Occasionally, I publish some of Mr. Montgomery’s musings edited only for grammatical errors. Here is another of his reflection of earlier times. Mr. Montgomery wrote about much of his time enlisted in the U.S. Army, and this is ACT THREE of SIX.
ROBERT MONTGOMERY – Wartime ACT THREE – On a troopship to England
How to get involved in a WAR and stay SANE (or thereabouts)
The coast guard ship: USS WAKEFIELD was to be our transportation to Europe. The rumor was that this ship had some 7000, soldiers aboard. The ship was originally built as the SS MANHATTAN, one of the luxury ocean liners that plied the Atlantic in the 20’s. Apparently, it held the speed record for part of one year. The ship was claimed sunk by the Japanese off Singapore and destroyed by fire. It wasn’t sunk, and ended back at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where it was rebuilt as a troop ship. There were no luxury accommodations; troop compartments were 3 tier bunks, on about 6 deck levels, and manned by a Coast Guard crew.
The ship was sent out alone, not part of a convoy, and took off at its high speed with a crooked zig-zag course for England. We made the crossing in about 7 or 8 days (I forgot) and arrived at Liverpool around July 6 or 7th. We were loaded aboard a British railroad train and sent off into the wilds of England. I remember the little suburban railway station name where we stopped was “Beeston Castle”. It took us to a little tent encampment in an open field somewhere near the Welch border where we waited around some more. I remember getting off from the camp one day, and visiting a nearby town of “Market Drayton”. Life at the camp was a repeat of army life in Alabama, except this was England, and it rained almost every day. A lot of the soldiers with me were from Texas, and complained bitterly about the weather. It seemed to be just like home to me in Seattle. Always cloudy, with dribbling rain every day, plus an occasional downpour.
They were making up platoons of soldiers and sending them off every day to Normandy. The allied army was stalled before St. Lo at the time. One day I was called out individually, ordered to put on class A uniform, turn in all field equipment and report to the transportation officer for shipment. The orders were to proceed to Hq. Command, SHAEF, at Teddington, England. I had no idea what that was, at all. My train orders took me via Oxford to Paddington station in London, then to Waterloo Station, vie London Underground, where I was to take a train to Teddington, and meet a transportation officer representing SHAEF, whatever that was. SHAEF: Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force, quartered in Bushy Park, near the London suburban rail station of Teddington, not far from Hampton Court Palace.
It was the official headquarters of the entire invasion army.
LIFE at BUSHY PARK, London 1944
Here I was back in an army tent camp, inside the park grounds, just outside the City of London. Bushy Park was a huge park area that I think had been Henry VIII’s grounds outside the palace when he lived there, about 500 years ago. I discovered that my job was to look after repairs on some 750 typewriters at the HQ. I didn’t need a gun for this job, again typewriters. This was a camp, set up to accommodate General Eisenhower and the main staff running the invasion army then fighting in Normandy. There was something like 50 or 60 generals assigned as part of this headquarters, and about 5000 mostly US and British soldiers running the headquarters, ALL with typewriters. Except they weren’t expecting me at the time, and they had another fellow working on the typewriters. The poor man, had an army book on how to repair typewriters, but really didn’t know much about the subject. However, I was temporarily assigned as an assistant to the Local Purchasing Officer. My usual job was filling out papers, and going down into London almost every day to buy things needed for the HQ. It was very interesting. A lot of time, after hours, I would help our man repair typewriters he couldn’t handle. I remember we had an army field safe, with cash money to buy things needed for the HQ. I think it was something like 5000 pounds British money in that safe, real spending money. I had this very complicated US government form that I had to fill-in, have the Lieutenant sign, and get cash for the various expenses paid out that period.
I can remember that first week, riding the London Underground, and coming up at Piccadilly Circus in time to notice that the English civilians were intently looking up into the sky, when someone said: “There she goes!”, pointing up, to the sound of rumble-rumble. It was a V-1 flying bomb missile, passing just overhead at the time. Being a chicken type, I decided to see what was happening down at the underground tracks. The train tracks at Piccadilly were over 100 feet below the street. Apparently, a lot of the Londoners thought it was a great bomb shelter, as there were double tier bunks along the station platforms, and a few people actually sacked-out at the time.
LONDON during the war
BRITISH MONEY – Americans are supposed to be confused by the various denominations of British money, but I never found it to be a problem. It also helped me in handling this money to be working in a Supply Dept purchasing office where we had our own safe full of British Pounds.
It was a system that wasn’t really a system. It just grew out of various denominations of money over the centuries, even from Roman times.
When I was working in the local Purchasing Office, I regularly went into central London to buy “things” for the Headquarters Offices. One of the items was the special drafting pen tips for the American Made “LeRoy Lettering Sets”. This was a common device in most all drafting rooms to rapidly letter titles on drawings. It is common in almost all drafting rooms, and may still in use today. The printing device was a little, tiny cup that held a very small amount of India drawing ink. In this tiny cup was a little knob with a fine wire tip that rode in the hollow tip point of the pen. The quire kept the hollow tip clear, and allowed the ink to flow whenever the pen tip touched the paper. This little pen tip was removable and came in various sizes, but the little wire tip sometimes got broken. Assembly replacement probably only cost about 5 or maybe 10 dollars. It appears that nobody was able to find a supplier in London for this so someone found a watchmaker company who could make the part for us. And I inherited the job of picking these things up regularly. My excuse for going down to London, at Hatton Garden address.
Naturally I tried to take advantage of living near the edge of London, and so tried to make the rounds of the theatres, and all the other places of tourist interest still operating in London. I even used to go down into the underground and just go out somewhere and come up to see what was there. I passed one movie theatre that was advertising the movie “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town”, so in a moment of whimsey, I bought a ticket and went in. I had already seen this Frank Capra movie several times before, but I was interested in how the London audience would react to it. SURPRISE! This was a theatre that featured “foreign” films. The print being run on this date was a dubbed French Language copy of Mr. Deeds. Well it was different, anyway. They even had a French voice that matched Lionel Stander’s.
I saw a number of the stage plays in downtown London, like “Tomorrow the World”, Noel Coward’s “Blithe Spirit”, “Is your Honeymoon Really Necessary”, and “Arsenic and Old Lace” starring that great old actress of the British Stage: Lillian Braithwaite. (I had never heard of her.) Then there were the Opera theatres. The Royal Opera at Covent Garden had been disbanded, and the building was then a dance hall catering to British servicemen. Sadler’s Wells Opera had been bombed out of their theatre, but they were presenting shows at the Prince’s Theatre. I remember seeing a performance of Rigoletto that was interrupted by the sound of the air raid sirens. The Orchestra stopped, and auditorium lights came on and an announcement was made that an air raid shelter was available immediately below the theatre for those who were invited to leave. I didn’t see anyone get up (there were about 1200 people in the audience), and after a wait, the conductor turned around, the music started again, and the opera continued as usual. The British populace by this time were getting pretty defiant toward the German air raids.
I attended performances of the Royal Carl Rosa Opera Company. This company had operated their own theatre somewhere in the London area, and they too lost their theatre and all their scenery and props in an air raid. I saw their shows at the Hammersmith Theatre, a theatre that looked like it had been built for Vaudeville in the early 20’s. I can remember a performance of the opera “Il Trovatore”. 3 of us had tickets to a performance and we got tickets in row 5. I got a surprise. The first 4 rows had been removed, so that the larger opera orchestra could be accommodated. I can testify that I know what the “Anvil Chorus” is like while looking right down the bell of a trombone about 3 feet away.
The supply office where I worked handled issuance of various pieces of equipment, supplies, and military equipment for headquarters officers who were frequently sent off on some kind of mission or inspection trip. We had several English bicycles for this purpose, and we seemed to always have a spare one of two over week-ends. So, I and 1 or 2 friends would usually take an excursion down some road, on bicycles, just to see the countryside. One week, I went out alone, took a road that followed part of the way along the Thames river, it was supposed to be the road to the town of Windsor. I kept going and going, but it was getting late, and finally I decided I had gone too far for this time of day. I stopped at a large patch of greenery along the road. I could just see off in the distance the round tower of Windsor Castle. While I was standing resting I noticed a plaque hanging on a tree, it read: “At this place, in the year 1210, King John signed the Magna Carta.” It was Runneymede, one of the most important historical sites in English History. Well, I never got to Windsor Castle, but I got to stand where the English Barons had forced King John sign the great charter.
To be continued in ACT FOUR