You're in the Army now!

Jack in his dress uniform

When Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941 and the United States entered World War II on the side of the Allies, Jack M. Clark was about a year out of high school. He tried to enlist but was turned down because of an alleged heart murmur. The following spring he suffered a fractured skull in a car accident. In the fall he got a draft notice, and the Army doctor declared him fit for service this time around.

The 474^th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Automatic Weapons Battalion, of which Jack became a part, began nameless as a group of recruits from up and down the eastern United States. There were men from large cities such as Baltimore, Washington, Brooklyn, Pittsburgh, Erie and Philadelphia, and others from small towns such as Bassett, VA, Tarboro, NC, and New Kensington, PA, where Jack hailed from. Little did they know as they boarded troop trains in December 1942 they would play a role in the greatest military event of all time: D-Day.

The trains themselves were described as “old, decrepit and depressing.”¹ A 20-year-old Jack would add “dirty” to that list as he tells of his trip from home:

My instructions for entering the U.S. Army were to board the train in New Kensington with a large group of draftees and proceed to Camp Meade, MD. I think we arrived there sometime during the next day. We slept in our seats. The train was dirty, but, of course, we didn’t expect Pullman reservations. I wouldn’t call my stay at Meade an exciting one, but it was full of surprises, since none of the group had ever had this kind of exposure. Little did we know then that there were bigger surprises down the road. We received some shots and uniforms, took tests, pulled clean-up details to keep us busy and wondered what our destinations would be. I guess the chow was OK at this point, since I don’t remember anything too different from civilian life. Somewhere during this routine we were asked if we had any preference as to what type of outfit we would like to go to for our basic training. I never met anyone who ever ended up in the outfit he named!

Lt. Steve Martinique
of  Coaldale, PA, was
Jack's lieutenant.

Each man was given two pairs of GI shoes, another two pairs of winter and summer underwear, socks, handkerchiefs, jackets, pants and a big, heavy overcoat. The shirt, coat and overcoat were to be buttoned at all times, on or off duty, as were the pockets of the shirts.

At this point, each man was also given a piece of brown paper, about a yard square, and a piece of string and told to use it to wrap their civilian clothes to be sent home. The Maverick Outfit shares an anecdote related to this activity that was indicative of life in the Army:

One man asked for another piece of paper for his hat. It was one of those broad-brimmed hats popular with the teen-agers in the early 40s. “Oh, that paper is big enough for the hat,” he was told, and the soldier supervising the recruits simply squashed the hat down with his hand.²

After about a week, Jack says the group was on a train headed toward New York City that ended up at Camp Edwards, CT. “This was a troop train with the usual accommodations,” Jack says, “which means we were glad to get the hell off of it when we arrived at our destination. I suppose they wanted us to appreciate our accommodations at Camp Edwards.”

Sgt. Fletcher Marshall
of  Richmond, VA,
was Jack's sergeant.

Barracks at this camp consisted of numerous, seemingly identical, white, two-story buildings. Each building was filled with double-decked bunks, and a latrine on the ground floor was for the use of men housed on both floors.

The non-coms and officers, referred to as the cadre, were from New England and drawn from the 207^th coast Artillery Regiment. It was formerly the 7^th regiment of New York, an exclusive National Guard outfit made up of the area’s bluebloods, and was renamed the 207^th when called into federal service.

“Basic training at Camp Edwards was very impressive for me,” Jack relates. “I really liked the marching, drilling, exercise, hiking, double-timing and instructions on small arms and the larger guns. But I didn’t care for the extreme cold weather or the ‘short arm’ inspections in the middle of the night.” As for the food, Jack says, “It wasn’t that great, although there was never enough of it to kill anyone. The post exchange was nearby and usually stocked well.”

He remembers one particular breakfast in the mess hall during a spell unusually cold for even New England when they were served cornflakes and water rather than milk. Their mess sergeant had overdrawn rations, so the cornflakes were limited to one bowl. Of course, the men could have all the water they wanted. Square eggs were served frequently as well, and Jack says these were OK “unless you bit into a lump of baking soda.”

Jack also remembers a humorous incident from a hike during this period. “My platoon leader asked me to identify a plane flying overhead at the time. I couldn’t identify it, and he said, ‘It’s an airplane, Clark.’”

Over the sea to Great Britain

The Aquitania was the last of the four-stackers.
Cunard Lines retired it in 1950.

Early in 1944, the 474^th boarded yet another troop train, its last stateside, and moved up the east coast to New York City. The unit was billeted at nearby Camp Shanks and, for a short while, lived it up, taking the bus and the Weeahawken Ferry to the city.

Then one day the man said, “No passes today.” In the early hours of the next morning, the youths, who were green rookies just a year ago, and who were now polished soldiers, crammed the last of their belongings into a bag almost too big to be carried, staggered onto a ferry boat into which they were packed like sardines and sailed down the Hudson to Manhattan. Arriving at the pier, they carried their heavy barracks bags up the gang plank, which went up several stories into a ship that seemed to be some 10 stories high and a block long. Inside, they went up stairways and through corridors until they reached “A” deck, the top deck of the ship and found large ballrooms packed up to the ceiling with bunks. Some had to climb five bunks up to get a place to sit down.⁵

The four-stack Aquitania, sister ship of the sunken Lusitania and the retired Mauretania, set sail for Great Britain on Saturday morning, Jan. 29, 1944. For most of the men on board, it was their first ocean voyage but not to be their last. Jack remembers the boat ride well. “Manned by the English, we naturally had crappy food,” he recalls. “The traveling conditions were salt water to wash in and a terrible storm for most of the voyage with everybody getting seasick. We went around Iceland twice to avoid German submarines.”

The outfit pulled MP duty and manned the ship’s anti-aircraft guns, mounted in turrets high above the boat deck. They got their first shot at the Germans while aboard, firing on a German reconnaissance plane. A master sergeant became ill during the voyage and died, and Jack remembers that the corpse was lashed to the deck at the front of the ship to keep it frozen for the remainder of the voyage.

All commissioned officers, Navy nurses and Red Cross workers had their quarters on the top decks, “and we were not permitted in that area,” Jack says. “In my area, I was on the bottom bunk with three or four bunks above me. I had to be careful when I exited from my bunk so that I could duck the heave-ho from the seasick guys above.”

The Maverick Outfit reported, “As the Aquitania rolled and dipped into towering waves in a storm-tossed ocean, some of the fellows feared they would be thrown into the sea. Others wished they would. At one time, the boat listed 30 degrees, losing one of its lifeboats.”⁶

Jack adds that he volunteered to go with a few guys to the front of the ship and then down into the hold to secure his battery’s PX rations. “That was a mistake! This is the worst place to be on a ship when you’re in a storm. You lose all sense of direction and have to hold onto the rails on the stairs. What an experience!”

Eight days after leaving New York, the Aquitania passed the Shetland Islands along the west coast of Scotland and went through the North Channel past Northern Ireland before easing into the Firth of Clyde. Still aboard ship, the men received a letter on White House stationery bearing the signature of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and addressed to members of the United States Expeditionary Force. It said in part:

We who stay at home have our duties to perform—duties owed in many parts to you. You will be supported by the whole force and power of this nation. The victory you win will be a victory of all the people—common to them all…You bear with you the hope, the confidence, the gratitude and the prayers of your family, your fellow-citizens and your President.⁷

Another paper carried this message from British Prime Minister Winston Churchill:

To each American soldier who has left home to join the great forces now gathering in this island, I send a message of greeting and welcome. Wherever you may go in our country you will be among friends. Our fighting men look upon you as comrades and brothers in arms. Welcome to you while you are with us, and when the time comes we will go forward together and carry the good cause to final victory.⁸