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 TWO of SIX.
ROBERT MONTGOMERY – Wartime ACT TWO – Salt Lake City
How to get involved in a WAR and stay SANE (or thereabouts)
So here I was, back in Salt Lake City, this time at the U of Utah. There were about 500 of us, quartered in row after row of double bunks on the floor of the athletic dept Field House. It was one giant barracks set up on the floor of a gymnasium that would ordinarily have been used for things like football practice in bad weather.
That is an interesting story by itself, for later. We all went to classes run by the University of Utah, oriented around engineering, mathematics, physics, etc that the army thought would be useful later on. It didn’t last. About 4 or 5 months into this curriculum, the need for fighting soldiers became acute, and this college program was quietly disbanded as large numbers of us students were sent off to rejoin the regular army. In my case, I was suddenly transferred to Camp Robinson, Arkansas, near Little Rock, and joined the 263rd Infantry Regiment, of the 66th Infantry Division, as a private in a pioneer platoon. It was a shift from the gay old college life, to one of the most dangerous, tough parts of a field army. We spent 2 or 3 months tromping around the wilds of central Arkansas, learning how to handle our eventual meeting with the German Army. We even moved the entire division to Camp Rucker, Alabama near the town of Ozark, Alabama. We were near the little city of Dothan, Alabama. The 66th Division was commanded by Maj General Herman Kramer. Some of us comedians referred to our commander as “Herman the German”. That’s another story by itself.
We did a lot of marching, and training exercises. I was a really green soldier, and where did I get assigned. To the Pioneer platoon of HQ company of the battalion. Eventually this would be one of the most dangerous assignments in an infantry company. I remember we did things, like learn how to build an improvised bridge, or how to secure a tent, pole, wall or whatever by proper staking into the ground. Lots of target practice, even to ducking into a foxhole while a tank was driven over us. In the camp in Arkansas our platoon was sent out with field shovels, etc to dig fox holes deep enough to duck a tank. Except the area picked by the Lieutenant was hard-pan earth that was as hard as any concrete I have ever seen. The sergeant in charge told us we had to dig a fox hole HERE. Fortunately, this was the PIONEER platoon, and we had come better equipped than the average foot soldier. I found a 6 foot long steel bar that was very handy. If I took this 20 pound bar, and slammed it point down into the ground it would start to break-up the clay earth. Then someone would shovel a little dirt out, then bang the ground with this iron pole again and again. (A pick-axe didn’t work very good as this was real HARD-PAN). We finally got a couple of holes smashed into the ground good enough to satisfy the sergeant. It’s a good thing there was no German Army waiting around for us to dig the hole. So much for training exercises.
I remember one of the members of this platoon, marching along the roads in Arkansas or southern Alabama. His name was Morris Steinberg, from New York City. A big overweight fellow with chronic sore feet. But he kept walking, and what I mostly remember during one march. He was muttering to himself, while marching, “That little bastard Hitler, I’m gonna walk all the way to Germany and get that little SOB …….” There was more, to the effect that Hitler’s Nazis were making souvenirs out of his aunts or uncles, and he was taking it very personally. He was making it a personal vendetta regarding the Nazi’s treatment of his Jewish relations and ancestors.
The WEATHER in southern Alabama. One summer day we were marching along an army paved road. The sun was shining brightly, the sky was a cheerful blue, and the temperature, at about 11:00 AM, was about 90 degrees. Suddenly, out of this bright blue sky appeared black storm clouds, followed by a torrential downpour. It rained a deluge for about 20 minutes, then cleared off, and back to sunshine. The locals claimed that it was normal weather.in Alabama.
Ozark & Dothan airfields
I remember going out of the camp, just walking off in the distance, to a little airfield not far from the town of Dothan. It was a field used mostly for practice landings by the Air Corps squadrons from Montgomery, Alabama. The planes were heavy bombers, Boeing B-17 or Consolidated B-24. They would come to the field, circle around, then make a landing, but not stop. Gun the engine, and take off. It was constant touch land, and take-off.
I would swear when I was watching one time, that a B-24 when it roared by, the pilot looked a little green around the edges to me. The B-24 had a fairly high landing speed, and I am assured by some of those flyers, it was a tricky business landing this big plane without smashing the landing gear, or doing some other piece of damage.
There was a B-24 already on the edge of the field that had obviously had a very hard landing and there was a crew doing a repair job on the broken landing gear. Possibly an object lesson to those flying by the scene that day.
Eventually our services were needed in Europe. June 6, 1944 came along, with the Normandy invasion, and anyone who looked like an American soldier was needed to fill the ranks over there. Along with several hundred other US soldiers we were ordered out of the 66th and sent off to become replacements in the fighting in Normandy. Now everything was in a hurry. I was moved to Ft Meade, Maryland, for about 4 days. We were divided up into new groups, and sent along to Camp Miles Standish just outside Boston. Getting there was a crazy adventure in railroading. Our group was put aboard a couple of very old Pullman cars, and our train sat around for a long time, then slowly inched along to the railroad yards at Baltimore, where we sat around some more. Finally, we got going, and it became a wild ride up to Philadelphia. I was later told that these 2 Pullman cars were hooked-on to the rear of an express train (Congressional Limited, or similar) and took off at what seemed like about 90 miles per hour. Even the colored porter in our car turned a little pale. We actually stopped into Pennsylvania Station in New York City at about 8:00 AM, but were told that nobody could get off the train, we would be leaving immediately. I think we spent a half-hour watching the feet of arriving commuters on the train platform beside us, and that was our view of New York City in 1944. Eventually the train got all the way to Boston, where we sat around for a day or so, and were then invited go aboard a ship in Boston harbor.
To be continued in ACT THREE