Colonel:
I can tell you a lot about the 294th Combat Engineers and the incident which took place on March 20, 1944.
When I entered the Army in March 1943, I was assigned to the 293rd Combat Engineers and we trained in Camp Gordon, Georgia. The 294th Combat Engineers were training at the same time at Camp Gordon.
Then, we went to Tennessee maneuvers for a couple of months. From there we were sent for desert training in Camp Pilot Knob in the Mojave Desert, near Yuma Arizona, which was started by Gen. Patton, as a training ground for the war in Africa. By the time we finished training, the war in Africa was over.
In December, 1943, I was transferred to the 294th Combat Engineers,assigned to Company "B", and we were on our way East by train to Camp Myles Standish in Taunton MA. From there, we boarded a ship and headed out in convoy to Glasgow, Scotland in January, 1944. We traveled by train down to Sherborne in Dorset.
We did all of our training with mines and bridges on the property formerly owned by Sir Walter Raleigh, and now owned by the Digby family. Raleigh's castle was in ruins and on a large lake and that is where we did our training, building and blowing up static and floating bridges and working with mines. The Digby family were living in the relatively new castle at the time. One of the daughters, Pamela Digby later married Randolph Churchill, Winston's son. Later, they were divorced and she had a series of lovers and, at one time, became America's ambassador to France. Late in life she married Averill Harriman. She dissipated his fortune and after he died, she was sued by his children.
On the grounds of the Digby estate was the 228th Station Hospital, which consisted of a bunch of Quonset huts.
The winter of 1943 was brutal. One day I woke up in my foxhole covered with frost and I realized that I had lost most of my hearing. This was not surprising since we were constantly working with explosives. I was taken to the 228th for treatment. On March 20, 1944, I was lying in bed when there was a huge explosion and I was blown off my bed. The other patients and I raced outside and we saw the carnage. Company "C" had just finished an exercise with mine laying and then picked up the anti-tank mines and placed them alongside a truck to be taken to a safe area until the next exercise. The truck accidentally back up over some mines and about 90 mines exploded. The truck disappeared and 29 men were torn apart and their bodies were scattered through the trees. It was horrendous.
Naturally, we were warned by security to keep quiet or we would end up being taken to Leavenworth Penitentiary in Kansas. The story was put out that two German saboteurs had set off an explosion. I understand that this was done because placing a hospital near explosives was a violation of the Geneva Convention.
It was many years after the war that a local reporter, using the Freedom of Information Act, wrote the true story. As an aside, many of you, I am sure, have heard about the Slapton Sands incident. That took place in Devon when the soldiers and sailors were practicing landings in an area which had been picked because the topography was similar to Normandy. All the villages there had been evacuated and were ultimately destroyed by gunfire. On this day, two German E-boats came out of the fog and fired their torpedoes and escaped back to France. The result was almost 800 dead. This incident was also kept secret until many years after the war when a local resident told of seeing hundreds of bodies being buried on the beach. Ironically, the wounded were taken to the 228th Station Hospital in Sherborne.
About a week after the explosion on March 20th, I was taken to a General Hospital in Taunton, Somerset for further treatment. While there, there was a German air raid and two planes were shot down. One of the pilots was brought into our hospital and had his legs amputated. I went to visit him and he was cursing a blue streak in German. I was finally told that they could nothing for me and that I would have to get hearing aids in the U.S. when I returned. I have been wearing hearing aids since 1946 and I am now profoundly deaf.
From Taunton, I was transferred to the Topographic Engineers in Leicester in the Midlands. There we prepared the maps for the invasion and also the maps for the other countries on the continent. I fell in love with an English lass, Noreen, in Leicester. I came back from Germany to get married on August 4, 1945. We have six children, thirteen grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.
Many years after the war, I found out that the 294th went up to Wales and from there sailed to Normandy in the Susan B. Anthony to Utah Beach on June 7, 1944. As they approached the beach, the ship hit two mines and sank. Destroyers came alongside and were able to rescue all the men on board. They lost all of their equipment. Later, they were reequipped and went on with the war and a number of the men were killed in later battles, including the Hurtgen Forest and the Battle of the Bulge.
When the war ended, I was in Austria and I was discharged in January, 1946.
However, when we sailed out of Antwerp,Belgium in January, 1946, our troubles were far from over. About 400 miles east of Newfoundland, we hit a terrible storm with 70 foot seas. The Captain said that in 25 years at sea he had never seen such a storm. The ship cracked across the deck and partly down the hull. An SOS went out and two Coast Guard cutters came out from Argentia, Newfoundland. We spent the night shifting the ballast, which was sand, from the stern, forward of the crack in the hull, to try to lift the stern higher out of the water. We could not launch the life boats because of the high seas and the Coast Guard told us later that if we sank they would have tried to rescue as many as they could. In the North Atlantic in January, they said that we would have lasted only about five minutes in that cold water.
We slowly made out way West with the two Cutters alongside and landed in Argentia in Newfoundland. They welded up the old tub and then put us on board again and we made our way down to New York. It took us 21 days from Antwerp to New York.
I have been back to Sherborne on four occasions. There are two plaques on the south side of Sherborne Abbey with the names of the 29 men who were killed on March 20, 1944. Alongside those are the plaques with the names of the Sherborne men who were killed in World War II.
I have gone back to the Digby property several times and I have found the remnants of the 228th Hospital, and this past October, I found the site of the explosion and I placed American Flags in memory of those who were killed and prayed for their souls. It was an emotional moment.
I have also visited with Jean Treasure in her home. She worked as a secretary at the 228th while I was there.
Now you have information on the tragic accident from someone who was there.
Joe Izzillo- 4907 Europa Drive, Naples FL 34105- (239) 262-2778