The Bedford Boys: One American Town's Ultimate D-day Sacrifice (6 page)

Their train was again crammed with troops. The track needed repairs. The journey seemed to last forever. And Viola now had morning sickness. Every few minutes, Bettie asked if she was all right.

“Don’t ask me that anymore,” Viola finally replied. “If I’m not all right, I’ll let you know.”
³⁰

The train shuddered to a halt in New York’s Pennsylvania Station. An early autumn chill was in the air. Bettie and Viola crossed a sea of uniforms and suddenly found themselves on a sidewalk, overawed by Manhattan. It was their first time in New York. They couldn’t help but look up and marvel at the skyscrapers jostling for attention, lit up so high they seemed to touch the stars.

They walked several blocks until they found a decent hotel. As they were checking in, they heard the familiar sounds of a big band. They followed the notes and peeked into a ballroom. The legendary Tommy Dorsey had just played. His road crew was packing up trombones and double basses and moving on for another gig.

Late into the night, Bettie and Viola tried to get a call through to their men at Camp Kilmer. They were told the camp was sealed. They kept calling, but no messages could be given to the men. They put their heads down for a few hours. The next morning they decided to return to Bedford. “Earl wrote later [that] the camp was surrounded by wire and looking through wire wouldn’t have been great,” Viola recalled.
³¹
“It was a foolish trip, but I was trying.”
³²

At least two Bedford boys were, however, allowed out of the camp. Ray Stevens and pencil-mustached nineteen-year-old Sergeant Grant Collins Yopp were lucky enough to be issued twenty-four-hour passes. Stevens and Yopp headed for Washington, D.C., and finally got off a streetcar at Third Street Northwest. It was a short walk from there to an apartment shared by Yopp’s sister, Anna Mae Stewart, and his young wife, Elsie Foutz, who both worked in the Washington central post office.

After a few drinks, the men got to talking about going overseas.

“I’m gonna go kick the shit out of the Germans,” said Yopp, “and then I’m coming home.”

Ray wasn’t so gung-ho. “Well,” he said, “if I go over, I won’t be coming back.”

“Ray, you know better than to say things like that,” said Anna Mae.
³³
Ray was deadly serious. He had already told his brother Roy that he could take his share in their farm—he wasn’t going to come home.

The 29th was among the first divisions to pass through Camp Kilmer on the way to Europe. The extensive preparations were infuriating and frustrating as everything, down to packing replacement buttons, was done strictly by the book. Every man was issued two kit bags—A and B—one for a ship’s hold, and one to carry on board. The list of contents for each took minutes to read, and there were frequent changes to the lists. The men spent days packing and repacking their bags.

Finally, early on September 26, 1942, Company A formed up outside its barracks and then marched to the nearest train station in New Brunswick. As their train moved slowly towards Hoboken, the men waved to crowds lining the route, flying flags and honking horns. Locals had not yet become jaded at the sight of boys leaving for war.

In Hoboken, the men learned that many of them were to cross the Atlantic on the most impressive ocean liner in history—the magnificent, 81,000-ton
Queen Mary
, launched to great fanfare and praise in 1936, the year Hitler had occupied the Rhineland. Two-thirds of the 29th Division— 15,000 troops—would cross the Atlantic aboard the
Mary
. The rest would take her sister ship, the equally imperious
Queen Elizabeth
. The liners had been requisitioned in March 1940 by the British Admiralty.

Ferries took the Bedford boys across the choppy Hudson River after dark. Because of blackout conditions, the ships at the west side Manhattan docks were indistinct silhouettes until the men walked down gangways onto the piers owned by the Cunard–White Star line. Once again, Colonel Canham was on patrol, barking orders. There were no more bands, no cheering crowds.

Nervously, the men formed long lines and then inched forward. Before them loomed the
Mary
but she looked nothing like the dashing Blue Ribbon record holder they’d seen in the pages of
Life
magazine and newsreels. Her bright red, black, and white coloring had been masked with what the British admiralty called “light sea gray.”
³⁴
As they got close, the Bedford men had to crane their necks to take in her full size; the sun deck was seventy-five feet above the water line.

Boarding was done strictly “by the numbers”: As each man stepped forward with his number chalked on his helmet, his last name was called out. He answered with his first name and middle initial, and was then checked off by Transportation Corps men wearing red and gold armbands. The Bedford boys, carrying heavy duffel bags, wearing full combat uniform—including cartridge belt, canteen, and rifle—then walked aboard and were given directions to their berths. As they headed below, they were handed a letter from President Roosevelt. “You are a soldier of the United States Army,” it stated simply. “You have embarked for distant places where the war is being fought.”
³⁵

T
HE B
EDFORD
BOYS DID NOT
expect to find the art deco opulence they had read about and seen in newsreels. But they were surprised by how spartan the conditions on the
Mary
actually were. Her six miles of carpet had disappeared, as had 450 deck chairs, 220 cases of china, silver, and crystal from the famous dining rooms, and every wooden door. Now walls of sandbags, endless hinged metal shutters, and a drab décor greeted the new passengers.

In the A section of the ship, deep down in her bowels, a long way from the lifeboats on the upper decks, the Bedford boys dumped their packs and realized this was going to be no pleasure trip. There were just eighteen inches between their bunks stacked in tiers of six. And they would have to lie on them and wait for several hours until the ship’s captain, Gordon Illingworth, gave orders allowing them to move about.
¹

Bedford Hoback had crossed to Hawaii aboard a troopship in the mid-thirties. But that was before the war, when there were less than a hundred thousand soldiers in the entire U.S. army. Now there were over ten thousand men on the
Mary
alone. Thoughts of garlanded hula girls serving rum cocktails in coconut shells had no doubt buoyed Bedford’s last journey. Now his exact destination was unknown. One thing was certain—there wouldn’t be any lounging around on surf-pounded beaches wherever they were going.

Hoback walked over to choose a “rack,” as the bunks were called. From experience, he knew he’d be better off in a top bunk. If the ocean was calm, it was better to sleep below and be able to get out of the berthing quarters without having to clamber down over five men. But if the crossing got rough, the top bunk was the only place to sleep. There would be no one puking his guts out just a few inches above.

The Bedford boys felt the
Mary
pull away from the pier and then steam slowly down the Hudson River and through New York harbor. Finally Captain Illingworth sounded the all-clear, and the Bedford boys were able to move around A deck. But they could not yet go up on top, so many opted to stay in their racks. The
Mary
, designed to accommodate three thousand at a push, was bursting at her seams with a vast human cargo. Men crammed every passageway, lugging heavy kit bags, wearing lifebelts, and shouldering guns.
²

The
Mary
moved down the river leading towards Ellis Island. Finally, Company A was permitted to go up on top. They found a deck already crowded with other companies, all smoking, it appeared, and all watching Manhattan’s skyscrapers glide by. From the sun deck, Roy Stevens and his brother Ray watched New York’s skyline disappear into the distance to be replaced by endless gray waves.

For many of the men, their last sight of land was an emotional moment. Almost all of Company A’s two hundred men were leaving American shores for the first time. They knew many of them would never return. “I feel scared,” Ray told Roy, voicing many of the men’s feelings. “I never felt scared like this before.”
³

Roy was confident they’d be back soon enough. Ray wasn’t so sure: They’d be lucky if they even got to Britain—three thousand miles across an ocean infested with dozens of “wolf-packs” of German U-boats. The enemy was hellbent on sinking the
Mary
, thereby knocking out an entire U.S. division and landing a crippling blow to American morale.

Dubbed the Gray Ghost because of her color and speed, the
Mary
had so far outrun every attacker, her elusiveness so infuriating Hitler that he was now offering a $250,000 reward to the first Nazi submariner who sank her. But how much longer would the
Mary
’s luck last? The Bedford boys were crossing at the height of the Battle of the Atlantic; U-boats were sinking more than 187,000 tons of Allied shipping every month. In fact, the Allies were very close to defeat, barely managing to build more ships than were being sunk. And if the Germans did launch a successful attack, there wouldn’t be a chance in hell of the Bedford boys being fished from the Atlantic by a merciful enemy.

The first day aboard the
Mary
was particularly bad for John Schenk, who suffered acute seasickness. Like most men aboard, he had never been to sea. Yet he managed to write to his wife and to think of her each day at the promised time. “He was so sick he could not stand up,” recalled Ivylyn. “Whenever he was on water, he got very nauseated.”
⁴

Perhaps the
Mary
’s only design fault was her tendency to roll heavily when the wind got up. This motion was exaggerated by her zigzag course, which changed at least every eight minutes, and by her speed. The fastest an attacking U-boat could go was twelve knots on the surface and just seven submerged—far less than the
Mary
’s top speed of thirty-two knots. Before long, many men nursed their first injuries of the war—bruises from falling to the floor in corridors and cramped quarters.

But the rolling was nothing compared to the
Mary
’s most serious drawback as a troopship—lack of ventilation. Officers were allowed to take showers. Noncoms could not, and the stench of unwashed thousands quickly filled every deck. To make matters worse, most officers went without showers: None wanted to be caught naked in front of their men when an alarm sounded.

While the weather was brisk and cold, the stench was almost bearable. But when the
Mary
headed south, so she could be out of range of U-boats for as much of the crossing as possible, higher humidity and temperatures forced some men to sleep with handkerchiefs across their noses. There was soon fierce competition to go on deck and fill one’s lungs with clean ocean breezes. Many wished they were on a summer crossing when men were allowed to sleep on the top decks under the stars.

Idleness is the enemy of discipline and morale in all armies: As much as possible was done to keep the men occupied. The most popular distraction was the daily testing of the
Mary
’s anti-aircraft batteries, which were commanded from a platform set up on the Veranda Grill on the boat deck. There were sometimes contests between artillery companies to see who could be quickest to fire the guns.
⁵

The men were expected to attend several lectures during the crossing. The most popular was about their destination, England. Every man aboard was also given the U.S. Army Special Services Division’s pamphlet,
A Short Guide to Britain
, full of advice about how to stay on friendly terms with the Brits.
⁶

You are higher paid than the British “Tommy.” Don’t rub it in. Play fair with him. He can be a pal in need. It isn’t a good idea to say “bloody” in mixed company in Britain—it is one of their worst swear words. To say “I look like a bum” is offensive to their ears, for to the British this means that you look like your own backside. The British are beer drinkers—and they can hold it.
⁷

The men’s first taste of British food did not bode well. Company A’s mess sergeant, Earl Newcomb, was suddenly viewed with a new respect. His meals may not have been much to write home about but compared to British “grub” they were gastronomic marvels. Bob Slaughter of Company D would always cringe at the memory of the
Mary
’s bland, mutton-based meals. Actually, the food was remarkably good given the number eating it, and vastly superior to the average Briton’s diet at that time.

It took the Bedford boys most of the voyage to get used to other things British. Only after several rounds of rook, a popular card game, did some understand the British currency, with its mysterious half-bobs, “tuppeny bits,” half-crowns, shillings, and bobs. Private Nicholas Gillaspie, an avid baseball player and fisherman before the war, was particularly skilled at rook. “Nick loved rook,” recalled his niece Melba Basham. “They all loved that game. They played it all the time.”
⁸
He had grown up with four brothers and gone to a one-room school like the Stevens twins. Tall, light-haired, quiet, and utterly dependable, Gillaspie was known in Bedford for his impeccable manners and constant smile.

The most serious gamblers congregated in bathrooms along with the heaviest smokers—smoking was banned in most other areas. In a fog of Lucky Strike fumes, men kissed the dice and small fortunes goodbye. Spotters were posted to give advance warning of MPs who would break up games. Junior officers, especially “ninety-day wonders” with the rank of second lieutenant, usually turned a blind eye, thankful that the men were preoccupied. In any case, many played stud poker in their own quarters in the former state rooms.

Company A had more than its fair share of heavy gamblers. For twenty-year-old Bedford boy Wallace Carter, nicknamed “Snake Eyes” because of his passion for dice, the crossing passed quickly. Whether he won or lost, “Snake Eyes” always had a spare dime to watch a movie, especially a Western or the thirties film noirs starring Humphrey Bogart.

Then there was Earl Newcomb, the best poker player in Company A, who could sit for hours with an inscrutable face, and sometimes bluffed his way to pots of several hundred dollars.
⁹
“We used to have some pretty good games around pay day,” Newcomb recalled. “Mostly, we’d just bet with quarters because some of the boys didn’t like to lose everything in one go. They wanted to take their time about it.”
¹⁰

It was not unusual, with so many men on board, to bump into old friends and even relatives in other regiments. On September 28, less than forty-eight hours after leaving America, Grant Yopp ran into one of his four brothers, Herbert, in a corridor. They had not seen each other since January 1942 when Herbert had been drafted and sent to a training camp in North Carolina with an observation squadron of the army air corps. Neither knew that the other was aboard.
¹¹

The second day out was notable for another incident, one that put many of the Bedford boys on edge for the rest of the journey. Roy Stevens and several buddies were shooting dice in a hallway when suddenly the
Mary
pitched to one side so violently they thought she was going to capsize. Their dice flew against a wall and then the
Mary
quickly righted herself. There was a nervous silence while several men picked themselves up and then loud sighs of relief and even a few brave jokes. “Some of us thought: ‘What if? What if we’d gone over?’” recalled Roy Stevens. “It could have been the end of 10,000 people. It would have been a terrible disaster.”
¹²
For the first time, many of the boys realized that from now on life and death would be separated purely by luck.

When he wasn’t gambling, Roy bunked beside his brother Ray on A deck. Ray could sit for hours and read passages from a Bible or cheap army-issue paperback edition. Roy couldn’t sit still that long but he would listen for a few minutes as Ray quickly summarized each chapter.

At least once an hour, Roy would go check on the men in his platoon. “We were berthed close to the privates so we could keep an eye on them. You knew where they were and they knew where you were. For most of those boys it must have been almost like being on a trip with Mom and Dad.”
¹³

On the third day out, tempers began to fray. There were rumors of fights between men sick of waiting in line at water fountains, tired of being woken by the snores of men inches from each other’s faces, unable to get air on deck after dark, and resentful of the officers’ privileges.

For those with appropriate rank, it seemed, the
Mary
was still a pleasure boat. In addition to showers, the officers had stewards to clean their kit and serve food; it was rumored that they even had the run of the sun deck at night. Most noncommissioned men soon shared the sentiments of a Private Sam Shapiro who had written to
Yank
magazine that June: “We’ll win this damn war but I can’t face the trip back.”
¹⁴

Eventually, the temperature dropped and the weather closed in as the
Mary
began her approach to Britain. They were now in waters latent with menace, close to the U-boat pens in the Brittany port of Brest. On October 1, the
Mary
entered the Irish Sea and was met by a convoy of British cruisers that would escort her to the Scottish port of Greenock.
¹⁵

When October 2, 1942, dawned, the sun shone and there were no clouds in the sky. Several Bedford boys walking around up top enjoyed exceptionally clear views. They were in high spirits; soon, they would be rid of the pitching
Mary
and be able to get a bath or shower, decent food, and a good night’s sleep.

Five destroyers and a British cruiser, HMS
Curacoa
, were sent out to escort the
Mary
, who continued her zigzag course that morning. The
Curacoa
was an anti-aircraft cruiser and provided essential protection since the
Mary
did not yet have enough guns to ward off a serious air attack by the Luftwaffe.

Just about 10 A.M., the
Curacoa
reached her designated rendezvous position five miles ahead of the
Mary
.
¹⁶
The two boats were then to accompany each other to the Forth of Clyde, weaving back and forth in a zigzag pattern. For its armament to be effective, the
Curacoa
had to stay close.

The
Curacoa
’s captain, John Boutwood, a veteran of World War I, had serious reservations about the close-in escort system because communications were not good between the ships. On a previous escort run, it had taken two hours for a message to be passed to the
Mary
by signal lamp. What bothered Boutwood more were the standing orders forbidding the
Mary
from slowing down under escort. It was extremely difficult for the
Curacoa
, built before the last war, to stay ahead of the
Mary
. Even on her zigzag course, the
Mary
clipped along at 26.5 knots—1.5 knots faster than the
Curacoa
’s top speed.
¹⁷