Teaneck, New Jersey to Lichfield, England

Jay Stone, Formerly Sergeant

321st Glider Field Artillery Battalion

101st Airborne Division

 

January 5, 1943 was the usual cold winter morning in Teaneck, New Jersey and I was standing in front of Local Draft Board #5 waiting to board a bus for the ride to the Army induction station in Newark. My family, Mother, Dad, Don, Joan and Noel were with me as well as Virginia Brown, her parents, Mary and Willard and her sister, Loretta. Virginia and I enjoyed each other’s company and had been dating for three years, not exclusively but often. We had said our goodbyes the previous night but her family, the Browns, and my family were friendly and they wanted to see me off. The only thing that I remember about the event is that Virginia and I went alongside a bus for some privacy and said goodbye again. There must have been other tearful goodbyes with family and friends before I boarded the bus and left for a life in the Army.

 At the induction center in Newark the process of entering the Army consisted of several stations one at which we received a physical examination by medical personnel and one an 

Men, soon to be soldiers,
receive medical examinations
at an induction center.
 

 interview which helped decide what our future training would be.  I wanted to train as an aerial gunner in the Army Air Force or as a paratrooper in the Army Ground Forces. I had never been in an airplane before but each of those would place me in one. In the former there was for the most part a safe landing at the end while in the latter I would jump out of the airplane and land via parachute. At each station of the line I told the examiner about my desire but was told to “keep moving.” The Army had no interest in my desires.

When we finished the examination 600 of us were found acceptable and were sworn into the Enlisted Reserve Corps. Those who wanted it were given a leave of one week in order to return home and perhaps get their affairs in order. At the end of the week they were to return to Newark and be escorted to The Reception Station at Camp Dix. I was anxious to begin my Army career, had said my goodbyes and had no affairs to put in order and so, along with one other soldier out of the 600, elected to go on active duty immediately. This was not a smart move because it made us stand out, something no soldier should do early in his career. The two of us were placed in charge of a staff sergeant with whom we boarded a train to Trenton from where we were taken to Camp Dix by bus. By the time our escort turned us over to the Reception Center and we arrived at our barracks it was 9:00 PM, not the usual time inductees arrived.
Things were not as smooth as one would hope but we had made it through the day and went to bed in a two floor barrack with each floor containing 60 double bunked beds.



This barracks is typical of those
built by the United States Army
at posts throughout the United
States. At both Camp Dix and
Fort Eustis I lived in one.

There wasn’t much to do at the Reception Center except for being tested, interviewed or selected for Kitchen Police (KP). One night about 9:00 PM, the soldier who occupied the bunk below mine came into the barracks looking very tired after an all day stint in the Transit Officers’ Mess. He told me that at the morning roll call the private first class (PFC)in charge told those who had been there since Wednesday to raise their hand. A few of those who raised their hand were given KP duty. Wow, I thought, don’t raise your hand. The next morning the call was for all those who had been there since Thursday – one day later than Wednesday – to raise their hand. I began to raise my hand, half way up I recalled the story of my friend’s KP the morning before and pulled it down. Too late, the PFC saw me begin to raise my hand and called me off for the KP at the Transit Officers’ Mess. I spent the day washing pots and peeling potatoes. At 9:00 PM I crawled back to my barracks and climbed into my upper bunk after a long day of KP.

After two weeks of testing and interviewing the powers to be decided that I was to be trained in Anti-Aircraft Artillery – Automatic Weapons (AAA-AW) at Camp Eustis, Virginia. A large group of us boarded a train one morning and after an all-day ride we arrived at Camp Eustis late in the evening. Two hundred and fifty of us were assigned to Battery A, 1^st Training Battalion, Anti-Aircraft Training Center and were met by the battery cadre who were to train us for the next 17 weeks. They were led by Staff Sergeant DiDonato who marched us to the battery area all the while counting the cadence. This impressed me. (At this stage of my military career it didn’t take much to impress me.) After we reached the battery area we were assigned to a barracks. The vast majority of the barracks built for the Army during World War II were from the same plan. The latrine and shower were on the right of the first floor when one entered. To the left was an open space for 30 bunks. At the end of this space there were two small rooms in which cadre members lived. The second floor was the same except that it had no latrine and shower.

 Reveille came all too soon the next morning and we piled out of the barracks in order to stand morning roll call. This was the cause of much confusion inasmuch as we didn’t understand how our platoon sergeant, Sergeant Johnson, wanted us to line up. But he had been through this before and we were soon sorted out standing at some sort of attention.  After he took the roll and reported, “all present or accounted for” to the first sergeant, he marched us to the mess hall for breakfast.

 In some quarters Army food is denigrated and is the butt of jokes. Not so for me. The

This is typical of Army mess
halls in the United States during
World War II.

ingredients were excellent and the preparation was not that of a high end restaurant but what one could expect of home cooked food. That said, Army cooks had difficulty mastering the intricacies of dried eggs and of dehydrated potatoes. It was not until after the war that I learned how palatable German prisoner of war cooks could make those ingredients: more of that later.

At Fort Eustis we filed into the mess hall, sat at picnic style tables of eight and ate  family style. Table waiters, who had left training an hour before meal time set the tables with flat ware. Just before we arrived they set the food out in bowls. Family style meant being polite at all times owls. After we sat down we passed to food around the table. If someone wanted more of a food he had to ask, “Please pass the potatoes,” or whatever it was that he wanted. If someone at a table wanted more of a food of which there was none left, the soldier at the end of the table held up the empty bowl and a table waiter would take it and return with the bowl filled.  These rules were enforced by cadre members who ate with us. In addition to serving as table waiters, trainees worked as KPs during which they performed any work in the kitchen which the cooks did not perform.

In order to move us from one place to another as a unit our initial training in the School of the Soldier was in facing movements and close order drill or how to march. Initially this was conducted without a rifle and then with a rifle. For the latter, we were issued M1903 rifles. as the designation implies they were developed 40 years before they were issued to us. We learned to disassemble and assemble that rifle and the names of all its parts. And – very important – we learned the serial number of our rifle. The cadre was patient with us – they had no choice - and we progressed from looking ragged to groups which could move out smartly.

In Battery A there were four platoons each with an officer as the platoon leader. However, the real leadership came from our platoon sergeant and assistant platoon sergeant, normally a corporal. These soldiers were with us all day, training us and getting us to the right place at the right time. The battery was commanded by a captain who did exercise authority, But again, the real authority, that is, as it was felt by the soldiers, was a sergeant, the First Sergeant. In Battery A he had served in World War I and was crusty and impatient. He had a low opinion of all of us including the officers with one exception, a first lieutenant who had been a first sergeant.

 

While we in basic training were issued the M1903 (03) rifles, the M1 Garand was in use by troops in units. It was impressed upon us that we were to memorize the serial number on our

This is the old type helmet
 we wore during basic training.

rifle. When there was an inspection of any kind we were asked for this. It was also important for us to memorize our Army Serial Number (ASN). To this day I know my ASN – 32605245 - but have forgotten the serial number of all the weapons I carried. There had not been enough of the M1s in the Army to be able to issue them to soldiers in AAA-AW Basic Training.  Another soon to be replaced item which we were issued was the steel helmet which had been used in World War I. A new helmet was in use by troops in units. And so in Basic Training we were using two items left over from a war which ended 26 years ago. 

We trained on the 40 mm Automatic Gun M1 or the Bofors anti-aircraft gun and the .50  caliber machine gun on an anti-aircraft mount. This, too, we had to learn to disassemble

The Bofors 40mm AA gun
firing in the field.

and assemble. Both of these were single barrel anti-aircraft weapons. The Bofors was aimed at enemy aircraft though the M5 Gun director which had a three man crew. One of the soldiers would establish a lead on the aircraft and then track it. The information generated by the director was transmitted to the gun which made automatic corrections  as it fired on the aircraft. I was assigned to set the lead on the gun director and then track the enemy aircraft. We went on the range with both of these weapons and fired at a sleeve towed by a friendly aircraft. I don’t recall that our success rate was high.

We had other training: physical  training which included obstacle courses, inspections, marksmanship with our ‘03 rifles, marches of one-half day, more School of the Soldier, some Infantry tactics and training in how to go over the side of a ship using a rope ladder. (I was to put this training to good use when we had to abandon the USS Susan B. Anthony a United States Navy transport after she hit a German mine six miles off Omaha Beach in Normandy on D+1.)

There was a telephone call center in our battalion area and I called home once a week an to Virginia less frequently. In order to mak a call one had to place the call with an operator who then searched for centers through which the call could be routed. For example, a call to Teaneck, New Jersey, just west of New York City might be routed through Richmond, Chicago, Pittsburg, Harrisburgh and then on to the number I called in Teaneck. This was a labor intensive procedure.

 Leave, or even a pass, was hard for me to come by throughout my Army service. During Basic Training I received two week-end passes and an overnight pass while at Camp Shanks the staging area for my Port of Embarkation, New York, NY. My first passes were from 12:00 Noon on Saturday until 11:00 PM on Sunday – 35 hours. During the first I met my mother and her sister, my Aunt Rose in nearby Richmond, Virginia. The only thing I recall about this is that they had met a first lieutenant from Fort Eustis in the hotel. I recall one bit of advice he gave to me. Don’t become too skilled in anti-aircraft or I would end up on some island in the Pacific Ocean. It was good to be with my mother and aunt but our time together was all too short. Our passes had a travel limitation as far as Washington, DC on them. 

 On my second pass I violated my orders for the only time during WWII. I traveled beyond the limits of a pass. On a weekend pass I, along with several others from the New York City metropolitan area, took a hired car to Washington. There we boarded a train which took us to a station close to our homes. In my case it was to Newark, New Jersey where my parents met me and took me to our home in Teaneck, New Jersey. I had left Fort Eustis at 12:00 Noon on Saturday and arrived home at 8:00 PM. My parents, my siblings and I talked for a couple of hours and then went to bed. On the following day, Sunday, my parents had our usual Sunday dinner to which I had invited Lillian Fiebel, a girl whom I had dated a few times before I went into the Army.   

 We had a pleasant afternoon and after dinner my parents drove Lillian and me to the train station in where we boarded the same train. She was a student at The College of Chestnut Hill in Philadelphia and so we rode together until we reached Philadelphia and it was time – a sad time - for her to leave. The leave taking, both from my parents and from Lillian was difficult but I had no choice and returned to the life of a soldier in training.

 

 Basic training lasted 17 weeks and by the 12^th or 13^th week it was getting old. However the end was in sight and the 17^th week finally arrived. As part of the ceremonies making the occasion, we had a parade in which we passed in review of some general officer. I recall one thing about this: we marched with fixed bayonets and I thought that if someone bent over the soldier marching to his rear might receive a bayonet wound. About May 18, 1943 I, along with many others who had completed basic training at Fort Eustis were sent to Indiantown Gap Military Reservation in Pennsylvania.

Indiantown Gap Military
Reservation circa. 1936.
By the time I arrived
in 1943 tents were gone and there
were many more one-story barracks.

 It was there that our fates were decided. Some would be sent to units in the United States – not many – others to the Pacific Ocean area and still others to the European Theater of Operations. I was fortunate to be among the latter and so was sent to Camp Shanks, New York, about ten miles north of my home in Teaneck, New Jersey where we were organized into units for shipment to the European Theater. Each overseas theater of operations had a list of uniforms and individual equipment that each soldier must have upon arrival in the theater. At Shanks these were checked and if we were short anything it was issued to us. A big event at Shanks was the pitch we received from a first lieutenant about purchasing government life insurance. We could purchase $10,000 of insurance for a nominal fee. The Army was anxious for us to be so insured inasmuch as some of us would not return from Europe and it wanted our beneficiaries to receive compensation for our deaths. This officer was a born salesman and almost all of us walked out of that room having signed up for the insurance.

 While at Shanks I received my third overnight pass in the United States. Only a few of us could be on pass at one time and I probably received some preference because I lived only ten miles from the post. My parents met me at the gate and drove me home. We had dinner and then sat around talking. It was a quiet evening, certainly no hint of celebration because we all knew that I would soon be in Europe and sometime after that in combat. I woke up at 4:00 AM the next morning and my parents drove me back to Shanks so that I could stand the reveille formation at 6:00 AM.

On May 31^st we boarded trains for the Port of Embarkation in New York. The train

RMS Queen Mary
sails up the Hudson River.

passed with one-half mile of my home and as we approached this I went to the end of the rail car so as to be alone with my thoughts. Our company commander joined me and later told me that he didn’t want me jumping off the train in Teaneck. He didn’t have to worry about that. I was ready to go overseas. After the train arrived at Hoboken, New Jersey on the Hudson River we boarded a ferry which took us across the river where we boarded the RMS Queen Mary docked at Pier 94. I am not easily impressed but it was with a sense of awe that I boarded that ship. I was 19 years old and had never been more than 50 miles from my home and here I was boarding a troop ship in the middle of the night, bound for Great Britain, an ocean away and that ocean had German submarines there looking for any Allied ship that came along. Obviously there was danger here.

There was danger but it had waned. While German submarines still patrolled the Atlantic


Short Sunderland Mark I,
of No. 210 Squadron RAF,
over the Atlantic while escorting
 a convoy in bound to Greenock
on March 31, 1943

there were less of them because for the first time in the war Allied aircraft covered the convoy routes from North America to Great Britain. These aircraft caused the German submarines to crash diver as soon as their crews spotted an aircraft or be attacked by the aircraft. The submarines needed much time on the surface in order to charge their batteries and to spot Allied shipping. The aircraft denied them this.

 Of course I did not know that the effectiveness of the submarines was not what it had been. I knew that I had read of many Allied ships being sent to the bottom by German submarines. And so I was apprehensive. However, what I didn’t know was that RMS Queens Mary did not travel in a convoy but because of her great speed, traveled alone. She was too fast for the crew of a submarine to compute firing data on her and so she sailed safely.

 



Soldiers on a line, which snaked
through the Queens Mary for one
of the two meals served
each day.

She sailed safely but she sailed crowded. During peacetime she carried 2,000 passengers. As a troopship she carried 16,000 soldiers who slept on bunks in almost every part of the ship. My bunk was in what had been the Turkish bath. Bunks were stacked as high as possible while allowing soldiers to slide into them. Two meals a day were served. Long lines of soldiers waiting to receive food wended throughout the ship. It took a long time to receive food. I believe that the food was British Merchant Navy food but all I recall was oxtail stew, hard cooked eggs and stewed tomatoes.

 As soon as we boarded Queen Mary the games of chance began: craps and poker. There were big winners and big losers in these games but the real winners were the soldiers who ran the games. They kept track of who and how much each player had bet. At the end of each shoot or hand they distributed the winnings to the correct soldiers and in doing so kept 10% of the pot for themselves. They never lost. These games ran 24 hours a day and typically were run by two soldiers in shifts of 12 hours each.



On the nights of 6 and 7 May 1941

the Luftwaffe raided Greenock

and destroyed 10,000 of

18,000 houses.

Queen Mary was one of the fastest ship afloat and she did not sail in a convoy because of this. There are many factors that must be considered by a submarine captain before he can fire a torpedo at a moving ship. One of the factors is speed of the target ship. The thinking was that by the time the crew of the submarine estimated the speed of Queen Mary and computed other data she would have sailed beyond range of the submarine's torpedoes. If any submarines attempted to fire on her, she performed as advertised.

On the evening of July 5, 1943, after five nights of sailing, Queen Mary reached Grenock, Scotland. She drew too much water to dock at a pier and so we were taken off her in lighters and landed ashore. Once ashore we boarded trains which would take us to the 10^th Replacement Depot at Lichfield Barracks in England. My great adventure was picking up speed. I had been in the Army for five months and I was in the European Theater of Operations which was conducting air operations against the enemy and preparing to invade in France within the year.