My two years in the service --- From UP in the blue, to down ON the blue
I enlisted in the Air Corps in 1944, thinking I would go into cadet training, but Uncle Sam had other ideas.Off to Truax Field,Wisc.
for airborne radio --- Chanute Field for electronics---and Boca Raton for Airborne
radar. But just as our training came to an end, so did the war in Europe .So, off to
Fort Monmouth, N.J. for shipboard radar. On completion of our traning there, we were (loaned) out to the Transportation Corps and sent down to New Orleans to be shipped out as three man crews aboard merchant ships taking supplies to Europe and bringing backG.I.s for discharge
I made four crossings, each time with a different crew. The first trip was to Marsailles,France, Which was beyond a doubt the scariest port ive ever been to.
Next, was to Le Havre, France. The third was to Bremerhaven,Germany, positively
The cleanest. We were allowed a few hours in town while the ship was loading up.
We saw shopkeepers sweeping the sidewalks AND the gutters before they were to open their shops. My last crossing was to Southhampton, England to pick up returning GI’s,AND a few hundred “English war bridesâ€. This would take a couple of days to get loaded properly, so we were granted passes to go to London. Oh Man !!!
What a city. I don’t think I will ever lose the images that were imprinted on my mind that day. Here was this big beautiful city with litteraly block on block of total ruin, and in the midst of all the destruction around them, were these people, with their heads up, carrying on with their lives. I don’t know how, after all those , dark,bleak years, you Brits could come up smiling. Don’t mean to sound Maudlin, but that is how I feel. Really your finest hour.
Chucktoo1926