to
succeed. The men of the company included Corporal Robert L.
Wicks, Route 2, Charlottesville: Private First Class Thomas D.
Gardner, Cobham: Private First Class John N. Zellars, Crozet: and
Private First Class John B. White, Esmont.[23] Company K of the
116th Infantry spent this day mopping up remnants of enemy resistance
along the bluffs and then joined in the perimeter defense of
Vierville that night.

At Pointe du Hoe, to the west of Omaha Beach, a force of Rangers
who had landed D-Day were isolated. Early on June 8 the 3rd
Battalion of the 116th Infantry joined other units moving along
the coast road to Pointe du Hoe. Company K took part in the

“How I got through I'll never know.”
Billy Washington of Crozet receives the DSC

attack which relieved the Rangers and cleared the enemy from the
area by noon. The Americans then pressed on to Grandcamp-les-Bains,
a beach resort town, a little over two miles farther west.
After the 5th Ranger Battalion had attacked and failed to take the
town, the 3rd Battalion of the 116th Infantry moved into position
late in the afternoon. Tanks led the way across a bridge over a
flooded area just east of the town, and then Companies K and L
crossed and attacked abreast on either side of the highway. Company
K on the north side found the enemy strongly entrenched on a
rise. Repeated assaults were turned back by machinegun and rifle
fire. The company commander, Captain William Geoff Pingley,
Jr., of Winchester, Virginia, was killed as he moved forward. An
officer who was nearby tells how, after two hours of fighting. Technical
Sergeant Frank Dabnev Peregory of Charlottesville took the
situation in hand and won a Medal of Honor.

“Realizing that it was necessary to go in after the Germans, [he]
crawled into the withering fire that covered the hillside and worked
his way to the crest. He carried only his rifle and bayonet and some
hand grenades. Near the crest he discovered a trench that led toward
the main fortification and dropped into it. He found himself
among a squad of enemy riflemen and immediately engaged them.
... He killed eight of these and captured three others and then, with
his prisoners, advanced on the main position along the shelter of
the trench. This was a deeply entrenched machinegun position and
using the hand grenades he destroyed the position and forced the
surrender of 32 other German riflemen.”[24]

During this action which broke the German resistance First Sergeant
Purvis exposed himself in order to bring fire upon the enemy
emplacement, and at the risk of his life he materially aided the
advance. The Silver Star was awarded to him for his heroic action.[25]

Grandcamp was occupied before dark, but Company K withdrew
to spend the night in a field to the south of town. The next few
days were spent in mopping up the area. The company then moved
south across the Arne River and became a part of the 29th Division
reserve. Here the men relaxed briefly.

On June 12 Staff Sergeant Jacob Lee Lively of Charlottesville
wrote to his wife, “I guess by now you already know that I am
somewhere in France. They had a nice reception waiting for us,
but we in turn had a nice one all cooked up for them. We hit them
a blow that was heard all the way across the Channel. ...

“I guess Mom is pretty well shocked but tell her not to worry—
I will keep my head down and go like h - - -. We can't lose; we
have too much stuff for them and are all Americans. Being Americans
means a lot. We are superior and will definitely prove it all the
way to the Heinie. How long we will last is undetermined, but

I personally think we will come out O. K. I have put an extra
emphasis on my prayers.”

Published in The Daily Progress on June 24, this letter was the
first word of the Monticello Guard to reach Charlottesville from
France.

On June 12 Sergeant Peregory also wrote a V-mail letter to his
wife, modestly remarking “news is scarce.” The next day Company
K advanced to the south, crossed the Elle River, and pushed on to
the village of Couvains. The following day the company was ordered
to take a patch of woods on high ground to the south of the
town. Three determined attacks were made, but each was repulsed
with heavy losses. The division took the high ground three miles
north of St. Lô on June 17. While leading his platoon through a
gate during the second attack on June 14 Peregory was killed.
Wrote Technical Sergeant Ellwyn C. Walsh of Charlottesville, who
was wounded in the cheek that day, “They finally got Frank today
but he didn't miss a one of the Jerries until they did get him.”[26]

Peregory was born in Albemarle County, April 10, 1915. His
parents, Mr. and Mrs. James Ervin Peregory of Esmont, died when
he was still a boy. After attending school at Esmont, Peregory came
to Charlottesville where he worked from the time he was twelve
years old. For four years prior to entering the service, he was employed
by the Barnes Lumber Company. He first enlisted in the
Monticello Guard on July 5, 1931, when only sixteen years old. As
a private first class he was mustered into Federal service on February
3, 1941. When the Guard visited Charlottesville five months later
to take part in the Fourth of July parade and celebration. Peregory
remained for the weekend, and on Saturday, July 5, he married
Bessie Geneva Kirby.

Shortly after Pearl Harbor while Company K was engaged for
two months in patrolling the coast around New Bern, North Carolina,
Peregory became the first hero of the 29th Division. Early
Sunday morning, January 11, 1942, a weapons carrier in which a
patrol of Company K was riding skidded on the icy road and plunged
into a canal near Hobucken, North Carolina. Most of the men extricated
themselves from the submerged vehicle, but when Corporal
Massie N. Tomlin of Charlottesville called the roll, it was discovered
that Private Stanley P. Major was missing. Peregory,
realizing that Major was still in the truck, immediately dived into
the icy water to rescue him. Descending through a hole which
had been cut in the tarpaulin top of the truck, Peregory located the
unconscious soldier and thrust his body up through the opening
where Tomlin and others could grasp the apparently lifeless form.
While awaiting assistance for which Corporal Earl F. Wilkerson of
Charlottesville had been dispatched, Privates John Chris Kardos

Frank Peregory of the Monticello Guard “didn't miss a
one of the Jerries.”

of Charlottesville and Willard C. Dyer worked diligently for half
an hour to restore Major to consciousness. It was some hours later,
however, after the group had returned to camp that Major was revived.
For his heroic and unselfish deed Peregory was awarded the
Soldier's Medal, and various other members of the patrol were
commended.

The Soldier's Medal, America's highest award for non-combat
gallantry, was presented to Peregory (then a corporal) by Major
General Leonard T. Gerow at the A. P. Hill Military Reservation on
June 17, 1942. Members of the 116th Regimental Combat Team,
commanded by Colonel E. Walton Opie, marched by the reviewing
stand where General Gerow and Corporal Peregory received the
salute of the troops as they passed. After the parade the modest
hero quietly slipped away and later was to be found doing his
routine duties.[27]

Peregory of course never knew that he had won the Medal of
Honor, for he had been killed only six days after his singlehanded
exploit at Grandcamp in Normandy, long before the award could be
made. A posthumous presentation of the medal was made to his
wife, on June 4, 1945, at the Charlottesville City Armory, where
Peregory had drilled with the National Guard. Present besides close
friends and relatives were Mayor Roscoe S. Adams, the local units of
the Virginia State Guard, and some returned members of the Monticello
Guard. In presenting the medal Brigadier General E. R.
Warner McCabe of Charlottesville, commandant of the School of
Military Government at the University of Virginia, assured the
hero's widow, “You will have the comfort and consolation and satisfaction
of knowing that your heroic husband's memory will live
forever in the heart of his country and his valiant deeds will live in
the hearts of his fellow citizens.”

The citation for the Medal of Honor reads:

The members of Company K were learning the grim lessons of
war at first hand. Wrote Staff Sergeant Clayborne W. Dudley of
Charlottesville, “I guess you know by now that our outfit was one
of the first to land in France on D-Day and as far as I know they
are still in there fighting. I waited two years to get over there and
then didn't stay but nine days. However, I learned more in those
nine days than I did in the two years I was here in England. I
never really knew what war was until after I was in there fighting,
and believe me it's hell. ... Day and night the shells and bullets
are hitting close to you and one can never tell just when you will get
the next one. Some of the boys are glad when they are hit so they
can get out of it for awhile. The piece that hit me felt as if it were
as big as a house, and I had to look the second time to see if my arm
was still on my body. Altogether, I got hit six times, but all of them
are healed except the one on my wrist. I guess it won't be long
before I'll be back over there so if my letters are few you'll understand.”[29]

In times of stress some soldiers found in religion a source of comfort
and strength. Private Roy Daniel Carver of Crozet, a member
of the Methodist Church, wrote his wife, “I was reading a chapter
in my testament the other night, as I do each day that I get a
chance, and a Spanish boy came up and asked me to read out loud to
him. But, as you know, I do not like to read to anyone, so I
called one of my buddies to come over and read to us out of my
testament. Another boy passed and hearing what was going on, he
stopped and joined us. It certainly made me feel good to know that
I had helped someone out that wanted to hear the word of God
during these trying times. None of the three boys has a testament
so they now borrow mine to read. I carry mine with me at all
times so that others, as well as I, may read from it.”[30]

During the early days of the invasion some soldiers came into
contact with many second rate German troops who surrendered
when the going got tough. “These d- - - Germans don't quite
seem to be the supermen you read about,” wrote Private Peter G.
Fekas of Charlottesville, with Company C. 12th Infantry. “When
we make things a little too hot for them, they come out and surrender.
All it takes to make them come out of their holes is a little machinegun
fire and a little artillery.”[31]

Farther inland around St. Lô the Americans found the Germans
fighting with dogged determination. By June 17 the 116th Infantry
was within three miles of that city, but it required over a
month of the most gruelling combat to break through the German

defenses. On July 15 the regiment was attacking southwest along
a ridge east of St. Lô, when the second battalion made an important
advance and reached the edge of la Madeleine, a village only a mile
from the city. Well in front of the rest of the 29th Division, the
battalion was isolated. At 4:30 A. M. on July 17, the third battalion
under Major Thomas D. Howie of Staunton, Virginia, attacked
with the mission of re-enforcing the second battalion so that
the two battalions could continue the attack on St. Lô. This was
the first silent night attack the Americans had made since landing.
Only two men in each platoon were authorized to fire even in emergency;
the rest were to rely on bayonet and hand grenades. Above all
else they were to get through. Technical Sergeant Marshall L. Tomlin
of Charlottesville, a platoon leader of Company K, remarked, “If
we'd tried this earlier, we'd never have got the men to hold their
fire. It takes a lot of experience not to shoot back when you are
shot at.”

The attack moved fast. Sergeant Tomlin personally killed at least
three Germans.

“I bayoneted my first one,” he said, “just as he was coming out
of his hole with his machine pistol in his hand. I was on top of
a hedgerow and I was pretty scared, I guess, because I lunged at him
so hard I could hardly get the bayonet out. It went in high up on
his chest, hitting the heart. He let out a little noise and that was the
end of it.

“There was another fellow coming for me in the mist and I hit
him with the butt and knocked him cold. Then I stuck him to
make sure. They were beginning to wake up at this time and I
threw a grenade at two machine gunners who were just setting up
[their gun]. It knocked them both out.” He bayoneted his third
man later.[32]

By 7:30 that morning the third battalion had reached its objective
and reorganized. When asked by phone if the battalion
would lead the advance on St. Lô, Major Howie replied, “Will do.”
He then ordered Company K to spearhead the attack. Hardly had
the company officers left, after receiving their orders, when German
mortar fire hit the command post, killing Major Howie. Soon
enemy artillery fire was covering the entire area, and the attack had
to be abandoned.

Late the next day a 29th Division task force fought its way into
the city. With it went the body of Major Howie, which was placed
on the rubble before the ruined cathedral. He had promised to meet
his men in St. Lô, and they wanted to keep the rendezvous.

After forty-five days of the most savage fighting the 29th Division
was relieved. Those men who had served throughout the campaign
were presented certificates by the Division Commander, Major General
Charles H. Gerhardt, commending their service from D-Day to

St. Lô. The 116th Infantry on September 6, 1944, was awarded a
Presidential Citation “for extraordinary heroism and outstanding
performance of duty in action in the initial assault on the northern
coast of Normandy.” Its personnel thus became entitled to wear
the Distinguished Unit Badge. Later the 29th Division was
awarded the French Croix de Guerre. Decorations too numerous to
catalogue were awarded to individuals. By July, 1945, after the
fighting was over but before all awards had been made, the men of
Company K, 116th Infantry, had already won one Medal of Honor,
two Distinguished Service Crosses, forty-three Silver Stars, eighty-eight
Bronze Stars, and 492 Purple Hearts, besides one Distinguished
Conduct Medal (British) and one Croix de Guerre (French).[33]

On D+38, even before the fall of St. Lô, the first detachment of
WACs arrived in France to do clerical work in the Forward Echelon,
Communications Zone Headquarters. They carried shovels for digging
foxholes but no guns. First down the gangplank of the
cruiser was First Sergeant Nancy Elizabeth Carter of Charlottesville.
While the French villagers cheered, the American GIs whistled a
welcome to “the morale builders.”

A few miles south of Cherbourg in an apple orchard just outside
of Valongnes the girls set up housekeeping in the most approved GI
manner. They dug ditches around the tents to carry off the water
which gathered during eight straight days of rain. On the other
hand, they also learned how to make one helmet full of water provide
first a bath, then a shampoo, and finally clean clothes. They supplemented
C and K rations with fresh apple sauce and even apple pie.
There were also a few other feminine extras, such as flowers in canteen
cups and teddy bears propped up on bunks. As first sergeant.
Nancy Carter had the responsibility of preparing for the housing of
additional WACs as they arrived. This was an arduous undertaking,
but by working from dawn until dark in the long northern
European summer days she got the job done in such a manner as to
win a Bronze Star.

With the liberation of Paris, Sergeant Carter and other WACs of
her detachment packed their gear and on September 6, 1944, moved
to the French capital with the Communications Zone Headquarters.[34]

The liberation of Paris was perhaps the most colorful campaign
of the whole war. To the armies the city had great strategic value,
but to the French people it was the sacred symbol of the whole nation.
When the shackles of German occupation were broken, the
French were carried away with a great delirium of joy. Captain
Henry R. Macy of Charlottesville with the Office of Strategic Services
was among the first Americans to enter the liberated city. In a jeep
driven by Colonel Donald Q. Coster, Captain Macy and a young
French lieutenant followed General Charles de Gaulle, when he paraded

from the Arc de Triomphe to the Cathedral de Notre Dame
on August 26, 1944.

“I saw the President of the Provisional Government of the French
Republic,” Macy wrote his wife, “that tall, gloomy, controversial
character who has from the month of June, 1940, symbolized the
French Resistance, the courage and the hope and the pride of Frenchmen
all over the world. He had a very serious expression on his
face and made odd little gestures with his hands which he did not
raise above his waist—small encouraging movements to the crowd—
very restrained. He got into his car and then a wild procession down
the Rue de Rivoli. The Colonel shoved tanks and armored cars
aside in his determination to get close to the “Grand Charlie.”
Eventually we got into the square in front of the Hôtel de Ville
where the General was to speak from a platform. Here the crowd
was thicker than ever, and I noticed a jeep full of correspondents and
photographers, writing and snapping madly away. ... We started
across the Pont Notre Dame in the wake of de Gaulle, on our way to
the Cathedral when the ominous sound of firing began. Of course.
one has no way of knowing where they come from, or against whom
they are directed. The crowd hit the pavement like lightning, and
the colonel turned the jeep around and we tore back across the Place
de L'Hôtel de Ville, careened around the corner into the Rue de
Rivoli (I was convinced that we would run over a dozen people—
but as an ambulance driver in 1940 I guess D. Q. C. has learned to
maneuver) and down the street. He was calling out “Soyez tranquilles,
ce n'est rien,” I was smoking a cigarette and making the
V sign for lack of anything else to do and feeling rather foolish, and
the French officer had his pistol out and I think was looking for a
target. We must have presented a rather frantic appearance, driving
like mad down the street with sounds of shots all around, apparently
in desperate flight from danger, and calling on the people to be calm
and that there was nothing. As we approached the Louvre where
there is a wide space, I noticed that the people were lying on the streets,
and plead with the colonel to turn off the street and get out of the
car. So we swerved into a side street almost running down the crowd
and stopped the car, got out and dashed into a building. By now
there was shooting everywhere. Apparently it was rather heavy in
the Place de la Concorde. (The Square of Peace!) People were still
in the street, police and F. F. I. were firing at windows up and down
and I must say it was the most exciting moment of my life. It went
on for about an hour I should think, but it was now a week old for
the Parisians, and they were unbelievably calm on the whole, although
some were evidently terrified, and others were cursing the Germans,
and apologized to us—were horrified that this should happen when

the Americans had arrived. They seemed to think it involved a breach
of hospitality on their part.”[35]

Meanwhile, back in England the German robot buzz bombs were
taking a heavy toll. “One fell about 25 yards from a building that
I was in,” wrote Corporal Melvin R. Bishop, Jr., of Charlottesville.
“I really hit the floor fast, but plaster walls and glass and all kinds
of furniture hit the floor first—and believe it or not I only got a
few small scratches. I was lucky to get out alive. That's the closest
I've been to one but I have had about ten within two blocks of me.
I'm ruining all my uniforms hitting the ground.”[36]

Lieutenant James Cranwell of Ivy, who had been on more than
thirty missions over Europe as navigator in his B-24 bomber, “Little
Hutch,” remarked: “Those buzz bombs are bad. I went into London
once, but I got out right away. It was too risky. I figured there was
no sense in risking my life twice a day.”[37]

Somewhat later, Private First Class Charles T. Lupton of Charlottesville
had a narrow escape in a London station. While he was
buying a ticket to return to his company of combat engineers, a rocket
bomb exploded nearby. The concussion was terrific. He was much
impressed by what he saw during his two-day pass. “London at
night was a new experience,” he remembered. “There were large
crowds on the Square, but few autos were seen on the streets. The
city is partially blacked out. No one seemed to mind the alert signals
or the buzz-bombs. When the signals sounded, there was no scurrying
for shelter.”[38]

While the Army pushed forward on the ground, the air force was
also carrying the war to the Germans. Second Lieutenant Robert S.
Gleason of Charlottesville downed his first enemy plane over Axis-held
Europe. In the “Vicious Virgin,” one of a P-47 Thunderbolt
Group providing protection for heavy bombers during a raid over
Germany, he became involved in a fight with twenty-eight Jerry
fighters, twenty-six of which were shot down. “I looked around and
saw an ME-109 chasing two P-47s,” said the Charlottesville flier.
“They crossed right in front of me. I opened fire at 450 yards and
closed to 200, firing my .50 caliber wing guns all the way. Suddenly
I felt my plane being hit and found myself in a violent turn to the
right. When I had completed 180 degrees of my turn I looked back
and saw the ME-109 that I had fired at exploding. I saw no parachute.”
When Gleason added up the damage to his own plane, he
found that one 20 mm. shell had shattered his canopy and sprinkled
the cockpit with shrapnel. Another had landed in one of the wing
ammunition boxes, exploding the last of the ammunition. A third
had smashed his tail surface, and a fourth had damaged his right
rudder. After landing he counted seventy-seven holes in the riddled
plane.[39]

“I was shot down in flames over Holland during the big airborne
operations you've been reading about,” Second Lieutenant Allen N.
White, Jr., of Ivy, pilot of a B-24 Liberator bomber, told his parents.
“Before I go any further, I'd better say that by some miracle I escaped
without a scratch, not even so much as a bruise. In fact, only one
member of the crew was injured—the radio operator got some minor
burns on his face and hands, but nothing serious, thank God. ...

“We decided to risk a crash landing rather than bail out, which
later proved to be a smart idea, as we would have been landed right
on top of a bunch of Jerries.

“As it was, we put her down smoothly in a field of scrub not more
than 200 yards from a Heinie heavy machinegun. The minute she
stopped rolling we really got the hell out—but fast! Luckily there
was a shallow ditch close by which we dove into headlong and crawled
along in it on our bellies for about 50 yards.

“We paused a while for breath and looked back to watch the Old
Lady burn. God, what a fire! And were we thankful to be alive,
even though our future was a little uncertain.”

However, a British armored patrol soon dashed to the scene, he
said. “They hauled us aboard their Bren gun carrier and plied us
with beer and cognac, which revived us enough so that we could tell
them our story coherently.” He added that the patrol was “Hunhunting,”
but rushed the airmen back to brigade headquarters before
continuing on their party.

“So that's how the colonel had a few unexpected visitors for tea. I
must say he rose to the occasion admirably. 'Bit of a hot show,
wasn't it, chaps?', he greeted us. 'Well, nice to have you here—just
in time for tea, too. Bloody punctual, you Yanks.' ”[40]

Lieutenant Joseph D. Moore of Charlottesville, also in the September
airborne operations in Holland, wrote his parents. “I was in the
first wave of parachutists to jump. Gee, you should have seen the
show. There seemed to be millions of different colored chutes in the
air at once. Too, the sky was covered with transports, fighters and
bombers. Seemed as if the whole Air Corps turned out to give us a
helping hand which we needed very much.

“While crossing the English Channel, there appeared to be thousands
of transports on the rear of the column I was riding in. I only
saw one plane go down in all that mess. Each time the Jerries
opened up on us with anti-aircraft fire, about four fighters would dive
down to end their career. That was truly a greater air show than invasion
day on France. I certainly hope they made some newsreels of
it so all of us can see them after it's over.”[41]

After ninety-four gruelling days at the front, where he was twice
wounded by shrapnel and finally knocked out for eight hours in a
barrage on the Siegfried Line on September 8, Sergeant Frank Cullen
Hartman of the 4th Infantry Division was evacuated to a hospital in

England. Here, as he recuperated he was haunted by what he had
seen of the barbarities inflicted by the enemy. “I've often wondered
what the people back home feel about punishing the Germans after
the war is over,” he wrote. “If they want to be lenient, I have
something I'd sure like to tell them. I know they'd change their
minds. ...

“It was done by the SS troops, those fanatical Hitlerats that seem
to think the only way to win a war is by cruelty. This scene took
place in a little town in France near the Belgian border. We had
stopped at one town near dark the Jerries had just vacated, and prepared
to dig in for the night. Then word came the Jerries were in this
other town about five miles away.

“Well, we left to go to this town and drive the Heinies out. ....
We were going to move up three miles and bivouac for the night, then
early next morning we were going the rest of the way and attack the
Jerries. In a few minutes it was dark and cloudy with no moon.
The blackness could be cut with a knife it seemed.

“As we marched along we could see a fire in the distance. As we
drew closer and closer on the winding mountain road, the tenseness and
nervousness of us all mounted in anticipation of the battle ahead. We
all go through that before a battle, and it's something that can't be
explained.

“Anyway, instead of stopping for the night, we advanced right
into the city. The whole eastern half of the town was in flames,
set by the Germans. The first sight I saw as I entered into the city,
besides the burning buildings, was an old man and woman, and a
little girl of five or six who was bandaged from head to foot. The
old man was crying, trying to run into the flaming building behind
him (it was his home) while the old woman was trying to keep
him out. The little girl had been slashed by the Jerries, and the
Recon units who preceded us had bandaged the girl. The FFI had
opposed the Germans, so they killed quite a few of them, ran their
tanks through the streets before the people could leave their homes
and shelled them.

“Then they took all the old people and children between five and
seven, and cut their throats. Some, they ripped their bellies open,
stuffed gasoline soaked wadding in it, lit a match to it, and locked
them in houses. Many persons were locked in and burned alive.
They cut the throats of the dogs they found.

“No, we never caught the Jerries, but the FFI made one pay.”

Six months later from Germany Sergeant Hartman wrote: “A
German woman came running over and put her hand on my arm,
looked into my eyes pleadingly and said, 'Ve haf five little sheldren
ofer here who are hungry. Haf you some chocalate for them?'
Maybe God and Dick [a brother who had been killed in battle]
will forgive me ... but I couldn't resist that look. I said nothing,

stepped into my truck and got a can of lima beans and a large box
of cocoa and gave them to her. She cried excitedly, 'Danke schoen,'
that is 'thank you' in German ... I can't help it, I can't be hard even
as much as I hate them.”[42]

The advance into Germany received a sharp setback in December,
1944, when Hitler lashed out with the Ardennes counteroffensive.
The Battle of the Bulge delayed the Allied advance about six weeks,
during which time some of the bitterest fighting of the war took
place. The Americans were, however, only checked, not stalled.

During the defense of Bastogne, Belgium, Private First Class Elton
L. Knight of Charlottesville served with the 502nd Parachute Regiment
of the 101st Airborne Division. Armed only with a light machinegun,
he silenced a German strong point in a single-handed assault.
His company had been assigned the mission of securing a high ground
and establishing defensive positions. As soon as the company crossed
its line of departure it was pinned down by automatic weapons fire
and heavy concentrations of enemy artillery. In disregard of the fire
Knight, operating his machinegun from his hip, rushed upon the well-entrenched
enemy, who were armed with two machineguns and five
machine pistols, and captured the area. His daring won for him the
Silver Star.[43]

On January 6, 1945, Private First Class Herbert C. Bethel of
Charlottesville went on a night raid across the swift, icy Roer River
into well-defended German territory on the east bank. His platoon
had instructions to capture a prisoner for interrogation.

“Before the entire platoon had crossed the Roer, their presence was
discovered and a hail of small arms and machinegun fire raked their
area. Not a man faltered. Despite the ease of escape which was still
available and despite the knowledge of the obstacles which lay in wait,
the platoon plowed through the withering fire. With a spirit of defiance,
each man plunged through the water and a successful river crossing
was effected. That platoon continued to work its way through the
difficult marshy terrain. The intense enemy small arms and automatic
fire was now augmented by a profuse number of well-aimed hand
grenades. Undaunted, the platoon continued forward under perfect
control until it encountered the enemy protective wire. Like a well-rehearsed
play, each man sprang to his feet to execute his assigned task.
The wire was immediately blown with bangalore torpedoes, and
with calm but decisive manner the men rushed through the gap to
their prearranged positions. Twenty-two minutes after H-Hour, a
prisoner was captured and the platoon proceeded back in quick, orderly
manner. Despite continuous enemy fire, the entire patrol returned
with its captive and with but one man wounded.”[44]

Shortly before the Germans surrendered, Second Lieutenant James
A. Hageman of Charlottesville with the Eighth Air Force delivered
food by parachute to starving Dutch people. Relating his experiences

on one of several such flights, Lieutenant Hageman said: “We made
our coast in point, exactly on the money, and shortly after that we
turned left at the initial point on our bomb run, flying from there to
our target near Rotterdam at an unusually slow speed. Our entrance
was made into the then still occupied Dutch territory under a truce
agreement, but none of us expected the Germans to hold their fire. ...

“We were in the lead element of the lead squadron of the lead group
of the first wing: in other words, we were there first. From my front
seat I could get a good look at the reactions of the people, and from
500 feet I could see, at least I thought I did, the famed wooden shoes
upon the feet of those who came out to greet us.

“And they were there all right. At first the people just looked at
us curiously, wondering what we were up to, since the operation was
unknown to those not in the actual dropping area. It wasn't long
before they were waving at us with flags and everything handy—caps,
scarfs, handkerchiefs, towels, anything at all. They came out in
pairs, in bunches, in mobs, but they were there and they were happy.
By this time, though, we were quite jittery. Would the Jerries shoot,
or wouldn't they? Could we trust them? Why should we? Well,
maybe they wouldn't. Maybe, pray, brother, pray. ...

“They didn't shoot a round at us. We flew in, found the target,
inspected the area to see if the authorities had cleared away the people,
radioed our okay to the trailing squadron, and made a big circle to
the right to get behind the bomber stream. The general and the
colonel and us wanted to see the results. So we took a 45-minute
tour of Holland to kill time. Everywhere we looked we could see
people waving at us, looking up at us as we sailed past, paying their
respects to us and waving a salute to what we were doing. There
they were, starved, beaten, conquered slaves, looking up to us for
help. They were dying by the thousands every day, but they were
happy this day.”[45]

“This day has been a day of awakening to horror and the absolute
depth of baseness of the Nazi mind,” wrote Technical Sergeant Henry
J. Euler, Jr., of Red Hill after visiting a Nazi slave labor camp on
April 13, 1945, where he witnessed the work of exhuming hastily
interred bodies of an estimated six thousand people. “I have seen
scenes that you, I and millions like us have seen portrayed on the
screens of our theatres,” he continued. “Over here we cannot shrug
it off and forget it in the quiet atmosphere of our after-theatre beer
joints or soda parlors. The stink of death is still in my nostrils. ...

“When we arrived,” Sergeant Euler wrote, “we saw civilians with
litters of wood and baskets carrying things out of a ruined building.
These somethings turned out to be bodies and pieces of bodies. Some
were misshapen blobs of charred flesh. ... Others were so emaciated
and wasted that they were bones held together by bluish skin. Bruises

were plentiful. Each a grim tale of perverted minds and hideous
agony. Each a blot against the name of Germany.

“The people know it. As they pulled the rotting corpses from the
holes and buried the dead these people could not look an American
in the face. I wonder if the civilians knew the extent of the slaughter
that took place. ... Whether they did or not, I hold them equally
responsible.”[46]

But gruesome scenes were not necessary to remind people of the
miseries occasioned by Nazi conquests. From Germany Staff Sergeant
Raymond Lang of Charlottesville wrote to his wife: “You should
see the view from my window. The country stretches for miles across
a valley with a few scattered hills in the distance, and is dotted with
apple and cherry trees in full bloom. While working we could glance
out of the windows and see wagon loads of civilians returning to their
homes. I guess by now they realize the misery their own conquest
caused other people.”[47]

On May 7, 1945, the thoroughly beaten German nation surrendered,
but the suffering occasioned by the holocaust continued.

XV
Island-Hopping Across the Pacific

Because of their imperialistic dreams and the imperative needs of
their then embarrased Axis partner Germany, the Japanese struck at
Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The devastation wrought there
included ten ships sunk, six damaged, most of the Army and Navy
planes destroyed, 2,117 men killed, 1,272 wounded, and 960 missing.
Among those killed were Staff Sergeant James Merritt Barksdale of
Crozet, Corporal Emmett Edlee Morris of Charlottesville, and Chief
Petty Officer Alwyn Berry Norvelle of Covesville. Barksdale, who
had served in the Army Air Corps since 1936, lost his life when
Wheeler Field was bombed. Morris, who had been in the Army six
years, died at Hickam Field. Norvelle, who had been in the Navy
thirteen years, was attached to the USS Nevada.[1]

After the last wave of bombers from the Land of the Rising Sun
flew over Pearl Harbor, American Army and Navy officers dispatched
fliers to seek out the enemy carriers and attack them. Among those fliers
was Phillip Hansen, son of the sculptor Oskar Hansen of “Pantops.”
Hansen discovered units of the Japanese fleet, though no mention was
ever made of it in the communiques. The planes flew low and
dropped their bombs, but Japanese antiaircraft knocked out one of
Hansen's motors and the plane crashed. Together with four of the
crew Hansen managed to climb aboard one of the damaged wings
which, thanks to an empty fuel tank, sustained their weight. For
nine interminable days they floated in the water until a Navy patrol
plane picked them up and took them to Pago Pago. They arrived
there during a Japanese attack but landed safely in spite of the fact
that their plane was hit. When it was found impossible to make
necessary repairs at the place where the plane landed, her crew taxied
on the surface of the ocean to another port. Hansen's father, who
had seen service with the French Foreign Legion as well as action in
World War I, observed, “That is really living life. That is the way
I have lived and now the boy is surpassing his dad.”[2]

Ensign E. H. Parrot. a former Charlottesville boy, was aboard a
torpedo boat at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attacked. Then a

Machinist's Mate, his first assignment in the war was to pursue a
two-man submarine which had stolen into the harbor.[3]

In salvage operations at Pearl Harbor Gunner's Mate Third Class
Richard L. Haley of Charlottesville made numerous dives inside and
alongside damaged and submerged vessels under difficult and hazardous
conditions. For his courage and skill he was commended by
Rear Admiral William R. Furlong.[4]

On the other side of the Pacific the Japanese attacked the Philippines,
where General Douglas MacArthur's small force was from the
beginning doomed to fight a losing battle. Prior to the war Commander
Joseph L. Yon of the Naval Medical Corps had been stationed
at the Naval Hospital at Cavite. His wife, a daughter of Dr. W. Dan
Haden of Charlottesville, and his children were evacuated from the
Philippines in 1940. When war broke out Commander Yon, then a
lieutenant, was attached to the tanker Pecos. She was bombed continuously
as she left burning Manila and headed for Java. In Java,
already under attack from the Japanese, Lieutenant Yon assisted the
famous Dr. Corydon M. Wassell in caring for injured from the cruisers
USS Marblehead and USS Houston. Some of these injured were
evacuated from the besieged island and taken aboard the Pecos, which
again set out to sea. It was not long before the survivors of the old
USS Langley were sighted and taken aboard. Some miles south of
Java these ill-fated men again met with disaster. The Pecos was
torpedoed and sunk. Those who were able kept afloat for eight hours
until the arrival of a destroyer gave them new hope. Trailed by
enemy submarines, she was unable to stop to pick up the survivors,
but landing nets were hung from her sides and the men of the Pecos
were told to grasp the nets and try to save themselves as best they
could. Only a few succeeded in taking advantage of this difficult
means of escape. Lieutenant Yon was fortunate enough to be one of
them. There was no doctor aboard the destroyer, so Lieutenant Yon
assumed entire responsibility of caring for the wounded. With untiring
perseverence he ministered to them until the destroyer reached
Australia.[5]

When MacArthur departed from the Philippines, Major General
Jonathan M. Wainwright assumed command. Then came the last
desperate defense of Corregidor, which withstood the combined fire
from land, sea, and air until May 6, 1942. With the final surrender
large numbers of Americans became prisoners of the Japanese, among
them Lieutenant Arthur L. Derby, Jr., of Eastham, who had served
with the Philippine Scouts in the defense of Luzon. Lieutenant
Derby survived the Death March from Bataan to San Fernando and
imprisonment at Bilabid. He perished on December 31, 1944, when
the Japanese prison ship on which he was being evacuated from the
Philippines was sunk north of Formosa by American planes, which
had bombed it twice before. Major Carter Berkeley Simpson of

Charlottesville was also lost aboard the same ship. As a junior
officer with the Fourth Marines, Major Simpson had fought throughout
the entire Philippines campaign. In the defense of Longoswayan
Point he had isolated and destroyed an enemy force. For his gallantry
and “outstanding qualities of leadership” on Bataan he was awarded
the Navy Cross.[6]

Bombed on December 8, 1941, for the first time, Singapore, the
great island fortress of the British in the Far East, was dangerously
exposed by the sinking of the battleship Prince of Wales and the
cruiser Repulse on December 10. Protection by sea was no longer
adequate, and because of its dependence on drinking water from the
mainland, Singapore had always been vulnerable to a land attack. On
January 3 this dreaded attack began, the Japs thronging into the
Malay States. By the end of the month the British had withdrawn
from the mainland to the island. In February the reservoirs were
captured and the city surrendered. The American Consul General at
Singapore was Kenneth S. Patton, brother of Mrs. J. Callan Brooks
of Charlottesville. Patton and members of his staff escaped in a
“sheep” boat on February 12. As they left, the city was in flames.
After ten days the little boat reached an Australian port. Meanwhile
Patton's wife had been evacuated to Batavia. She and her husband
finally met aboard a ship somewhere in the area of the Dutch East
Indies and sailed back to the United States. The following July
Patton was appointed Consul General at Calcutta, the great port of
India, through which supplies to China were to flow during the war.[7]

In handling these supplies the United States Army required a
sizable establishment in India. Sergeant Merril Carter of Scottsville
was stationed at a hospital there. In October, 1942, he wrote friends:

“I am OK and feeling fine, but am afraid this extremely hot weather
(Oct. 12) is going to get me down. It has been awful the last ten
days. If it wasn't for the cool nights I don't know what we
would do.

“The trip across was quite an experience but was glad when it was
over with. I just want to take one more boat ride—and that is the
one back. Think that will do me for quite a while. Made four stops
and was allowed shore leave at two of them.

“Our living quarters here are not so bad. We have barracks something
like the ones back in the states, and most of them have electric
lights and fans. They do not have running water but a place with
showers and a place to shave, etc.

“The food is very good considering most of it comes out of cans,
although we do get some fresh fruit and vegetables. We also get
fresh beef, fish, shrimps & chicken. ...

“We have free outdoor moving pictures here at the hospital every
Sunday night and several times a week at the main post exchange.

There is a theatre on the post and several in town. They all show
American pictures but they are quite old when they get here. Busses
for U. S. troops run between here and town every afternoon. A
certain per cent are allowed passes after five o'clock every day, so we
get to go quite often if we want to.”[8]

During the early part of the sea war in the Pacific, the Virginiabuilt
19,900-ton aircraft carrier USS Yorktown played a leading role.
The ship was commanded by Captain Elliott Buckmaster, son of Dr.
Augustus H. Buckmaster, formerly a member of the medical faculty
of the University of Virginia. Captain Buckmaster had spent his
childhood in Charlottesville, which he always considered his home.

Vice-Admiral William F. Halsey, an alumnus of the University of
Virginia, was busily engaged in strafing the Gilbert and Marshall
Islands in January of 1942, and the Yorktown's first battle action
of the war took place on January 31 when her planes bombed Makin.
The next attack was on March 10 when her planes raided Salamaua
and Lae, after which followed a tedious period of cruising for sixty-three
days in tropical seas guarding the United States' life line to Australia.
On May 4 Japanese ships in the harbor of Tulagi were sunk by
her planes, and the next day she joined forces with the carrier USS
Lexington in the Battle of the Coral Sea.

A month later, when the Japanese fleet was on its way to Hawaii
to crush the United States Navy once and for all, our knowledge of
their code made it possible for Rear Admiral Raymond A. Spruance
to assemble every ship, plane, and submarine available to intercept
the attack at Midway. Planes together with submarines did all the
work, for, like the Battle of the Coral Sea, this engagement was a
twentieth century affair in which surface ships' fire played no part.
The Yorktown's planes were in the fight at Midway even after their
ship had received three serious hits in the first attack of dive bombers.
A second time the Japanese came on the Yorktown with torpedo
bombers. Now she was hit forward to port; now amidships: at last
she listed and water rolled over her decks. After a conference it was
decided that nothing could be done, and the crew climbed down
ropes into the water, while the wounded were let down in wire
stretchers. But the Yorktown did not sink. Efforts were made
to salvage her. Men from the destroyer USS Hamman were making
good progress and had reduced her list about four degrees when
suddenly the Japanese struck again: two torpedoes from submarines
hit the Hamman and it went down, its depth charges killing the
men who had abandoned ship. The following day at dawn Captain
Buckmaster gazed at the ghostly hulk of the Yorktown still
afloat. “Her flight deck was in the water. Her battle flags were
still flying. We hadn't taken them down,” the captain said. At
7 A. M. on June 7, as taps sounded across the water from nearby

destroyers, the Yorktown sank, six months to the hour after Pearl
Harbor.[9]

Also at Midway was the submarine of Commander Howard W.
Gilmore on which Lieutenant Landon L. Davis, Jr., of Charlottesville,
was diving officer. As Davis puts it, while “we were in a hot
enough spot, nothing came our way.” Soon, however, better hunting
was ahead. The Japs had occupied the islands of Kiska and Attuin
the Aleutians. On July 4, under cover of fog, the submarine
crept into the harbor of Kiska and discovered three Jap destroyers
riding at anchor. Torpedoes were fired against all three before they
could get under way. Almost immediately two went down and
the third, when last seen, was a fiercely burning wreck. Before the
submarine could get away, it was subjected to an aerial bombing
attack but escaped with minor damage. Early in 1943 Commander
Gilmore, who hailed from Selma, Alabama, led his submarine, already
credited with sinking 26,000 tons of Jap shipping, in an
attack against some Japanese ships. While on the surface, he was
spotted by a gunboat which attempted to ram the submarine. Avoiding
the attack. Gilmore then maneuvered so as to ram the gunboat.
As the submarine separated from the gunboat, machinegun fire swept
the deck where Gilmore stood. Mortally wounded and unwilling to
subject his crew to further danger, he sealed his own fate by ordering
Lieutenant Davis to “take her down.” Obeying, Davis dived and
brought the submarine safely out of the engagement. Commander
Gilmore was awarded the Medal of Honor and Lieutenant Davis
the Silver Star for this exploit.[10]

From the very beginning of the war Captain H. Maynard (“Bull”)
Harlow was in the thick of the fight in the Pacific. In the spring of
1942 as co-pilot he made a bombing raid on Rabaul, New Britain.
Fleeing from Japanese fighter planes, his plane ran out of gas and
made a crash landing in the New Guinea jungle. What appeared
to be a grassy field was chosen for the landing, but it proved to be a
swamp. In order to get out, the nine crew members had to cut the
thick grass every inch of the way. For four nights and three days
they wandered in the jungle before they came upon some natives
who took them in a canoe to Buna, which was then still in the hands
of the Australians. Five weeks later they reached the Allied base
at Port Moresby. In November malaria, which all the crew members
had contracted while in the jungle, forced Captain Harlow
to return to the United States.[11]

The invasion of the Solomons in August, 1942, was the first
American offensive of the war. It was, however, primarily designed
to protect the supply line to Australia, for, from their air base on
Guadalcanal, the Japanese were in excellent position to attack the
New Hebrides and New Caledonia area, thus endangering American
ships in the Coral Sea.

In the words of Major General Alexander Archer Vandegrift who
led the campaign, “The planning for the Tulagi-Guadalcanal operation
was hurried. When the enemy was discovered building airfields
in the lower Solomons, the decision to undertake a land offensive
came much earlier than those who were to carry it out had
anticipated. Our preparations were made with what we had, not
what we had expected to get. Marine aerial reconnaissance consisted
of one flight over the theatre of operations by two officers in a B-17.
Above Guadalcanal they were attacked by three Zeros, but escaped.
There was no appreciable softening up of the objective prior to
D-Day.”[12]

Vandegrift was born in Charlottesville on March 13, 1887, the
son of Sarah Archer and William Thomas Vandegrift, one of the
leading architects and contractors of Virginia. His grandfather,
R. Carson Vandegrift, fought as a captain under Longstreet in the
Confederate Army, took part in Pickett's charge at Gettysburg, and
was at Appomattox when Lee surrendered. He communicated his
admiration for the fighting-Christian qualities of “Stonewall” Jackson
to his grandson, for General Vandegrift at Guadalcanal took
Jackson as his model when he himself was “to do so much with so
little.”

Vandegrift graduated from the Charlottesville High School and
attended the University of Virginia from 1906 to 1908. At the age
of twenty-two he was appointed to the Marine Corps as a second
lieutenant. The following year, he married Mildred Strode of
Lynchburg, the mother of his only son, Archer, Jr., who became a
lieutenant colonel in the Fourth Marine Division which fought so
magnificently in the Pacific campaigns.

At Parris Island, South Carolina, Vandegrift “learned his trade.”
Soon afterward he saw action in the Caribbean—1912 in Nicaragua.
1914 at Vera Cruz, and 1915 in Haiti with General Smedley D.
Butler, the famed soldier-orator who nicknamed Vandegrift “Sunny
Jim.” From 1916 to 1918 and later, from 1919 to 1923, he served
with the Haitian gendarmerie. In 1927 began his first period of service
in the Orient. For two years in China he was Butler's operations
and training officer, first in Shanghai and later at Tientsin. In the
course of these years spent in the East, the more he saw of the Japanese,
the better he liked the Chinese. Repeated spying of the Japanese
on fleet maneuvers off the China coast near Shanghai in 1927
gave Vandegrift his first taste of Japanese arrogance and hypocrisy.
His first adverse impression was confirmed and strengthened by later
experience. Back in the United States for a five-year interlude, he
was assigned to the Budget Bureau in Washington and afterwards
served as assistant chief of staff of the Fleet Marine Force at Quantico,
Virginia. Then in 1935 he was again sent to China, this time as

executive officer of the Marine detachment assigned to the American
Embassy in Peiping.

When Vandegrift and his wife returned to the United States in
April of 1937, they traveled via the Soviet Union. He had long
been curious about Russia; the similarity of our geographical and
military problems was striking to him, and he was one of the few
American officers to predict so early that Russia would be our ally
in World War II.

From June of 1937 to November of 1941 Vandegrift was on duty
at Marine Corps Headquarters, first as secretary to the commandant,
Major General Thomas Holcomb, and then as General Holcomb's
assistant, with the rank of brigadier general. The First Marine
Division was training at New River, North Carolina, in the spring of
1942, and Major General Philip H. Torrey, its commandant, asked
for Vandegrift as assistant division commander. By March he had
fallen heir to the command of the division with the rank of major
general.[13]

Long years in foreign lands had little affected qualities in Vandegrift's
character inherited from his Virginia family or acquired during
his childhood in the city of Charlottesville, so rich in traditions.
It would seem evident that the fighting-Christian faith of Carson
Vandegrift was reborn, though in a somewhat different form, in his
grandson. During the struggle for Guadalcanal he displayed a remarkable
confidence which he was able to communicate to his men.
John Hersey wrote of him after a visit to Guadalcanal in October,
1942, “General Vandegrift, who can be seen in the evenings stretched
out meditatively in a canvas deck chair in front of his heavily fly-sprayed
cabin, has been cool, soft-spoken, crafty, hard and wonderfully
cheerful.”[14]

In numerous instances he showed the respect he felt for each individual
Marine serving under his command. Once, during the
November fighting, he discussed the type of warfare that was going
on. “We could do this a lot faster if we wanted to lose the men,
but I don't intend to do it. Whenever it is possible we will not
attack without artillery preparation, no matter what element of
surprise we lose, and we will storm no enemy strong point that possibly
can be leveled or softened up by shells.”[15]

A series of letters written by Vandegrift during the Guadalcanal
campaign and later published in Life magazine constitutes one of
the most valuable revelations of American war history. Without
violating security regulations, he gave his wife a vivid picture of those
aspects of the campaign he chose to describe. On August 6 he wrote,
“Tomorrow morning at dawn we land in the first major offensive
of this war. Our plans have been made and God grant that our
judgment has been sound. We have rehearsed the plans. The officers

and men are keen and ready to go. Way before you read this
you will have heard of it. Whatever happens you will know that
I did my best. Let us hope that best will be enough.”

After a three-hour bombardment by a surface task force and Army
and Navy planes, Vandegrift made landings with the First Marine
Division and part of the Second on Guadalcanal, August 7, 1942.

“The show opened before dawn and we got in without their
knowing it,” he wrote the next day. “At first it was exciting but
then came the anxious hours of waiting to hear how things turned
out on all sides. It went as planned. I deeply regret the men lost
and the wounded, but we had to expect that and it was less than
expected.”

In one day the air strip, later known as Henderson Field, was captured.
Then began a series of Japanese attacks to dislodge the Marines
from their positions. With the air strip bereft of planes, no coastal
artillery, and few supplies during the first days, the task of defending
the foothold on the island was not an easy one. The Marines
held a three-by-eight mile stretch of jungle with a patch of meadow
and a coconut grove. The Japanese prowled and lurked in the jungle,
practicing every conceivable form of deceptive cunning in their fighting.
On occasion they would attack in mass, screaming wildly. The
Marines held on and gained ground. In a letter dated August 17,
Vandegrift made the modest claim: “We had a little ceremony
when we raised the flag over this place.”[16]

A shack on top of a hill was Vandegrift's quarters. When the
Japanese warships shelled the island, this shack served as a convenient
target. Finally his men built another bungalow somewhat protected
by the conformation of the land, and persuaded the general to move.
“The very next day,” in the words of Admiral John S. McCain,
“three fourteen-inch shells carried the old shack away.”[17]

Concerning the attack of August 20 when a Japanese battalion
tried to force the Tenaru River. Vandegrift wrote, “The Japs made
a grievous error the other night. ... They tried to take this place
by raid with about 800 men and they were practically annihilated.
The radio said 670 killed, but since then about 120 have washed
ashore. We lost 28 men and all of their 800 were not worth one
of them. These young men, or really boys,” he continued, “are restless
when there is nothing going on but when there is a job to do.
they fight like young demons. They are doing it in the best Marine
tradition and I could add nothing to it.” Enormously admiring his
men, he continually referred to their bravery in such terms as,
“The Marines were wonderful. I'm awfully proud.”

“There is a lull in the work so I'll drop you a note. We are now
all right and you must not worry. This afternoon Roy (Colonel
Hunt) brought up six large bass which Bill Whaling (Colonel)
caught in the river and we will have them for supper. The flies

“They are doing it in the best Marine tradition,” Vandegrift
wrote, “and I could add nothing to it.”

around here are pests and they bite like the devil. Some of the men
are so dark they look like natives. Our days are a good deal alike.
Tell Archer, Jr., to keep himself in good physical condition if he's
coming this way for the jungle is the toughest thing in these parts.”

“The Resident Commissioner of the Solomons came in last night
to set up the civil government again,” Vandegrift observed in his
letter of September 3. “We are having more visitors, so the darn
place must be getting safer. We have just heard over the radio that
one of the bases to the north from which we have been receiving
'visitors' has been completely knocked out by bombers. I hope so.
The Resident Commissioner has been living out in the jungle since
May and is literally coming out of the seat of his pants. Seems an
awfully nice person and enjoys being with white people again.” A
Naval communique of September 3 announced that “eighteen Japanese
bombers escorted by fighters, attacked our installations at Guadalcanal.”
These were the “visitors” to which Vandegrift referred.[18]

A member of the Keswick Hunt Club and well known throughout
Albemarle County, Corporal Thomas A. Watson of “Logan
Farm” near Gordonsville had enlisted in March, 1942, as a private
in the Marine Corps. On the night of September 13, as a forward
observer at Lunga Hill, key to the defense of Henderson Field, Corporal
Watson with courage “directed artillery fire while exposed to
enemy rifle, machinegun, grenade, and mortar fire.” For his coolness
and efficiency he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the
field. “I've never been more proud in all my life,” said Admiral
Halsey sometime later to Watson and twelve other men lined up
beneath rain-sodden trees to receive Navy Crosses. “You are very
courageous, splendid men.” In November Lieutenant Watson also
won the Silver Star. Disregarding their own safety, he and another
officer formed a forward observer liaison team for a battalion and
maintained observation and communication under almost constant
fire.[19]

Efforts by the Japanese to reinforce their troops on Guadalcanal
brought on sharp naval engagements. In October the carrier USS
Hornet was torpedoed in the Battle of Santa Cruz Islands and subsequently
lost. Chief Boatswain's Mate Robert H. Trice of Howardsville
spent several hours in the water before he was rescued. Two
years later he was again a survivor when the carrier USS Princeton
was sunk in the Second Battle of the Philippine Sea.[20]

On the destroyer USS Grayson Lieutenant Rosser Jackson Eastham
of Charlottesville spent sixty-five successive days ranging up and
down the South Pacific. His ship dodged Jap torpedoes and repelled
fifteen air attacks in the Solomons area between August and October,
1942. Though men were shot down all around him Lieutenant
Eastham kept his guns in action. On one occasion he was kept at

his battle station for forty-eight hours straight with only half an
hour's sleep. While the Grayson was in the Sealark Channel off
Guadalcanal, Lieutenant Eastham had to take a Marine officer ashore.
Before he could return, the red signal went up, notice of a Jap air
raid. As thirty-odd Japanese bombers appeared, the Grayson weighed
anchor and steamed away. Trapped on the beach Lieutenant Eastham
and his companion dived into a nearby fox hole from which they
watched the two-hour dog fight in which eighteen Japanese planes
were shot down at a cost of only two American planes. Later the
Grayson returned to pick up Lieutenant Eastham.[21]

In the Solomon Islands naval operations Lieutenant George S.
Hamm of Charlottesville aboard the destroyer USS Monssen played
a gallant part. “We were sunk,” wrote he, “in the big night battle
off Guadalcanal on November 13th, [1942]. We ran into a large
missing Jap force and [engaged] in a point blank battle which
was so close that we were shooting at a Jap battleship with machineguns.
We were caught between several Jap ships and received a
terrific pounding, which left us completely demolished and burning.”
With the fire-fighting system ruptured and only hand extinguishers
available for combating the flames, Lieutenant Hamm directed fire-fighting
and damage control parties. Refusing to go over the side
when ordered to abandon ship, he sought out the wounded and administered
first aid. He then directed the evacuation of survivors on
rafts. Not until warned that the ship's magazines would soon explode
did he leave. “Only a small number of our crew got off alive,”
wrote Lieutenant Hamm. “Ensign Little and I were the only two
uninjured officers and as the senior survivor to the Captain I was the
last off the Monssen before she went down. After about six hours
in the water we were picked up by the Marines and taken to Guadalcanal,
where we remained for thirteen days until we could get started
on the first lap of the journey back to the States.” For his heroic
conduct Lieutenant Hamm was awarded the Silver Star, and in
November he was assigned to command the new destroyer USS
Monssen, then under construction.[22]

In December the Army under command of Major General Alexander
M. Patch of Staunton took over operations on Guadalcanal
from the Marines. General Vandegrift's last order to his troops,
dated December 7, 1942, was titled a “Letter of Appreciation for
Loyal Service.” In it he said:

“In relinquishing command in the Guadalcanal area I hope that
in some small measure I can convey to you my feelings of pride in
your magnificent achievement and my thanks for the unbounded
loyalty, limitless self-sacrifice and high courage which have made
these accomplishments possible.

“To the soldiers and marines who have faced the enemy in the

fierceness of night combat; to the pilots, Army, Navy, and Marine,
whose unbelievable achievements have made the name 'Guadalcanal'
a synonym for death and disaster in the language of the enemy; to
those who have labored and sweated within the lines at all manner
of prodigious and vital tasks; to the men of the torpedo boat squadrons
slashing at the enemy in night sorties; to our small band of devoted
Allies who have contributed so vastly in proportion to their numbers;
to the surface forces of the Navy associated with us in signal
triumphs of their own; I say that at all times you have faced without
flinching the worst the enemy could do to us and have thrown back
the best that he could send against us.

“It may well be that this modest operation, begun four months
ago today has, through your efforts, been successful in thwarting the
larger aims of our enemy in the Pacific. The fight for the Solomons
is not yet won but 'tide what you may' I know that you, as brave
men and men of good-will, will hold your heads high and prevail
in the future as you have in the past.”[23]

For his services in the South Pacific, General Vandegrift was
awarded the Medal of Honor, which was presented to him personally
by President Roosevelt at the White House on February 4, 1943,
with the following citation:

On July 30, 1943, it was announced that Vandegrift, who had
been Commanding General of the First Marine Amphibious Corps,
was promoted to lieutenant general. The command of the Amphibious
Corps passed to Major General Charles D. Barrett, when
President Roosevelt appointed Vandegrift commandant of the entire

Marine Corps, to succeed Lieutenant General Thomas Holcomb, who
was retiring because of age. On his way to the States to accept
the appointment, Vandegrift received news in Honolulu of the sudden
death of General Barrett. Ordered back to the Solomons to resume
command, Vandegrift led the Marines in the invasion of Bougainville
on November 1. After this new beachhead had been consolidated,
he relinquished command and returned to the United States to become
on January 1, 1944, the eighteenth Commandant of the Marine
Corps. In recognition of his outstanding service and ability Vandegrift
was made in the spring of 1945 the first full general in the
history of the Corps.[25]

Captain John G. Hundley of Charlottesville was stationed on one
of the islands in the Pacific during the first year of the war. Christmas
day, 1942, a letter from General George C. Marshall was posted
on the bulletin board. In part it read as follows: “Our men in
lonely watch towers of the Himalayas, on small island bases in the
Pacific and the fog bound Aleutians, on bases in the Caribbean and
South America, have been denied the thrill and glory of the battlefield.
Yet their role is no less important to the tremendous task
which we are facing.”

A year later Captain Hundley repeated these words by heart in an
interview with a reporter of The Daily Progress. He told of his
experiences and explained how important General Marshall's words
were to him and others like him. “You see, I got into the war early.
I graduated from Lane High in 1936, went to V.M.I., and in June,
1940, was commissioned a second lieutenant in Field Artillery. Soon
I was assigned to a field artillery battery and I learned a lot about
men and mules. ...

“In January, 1942, just a month after Pearl Harbor, I got a
chance to go overseas with a pack artillery battery, minus the mules.
We didn't know where we were going, only that it was tropical
service, and we had an idea it was to be landing operations. We
got to an island that's been written up a bit. ... Our task, we found,
was to turn the island into a Naval fuel base. That was all, just
hard work on an island in the Pacific, a piece of land five miles long
and two wide, with a lot of good natured Polynesian natives and not
a sign of a Jap.

“There we stayed for seventeen months. We loaded ships. We
built roads. Labor details dragged out big rocks by hand, with ropes,
for at first we had almost no machinery. We built water tanks and
mains. We built a dock. We did everything but fight, and all the
while the men on Guadalcanal and with MacArthur in New Guinea
were holding back the enemy. We would have been a front line position
if those others hadn't held, but they did the job.” Then, reverting
to the drudgery and seeming futility of the assigned duty,

he added, “But Marshall's letter fixed a lot of that for me, for all
of us.”[26]

In 1943 the Australians and Americans on New Guinea continued
to attack. On March 4 as a crew member of a bomber, Staff Sergeant
Charles Hunter Maupin of Crozet participated in a coordinated attack
against a Japanese convoy of twenty-two ships in Huon Gulf,
east of Salamaua. Despite heavy antiaircraft fire, the plane attacked
an enemy transport and scored two direct hits on the ship, which
was left in a sinking condition. On the same day the crew also
scored a direct hit on a destroyer.[27]

Meanwhile the Allied forces in the Pacific area were everywhere
being strengthened. Lieutenant Charles William Smith of Charlottesville
wrote home during the summer, “I can tell you folks now
that when we first arrived in the South Pacific we were stationed in
the Fiji Islands. We were the first large group of American forces
there and did a great part of the work of setting up the U. S. Ground
Force base there.” It was a nice place to be. The camp site was
good and the Fiji Islanders were fine, friendly fellows. Luckier than
some in the early days, each man in Smith's company got a real egg
for breakfast from time to time.[28]

Lieutenant William G. Schauffler, III, Army Air Corps, whose
mother and wife lived in Charlottesville, exhibited great courage
and untiring energy while participating in sustained combat operational
missions in June and July, 1943. On July 20 he sighted near
the Solomon Islands a large enemy cruiser and attacked immediately
at masthead level. “Despite a terrific barrage of automatic weapons
fire from at least 30 battle stations aboard the ship, he dropped three
500-pound bombs. The first was short, but the second was a direct
hit causing a huge explosion followed by billows of black smoke.”
Within two minutes the cruiser sank, few if any of the crew escaping.
The attack was executed with disregard of personal safety, and his
B-25 bomber crashed. Enlisted personnel of Lieutenant Schauffler's
crew were thrown clear and ultimately rescued, but they were unable
to throw any light upon his fate. He was first listed as missing
and then later officially declared to have been killed in action. For
his gallant action he was awarded the Silver Star posthumously.[29]

Water Tender Second Class Manuel E. Perry of Charlottesville
with the Seabees in the New Hebrides Islands ran across a few cannibal
tribes. “They were very sullen and ugly,” he wrote. “They
haven't bothered any white people for about eight or ten years, but
still cook up a native tribal enemy when they fight.” In July, 1943,
he wrote, “We are now working day and night to bring the enemy
down to his knees. The work is hard but we try to do it with
a smile... I would like to trade my place here for those back home
who are beefing about the rationing, sitting on front porches, while
we get Spam and powdered eggs. Our food is good as far it goes

but you don't get the green things that you have back home.” Later
Perry moved on to the Admiralty Islands and then to the Philippines.[30]

On the night of August 1, 1943, accompanied by other torpedo
boats, Ensign William C. (“Bill”) Battle, son of Senator and Mrs.
John S. Battle of Charlottesville, in charge of a motor torpedo boat,
engaged five enemy destroyers in Vella Gulf in the Solomon Islands.
Five or six probable hits were scored. Soon promoted to lieutenant
junior grade, in the following months he participated in numerous
engagements with enemy landing craft, ships, and shore installations.
He saw action at Bougainville and in New Britain and New Ireland.
He took part in the torpedo boat raid into the harbor of Rabaul. For
his leadership, tactical ability, and loyal devotion he was awarded
the Silver Star by Admiral Halsey.[31]

Second Lieutenant Daniel B. Owen, Jr., of Crozet was shot down
following a raid on the enemy airdrome at Boram, near Wewak,
New Guinea, on August 29, 1943. He was flying a B-24, part
of a formation of six planes, and had begun a bombing run when
three Zeros concentrated their fire on his plane, shooting out one engine
and setting the plane afire, but all bombs were dropped on the
target. In the running fight which ensued, the crew destroyed one
Zero and possibly two. A short distance beyond the target the
bomber burst into flames. Lieutenant Owen remained with his aircraft,
keeping it in level flight so that as many of the crew as possible
could escape. His Distinguished Flying Cross was posthumously
presented to his parents.[32]

Following a “mix-up with a grenade” at Salamaua which cost
him his left hand, Captain William Ray Woodard of Charlottesville
was flown from New Guinea to Brisbane, Australia, where he was
put aboard a ship bound for San Francisco. “Had a helluva trip
back,” he wrote. “Got into a fight with a Jap raider. Being a
bed patient I couldn't help much. The excitement and the following
lack of attention just about cooked my goose. I have had so
many transfusions that I don't believe I have any of my own blood
left.” The Silver Star was awarded Captain Woodard “for conspicuous
gallantry and intrepidity in action against the Japanese
forces.”[33]

In order to secure an advanced naval base and airfields within
fighter range of enemy concentrations at Rabaul, New Britain, the
First Marine Amphibious Corps under Lieutenant General Alexander
Archer Vandegrift landed on November 1, 1943, at Empress Augusta
Bay in western Bougainville. A beachhead was secured, and on the
next day, while the Marines were still battling the Japs, Chief
Machinist's Mate Elmer Irving Carruthers, Jr., of Charlottesville
landed with the Seabees to begin construction of the base. In many instances

during the next three weeks the Seabees actually led the
Marines through the swamps and jungles. On November 20 a
trail was under construction five hundred yards beyond the front lines
and only a few hundred yards from the Japanese positions in the
jungle. “A party had been working in the area the previous day
but the men were jittery about returning,” said Major General Roy
E. Geiger, who succeeded Vandegrift. “Carruthers volunteered to
lead them and was killed by a bursting mortar shell a few hours
later. All of the party might have been killed but Carruthers ordered
the others behind the blade of the bulldozer they were using
to clear a path. There was not room enough for Carruthers.” Mortally
wounded, he insisted that the uninjured men attend other comrades
whom he considered more severely wounded than himself and,
as a result of this unselfish action, he died before reaching an aid
station.

A day or two later Lieutenant Commander Thomas M. Carruthers,
who was in the area and had not heard from his brother recently,
made inquiries and was told of his death and burial in the cemetery at
Piva, a little village on Bougainville Island. The gallantry of Chief
Machinist's Mate Carruthers won the admiration of his buddies,
who erected at each end of a bridge simple signs on white boards with
black lettering which read: “Carruthers Bridge, dedicated to Eddie
Carruthers who gave his life blazing this trail.” In recognition of
“his heroic spirit of self-sacrifice and unswerving devotion to duty”
the Silver Star was awarded to him posthumously.[34]

The invasion of Tarawa, the main air base of the Japanese in
the Gilbert Islands, inaugurated a series of great oceanborne offensives.
Commanding the supply route to Australia and defending
the road to Japan, Tarawa was of enormous strategic value. Its
elaborate, recently constructed defenses were meticulously concealed
in the coral island. On November 21, 1943, the Second Marine
Division landed. On a destroyer, which was “up front” throughout
the battle, Ship's Cook Second Class Glynn W. Amiss of Charlottesville
watched the battle. Declared he, “Folks back home will never
realize the extent of the terrible massacre of Marines and Sailors at
Tarawa. Words cannot describe the scene I witnessed and unless
the Navy Department releases uncensored pictures of the battle the
public will never know what a real battle is like. ... It was too horrible
to think about, and I am sorry that I can never forget it.”
The loss of American life reached its height when many landing
barges became stranded on coral reefs offshore, leaving the men practically
helpless in the face of terrific machinegun fire from the Japanese
shore installations. When the fighting had subsided, shell-torn
bodies could be seen floating in the water as far away as five miles
from the scene of battle. “If the folks back home could have seen

what I witnessed,” continued Amiss, “or even see the motion pictures,
I am sure there would be no strikes in defense plants.”[35]

From New Guinea, Private Lewis W. Wingfield of Charlottesville
wrote his parents of a very important but in no wise unfriendly
battle there in December, 1943. “Well, we have a big baseball game
this Sunday,” he wrote on Wednesday the fifteenth. “From what
I hear we are playing a team composed of former major and minor
league baseball stars. This team just won the championship of
Australia. We have a very good team, and we expect to give them a
good game.” Sunday evening he fairly shouted, “We won the baseball
championship of the Southwest Pacific. We beat the team that
was the former champ, by the score of nine to six. I played third
base.” The thought of spending Christmas away from home cast
a shadow, however, and three days later he added, “I hear we get
a bottle of beer for Christmas. I doubt it, we haven't had any since
we have been over here. This doesn't worry me, though. All I
am asking for is to be home for next Christmas.”[36]

During 1944 MacArthur continued to advance from east to west
along the north coast of New Guinea. At the same time other forces
drove from the Gilbert Islands through the Marshalls and on to the
Marianas. Each step was preceded by bombing raids. Some planes
did not return from these attacks, and others limped home bringing
their dead. A flight surgeon, convinced that many fliers could have
been saved if blood plasma had been administered shortly after they
were wounded, trained the members of crews to give transfusions in
the cramped quarters of a B-25. During a flight over a Japanese
base in the Marshalls, Sergeant Robert V. (“Bobby”) Smith of
Charlottesville, the engineer-gunner, and Lieutenant Andrew A.
Doyle, the bombardier-navigator, of a Mitchell bomber were
wounded. Lieutenant Doyle, whose legs were injured, was in danger
of dying from loss of blood and shock. In spite of his own injury
Sergeant Smith assisted the co-pilot in administering blood plasma
which was credited with saving Lieutenant Doyle's life. This first
successful transfusion opened the way to general use of transfusion
equipment on medium bombers.[37]

Second Lieutenant Bernard C. Harlow of Charlottesville was the
third of three brothers to win laurels in the Army Air Force. In
the Central Pacific he was a crew member on one of a fleet of
bombers which so effectively combed the area that a huge Navy task
force landed troops at Kwajalein on January 31, 1944, unmolested
by enemy planes. On April 4 Lieutenant Harlow was a crew
member of a B-24 Liberator which took part in the bombing of
Eniwetok in the Marshall Islands. His plane was last seen going
down in flames just before the bombers broke formation to make the
attack.[38]

In February, 1944, Staff Sergeant Gilmer M. Hall of Charlottesville

whose Air Force unit received a Presidential Citation, wrote
his mother. “I'll bet I was certainly funny when I was in Australia
on furlough—I was walking down the crowded street one day when
an automobile backfired, and I immediately fell to the ground as I
always do when the air-raid signal is given. Everyone stared at me
as if I were crazy or something, but it's just natural to 'hit the dirt'
whenever anything like this is heard. ... One morning, I was awakened
by the noise of a low-flying airplane with its gun shooting. I
thought it sounded different from ours, and turned in bed to look.
When I did I saw some Jap 'Zeroes' coming over the tree tops and then
realized we were being strafed. Needless to say, speed records were
broken going to my trench! By the time I was fully awake, I
thought it was a lot of fun. One time he passed directly over, not
more than fifty feet above me, and take my word for it, those big
red dots on the wings are the biggest things that you've ever seen in
your life!”[39]

But the Japs also got strafed. Commenting on a tree-top run
over Wewak, New Guinea, Technical Sergeant Robert C. Walker of
Charlottesville, a B-25 radio-gunner in a crack unit, said, “We had
sneaked in on the Jap 'drome over a small range of hills in back
of Wewak. When we reached the field I began strafing with the
waist guns of our Mitchell medium bomber and the Japs strafed right
back. One of their shells hit my gun and exploded. I figured I
was the luckiest little boy that ever lived. If the gun hadn't been
there I wouldn't have my head now. I didn't know right then that
15 of the shell fragments had cut me up. So when we got safely
away from the 'drome and the pilot asked if everybody was all right.
I said I was OK. I had to take it back a little later when I noticed
I was bleeding, and the navigator sprinkled sulpha on my arm.”[40]

With a quartermaster company stationed in New Guinea, Private
Edward E. Michtom of Charlottesville wrote his uncle, I. D. Levy.
in the summer of 1944. “I thought I had toughened up—I've been
through a hell of a lot since you heard from me, Boy! I mean
WAR IS HELL—but just now a long, deadly poisonous snake came
crawling through my tent, and I got out of there in a hurry! Scared
the hell right out of me. ...

“The going was plenty rough for a while. The Nips were trying
to sneak their planes in to knock us off. Six of them came over
one day, strafing to beat all hell. I was so shocked I stood there
for a second as if in a daze, bullets screaming all around me. Then,
like a flash, I was in my beloved fox-hole. Looking up, I could see
them directly overhead. Having had enough experience by now to
understand the not too comfortable situation, I knew that since they
were right overhead, they could neither strafe in my vicinity or if
they should drop a bomb, it would be pretty far off. (You can see
bombs falling, anyway.)

“About that time, the Nips got the surprise of their lives—our
ack ack cut loose with a barrage that literally filled the sky with
flaming tracers. Up on the edge of our foxholes, we were cheering
and yelling like mad, 'Git 'em, git the B—.' Suddenly, we saw
a Nip burst into flames and hurtle to the sea. The ack ack blew a
second Nip to pieces in mid-air, coming down not 200 yards away.
What a thrill! Meanwhile, the remaining four are zooming around.
All of a sudden, all four of them simultaneously burst into flame and
began falling into the sea. Perfect score, six for six! Boy, I'll
never forget it. ...

“The thing that tickles me about these air raids is the slow bobbing
up of heads all around. One by one you see them pop up, when
they feel secure enough for the moment to watch the show. What a
hubbub when it's over. Every man has his own version of the panorama.
You should hear them all chattering at the same time, each
man with a different viewpoint on the subject. It happens every
time. ...

“Things have quieted down now. Once in a long while, some
stray Jap may come buzzing over and wake you up out of a deep
sleep, but even those futile attempts are becoming more and more
infrequent. Occasionally, one can hear the roar of our mortars as
they reach their target. Once in a while, one can hear a Jap 'woodpecker'
(Jap machinegun that sounds like that bird) peck away,
but it is soon silenced. All in all, the place has become very quiet
and peaceful.”[41]

On June 15, 1944, the Marines attacked the Marianas Islands,
landing on Saipan. The next day when a Japanese artillery battery
held up the advance, Major Roger Greville Brooke Broome, III, of
Charlottesville organized an attack so that the 37-millimeter gun
platoon of his 24th Regimental Weapons Company outflanked and
captured the enemy position. On July 5 he personally took a 75-millimeter
self-propelled gun into a narrow defile against heavy
enemy fire and blasted the Japanese concealed in caves which could
not be reached by other weapons. Three days later he made a reconnaissance
in front of the American lines and located strong enemy
positions. While disposing his weapons for an assault, he received
serious wounds from which he died the following January. Major
Broome's Navy Cross was presented to his son.[42]

On Saipan Corporal Claude S. (“Billy”) Haggard of Charlottesville
was also fatally wounded. An officer who served with him
wrote Haggard's wife. “I was near Claude when he was hit. It
was early in the morning of July 8th and we had been catching hell
for about three hours. I did not actually see him receive his wounds
as I had just had my radio shot out of my hand and was attempting
to get reorganized. I did see and talk with him a short time later,

and from our conversation I gathered he was not in a great deal of
pain.

“He received these wounds while trying to remove one of his
wounded buddies from enemy machinegun fire. On July 9th he
died from these wounds. His conduct in this action was above
and beyond the call of duty and to me that makes him a great
soldier. He is buried in the Second Marine Division Cemetery, Saipan
Island. I have visited the cemetery and when all the work is completed
it will be a fine and beautiful memorial to those boys that rest
there.” Haggard's widow received the Silver Star awarded him for
conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity.[43]

Although a demolition expert with plenty of Japs to his credit,
Private First Class Thomas E. Branham of Eastham won the admiration
of his comrades by his rescues of the wounded on Saipan.
This he had done before at Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands. where
he braved a hail of death from an exploding ammunition dump to
administer aid. On Saipan in the bloody battle for Hill 500, he
advanced across an open field and returned with a wounded Marine.
A closer call came later on Tinian, however, where he was trapped
between a burning tank and a cliff full of snipers. Private First
Class Branham was killed by a sniper on Iwo Jima while he was
removing a mine from a road so that tanks could advance.[44]

On July 21, 1944, the assault on nearby Guam began. The
Marine First Provisional Brigade was led ashore on Agat Point on
the south coast by Brigadier General Lemuel C. Shepherd, Jr., of
Charlottesville. Fighting against heavy opposition, it pushed on to
capture the Orote Peninsula.[45]

During the invasion of Guam First Lieutenant David W. Schumaker
of Scottsville was engaged in clearing “blue” beach and the
area behind it of Japanese land mines and unexploded projectiles. He
was often under Japanese artillery, mortar, and rifle fire while doing
this dangerous work, but he and his men soon made it possible for
vehicles to operate on the beach. Later he also helped clear the
causeway to Cabras Island of mines.[46]

When the American flag had been raised again over the old
Marine Barracks of Apra Harbor, Marine Major Ross S. Mickey
of Charlottesville, in a Grumman Hellcat fighter plane, led the first
of four combat squadrons onto the hard-won air field. Especially
equipped for night fighting, his squadron helped keep Japanese raiders
away from Guam.[47]

From Saipan on July 19, 1944, Captain Harry Hubbard Cowles
of Charlottesville wrote his parents. “We had some fireworks here
for about a month. Things went from bad to worse, then back to
bad. I finally turned up all right, which is as brief a description as
I can give you up to this point. Things are now quiet. We are

eating, sleeping and cleaning up generally. That's about all the
news from here. I imagine you know more about this affair, from
reading the papers, than I do. I get a pretty small perspective. This
fighting out here has a long ways to go yet, and if my luck holds
out I hope to see you in a year or so. I hope you've got that farm
picked out. I'm all set to settle down when the time comes.”[48]

Five days later Captain Cowles was among those who invaded
Tinian. Caught in a machinegun cross fire, he was instantly killed.
One of his friends said of him: “He was one of the finest and bravest
of officers in the Corps. He was a machinegun specialist and it was
his bravery and thoughts of his men that caused his death.”[49]

During his first night on Tinian nineteen-year-old Private Thomas
D. Hopkins of Charlottesville and six other Marines with “Old
Slugger,” a 50-caliber machinegun, wiped out 106 Japanese in a
sugar cane field without the loss or injury of a single Marine. “It
was one of the most outstanding feats of the entire Marianas campaign,”
wrote a Marine combat correspondent. “The Japs never
got close enough to use their hand grenades or dynamite packs; their
rifle fire was sporadic and wild, and they failed in repeated attempts
to set up three .30 caliber machineguns they carried with them.”[50]

When the Japs had at last been cleared out, great bases were set
up and many of the comforts of civilization brought in. A year
later Marine combat correspondent Sergeant Phillip Joachim of
Cobham landed on Agrihan in the Marianas and found it “an island
paradise in the Pacific replete with beautiful native women and luscious
tropical fruits.” The friendly Kanakas, who had been mistreated
by the Japanese plantation overseers, greeted the Americans with pineapples,
lemons, limes, watermelons, coconuts, and bananas.[51]

The ports of China were already under Japanese control, as were
the Malay States and Singapore, when the Nipponese in 1942 pushed
the British out of Burma and closed the Burma Road over which
supplies had been going to China. Thereafter such supplies as reached
China from the United States were flown over the Himalayan Hump
from Assam, India, to Western China by American pilots. Among
them Captain Robert E. Carter, III, of Charlottesville made the trip
many times, helping the India-China air transport command to make
a spectacular record in supplying the fighting forces in China despite
high mountains and adverse weather. In March, 1944, he was with
the famous Rescue Squadron which aided fliers forced down in their
flights across the “hump”. Members of the squadron made regular
surveys in search of crews and passengers of lost and crippled planes.
When survivors were located the squadron kept constant contact with
them, dropping food and other necessities until rescue was made.[52]

Late in 1943 Allied forces under Lord Louis Mountbatten began
the drive to reestablish overland communication with China by driving

the Japs out of Burma. A specially trained American infantry
combat team, later known as “Merrill's Marauders” after Brigadier
General Frank D. Merrill, its leader, was prominent in the fighting.
With this Group was a scout and flame thrower, Technician Fifth
Grade Howard Carter, Jr., of Charlottesville. Between December,
1943, and May, 1944, his regiment marched 1,120 miles through
the Burma jungle and penetrated to within eighteen miles of Teng
Chung, China. Though he escaped the Japanese bullets, Carter was
finally knocked out by typhus and spent months in the hospital.[53]

Also with Merrill's Maurauders was Private William H. Hughes
of Scottsville, who served as a scout and engaged in many skirmishes
with the Japs. Once a bullet missed his head by a bare inch and
struck the tree against which he was leaning. The Jap who fired
the shot fell before a burst from Hughes' tommygun. At Nhapun
Ga his battalion was surprised by the Japanese. For fourteen days
the battle raged. “Despite the fact that we were surrounded and
outnumbered,” he recalled, “Jap casualties were very much greater
than our own. They kept coming against our lines and we kept
knocking them off as fast as they came. However, things might
have become pretty bad for us if one of our battalions hadn't been
able to reach us and blast open an escape gap with artillery fire.”[54]

The climax of the campaign was the attack on Myitkyina, where
an all-weather airdrome south of the city was captured on May 17,
1944, and held against savage counterattacks while American reinforcements
came in by air from India. According to a CBI Roundup
correspondent, First Lieutenant Henri G. (“Ricky”) Carter of
Charlottesville and four companions “distinguished themselves by
doing the risky job of flying all of the gas used by fighters, bombers,
and transports in the battle for Myitkyina.” Not the smallest of
Lieutenant Carter's feats was taking a C-46 on to the Myitkyina
air strip, the dimensions of which would ordinarily preclude the landing
of the giant plane. Among other things the C-46 brought in
the large central casting of a half-yard shovel for the engineers. He
was the only one to perform this bit of aviation gymnastics. Forced
to make landings in the face of enemy fire during the early days, he
and his crew would race for foxholes as soon as the plane stopped.[55]

Four days after the airborne troops came to the support of Merrill's
Marauders, Master Sergeant John Cooke Wyllie of Charlottesvilled
landed at the bloody Myitkyina air strip. Known to the men
of his squadron as “Uncle John,” he moved southward through
Burma with the infantry. He was in the thick of the Myitkyina-Mogaung
campaign as communications chief of a Tenth Air Force
squadron. He and his six-man team provided directions to bombers
and fighters in close support attacks on the Japs. Sometimes bombs
were dropped as close as fifty yards to his radio team in the front
lines. In January, 1945, during the action at Pinwe, Wyllie was

commissioned a second lieutenant in the field for outstanding work
with his combat unit. Soon afterwards he was transferred to China.
Here he served with various Chinese units, controlling the American
air strikes in support of the Chinese advance. During the Battle of
Junkow, near Poaching, Lieutenant Wyllie was promoted. He was
awarded the Chinese Order of Yun Hui.[56]

A preliminary step in the reconquest of the Philippine Islands was
the capture of the Palau Islands. Landings were made by Marines
on Peleliu at eight in the morning of September 15, 1944, Corporal
James N. Kardos of Charlottesville was one of eight Marines in
an amphibious tank which was knocked out about fifty yards from
shore during the initial landing. The group dashed ashore and took
cover from Jap machinegun fire in a ditch about seven feet deep.
Describing the landing, Kardos wrote: “We got caught in a tank
trap but me and fifteen of the other boys got out of the trap and
was trying to take a ridge that the Japs were on. We ran into a lot
of pill boxes and a cross fire from Jap machineguns and snipers. In
about a minute there were only three of us left. Then the Japs let
loose a mortar barrage on us and the two boys that were with me
were hit by a sniper as they were trying to get better cover. I
dragged the one that was wounded the worst into a hole and then
started for the other one. I just got my hands on him and was going
to drag him back when a second shot killed him.”

Kardos remained until dusk with the wounded man. When his
comrade died, he made his way back to the tank trap. As he dashed
for the trench, the Japs opened up with everything they had. “I
got into the trap and some of the boys were still alive back there,”
he continued. “They were so glad to see me that they almost
kissed me.”

Because of the many wounded needing attention, the group made
its way in the dark to the aid station on the beach. Then Kardos
started back to join his company. “It was about ten at night and
very dark,” he wrote. “I took the wrong turn and ended up out in
front of the lines where I ran into a Jap machinegun and spent the
rest of the night there fighting them by myself. When it got light,
they stopped firing. I don't know if the reason they stopped was
because I had killed them or they had left. I didn't go out any
farther to find out.”[57]

A veteran of the Solomons, Cape Gloucester, and New Britain,
Staff Sergeant Warren Mowbray of Charlottesville, who hit the
beach at nine-thirty on the very first day, thought Peleliu the toughest
campaign he had been through, much worse than Guadalcanal. “The
only Japs that we found that were not fanatical were the Koreans,”
he said, “and we don't call them Japs.” Altogether his division took
only about a hundred Japanese prisoners, although many Koreans
were taken and used as laborers. He recalled that after experiencing

the kind treatment of the Americans, the Koreans would stomp and
yell with delight when a Jap plane was shot down in a dogfight.[58]

After a thundering naval and air bombardment, General MacArthur
returned to the Philippines. First Lieutenant Ralph Erskine
Conrad of Charlottesville with Troop F of the 7th Cavalry landed
October 20, 1944, six miles south of Tacloban on the island of
Leyte. “I was the first guy to land in the Philippines,” he wrote to his
mother. “My boat was no. eleven which means first boat first wave,
and since I was the platoon leader I was the first off. We killed six
Japs right on the beach.” Colonel Walter Finnegan of Charlottesville,
commander of the 7th Cavalry, led his soldiers into Tacloban,
where the gaily dressed Filipinos lined the street to welcome the
soldiers. Many trudged along happily with cases of beer and saki
on their heads. These came from the stocks abandoned by the Japanese
and were offered to the victorious Americans.[59]

After the beachhead and port had been secured by the initial success,
hard fighting ensued as the Japanese and Americans struggled,
each seeking to expel the other from the island. For twenty-one
exhausting days Lieutenant Conrad took part in the advance across
rugged and inhospitable terrain to the west coast. There were frequent,
fierce skirmishes with the Japanese. Outside Villaba, shortly
before dark on December 29, 1944, F Troop, which Lieutenant
Conrad now commanded, encountered determined enemy resistance.
It was important that the town be taken that evening. Lieutenant
Conrad made a personal reconnaissance and then issued orders for
the assault on Villaba. Shortly afterwards he was instantly killed.
but the town was successfully occupied. The Silver Star was awarded
him posthumously and presented to his mother, Mrs. Janet E.
Conrad.[60]

During the fighting for the Philippines a soldier heard a voice near
his foxhole. “Are you Mr. George Gentry's son, and is your name
Cushman?”

“Yes, I'm Cushman Gentry.”

“Man, am I glad to see you.”

Thousands of miles from home Ollie T. Woodfolk had found a
friend from Albemarle. Writing home about the meeting Gentry
commented that the Negro soldier had had a close call that day
from Jap planes.[61]

On December 14, 1944, Ensign James Witt Robinson of Charlottesville,
a member of Fighting Squadron Twenty, attached to the
USS Lexington, flew his first mission over enemy territory to photograph
Japanese air fields in the Clark Field area of Central Luzon
in the Philippines. Several fighters from the carrier went along to
protect him from enemy planes while he took his pictures. Of the
mission Commander F. E. Bakutis, his commanding officer, wrote,
“Without regard for his personal safety, Jim was making his runs

through heavy antiaircraft fire. Suddenly, several bursts were seen
close by his plane and that of [Ensign George William] McJimsey,
and both of them began falling. One of the pilots, believed to have
been McJimsey, was seen to parachute and appeared to be unconscious
in his chute. Both planes crashed among the enemy installations.”
First listed as missing, Ensign Robinson on January 16,
1945, was reported killed in action. Two days later he was reported
safe. Actually, McJimsey was killed, and it was Robinson
who had been seen to parachute.

Like the hero in a movie serial, Robinson had been spared by a
combination of fortuitous circumstances. A direct hit on the left
wing of his plane near the cockpit threw the plane into a spin.
There was a blinding explosion and Robinson lost consciousness.

“The last thing I remember is going into a spin—all I had on
my mind was to get out, but I don't remember bailing out nor opening
the 'chute,” he recalled. “I was too weak to bail out. The
only thing that I can figure is that the explosion blew the canopy
off the plane and I tumbled out. Somehow the 'chute yanked open.”

When he came to, Robinson was lying in a rice paddy surrounded
by Filipinos. His ribs were dislocated and his wrist and arm injured.
Using his first aid packet, he treated his wounds. A Filipino
doctor later dressed his arm and put a splint on his wrist. That
night he was turned over to one of the traveling guerrilla bands,
which, because Robinson was too weak to walk, provided a two-wheel
cart drawn by a carabao in which he rode for the next week.

“We were on the move every night,” he recalled. “We'd travel
from one barrio, as the natives called the villages, to another, and
were fed and hidden by the civilians during the day. We stayed
outside the towns, since there were usually several thousand Japanese
in the large centers.”

With Filipino guides Robinson and several other American airmen
made their way to the foothills above Clark Field where the guerrilla
forces had a stronghold.

“In order to get there, we had to cross the Jap lines,” he said.
“It took us five days to go 15 miles through the Jap lines and across
a main highway. We traveled by daylight, which was dangerous,
because if the Japanese saw a band of unidentified men moving
around, they would conclude that they were guerrillas, and either
strafe or ambush them.”

Robinson remained in the foothills camp until a week after the
Americans landed on Lingayen Gulf, then he started north covering
the forty miles to Camiling in a day and a half. Here he rejoined
the American forces on the day that city was occupied, returning,
as it were, from the dead a month after he had been shot down.[62]

The Sixth Army had landed on the beaches of Lingayen Gulf
on January 9, 1945, and put 68,000 troops ashore to secure a

fifteen-mile beachhead the first day. The next day First Lieutenant
George Cleveland Doner of Charlottesville with the 20th Infantry
of the 6th Division wrote:

“We were the assault troops and the first to land. I came in in
the fifth wave about 12 minutes after the initial waves. To our
surprise there was no resistance whatsoever. The Navy and Air
Corps had previously given the beach a good working over but there
were no Japs. We will, naturally, run into them soon but landing
and getting organized has been a great asset. This is the second
day and we've moved about five miles and have seen no Japs. The
natives were overjoyed in our coming and have been most helpful
in every way. They are extremely friendly and grateful of everything
done for them and their homeland. One asked if Roosevelt
was still president. They are far more intelligent than I had expected.
It is a great relief after the New Guinea type of inhabitants.
You'll never know how grand it was to hit land and proceed inland
to a coconut grove. I saw the grass and just lay down and rolled
in it. The highways, houses, and railroads were the first we'd
seen in over a year.

“Our trip up here was exciting and one day a Jap dived his plane
into our transport. There were a few deaths and injuries but not
as bad as it could have been.”

Lieutenant Doner fought throughout the Luzon campaign. Six
months later, on July 8, he wrote, “We have been sitting still for
the past two weeks taking a little rest. Patrols are sent out every
day but other than that, things have been very quiet. Quite a few
prisoners have been taken in lately and one in particular ... was
of special interest. He was an officer with 17 years of education,
which is a lot as compared with most of the others. He spoke
perfect English and gave an opinion of the average thoughts ...
in the minds of the Japanese. He expressed his desire that some
day he may be able to go to England to further his education. As
he expressed it, he is strictly anglophilic. I had to look that one up.
He is married with four children whom he loves very dearly but
he had no desire to return to Japan because he knows that under
the present government, he will be ostracised. He also said that
the average Japanese knew that they were fighting a losing battle
but they had no leader who had the power and fortitude to lead
the people.”

On August 12, 1945, only a day before the announcement of
Japanese intention to surrender, Lieutenant Doner wrote again.
“I am writing this somewhat near the front lines. I was sent up
to the forward ammunition dump to consolidate and manage same.
... This is really rough country and roads are impassable because
of the rain and high mountains. Naturally we are 'sweating out'
the answer from Japan and at a point like this a bit of emphasis

can be put on the 'sweating out'. It seems strange being here and
listening to only an occasional gun shot. Yes, all firing (except air
strikes and artillery) has ceased except when only necessary. The
attitude of the more forward elements is, naturally, one of joking
and plans for the future. ... Hope they'll let us out by the first-in-first-out
system. That seems to be the concensus of opinion, and
one of the biggest questions is whether or not the Japs up here will
give up even after the armistice. Then, 'midst all the joking,
laughter, and impatient waiting, is some tragedy. Two boys were
killed last night.”[63]

The code name “Hot Rock” for the invasion of Iwo Jima was
well chosen, for the volcanic island emits steam and sulphur fumes.
Though it was heavily bombarded in preparation for the attack, its
fortifications were still intact when the Marines landed on February
19, 1945. In the ensuing hours and days the defending Japs took
a heavy toll of the attacking Americans. During a heavy enemy
mortar barrage which had seriously reduced his platoon, Second
Lieutenant Nathaniel F. Mann of Charlottesville inspired the remaining
members to hold their positions by walking through the
deadly hail calmly giving personal encouragement to each man.
“After the barrage had lifted but while exposed to intense and
accurate rifle fire, he led a platoon of reinforcements into position.
Although the enemy continued to inflict severe casualties in his
platoon, Lieutenant Mann voluntarily worked his way across a draw
under observation to gain contact with the unit on his left, and
that night was directly responsible for closing a dangerous gap in
the front line by leading two more platoons into position across
the draw.” For his courageous conduct Lieutenant Mann was
awarded the Silver Star.[64]

Private First Class Harold E. Roberts of Charlottesville was one
of the replacements moved up to the front lines on Iwo Jima to
relieve a unit which had been “pretty badly cut up.” A bullet
grazed his left cheek, inflicting a minor wound, but he refused to
go back to an aid station and stayed in his foxhole awaiting orders
to advance.

“We'd been pinned down all morning, and when we finally got
ready to move out, I threw my leg up over the hole, only to fall
back with a bullet wound in it,” he recalled. For eight long hours
Roberts waited while things were so “hot” in his area that the
medical corpsmen could not get forward to the wounded, but later
he dismissed the experience. “That sort of thing doesn't hurt, you
know, there's just a hole in your leg, but no feeling.”[65]

Pharmacist's Mate Second Class Eugene Hoover wrote his parents
describing the battle of Iwo Jima.

“That was sure one of the hottest places I have even seen and
for 27 days we were kept awfully busy most all the time. For a

while, I was in the front line as first-aid man with the boys. You
can't realize what it's like here night and day or what awful
ground we had to go over. ... Japs lived like ground hogs and
had to be smoked, burned and blown out.

“I have some souvenirs. Two sabers—two big Jap swords, one
was burned some and had no handle so I sold it for $30, but the
other one is very beautiful and I still have it—a small automatic
pistol, a bayonet and a pocket knife. ...

“We were given new clothes and good chow after leaving Iwo
Jima and the boys feel lots better after washing and shaving. This
we really needed.”[66]

In March, 1945, the USS Trigger was lost while on war patrol
in the Ryukyu Islands. The executive officer of the submarine,
Lieutenant Commander John Eldon Shepherd, III, of Charlottesville,
had been with the Trigger ever since January 31, 1942, when it
was commissioned. He had finished his regular number of patrols
the previous December, but he volunteered for two extra patrols.
On the second of these the submarine was lost. The Trigger had
made one of the most outstanding records of the war. For outstanding
performance in combat during her fifth, sixth, and seventh
war patrols she received the Presidential Unit Citation. During
this time Shepherd personally earned the Navy Cross and the Silver
Star.[67]

The offensive on the Ryukyus began March 26, 1945, when
Lieutenant General Simon B. Buckner's Tenth Army landed on
Kerama Retto. On April 1 landings were made on Okinawa, the
main island. The Sixth Marine Division under the command of
Major General Lemuel C. Shepherd, Jr., of Charlottesville landed
with other troops on the west coast and turned left to clear the
northern part of the island. Later after that job was done they
returned south to assault the chief city of Naha. By May 17 patrols
of Major General Shepherd's division had crossed the muddy Asato
estuary and entered the rubble-strewn capital of Okinawa. It was
the largest city ever captured by the Marine Corps. After a hard
campaign of eighty-two days the island was completely in American
hands.[68]

Air attacks on American vessels were frequent during the Ryukyus
campaign. The destroyer USS Newcomb was attacked near the
island of Ie Shima on April 6, 1945, by four Kamikaze planes.
Fireman First Class Franklin B. Giles of Charlottesville was wounded
when the third suicide plane tore into his ship. “The four planes
all struck our ship within a few minutes of each other,” said Giles,
who was on duty below a five-inch gun. “The Japs had been
flying around all day, but our planes had been successful in fighting
them off. The first two planes hit with terrific explosions. The
metal decking rolled up like a carpet. Looking up from my position,

I saw flames. I yelled at the gunner, telling him his gun
was afire. He yelled back and said so was the rest of the ship!
Then the third plane hit. Our room was torn by concussion and
the air was filled with flying shrapnel and pieces of metal.” Severely
crippled, the Newcomb with her wounded was towed to a repair
base.[69]

Ensign Horace Walker Heath of Charlottesville was an ace pilot
with Fighting Squadron 10, the “Grim Reaper Squadron,” attached
to the USS Intrepid during the Okinawa offensive. “Tuck,”
as he was called by his friends, was with the “Ripper Five” division.
During four months' duty in the Pacific Heath accounted in part
for the destruction of fourteen planes on the ground and damaged
ten others. He made many flights in support of the advance on
Okinawa. On one occasion he shot down two enemy fighters and
then a few days later shot down three more. Several months later,
July 8, 1945, he was taking part in practice maneuvers off Pearl
Harbor. As he dived making a dummy pass at the carrier, the
tail and wing tops came off his plane and it started spinning with
its body parallel to the water. As the plane hit the water, it disintegrated
leaving no wreckage. A bronze tablet in memory of
Ensign Heath was unveiled on January 19, 1947, in the chapel of
St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Charlottesville.[70]

Off Swatow, China, on March 13, 1945, First Lieutenant Vincent
dePaul Jammé, Jr., of Earlysville flew as a pilot in a formation
of four B-25 aircraft on a minimum altitude bombing and strafing
mission against enemy shipping along the China coast. When a
destroyer and a freighter were sighted, he led his wingman in an
attack on the destroyer. Though the left engine of his plane was
set on fire and a propeller blade was shot off during the approach,
he continued the run, strafing and bombing the vessel. Lifted out
of the water by four or more bomb hits, it sank in seventy-five
seconds. Forced to land on the water near the target, Lieutenant
Jammé and his crew were lost. The Silver Star was awarded him
posthumously.[71]

Airplanes were meanwhile carrying the war to the Japanese
homeland. Ensign James C. Funsten of Charlottesville, flying a
Navy Hellcat fighter from a carrier, escorted bombers on a smashing
raid on Japan. He strafed hangars and destroyed a two-engine
bomber on an enemy airdrome. An Oscar fighter came up to intercept,
and Funsten got first crack at him.

“I swung out wide in a downward turn and gave the Jap fighter
a long burst of 50 caliber fire,” he said. “The Oscar rolled over
on its back and went straight down, smoking. I didn't wait around
to see him crash.”[72]

From bases in the Marianas Islands B-29's made regular raids
on Japan. Brigadier General Lauris Norstad of Charlottesville was

chief of staff of the 20th Air Force, which had its headquarters on
Guam and directed these operations.[73]

With the 314th Bombardment Wing, First Lieutenant (later
Captain) Charles W. Lucas of Charlottesville piloted a Superfortress,
which his crew voted to name “City of Charlottesville” in honor
of his home town. The name was painted on a flag drawn with
its staff planted at Charlottesville's location on a map of North
America painted on the nose of the plane. During the air assault
on Japan the bomber made a record of forty-one missions. Each
flight was around three thousand miles and took approximately
fifteen hours. During most of these flights Lucas was at the controls.
His performance of this duty earned him the Distinguished
Flying Cross.[74]

Charlottesville also had a warship to bear her name. While
the band played “Carry Me Back To Old Virginny,” the USS
Charlottesville, a Coast Guard frigate, slid down the ways of the
Walter Butler Shipbuilding Company at Superior, Wisconsin, on
July 30, 1943. It was a good ship, three hundred six feet long
and thirty-seven feet, six inches, in the beam, which Mrs. J. Emmett
Gleason, the wife of Charlottesville's mayor, christened with the
usual bottle of champagne. Miss Anne Nash, the maid of honor,
Alvin T. Dulaney, and Mayor Gleason watched as the ship took
to the water. Then was presented Charlottesville's gift to the
vessel—two handsome photographs, one of Monticello and one of
the Rotunda. Later the PF-25, as she was designated in Navy
records, was taken down the Mississippi River to New Orleans,
where she was commissioned in April, 1944. One of ninety-six
such vessels built to battle U-boats and protect American convoys,
the Charlottesville had a crew of one hundred ninety-six
enlisted men and twelve commissioned officers under Lieutenant
Commander W. F. Cass, her captain. After the commissioning
ceremony Dr. H. D. Ecker of the Marine Hospital at New Orleans,
a graduate of the University of Virginia Medical School whose
wife was formerly an Albemarle County girl, wrote Mayor Gleason:

“She was tied up at a slip not far from the hospital, with all
her signal flags flying from the yardarms in a colorful display to
supply as festive an air as could be expected to surround a fighting
ship. The railings on the dock leading to the gangway were strung
with red, white and blue bunting; the watch were uniformed in
white, standing smartly at attention; and the deck was crowded
with highranking officers of the Coast Guard. ... For the most
part, she appears as all the other vessels of the 'frigate' class—
amply supplied with fire-power and speed, and neat, compact integration
of the complicated machinery of a modern fighting ship.
I, naturally, was especially interested in the sick bay, which is
small but adequately designed and equipped for almost any emergency.

Mrs. J. Emmett Gleason makes a hit as she christens the
USS Charlottesville.

With all her signal flags flying, the USS Charlottesville takes
her first dip.

The officers' quarters are small but appear comfortable.
My main interest, however, centered in the officers' wardroom where
are hung two large, lovely pictures which occupy most of the forward
bulkhead—one of the Rotunda, and one of Monticello. They
also have hung in the wardroom a portrait of Jefferson. Lieutenant
Commander Cass and several of the other officers told me that both
officers and crew were most appreciative of the library sent the ship
from Charlottesville. Unfortunately, the bookcase could not be
accommodated, so a brass plate is being secured to the steel bookcase
indicating that the library is a gift from the city of which
the ship is namesake.”[75]

When the ship put into Norfolk in July so many of her crew
wanted liberty to visit Charlottesville that Commander Cass had
the applicants cut cards. Those who drew the five highest cards
made the trip. As guests of the city on the first anniversary of the
launching, the five sailors were shown the town. The Monticello
Hotel made good on its standing offer of berths to visiting crew
members. Mayor and Mrs. Gleason entertained the boys at luncheon,
together with five charming hostesses. Afterward the group visited
Monticello. That evening, before catching the train back to Norfolk,
the visitors had dinner at the Albemarle Hotel.

Just before Christmas Mrs. Gleason got a letter from one of the
sailors who visited Charlottesville. He told how the Charlottesville
had taken part in recent invasion operations in the Pacific.
Although bombed for several days by enemy planes, she came
through safely, to display proudly a reproduction of a Japanese
flag and one plane as evidence that her gunners had blasted an
enemy out of the sky.

At the same time Ensign James R. Lewis of Charlottesville, serving
aboard the USS O'Bannon, a destroyer, also wrote Mrs. Gleason
about the Charlottesville, “Not so long ago, I saw her—very neat and
very trim, indeed.” He described an unusual incident in which his
proud destroyer was forced to take orders from the frigate which
bore Charlottesville's name. Of this paradox he wrote, “To me it
was nothing more or less than my home town again exerting itself
as being just a little better than the next one. Yes, she seems to be
doing all right for herself.”[76]

The Pacific war reached a climax when atomic bombs were dropped
on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by Superforts during the first two weeks
of August, 1945. At seven o'clock on the evening of August 14
radio listeners throughout Charlottesville and Albemarle County
heard the joyous news that Japan had capitulated. The formal signing
of the surrender took place in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945,
according to the calendar there; but in the time zones of the United
States the date was September 1, six years to the very day after the
war had begun with the German invasion of Poland.