Chapter 6 - Camp Campbell, KY

We were transferred to Camp Campbell, Kentucky, now known as Fort Campbell, a permanent army base, situated on the Tennessee and Kentucky border. When you went out the upper gate you were in Kentucky and the nearest town was Hopkinsville. If you went out the lower or southern gate you were in Tenn. and the nearest town was Clarksville. It was only about forty or fifty miles over to Nashville and the Grand Ole Opry, which I did attend once. This was a very nice camp and the living quarters were the best we had seen. The PX was very nice and the USO club was a special treat. then we got the good word that we were being changed from truck drawn field artillery to armored.

We didn't realize what really good news this was. It increased our fire power tremendously. Each firing battery now had six 105's in place of four, many more vehicles, armored half-track personnel carriers, and the big guns were mounted on M4 Sherman tank chassis called M7's, with armor plate all around protecting the personnel. Also there were many more automatic weapons 30 and 50 caliber machine guns, and 45 caliber machine pistols or "Grease Guns" as they were called by the people they were issued to, mostly the drivers. The others were issued semi-automatic 30 caliber carbines. The officers carried 45 caliber side arms.

Probably the greatest thing about this switch over to armor, was the fact that we had to be re-trained, and this put us way behind the army's schedule of having the three battalions ready for D Day. This one thing probably saved an untold number of lives, since causalities were very high on D day for every unit that participated in the landings. Then when we would finally get to combat we were a much more lethal fighting force, because we were armored instead of truck drawn. this fact probably saved a lot of our lives also. I believe this had to be one of the luckiest breaks the 275th ever had, and we green boys didn't know enough to appreciate what was happening. And griped about being delayed in going overseas. Of course a good soldier will go out of his way to find something to gripe about, and we were no exception.

We got started on our new training program right away. There were a lot of changes to be made and a lot of new equipment to get used to. My particular section did not have as much change as the gun sections since our method of travel was still basically by jeep, with a half-track instead of a weapons carrier as the command vehicle. The Battery Commander also had a half-track instead of a command car. These armored vehicles were not as fast as the ones we were used to and required an altogether different driving technique. The tanks were steered with two levers and a set of foot brakes and needed a pair of strong arms and shoulders to handle them. You simply stopped or slowed down one track with the brakes and let the other one catch up, they would turn on a dime.

The half-tracks steered just like a truck, but they had a low and a high range and about five or six forward gears in each range, so the driver was almost constantly changing gears. They had a very large six cylinder motor most of them made by White Motor Co. They ran real smooth and quiet, and were easy to drive. The large tank type vehicles that carried the 105 MM guns were powered by nine cylinder circular Pratt and Whitney air cooled airplane engines. They could not be operated below a certain RPM, nor above a certain RPM or they would get too hot and burn out. They had a huge fan in the rear of the engine to cool it and they made a lot of noise. The only thing that would stop one of these big jobs was mud and soft ground, they would just sit there and dig themselves into a hole. So soft ground and deep mud had to be avoided at all costs, this did not prove much of a problem in combat since most of the time the ground was frozen hard, but this is getting ahead of my story.

I can't remember just how long I had been at Camp Campbell, when I received the news that my brother Robert had been shot down over Normandy and was missing in action. A few days later my daddy called me through the Red Cross and informed me that Mother was very sick and he was trying to get me an emergency leave to come home and see her. The Red Cross succeeded and I came home, Mother was in bed and hadn't eaten in several days and looked real sick to me. I suspected most of her problem was mental over worry about what had happened to Robert. I sat by her bed all day and talked and tried to reassure her as best I could and the next day much to my daddy's surprise and delight, Mother got out of bed and told everyone, she had to get up and cook that boy something good to eat. That was exactly what she did and was probably the best therapy of anything she could have done. I believe that furlough was about eight days, Mother was much better when the time came for me to leave, even though she hated to see me go more than ever, I'm sure she realized that there was no other choice.

I returned to Camp Campbell and resumed my training, and we were getting a lot done. The time was getting closer when we would get to demonstrate the things we were supposed to be learning. I remember another time at Campbell that was not very pleasant. We had gone out on the range a fairly long distance for a firing demonstration. Along about four or five o'clock that afternoon Capt. Brundage came running over and wanted me to drive him down range in my jeep. He jumped in and I sped off, there were two sets of deep ruts and I was driving in the middle of them when all of a sudden the vehicle veered to the left and landed in the deep ruts and stuck there. Capt. chewed me out accusing me of being a lousy driver, while I protested saying that something had happened to the jeep. When we finally got it out of the rut we saw that the ball joint in the left front wheel had burst and had locked the steering mechanism so that the jeep would only go around in tight circles. Capt. told me to stay with my jeep and when the battery got back to camp he would send a wrecker after me. Darkness and cold moved in and then the mosquitoes decided they would make a meal out of me. Along about mid-night I heard the wrecker coming, he had sent a huge tank wrecker, probably the only thing available, after my little old jeep, and the big old thing had stayed stuck half the night. On the way back we got stuck no less than a half dozen times. We would have to winch the jeep out of the way and then winch the wrecker out. I dragged wire winch cables so much that when we finally got back to camp at daylight, my hands were so bloody and sore that I had trouble eating breakfast although I felt half-starved. The First Sgt. took pity on and excused me from duty and told me to go to the barracks and get some sleep.

I had not been back to camp from my emergency furlough but a few weeks when one morning I had just gotten back from putting my dress uniforms in the post cleaners, Sgt. Wolf came roaring into the barracks, growling and fussing and looking for me. I was quaking in my boots wondering what I had done wrong this time. He approached me saying I don't have enough men in camp now to handle all the work, with so many guys on furlough. By the way the battalion was now getting its prior to going overseas furloughs. I had no idea that I would get one since I had just been home.

To my surprise that was the reason Sgt. Wolf was hunting me. He said that Battalion had come up with two extra furloughs and my name had been drawn out of the hat, and to get my butt out of there immediately. I had troubles. All my dress clothes in the cleaners and no money. My buddies came to my rescue and loaned me sufficient, if ill fitting, clothes and money for bus tickets, and I was on my way back home. Naturally I was welcomed with open arms by my parents. The sad part to them was that another boy was about to be sent overseas, while another one was still MIA.

My parents, as so many others, really paid a price in suffering during World War Two. I believe the not knowing about what happened to a son must have been more painful than finding out that he had been killed. They also had to go through some unnecessary sorrow, because some nit-wit in Montgomery, Ala. mistook MIA for KIA an sent them an official looking telegram of condolences on Robert's death.

The Methodist church held a memorial service in honor of him, and they went through the mourning period, before someone noticed that the telegram was from Montgomery and not the war department, and upon checking he had not been confirmed dead--missing in action. But this was bad enough, and I don't believe my parents ever gave up hope after that. He was missing in action for six months and it was quite a coincidence that on the day he returned to England, Aug. 28th, 1944, I was leaving England going to France, but of course we didn't know it at the time.

After returning to camp from this furlough it wasn't very long until we received our travel orders. The Battalion boarded a troop train and started a long slow trip. We wound down through the south across the northern part of Alabama, Georgia, and on up through South and North Carolina, and on up the east coast, pulling into a siding at every whistle stop to let an ammunition or supply train pass. This was the last of June, 1944 and things were not going so good for the Allies.

They needed supplies and ammunition worse than they needed men in Europe at that time. So our priority was not very high on that trip either. I believe we were two or three days on that trip, naturally we soldiers didn't know our destination but we did know we were on our way to Europe sooner or later.