MEMORIES OF COMPANY C, 594TH E.B. & S. R.                                                                    4TH ENGINEER SPECIAL BRIGADE .
BY ARCHIE ANDERBERG

 USAT SEAWITCH

Around the first of February, 1944, we began packing all of our gear as we had received   word that we were shipping out of Camp Gordon Johnston for an unknown destination.  Everything was packed in creates and we boarded the troop train, bound for who knew where.  Even now, I don't have any idea of the route we took, but it meandered all over USA, apparently to confuse us as well as any spies who might be checking troop movements. I know we went through Philadelphia because Joe Sullivan wanted to call his dad to come down to the tracks to meet us but wasn't allowed to, and also through Alton, Illinois as we stopped there for exercise within sight of Lathy Roloff's home.

Our journey ended at Pittsburgh, California, site of Camp Stoneman. Our obvious destination was to be somewhare in the Pacific. At Camp Stoneman we had the best chow we ever got while in the army. They were fattening us up for the kill. We did get some leave time to to enjoy the sights of San Francisco - if you stayed sober long enough to enjoy them.

On February 29, 1944 we were marched to the embarkation pier on the Sacramento river to board the USAT Seawitch. The entrance to the pier had a large sign that said, "Throug These Portals Pass The Best Soldiers In The World". We were marched to the end of the pier, NOT through the gate under the sign, and up the gangplank to our new home.

The Seawitch was a converted merchant ship of about 10,000 tons, about the size of a  Liberty Ship frieghter of the period. The cargo holds had been emptied and racks of 6 X 3 bunks, made out of canvas stretched over a pipe frame, placed in them about as close together as they could get them. They were stacked seven high with just enough room between for a man to crawl in and try to sleep. When not in use they could be folded  upwards, out of the way. Company C's compartment was deep in a forward hold, near the bow of the ship. Here you get all of the benefit of the up and down motion as well as the side to side rolling of the ship. We put to sea and passed under the Golden Gate Bridge the same day, traveling alone, without an escort. After clearing the harbor, we never saw another ship until we reached our destination thirtyone days later.

The waves, or ground swell, are greatest near the coast so our sea legs, and our sea  stomachs, were soon put to the test. Being packed seven deep in the small, poorly ventilated  holds was bad enough, but half of the company was soon seasick and the other half was shortly nauseated by the stench of the first half vomiting in their bunks. Sgt DeFarkas had  the best advice. He said, "Boys, take two hairs on your hind end and tie them together sothat they wouldn't throw that up too. That is the only cure for seasickness. The mess crew of the ship did all that they could to help by serving a greasy chili the first night out.

After we became accustomed to the rolling and pitching of the ship, it wasn't too bad, if you could get up on the deck. We spent all of the free time available playing cards on the hatch covers or just looking over the side. There was also a continuous crap game going in the latrine with small fortunes changing hands  much too fast for me to play.

There was a Special Services unit on board, called "The Stars And Gripes" on their way to entertain the troops in the Pacific. They had singers, musicians hyptnotists etc in their  group. Red Blanchard, a comedian, guitar player from the WLS Barn Dance in Chicago is the only one I remember by name. I recently heard that Don Knott was a member of this troop, but whether he was present or joined them later, I don't know. It was well before he became  famous as Barney Fife. They put on a show every afternoon on one of the hatch covers. Their MC was a Mickey O'Shaunessy, or some such, from New York, who had quite a high opinion of himself. A couple of us used to get ringside seats and stare at him, NEVER cracking a smile at one of his jokes. It Finally got to him and he would come over to where  we were and make faces at us. It didn't work we never smiled back. The hyptnotist got some guys, including Matthew Hermetz from our company, to debate the relative value of  twin beds over double beds. Hermetz's main argument was that the carpet would quickly                                                                   wear out between twin beds.

We crossed the equator sometime about March 23,rd, and were all inducted into King Neptune's Court as "Shellbacks". Sailors who had previously crossed the equator made up the court. Our company had two old tars, Salvatore Anderson and Warren McCrocklen, who  were part of the initiation team. Everybody was hosed down, and some were dunked in a  tank of ice water by the Royal Polar Bears (or Polaris Club). The Royal Baby was some fat guy wearing only a bandanna and a diaper and carrying a slop jar filled with "brown stuff" which he threw at the crowd. McCrocklen had the role as King Neptune, A few days later,  we crossed the International Date Line and became "Polliwogs" as well as ":Shellbacks".

The ship's crew had the main responsibility of the operation of the ship, but various  companies had to provide guards at times. I was CQ (Charge of Quarters) the night C. Company was called upon to provide sentryies. Around midnight the ship's captain pulled an  inspection of the guard and found several of our boys asleep at their posts. Our CaptainFord was furious, suggesting that they be shot. If an opinion poll could have been   taken among the troops, they would have voted to throw Captain Ford overboard. The guilty were placed in the brig for the remainder of the voyage. They came down to our hold looking for the CQ in order to locate our First Sgt Stanton. The CQ was asleep too. It is not a criminal offense for a CQ to sleep on duty, but he should be at his designated place and properly identified so that he could be found if needed. Capt. Ford threatened to "break" me from  Sgt. too, but never did.

In later years I ran across a tale about the Seawitch in a history of the Pacific war. I assume that it was the same Seawitch while still in the merchant marine service. It was sent to Batavia (later called Jakarta), Indonesia with a deck load of fighter planes in crates for the air force. The Seawitch came into the Batavia harbor just as the Japs were entering from the other side of town. They quickly unloaded the planes and left them on the dock, intact, for the Japs to capture.

March 31, 19" we reached our destination, Milne Bay, New Guinea. It was the first land we had sighted for a month and what a beautiful sight it was. Milne Bay is a long, narrow harbor with steep hills on both sides and lush tropical growth along the shores, and coconut plantations along the way. We were soon to learn differently.

MILNE BAY

Milne Bay is located at the very tail end of the bird shaped island of New Guinea. It is, in fact, the bird's anus, complete with three small islands (Ferguson, Goodenough and Trobriand) lying just outside of the entrance, representing what one would expect from such an organ. Milne Bay is one big swamp with an annual rainfall of over 350 inches per year. It literally rains every day, even when the sun is shining. It is one of the wettest spots on   earth.

There was an old coconut grove near where we disembarked, and everyone was soon eating all that they could. Too much coconut especially green coconut, is a powerful physic. The results were predictable. We were assigned a camp area and told to scrounge material for floors for our tents where ever we could find suitable material. We got some old steel    landing mat as was then used at makeshift airports, lumber from dunnage and crate parts  near the docks, and some raided an old abandoned sawmill and got some huge planks of rough mahogany wood, worth a fortune in the states. These, and other material, went to provide floors for our double tents.

The carpenters, Foth and Fowler, soon made a twentyholer latrine on the hillside, with only  an awning cover to shed the rain.

Our job at Milne Bay was to reassemble some LCMs, 56 foot steel landing craft we were to use later. A small shipyard had been previously built by an earlier regiment. The LCMs had been cut into several pieces, crated, and shipped over as deck cargo. The various crates were all numbered and stored in the outer yard. The assembly plant consisted of three bays under one roof, with rails laid in each bay. The parts of each LCM was transported to the bay and placed on a cradle, or carriage, on the tracks. Our job was to align the correct parts and weld them together. There was room for three LCMs on cradles in each of the three bays, to be worked on at the same time. We worked twenty four hours a day, three shifts, to   assemble the parts. When finally assembled, an inclined railway track led down to the water and the completed craft was floated and tested. Welding the parts was an especially hot job as the welder had to crawl into the wing tanks and doublebottom tanks to weld from the inside, with little ventilation. Even with air being pumped in to the welder, it was a terrible    job but we got it done.

One day, out behind the shipyard, some of the boys wanted to climb a coconut tree for some of the fruit. They made a pair of pole climbing hooks and First Sgt Stanton went up the tree like a monkey. As he was busy knocking down coconuts, a battalion majorcame by on a safety inspection. I was the only one present who was wearing a shirt with stripes othe  sleeve so he ordered me to "get your man out of that tree. It would look like hell to haveto file a report that a man fell out of a coconut treeStanton far outranked me but I took great pleasure in ordering him to come down right now. The major never knew the difference.

Milne Bay was our first encounter with aborigine natives of New Guinea. They were adirty, uncivilized lot. Few women were allowed to run around, and those that did were certainly NOT appealing in their grass skirts and scabs. They could speak Pidgin English whichis a old lingo taught them by traders and has little resemblance to modern English, but could be partly understood. Of course they all knew a wide variety of swear words taught to them by the Americans. Meat is scarce in their country and they would trade nearly anything for canned meat, or "bully beef". A favorite trading object with our troops was "Cat Eyes", a type of sea shell. GI canned food did not have paper labels but had painted on names of the contents so the guys traded all sorts of canned goods to them, saying it was "bully beef". They were quite irritated when they opened a can of fruit cocktail instead of meat. They had plenty of fruit on their own. We used to walk the beaches looking in the crystal clear water for sea shells. The natives had some log and palm leaf structures built out over the water that had a lot of shells under them. We quickly learned that these structures were their toilets, where the tides cleaned them every day. The Australians had some native men organized into armed police in blue and red tunics. They were as fierce looking as the women were ugly.

All native women were called "Mary" in pidgin English We noted a small child with distinctive Japanese features so we asked a man, "Japanee man he pompom Mary ?" He replied, "Japanee man he pomporn Mary three time. He pompom me two time". Natives were not allowed in our camp area as they would take anything not nailed down.

On the trail up the hill past the latrine was a clear stream which was the source of our water. There was a waterfall that had washed out a deep hole beside a tall rock. This became our swimming hole, until one GI dived off the rock and hit his head on the bottom, killing him. The hole was thereafter off limits

The Australians had been at Bay for a long time and with nothing better to do they spent their free time making rings and other jewelry out of silver coins. To make a ring, the took a silver florin, about the size of a halfdollar, and by continually tapping on it side as they rotated it, the side flattened out. When it reached the desired size, thecenter was reamed out. It took hours of tapping to make one ring but what is time to a GI? We soon learned to make rings ourselves. You could hear tap tap tap tap far into the night. Tom Smith got tired of the noise so he hung an old brake drum in his tent and when the tapping continued after lights out, he would hit the drum with a hammer for every tap he heard. It put an end to night ring making as the whole camp then complained about the noise.

The sides of our tents were turned up to catch the rain water. This provided fresh, clean water for our personal shaving etc. Just behind Company C's camp area was a big mud hole. A USO show featuring Jack Benny, Carol Landis and others was coming to Milne Bay so we built a stage in that area, filled it in and made seats out of coconut logs. We could see the show from our cots.

At this point in the war Gen MacArthur would not allow cargo space to be taken up with beer or other hard liquor. GIs have a method to meet every requirement. Earl Mantooth, of our company, had previous experience in making a still. He made one back in the brush. Supplies for the mash was pilfered from the mess hall. They turned out a pretty good grade of white lightening. Everybody more or less knew about the still but it was allowed to operate until a tough character from Baltimore, Joe Conlon, drank too much and decided to kill the mess sgt, the company officers and steal an LCM and go back to the states one night. Again, I was on CQ and heard him stumbling up the walk. I was sitting in a dark corner of the orderly room tent. He looked in and said, "It's a goddamned good thing nobody is in there or I would shoot the sob." He turned the other way to go to the mess tent and fired a shot into it, swearing at the same time that he would kill Sgt. Gottlieb, our mess sgt. I quickly took an exit out the back way to wake up the First Sgt, only to find him and several others already up and pecking around their tent watching the proceedings. The MPs were called but by the time they arrived Conlon's platoon sgt, Joe Moore, had talked him out of his gun. Sgt Gottlieb never slept in the company area after that and was soon transferred out and replaced by Joe Burnetti, a great improvement. The still was demolished by the authorities.

After we launched our newly reassembled LCM's they were assigned to various crews. We tried them out in the bay and soon left Milne Bay for new quarters at Buna up the coast.