Redeployment

The war was over in Europe but there was still plenty of action in the Pacific. I remember Billy Williamson saying that we had been beating the Japs with our left hand and when we got both hands it shouldn't take too long.

Anyway we had to keep soldiering. We were having formations, Service practice, calisthenics, guard duty, etc. On may 24th "went to carbine range and shot very poorly'. My diary shows that I started on "my notebook" in late May. This must have been "Curbstone Combat Diary" which regrettably I threw away years later.

I think the place we were staying was called Reinhausen. May 28th was Kestner's birthday. We were still very close even though in different sections.

On Memorial Day we "Packed to go." At 5A.M. the next morning we pulled out of Reinhausen and traveled through Dunderstadt, Nordhausen to Voigtstadt, Kreis and Sangerhausen. On June 1st we worked in the motor pool most of the day and the next day we had inspection in the motor park and barracks. I think we called it "S.O.S."

The 6th of June was a holiday because it was D+365. It seemed that we had lived a lifetime in that year. That week we went swimming about every day. I don't remember that at all!

Sunday June 10th "Went to Buchenwald. Saw how Nazi prisoners were treated." This was part of the famous holocaust as it came to be known. Again volumes have been written about this and I doubt that I could add anything new.

The next day we packed our duffel bags and I wrote some more in my note book.

At 4A.M. on June 13th we pulled out and went through Sangerhausen, Nordhausen, Kassel and Cologne. The next day we went through Duren, Aachen, Liege (back in Belgium) Huy, Namur, Charleroe, Mons, Valenciennes (into France) and Cambrai.

Camp Lucky Strike was our destination at Amiens, France. We settled into tents on June 15th. On Father's Day we turned in our carbines and had ETO (European Theatre of Operations) Jacket inspection. These are better known as Eisenhower Jackets.

We played a lot of softball that week and I remember getting one of the worst sunburns I ever had. It seemed strange because a number of us laid out in the sun but it really seemed cold.

On June 23rd at 3:45 A.M. (I never did learn the army system of telling time too well). We headed for LeHarve, where we boarded the USS Santa Maria. The showers were nice. I seem to remember the showers on the Scythia, coming over, were salt water.

Like we did on the ship coming over we played a lot of "500." This was a card game played with the joker, right and left bower (jacks) and the twos, threes, and black fours were discarded. There was bidding and taking tricks something like Bridge only much easier. Most of the men from Pennsylvania knew how to play it and one British sailor played it on the way over.

More troops came on board on June 24 and we left the harbor around 9P.M. headed out to sea. I think the Santa Maria was what they called a "Victory Ship."

June 25th "England visible on starboard. Wrote. Played 500." I seem to remember that it was a great treat to have ice cream as we hadn't had any in about a year. There were a couple of USO shows on the trip back.

We landed in Boston Harbor around 4A.M. on July 3rd almost exactly a year since we left Camp Shanks, New York. By 8A.M. We were at Camp Miles Standish, Massachusetts. Apparently we only stayed one night because on Independence Day we left around 8A.M. and went through Providence, New London, New Haven, Bridgeport, N.Y., Trenton, Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore on our way to Fort Meade, Maryland.

There was a lot of processing the next day but I got to my house around 10:30 P.M. I had phoned home from Camp Shanks but I don't think anybody expected me home so soon. My father nearly always stayed up later than the rest of the family and he was still up. He let me in, threw his arms around me and said "Thank God". It was not the careless use of the Divine Name that we hear so much today but sincere gratitude to the Almighty for bringing his youngest son home from the war.

The 30 days went by too quickly. Instead of staggering furloughs like was done after basic training and before going overseas, everyone went at the same time.

The diary shows that I saw Betty four or five times in the first week and then only two more times for the whole month. It wasn't working out. I dated several other girls while I was home.

I took two trips to New York while on leave as my brother Bert was at the Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point. Train service was excellent then. The Pennsylvania RR ran trains between Washington & New York every hour except hours in the middle of the night when they were less frequent. You could leave Union Station at 8A.M. and be in Penn Station by noon. The Baltimore & Ohio also ran trains to New York.

The other side of the coin was Detroit was making no automobiles because jeeps, tanks and trucks were the order of the day. In addition tires and gasoline were rationed. We had to ration gas at home so we could wash tanks with it overseas.

Twice while on furlough I went to Griffith stadium to see the Washington Senators. They usually lost when I went and they did their share of losing whether I was there or not. Griffith stadium was something like the opposite of Fenway Park. Fenway has the big high wall in left field and Griffith stadium had a high fence in right field. I remember as a boy sitting behind the Senator dugout watching Babe Ruth in batting practice. The pitcher would groove the ball and the Bambino would swat four or five balls in a row over that high right field fence. Awesome. Griffith stadium was torn down years ago and Calvin Griffith took his team to Minnesota.

On the second trip to New York I stayed at the Y.M.C.A. In the fog a B-25 ran into the side of the Empire State building while I was there. Bert and I tried to see it but it was too foggy. When Bert was taking me back to the Y.M.C.A. (he knew New York City better than I did) there was a dance going on. We looked over the crop and each found a girl to dance with. The girl Bert met, Helen, later became his wife, the mother of his children, and grandmother of his grand children. The girl I danced with I never saw again.

I saw two movies while I was home; "God is my Co-Pilot" and the "Story of G.I. Joe." (Both war movies?)

On August 6th Roy Agee came up from Roanoke and we went back to Ft. Meade together. The next day we were on a troop train that pulled out around 4P.M. We stayed awake through Baltimore; York, Pennsylvania, Harrisburg and Pittsburgh. We slept through Ohio. On the 8th we went through Richmond,

Indiana; Indianapolis, Terra Haute, and St. Louis. If I'm not mistaken this is the day the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.

We woke up the next morning in Texarkana. For some reason we thought the train was going to stay put for a while so we got off for a beer and cigarette breakfast. I got sick and threw up on the street. How repulsive can you be?

That day, August 9th, 1945, I smoked my last cigarette. Thank God for that. I never did become addicted to cigarettes but I did smoke some while I was in the Army and they were free. At the time it seemed patriotic for the tobacco companies to provide free cigarettes to the armed forces. Remember "Lucky Strike green has gone to war"? But how many men smoked their first cigarette, free, in the service and years later went to an early grave from some smoking related disease?

It would be many years later until I would drink my last drink. This came about when I was studying for the Methodist ministry in either 1960 or '61. I knew that I would have to promise to be an abstainer before I could be ordained so I looked over the various reasons given by the church that their ministers could not drink. One reason stood out to me as very persuasive. We should never put a stumbling block in front of a weaker brother. I believed I could have drank moderately for the rest of my life and it would not have hurt me. Other people cannot do that. Alcohol is poison to them. I didn't want anybody saying "Drinking can't be all that bad, the preacher does it." They may drink anyway but not by using me as an example.

When Agee and I got back to where we left the train we looked down the track to the point where the rails seemed to come together -no train. After thinking we were in deep trouble, but not caring much, we discovered that the train had been switched to another track and we hadn't missed it after all.

We arrived at Camp Bowie, Texas on August 10th and Agee had a tooth pulled that day. On August 11th Leroy Hoffman's name shows up in the diary for the first time since the opening day of the Bulge. Remember he was a medic and there were wounded people after the action began at Medendorf, so maybe that accounts for his disappearance. I went to bed early but before I did I shot some pool with Cecil Nanny.

Two days before my 21st birthday the war came to a sudden end (Aug. 14th). Thank God, we would not have to go to the Pacific after all.

DeLoyd Cooper is the Historian for the 275th Armored Field Artillery Battalion Association.
Copyright © 1999 DeLoyd Cooper. All rights reserved.
Revised: November 4, 2004