Hi 540th Engineers,
In WW II the Army deployed overseas maybe 300 tiny units (1 officer and 28 enlisted men) called Engineer Fire Fighting Platoons (EFFPs), the Army's overseas fire departments. The first ten, the 1201st through the 1210th were activated in August 1942 and the frst four (1201, 1202, 1204 & 1205) were deployed (to North Africa - Casablanca, Rabat and Oran) in early April 1943. In May came 1203, 1206, 1207 and 1208 - Algiers and possibly Bizerte and Tunis. Since Army historians do not create unit histories for units smaller than Battalion size these 300 Platoons are lost in the war's records.
Those of you who served in Sicily may have come across the 1206th and the 1208th. And those of you makng the Anzio beachead may have met the 1206th. We of the 1204th may have met some of you on the beaches of Southern France on 15 August 1944. Did any of your units build the railroad bridge (a Bailey triple/triple) over the Durance River at Myraguesse?
This story is let me ask "did you ever run across any of these EFFPs"? If you did how about contacting me at r11@maui.net to tell me about your meetings.
Thank you and Aloha,
Jim Davis, Member and Historian
1204th Army Engineer Fire Fighting Platoon
World War II