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Click on a Tall Tale below to travel to a particular tale or scroll down at your own pace. |
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Today, the Florida panhandle is a vacation resort paradise. In 1944, times were a little different. One tale of that time relates how Tech 4th. Grade, Eph Hansell, Company B, definitely did not like "Hillbilly" music, especially when it played on and on. Eph ended up losing his temper over it and threw the offending radio across the floor of a Camp Gordon Johnston barracks. The radio’s owner and his friends then attempted to throw Eph into the Gulf of Mexico. Eph emerged from the fight sore and bruised and is to this day, no lover of hillbilly music. He has apparently quit throwing radios though. Joe Sullivan, Company C, 594th wrote the following Tall Tale: I was a member of Company C and arrived at Camp Gordon Johnston, Florida from Cape Cod, Massachusetts on 9 September 1943. I was eighteen years old with only two months of service. We trained as combat engineers and then went to manning landing craft. There we trained the 4th Infantry Division in Amphibian warfare. Then the New Year’s holidays arrived. With nothing to do and nowhere to go, we were restricted to the Camp and the small town of Carabelle, Florida. It was decided that we would have a New Year’s Eve booze party, and a volunteer was asked to go into Carabelle, secure liquor, evade detection by the MP's at the Camp gate and return to the Company area. This sounded to me like more fun than I had in months of boring army training. A challenge to defy authority! I went for it. Everyone chipped in, and my buddy and I hitched a ride into Carabelle at sunset. We walked the boardwalk to the nearest liquor store. We bought about twelve bottles of liquor and a large bottle of Champagne for myself. I spotted a large Packard sedan Taxi with the spare tires mounted on each side of the car body. We made a deal with the cabby. First we pulled off the tires, stashed the tubes and stored the bottles in the remounted tires, and off we went, back to Camp. Arriving at the well-lit front gate of Camp Gordon Johnston, we found that it was manned by two MP's and their commander, a 2nd Lieutenant. We were ordered "OUT OF THE CAR!". These guys must have been tipped off because they pulled out all the car seats, opened and searched the trunk, searched under the hood and even crawled under the car. But they did not pull off the two spare tires. Sitting beside the 2nd Lt. was a cluster of confiscated bottles which I'm sure were headed for the "O" club (Officer’s Club) that night. After the exhausting search of the car; off we went to the best all-male party ever at Camp Gordon Johnston. Having no ice to cool my wine, I ended up at the back door of the O club and got myself a bucket of ice. We screwed the system and had a wonderful time. Archie Anderberg, Company C, 594th. wrote the following Tall Tale: USAT SEA WITCH 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 crates and we boarded the troop train, bound for who knew where. Even now, I don't have any clear 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 somewhere 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 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 Sea witch. The entrance to the pier had a large sign that said, "Through 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 Sea witch was a converted merchant ship of about 10,000 tons, about the size of a Liberty Ship freighter 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 thirty-one 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 so that they 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, hypnotists, etc in their group. Red Rlanchard, 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 hypnotist got some guys, including Matthew Hermetz from our company, to debate the relative value of twin beds over double beds. Hermetz' main argument was that the carpet would quickly wear out between twin beds. We crossed the equator sometime about March 23rd, 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 CO (Charge of Quarters) the night C Company was called upon to provide sentries. Around midnight the ship's captain pulled an inspection of the guard and found several of our boys asleep at their posts. Our Captain Ford 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 CO in order to locate our First Set Stanton. The CO was asleep too. It is not a criminal offense for a CO 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 Sea witch in a history of the Pacific war. I assume that it was the same Sea witch 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 Sea witch 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, 1944 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 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 twenty-holer 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. Wedding the parts was an especially hot job as the welder had to crawl into the wing tanks and double-bottom 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 fresh coconuts, a battalion major came by on a safety inspection. I was the only one present who was wearing a shirt with stripes on the sleeve so he ordered me to "get your man out of that tree. It would look like hell to have to fill out a report that a man fell out of a coconut tree." Stanton 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 a dirty, 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" which is an 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. Gl 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, "Japanese man he pom-pom Mary ?". He replied, "Japanee man he pom-pom Mary three time. He pom-pom 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 Gl dived off the rock and hit his head on the bottom, killing him. The hole was thereafter off limits. The Australians had been at Milne 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, they took a silver florin, about the size of a half-dollar, and by continually tapping on it side as they rotated it, the side flattened out. When it reached the desired size, the center was reamed out. It took hours of tapping to make one ring - but what is time to a Gl? 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. Gls 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 CO 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 god-damned good thing nobody is in there or I would shoot the s-o-b." 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 t the back way to wake up the First Sgt. only to find him and several others already up and peeking 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. Another tale from Archie Anderberg (Company C 594th, First Platoon): We were at Finchaven, New Guinea, just the first platoon. We thought we were to go in on Leyte and our small group was anchored at the entrance of a small lagoon. Another group (Perhaps Company B) had an anchorage inside the lagoon. This group would constantly run their boats past us "wide open", making large wakes which caused our boats to slam together, breaking all our tie-up lines and causing general discomfort. Hollering and shouting at them did no good, they couldn't hear us above the roar of their engines. To put an end to it we all got our boats in a line and entered their anchorage area going "wide open", around and around the lagoon. We put up a huge wake that snapped all their lines. I remember seeing one guy with a foot on each of two boats, using the space between the boats as a latrine. Remember our boats did not have heads (toilets) on board. With our wake causing the boats to bob up and down, he was holding on for dear life with one hand and shaking the other fist at our boats. This ended their going past our anchorage at full speed! Walter Schroeck (Company B) here, I read the Tall Tales about the C Company and Sullivan. That was pretty good, but they could learn from B Company. On New Britain, while on-loading Aussie ships we came to where we were unloading officers liquor. The (Company B) boat went from ship to shore and when they got on shore the Aussie officers were two cases shy. The Aussies were then arguing with each other about the count. The boat went back for another load and the same thing happened... Still two cases short. The Aussies then decided to put an MP aboard, which for B Company was like throwing down the glove. Next load from ship to shore was still short of liquor. Again, the Aussies argued among themselves and put another MP aboard. Again, the glove went down, and B Company picked it up. Last load of booze, three cases short. The Aussies were baffled and B Company had won. B Company: Chapter Two Lt. Nagy told me to get a detail to go down to the boats and pick up two cases of the officer’s ration. The men went down to the boat and found it empty. They reported to me and I took them to Lt. Nagy to check the boat number. He too went down with the detail to find the boat empty. A whole boat load of officers ration gone... Lt. Nagy was beside himself. At the evening formation he mentioned that the men, "Swooped down like vultures…", and with that proceeded to check every boat in the company, as well as every tent. Weeks later I put a notice on the bulletin board that I was tired of the food and that I would like a change. The next day, two cases of boned rabbit was at the mess hall door. Lt. Nagy asked me where it came from and I replied with the fact that I didn't know, and that I had just put a notice on the bulletin board. Lt. Nagy, if you’re reading this you should have checked the wing tanks... That is all... The next tale goes back to 1945 near Manila. Tech 4th. Grade, Bob Lewis, Co. C, was happy after receiving news that an Atomic Bomb had been dropped on Japan. He and his friend, seaman Art Hughes decided to consume large amounts of Medical - 180 proof - alcohol. They mixed it in coke syrup and water and eventually paraded up and down the street shouting "Mabuhay!" (the word for victory in Tagalog) and firing a 38-special. This caused the observant Filipinos to disappear. Art wanted to "Shoot the windows out!", but good sense or fear of MPs stopped them from doing so. TO: Robert This story was sent to me by Alex Nagy about three years ago and thought you may enjoy it. Ephraim Hansel We were assigned a young Australian lieutenant, Jim Roache, who was to act as liaison in our mutual assault and support operations at Jacquinot Bay. A teacher in civilian life, married with two children, one a daughter whom he had never seen. We became tent mates and close friends. We shared the fact that we were both fathers of baby girls that were born after our embarkation. For nearly a year we were "cobbers" together sharing many a "gin and squash" at our jerrybuilt bamboo club built out over the water at Jacquinot Bay. In the Spring of 1945 he was unexpectedly recalled to his unit. We didn't even get a chance to say goodbye. We later heard that on the first day of his return he went on patrol with his colonel and was accidentally shot and killed by his own troops. Over the years I couldn't get him off my mind, often wondering if his family ever knew of the circumstances of his death and where he was buried and how his children were. My daughter would be the same age as his Anna. Last year, my wife and I planned a trip to Australia. About a month before we left, I called the Australian Embassy in Washington and asked the Military Affairs section if it would be able to track down the present address of any next of kin. I gave his rank, home, date of death, etc., and the fact that he was a former teacher in Sydney. A week later an officer called and gave me the phone number of his daughter, Anna, now married and living in Petersharn, a suburb of Sydney. When we arrived in Sydney, I called and introduced myself, explaining my close attachment to her father and that I had some photographs for her taken by an Australian army photographer attached to my company. We met at the Sydney Opera House where we were her guests at a symphony. Later we had a lovely dinner and talked for hours. She asked all kinds of questions about a father she never knew, what was he like, what did he do, did he enjoy music, jokes, his job? Exploring every facet of his personality, his dreams, his worries, etc. And when I pulled out the photographs she wept and showed me a family portrait of Jim that was all she had. It was an emotional evening but certainly the highlight of our trip. Anna works in an office, has two boys and an older brother. Her mother died right after the war and her father’s grave is in a beautiful Australian military cemetery at Jacquinot Bay in New Britain. ALEX NAGY P. S. Alex Nagy passed away in 1995 or 1996. |
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The editors would like to put other 594th "Tall Tales" here.
Tales must only loosely resemble the truth as you remember it and the statutes of limitation have run out on most of these offenses a long time ago anyway! Write (or call) Bob Lewis |
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Tales are copyright @ 594th EB&SR Association, 1997 |
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