31st "Dixie" Division October, 1943
Quite a few of the members of my class from Fort
Benning reported to Camp Stewart for "orientation" and assignment.
Orientation was, I believe, another term for giving us time to get used
to being brand new second lieutenants.
A number of us were assigned to the 31st Division,
stationed at Camp Pickett, near Blackstone, Virginia. The 31st had been
a National Guard division, which had been activated early on, and was
made up in large part of men from Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia and
Florida.
One of our group had a car, a 1937 Chevrolet sedan,
and at the end of our two weeks at Stewart, four of us pooled our travel
allowance funds and took off for Virginia in early October. Arriving
at the 31st, I was assigned to the Anti-Tank Company of the 167th Infantry
Regiment as a Platoon Leader and reported in.
The officer compliment consisted of the Company Commander,
a Captain, an Executive Officer, a First Lieutenant, and four Platoon
Leaders, two First Lieutenants and two Second Lieutenants. Lt. Bruce,
the Exec, and I wound up rooming together in the Bachelor Officers Quarters
while we were at Pickett.
We were equipped with 57 mm Anti-Tank guns, with three-quarter
ton trucks as prime movers. These guns fired a six-pound projectile
at a muzzle velocity of twenty-nine hundred feet per second, compared
to the muzzle velocity of a round fired from an M-1 rifle, twenty-seven
hundred fifty feet per second. They were of course crew served and were
quite effective.
I commanded the Second Platoon and had as my Platoon
Sergeant one of the finest soldiers I encountered in my entire service,
Sergeant Johnny Robertson. As soon as I took over the Platoon, I explained
to him that I had in fact just been a Platoon Sergeant in a Rifle Company,
told him of my background and we became very close from the start. This
was pay-off on my prior experience, as I had hoped for.
The 31st was at this time being brought up to full
strength and undergoing additional training to top off its readiness
for moving to an active Theater of Operations.
The weather in Virginia was wonderful. The air was clear and cool, there
was relatively little rain and we had a few light snowfalls. It was
quite a contrast to the winter weather in Oregon.
Lynchburg, Virginia was some seventy miles from Pickett
and my first cousin, Mary Moss Madison, was attending Sweetbrier College
there. Whenever I could get a long weekend, I rode the Norfolk and Western
over for a little civilization.
We undertook extensive training in map reading, compass
courses, nighttime operations, weapons firing, in special areas such
as handling land mines and booby traps and in other special skills we
might be called upon to use. Realism was introduced by such exercises
as crawling on our stomachs through the mud for some one hundred feet,
while live machine gun fire was directed some four or five feet over
our heads. Safety precautions were of course enforced, but we did get
the effect and feeling of the real thing. It should be noted that a
bullet coming close to you, unless it is a ricochet, makes a cracking
sound, rather than whining.
In November, we began amphibious training, first on
dry land, climbing up and down wooden towers, simulating the side of
a ship, on cargo nets and chain ladders. We would climb up some thirty
feet, while a couple of men took hold of the bottom of the net and shook
it, to simulate action of the waves.
We then moved to the Little Creek training area near
the Norfolk Navy Base for actual amphibious training. This was a well
planned program and included loading and unloading operations with various
types of landing craft, large and small, as well as getting wet up to
our necks in Chesapeake Bay, a rather cool experience in November.
The Navy had positioned a ship out in Chesapeake Bay
for use in instruction in loading personnel and equipment on and off
landing craft. Here we got the first real experience with cargo nets
and chain ladders.
Our final exercise was a mock invasion of the Maryland
shore of the Bay. We went aboard this ship one day, with all our gear,
spent the night on board, got up the next morning well before first
light and had breakfast and a briefing on the operation. We slept, ate
and were briefed under red lights, which allowed us to see better when
we went out into the dark.
At the scheduled time, we went over the side, down
the cargo nets and into the LCVPs (Landing Craft Vehicle/Personnel),
rendezvoused with the other landing craft and made the run for the beach.
When the landing craft got to the beach, the ramp was dropped and we
went ashore with plenty of rebel yells and fanfare. Once ashore, we
assembled our vehicles, equipment and personnel, loaded up and drove
back to Camp Pickett.
Knowing that we would be shipping out soon, I took
a short leave in early December and came back to Monroe for a few days.
No mention was made of it, of course, but we all knew that I would not
get back again before going overseas. This did not dim our enjoyment
of my time home.
In early February, we were ordered to the Port of
Embarkation, Hampton Roads, Virginia. We spent a few days there and
then went aboard a Dutch merchant marine ship, the Kota Inten, bound
for we knew not where. Once under way, we learned that our destination
was New Guinea, by way of the Panama Canal and a lot of the Pacific
Ocean.
Preamble
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5 | Part 6 | Part
7 | Part 8 | Part
9 | Part 10 | Part
11
