Oldest Military Blogger at Camp Myles Standish

Oldest Military Blogger at Camp Myles Standish

On our arrival in South Boston we were billeted in
a warehouse on Summer Street that was converted
into sleeping quarters.
This location made Castle Island very accessible.
New Years Eve of 1943, there was little need for celebration
because duty demanded, shipping stuff out to the troops
abroad, was much more critical.
New Years Day at 6 A.M. our C.O. had the Officers
and Non-Coms wake all the men in the Company, to take
a hike, with full gear.
We marched to East Cambridge and back under
extreme protest from the men and Officers alike.
Three days later, a visitor from the Adjutant General's
Office arrived at our warehouse to respond to some inquiry.
When he left, our surly Captain went with him, fully packed,
never to be heard of again.
His replacement an "Old Army" Captain, assumed
Command of the 301st Port Company.
Within a week, he took away the chevrons of every
Technical non-com in the Company.
He issued a statement that, " No man will wear stripes
without his sanction and authorization".
I did not get my stripes back until, sometime after, we were sent to
Taunton Massachusetts, January of '44 ..
We were kept busy and physically fit in Camp Myles
Standish,in Taunton MA. which was about 60 miles
from South Boston.
We were taking 3 mile runs with light field packs
almost every afternoon.
This was later increased to 5 miles around a lake area....
On one section of the run we had to cross a foot bridge,
across part of the lake, three feet above
the water level.The bridge had rope hand rails, on both sides
of the wooden, flexible track.
When you ran you had no concept of moving forward
except for the blur of the hand rails.
Very few of us could finish that one..
Many men got disoriented and barely finished.
Most evenings, we had surprise night marches, with
Combat field packs.
We casually could be lounging around and
one or two of the Platoons would be called upon, to participate,
in an exercise without warning.
They would have to dress and be ready to move out
in very few moments.
They might ask them to join another unit in this night maneuver,
to attain some target in the wooded area surrounding
the camp, just to find out how they worked with unfamiliar Officers.
One evening the entire Company was activated in this
manner and we were off .
On this sortie, our Platoon was sent off in another direction
than the point the Company had taken.
We had been instructed to follow the path South until we
would meet with the main body of our Unit, less than
a mile away.
The first minutes down the path were uneventful, until suddenly,
the path was obstructed by a concertina of barbed wire.
When Lt. Petrie started to look for a way around the wire,
Oakie and I were at the head of the First Section in our Platoon.
We sprawled across the wire, side by side and the section
then ran over us across the wire
The remainder of the march was without incident and we
met up with the rest of the Company.
At the end of the debriefing back in camp, the Company Commander
told us that he had been informed of an action by someone,
unknown, who helped to allow the men in his group
to overcome the barbed wire.
He wanted to know!
"Who was it?"
He stared accusingly from one side of the Mess Hall to the other.
Many heads turned to Okie and myself, but no one spoke.
Okie and I were silent.
We were not sure if we were right, or wrong.
Never the less.........
Three days later, we, got our stripes back!

A few weeks later we shipped out on the S.S. Argentina,
over the North Atlantic, bound for Scotland.

Oldest Military Blogger on Castle Island

Oldest Military Blogger on Castle Island.

Indiantown Gap, was a training experience for the
301st Port Company.
We were given the opportunity to use our hard
won knowledge in a real situation.
We were very familiar with the equipment and
material at our disposal on Base,but...
We had no idea of what we would encounter
elsewhere.
Early in December of '43,we were shipped to
Boston, Mass. by rail, and spent some twenty hours
in a crowded Pullman Coach....
The normal rail time from PA.would be closer to
4 hours but the Fortunes of War ordained the
excessive delays because of "security" we were told.
The fact is, we were like 4th class Mail.....
our transport gave way to all scheduled train
passage on our track.
Arriving at our destination at noon in South Boston, our
Company was billeted in a huge warehouse
on Summer Street.
Our area had Bunk Beds with rolled bedding,
neatly placed in rows, on a 10,000 sq. ft.
concrete floor on the second story with a
fire extinguisher, containing water and a
hand pump, located at the head of every
alternate row of Bunks.
Two other Companies occupied the third
and fourth floors.
The Basement was our Mess Hall.
When we finally began our duty to work,
after a week of crude organization and
familiarization with our new home, it was
to be at a place called,
Castle Island..
The men in the Company assigned to work
that night, would leave from the Mess Hall,
fully dressed, under arms, mounting 10 wheeler
trucks, and dropped off at,what we thought was,
"The Coldest Place in The World"....
Castle Island.
We found out about the fact we were not
dressed warmly enough, the first time we went out.
Our Officers and Noncoms alike, froze
their asses off that night and we were cautioned
to "dress appropriately in the future".
Eventually, we clothed ourselves in long underwear,
and our OD's, because fatigues made no sense.
We wore hand made woolen sweaters and scarves
contributed by a local neighborhood Catholic Church.
(my package had a small slip of paper clipped
to the inside of the sweater,inscribed,
"Bless You, Cathrine".)
I carried that piece of paper in my cigarette case
throughout my service .
In addition to the winter overcoats we wore, wool skull caps
pulled down over the ears, a helmet liner and steel helmet,
and the best gloves we could find, in addition to those
issued, but nothing helped.
Our job in South Boston,was to unload Railway
freight cars onto the piers and onto the ships in the harbor.
It seemed, the Longshoremen who were not
in the Armed Services at the time, balked at allowing
us to load the ships, so the Army, in its infinite wisdom,
allowed this to pass.
This resulted in the virtual loss of all our training
from the Gap and we never got, hands-on ship handling in
the States, until we got to Scotland.

We realized later, that the reason we got so cold
on Castle Island was because of the damp fierce winds
coming across this wide open harbor cutting us to the bone.
Everything was fine as long as we kept working.
The problem was, the inactivity and boredom from idleness,
waiting for the changing of the empty freight cars
on the siding with fresh cars, always felt like it
took forever.
We had many occasions of getting to the pier and having
nothing to do for 6 to 8 hours.
We sat huddled in trucks when they were available
and built fires in discarded,empty,50 gallon drums,
often using the packing of loose cargo, and stuff
on the pier for fuel..

Castle Island is no longer an Island.
It has been incorporated into the mainland of South Boston.
After the War, for many years, using it as a dumping ground for
garbage and waste materials, a large part of it
has been reclaimed as a park