Hey, look what Art Cook (36th CE) sent me today. Three different engineer tunes - actual sheet music. It's the cat's pajamas!
I had a great idea today and need some outside assistance. Need a choir, chorus, glee club, etc., to learn the music and record it. I want to present it to all the engineers and of course include it on the website and the documentary. Anyone out there a current member of a choir, or know someone who could do this? Please let me know. Here's the music.
Here are some more scans from my grandfather’s notebook. I interesting how much one can learn form just notes taken for that day’s activities. Also, you can tell something from what is not there as well. Notice what is written for Christmas Eve of 1944. "Ask Fred about guard", "See about scotch tape", "AP mines to be laid at 125E?" Nothing much said about the holiday.
Finally, I assume that the Gilsdorf Bridge entry is 1945 as there probably aren't as many "Gilsdorf" Bridges in Italy or N. Africa as there would be in central Europe. Looking at the notebook would answer that for sure, but I scanned these a while ago and I'm at work right now!
The following photo is one of the images featured in the intro of my documentary. I always loved the photo because it expressed so much. Says it all doesn't it?
The only thing I ever knew about it; it was a 36th Engineer. That is until this week. I received some correspondence from Larry Babine, whom I met at the Seahorses Reunion last year.
Well it turns out THAT photo is Larry, and I found out the whole story behind it. So once again, after many moons, I can put a face and name to an image.
His letter also brought up memories of my dad, for as you know, he was injured by a mortar shell on his motorcycle during the breakout from Anzio.
Here is the doc he sent me via email...
Refreshed Memory
Having just received pictures of 36th Engineers via e-mail, has brought back memories of a rugged period from May 21 to June 6, 1944.
On May 21 I was part of a platoon size battle patrol on Anzio. With no reason why, we were sent out in broad daylight [a no no] to go as far as possible into enemy lines. We went about one mile without any contact until suddenly we discovered we were let into a trap. All Hell broke loose and the man with me [i’ve lost his name, I only remember he was Polish] was instantly cut down by a machine pistol. What happened next is a blur. I ended up in the roadside ditch and the German vanished.
For the next half hour [i’m only guessing] I was under fire from an 88 gun that kept hitting the road bank. When I nearly reached the point of panic, the firing suddenly stopped and I was wrapped in a white mist. My first thought was that I had been painlessly killed and that I was wrapped in the arms of God. Gradually I realized I was still alive and in one piece. Then followed a strange series of events when I got distinct orders to move NOW. As soon as got settled in a shell hole I would once again get the order to move. In this way the Germans were never able to pin point me with their mortar.
It was while I was resting [getting my breath] in one of those shell holes that I saw our Lt. Fallon hurrying back along the road to our lines and his head was covered with blood. I never saw him again until our Rgmt. reunion 60 years later. After a long time – no idea how long – I finally made it back to our lines and I can remember being speechless, probably deaf too.
On the night of May 22 – 23 I was once more on the battle patrol and was out front at the start of the massive artillery bombardment that shook the entire Anzio Beachhead. New infantry was coming ashore for the breakout but I saw none of it.
The day after the breakout we loaded on trucks and headed in the direction of Valletri where we entered into a fierce three day battle to close the road from the south to the retreating Germans. During this three day battle I saw three men killed within a few feet of me [one was torn to pieces but was taken away screaming] Later I was standing against the wall of a stone farmhouse with two GI’s when a German mortar shell landed in the courtyard and shrapnel hit the two men who were three feet from me.
My memory is pretty sketchy about the details but I remember chewing dusty grape leaves for water. I remember two German machine gunners trying to surrender after running out of ammo and being shot in the back [own officers]. It was a time of sheer chaos no one was sure where the enemy was and for a time we were in the crossfire of more than two machineguns. The enclosed photo shows how I felt after three days without sleep or food.
I must have bounced back after a close encounter with PTSD and a trip to the medics, a morphine shot and a night’s sleep. The next day after loading up for the run to Rome we were caught in a traffic jam. That’s when I learned not everyone was anxious to catch up to the enemy. Our Major with some help went forward to check on the traffic jam only to find that a British AA outfit had parked on the road whilst they made 5 o’clock tea. With a little help from us the equipment was pushed off the road. They could not understand why we were in such a hurry. It’s been a good laugh for many years.
Here is another post for my class. It's pretty lengthy, I suppose, but here it is:
This is a subject that I have thought quite a bit about as well. Starting in 1994 when I bought the U-boot simulation “Aces of the Deep,†I have been fascinated by submarines of all nations. (For those who are interested, Silent Hunter III and IV are about as good a sub-sim as you can get for the German and American side respectively!) The fact that were I am stationed in North Carolina there are 3 dive-able U-boots (352, 701, and 85) only fuels this fascination.
Although it could be argued that the Germans and Japanese we reluctant partners, ample evidence points to sharing of technologies as well as Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs) in differing aspects of warfare. It would therefore seem unlikely that the Japanese were unaware of the mission behind the German U-boot fleet: sink the Allied merchant fleet. The Germans had also been warring with Britain for over two years by the time Japan entered the fray in late 1941.
Was it that they did learn the lessons of the Germans and British during World War I that led to their ineffective anti-submarine (ASW) campaign? It was during that conflict that the submarine graduated from one of those new technologies (perhaps not new, per se, but technology had finally caught up to Bushnell’s innovative notion), discounted by the “big gun†admirals, to a major threat to the survival of whole countries. One could argue that because the Germans did not pursue a u-boat campaign in the Far East, the Japanese did not obtain first-hand experience in the damage that unrestricted submarine warfare can do to nation dependant on maritime re-supply. Had the Germans had the resources to pursue an aggressive u-boat war in the Pacific during the Great War, the Japanese may have given more thought to the damage that could be (and was) inflicted upon them in a larger conflict. The British and Americans learned this, of course, during WWI – and then promptly forgot it at the opening stages of WWII. The British, on the receiving end of the u-bootsmen’s “Happy Times†in 1939, recovered quickly and convoys were arranged and merchants armed. Stupidly, it would seem, the Americans afforded the Germans a “Second Happy Time†in late ’41 and early ’42 when unescorted merchants slowly plodded the Atlantic seaboard, silhouetted by the lights of coastal cities. They quickly adjusted procedures as well, but not before allowing several U-boot skippers to earn their Knight’s Cross. The Japanese, on the other hand, never seemed to have learned that lesson and allowed their country and their Pacific Rim garrisons to be starved by the US navy’s sub fleet. Given the first rate quality of Japanese destroyers, organizing convoys and escorting them would have increased the amount of cargo that arrived in Japan without a doubt. Getting into port may have been an issue in the latter parts of the war, however, as I recently learned. In the April/ May 2008 Issue of “World War II†magazine there is an article about “Operation Starvation†which was the methodical mining by B-29 of Japanese sea channels around the home islands.
A secondary question is why the Japanese submarine campaign did so poorly. Was it, perhaps, the Japanese dedication to Bushido that led to Japanese turning from the offensive capabilities of the submarine? In the introduction to the book “Sunk: The Story of the Japanese Submarine Fleet, 1941-1945†by Machitsura Hashimoto (1954), Commander Edward L. Beach writes that the failure of the midget subs in Pearl Harbor had lead to a great loss of face to the submarine fleet. This is especially true in light of the amazing devastation wrought at the hands of the aircraft used during the mission. Although Japanese submarines accounted for some of the largest US ships lost during the war, their contribution was minimal. Capital ships also tended to be the primary target of their submarines unlike the Germans in the Atlantic and American in the Pacific whose objective was the sinking of merchant ships. With the rate of US warship production and the effectiveness of USN escorts, this was hardly going to make a significant contribution to the Japanese naval campaign.
