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When Ralph traveled from Ft. Thomas, Kentucky to Camp Swift, Texas he mentioned traveling through Memphis, Tn and Brinkley, Arkansas, where the train made a short stop. He never expected to return to this spot, but his letter of May 15, 1943 is post marked from Brinkley. Things can change quickly when you're in the Army."Dear Mom & Dad -"
"You didn't expect me to bob up in Arkansas, did you? Well, I didn't either 'til they woke us up at 4:30 Thursday morning. They're having a terrible flood at a place about 12 miles north of here called Cotton Plant. They called out the Engineers to bring boats and a pontoon bridge up here. There are 60 trucks in our convoy and another convoy came up earlier. They told us to pack a barracks bag with blankets and enough clothes and toilet articles, etc. to last a week. Some say we'll be here two or three weeks, so it's pretty hard to tell how long it will be. There are 8 trucks and 16 drivers from the 147th in the convoy. The rest are from half a dozen or more other outfits including the 207th, 206th, 146th, 291st, 527th, 82nd, etc.
We got loaded and left Camp Swift about 11:30 Thursday morning. We've stopped for meals for 10 or 15 minutes every two hours and from 12 to 3 Friday morning. Outside of that we've been rolling all the time, night and day. Right now we've come 619 miles. All the sleep we've got has been those three hours Friday morning, and what we could get while the other fellow was driving. I feel like I could sleep for a week. We got here about 7 o'clock this morning, ate breakfast and gassed up the trucks, and now we are just waiting, I suppose for further orders. Our job is ust supposed to deliver the stuff up here, but we may have to build the darn bridge yet, it's hard to tell. I hope not.
From the reports we've been getting, I guess the flood must be pretty bad, and it hasn't reached the crest yet. We may see quite a bit of excitement before we get away from here.
Just keep on writing to Camp Swift. I'll get the letter when I get back. I'll write more about this when I get a chance."
3 comments:
First, one can get some understanding of the importance of this seeming diversion from the troops' military training by reading the Time magazine report of the huge impact of the floods in the Midwest and the South in 1943. Crops were ruined, rail traffic was stopped, including movement of supplies and materials for factories manufacturing war materiel, and many of the factories themselves were flooded.
Second, it seems important that parts of many Engineer Combat battalions were sent. How valuable to have men in each battalion who have had real experience responding to a flood and putting their newly learned skills to work.
In June of 2008, while attending a professional conference in Little Rock, Arkansas, I was able to rent a car and drive east to the area where Ralph worked fighting the floods 65 years earlier. The pictures in the collage in this post were taken during this trip. The towns and rivers mentioned by Ralph in his letters of May and June 1943 are included in this collage. The picture of the main street of Cotton Plant, Arkansas is in the upper left-hand corner. The town looks very much like it must have looked in 1943. Aside from Brinkley, the towns included in Ralph's letters were, and still are, almost exclusively populated by African Americans.
Much of the land of the the area is considered to be hard wood bottomland, flooded much of the time.
Didn't he end up having to build the bridge, as predicted? This is timely, as so many National Guard troops are rolling into the Gulf region to help out. I imagine they must be making the same kinds of sacrifices he did.
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